House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations
10:00am EDT

This will be shown on C-Span 1 TV

Links:  C-Span 1 - follow link on home page
   From afterdowningstreet.org:

KPFA & Pacifica Radio will air Friday's hearing from 9:00AM - 1:00PM EDT streamed live at pacifica.org and kpfa.org and on the air at KPFA (Berkeley), KPFK (Los Angeles), KPFT (Houston), and others TBD.

You Say 'Tomato', I say 'Tomato'...

AP: Food industry bitten by its lobbying success

More Bush Administration's HANDIWORK, to make you Sick, REALLY SICK!

The House is not in session today, but the big goings-on will be in the House Judiciary Committee.

• Watch online
• Listen online

Today's the day House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has set aside for a hearing granted in response to the demands of Dennis Kucinich for hearings on the impeachment resolutions he's introduced over the course of the past few months: H. Res. 333 and H. Res. 799, impeaching Dick Cheney, and H. Res. 1258 and H. Res. 1345, impeaching George W. Bush.

The hearing, scheduled for 10:00 A.M. in Room 2141 in the Rayburn House Office Building, is not styled as an impeachment hearing. That's something Conyers and his staff have studiously avoided. It is instead titled a hearing on, "Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations." As we'll see later, this designation could impose some real substantive limitations on the ability of Members and witnesses alike to discuss such critical matters as what constitutional provisions actually set the boundaries of executive power, and what Bush may have done to warrant their invocation. But other than that...

Chairman Conyers wasn't originally inclined to hold any kind of hearing related to Kucinich's resolutions, but a combination of factors eventually made that an untenable position -- though unfortunately none of those factors likely reflect any newfound interest among most Members of Congress in actually impeaching either Cheney or Bush. But with three of Kucinich's four resolutions all referred to Conyers' committee by actual roll call votes on the floor rather than by the usual process of designation by the Speaker in consultation with the parliamentarian, treating those referrals as mere pro forma designations and letting the bills die of neglect (as is the chairman's prerogative) became more difficult to do.

In addition, the cosponsorship of some of those resolutions by members of the Judiciary Committee (Tammy Baldwin, Robert Wexler, Luis Gutierrez, Steve Cohen, Keith Ellison, Shiela Jackson-Lee, Maxine Waters), and especially the explicit pressure for hearings by Wexler, Baldwin and Gutierrez, made it impossible to maintain the position that there was no interest among the membership in having those hearings.

Finally, there was the tactic eventually employed to greater effect by Kucinich, taking advantage of the rules permitting any Member of the House to bring a resolution directly proposing impeachment to the floor at any time as a highly privileged motion, and forcing the Speaker to designate a time within two days after the motion is noticed for its consideration. That gave Kucinich the ability to threaten, after his Cheney resolutions were ignored by the Judiciary Committee, to follow up his first Bush resolution with a second one if the Committee didn't act within 30 days. In theory, he could have threatened an even shorter timeline for the second one, or indeed to bring one every single day until he got what he was looking for. But with that being clear to everyone, granting the hearing (but refusing to call it an impeachment hearing) must certainly have seemed the simplest solution. Especially if you can schedule them for a Friday when there are no votes in the House, so that fewer people will want to stick around to participate or follow along.

So who are the witnesses at this non-impeachment hearing?

Witness List

Panel I:

Hon. Dennis Kucinich
U.S. House of Representatives
10th District, OH

Hon. Maurice Hinchey
U.S. House of Representatives
22nd District, NY

Hon. Walter Jones
U.S. House of Representatives
3rd District, NC

Hon. Brad Miller
U.S. House of Representatives
13th District, NC

Panel II:

Hon. Elizabeth Holtzman
Former U.S. House of Representatives
16th District, NY
Department of Justice

Hon. Bob Barr
Former U.S. House of Representatives
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
7th District, GA

Hon. Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson
Founder and President
High Roads for Human Rights

Stephen Presser
Raoul Berer Professor of Legal History
Northwestern University School of Law

Bruce Fein
Associate Deputy Attorney General, 1981-82
Chairman, American Freedom Agenda

Vincent Bugliosi
Author and Former Los Angeles County Prosecutor

Jeremy A. Rabkin
Professor of Law
George Mason University School of Law

Elliott Adams
President of the Board
Veterans for Peace

Frederick A. O. Schwarz, Jr.
Senior Counsel
Brennan Center for Jutice at NYU School of Law

Interesting. Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Constitutional Law professor who doesn't appear to have a law degree. It's by no means impossible to teach ConLaw without one. But I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. GMU Law. Gee, I wonder who suggested him?

Panel I looks interesting too. Walter Jones is a name I wouldn't have expected to see there, though I know he's been both rather remorseful about the Iraq war and outspoken about it, since his long ago "freedom fries" days. Hinchey has been very vocal in the past with questions about the process by which DOJ claims to have "authorized" the NSA's illegal domestic spying program. Kucinich, of course, is Kucinich. And Brad Miller will be there to discuss two pieces of legislation he's introducing to address the Bush "administration" power grabs: one to authorize the Congress to ask the courts to appoint a special prosecutor in cases when the DOJ refuses to press contempt of Congress charges, and one to require notice to Congress when the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issues an opinion advising the executive that it may ignore statutory law (though I suppose we might wonder why they wouldn't ignore that law, too).

Finally, a note on what not to expect: the "L word." Many people watching the hearings will wonder at some point why no one is just coming out and saying Bush lied. There's extensive precedent in the House against "personal abuse, innuendo, or ridicule of the President."

Personal abuse, innuendo, or ridicule of the President, is not permitted. Under this standard it is not in order to call the President, or a presumptive major-party nominee for President, a "liar" or accuse him of "lying". Indeed, any suggestion of mendacity is out of order. For example, the following remarks have been held out of order: (1) suggesting that the President misrepresented the truth, attempted to obstruct justice, and encouraged others to perjure themselves; (2) accusing him of dishonesty, accusing him of making a "dishonest argument", charging him with intent to be intellectually dishonest, or stating that many were convinced he had "not been honest"; (3) accusing him of "raping" the truth, not telling the truth, or distorting the truth; (4) stating that he was not being "straight with us"; (5) accusing him of being deceptive, fabricating an issue, or intending to mislead the public; (6) accusing him of intentional mischaracterization, although mischaracterization without intent to deceive is not necessarily out of order. [Notes omitted]

And here's something that may cause a bit of trouble:

Although wide latitude is permitted in debate on a proposition to impeach the President, Members must abstain from language personally offensive; and Members must abstain from comparisons to the personal conduct of sitting Members of the House or Senate. Furthermore, Members may not refer to evidence of alleged impeachable offenses by the President contained in a communication from an independent counsel pending before a House committee, although they may refer to the communication, itself, within the confines of proper decorum in debate. [Notes omitted]

I'm not sure what kind of latitude is permitted in a hearing that's convened solely because of a pending proposition to impeach the president, but which purports not to be on that subject, but even the above rule doesn't appear to leave a lot of room for, you know, actually discussing what it is that people will be there to discuss.

All of these precedents, though intended to govern debate on the House floor, will likely be applied similarly to questioning and testimony in the Judiciary Committee. So you may have to get your fix of the "L word" from the press conferences afterward. And depending on what kind of stink, if any, Republicans raise and how Conyers deals with it, most of the other words you want to hear, too. Fair warning.

The hearings will be available via streaming video at the House Judiciary Committee website, and Pacifica Radio's coverage begins at 9:00 am EDT, and will be streamed live at pacifica.org and kpfa.org and on the air at KPFA (Berkeley), KPFK (Los Angeles), KPFT (Houston), WBAI (New York), and others TBD.

In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

Convenes: 9:15am

9:15 am Immediately following the prayer and pledge, the Senate will proceed to up to 2 Roll Call Votes in relation to the following:

• Motion to invoke cloture on S.3268
• If cloture is not invoked on S.3268, motion to invoke cloture on the House message with respect to H.R.3221, the Housing legislation.

10:00am Filing deadline for all 2nd degree amendments [see this discussion of the different types of amendments] to S.3268, the Energy Speculation bill.

The Senate will likely stay in session over the weekend to finish any post-cloture debate on the above bills, and perhaps begin the process of getting the "Coburn Omnibus" (S. 3297) to the floor for next week.

No matter what Judiciary Chairman John Conyers calls it.  The semantic battle over the name of this hearing is the true indicator of its importance.  Even though the resolution HR 1345 that the full House voted to refer to Judiciary for today's hearing is entitled "An Article of Impeachment of President George W. Bush," Conyers is bending over backwards to call it anything but.  The reason is that they are afraid if the word "impeachment" gets out, the natives will get restless, and start demanding the return of the rule of laws, not men.  Let's see if they'll settle for a show trial and go away.  We're counting on you John.  Love, Karl.

The witness list is impressive, and includes Liz Holtzman and Bruce Fein.

What happens now is up to you.  Reach out and speak not as a member of any party, but as an American who grew up loving that you were a citizen of a country where the law was enforced equally among rich and poor, to the extent possible in any democracy yet created.  Call your Republican uncle who would love to see Bush impeached and tell him what's going on.  Contact the media and...

We can not afford a third Bush term, John McCain represents four more years of George W. Bush's failed policies.

It's an incredibly simple statement, yet devastating and for some reason I haven't been hearing it from the Obama campaign for a while. JMHO, but the reason John McCain has been making up ground isn't simply because of his advertising and campaigning but because the Obama campaign has been passively allowing him to pursue his message without going after him for supporting George Bush's failed policies. It used to be every speech at the end of the primaries and at the MN acceptance and a while beyond was calling McCain out on supporting Bush. The MSM will not make the contrasts, Obama has to take his microphone and like Iowa, go after John McCain every day as a third Bush term. MAKE McCain the incumbant. MAKE the election about McCain. The dynamics as they now stand give McCain a 50/50 shot of negative campaigning winning the day for Republicans. We can't let this be about Obama but about ideas: John McCain is running for George Bush's third term. EVERY democratic surrogate and talking head should be saying this EVERY day about EVERY subject. And so should we in our diaries.

 Listening to John McCain clips from the campaign trail on NPR this morning, I realized it was just like listening to George W. Bush - if an older, creepier version. Not all that different from listening to Ronald Reagan, either.  That's when it hit me: that's ALL the Republicans have. They have no real ideas, no substance - just snark.

You can't debate them, because they're not operating at a level of substance, just social dominance games. They don't need real policies, just excuses to paper over their agenda which is basically nothing more than greed and power grabbing. Their whole attitude is so high school, as in "It doesn't matter what you say - we're just too cool to care what YOU think." And if you try to take a position that things matter, that it actually DOES make a difference... well you're just not cool and can be ignored. There's no problem so big they won't turn any real attempt to address it into a joke.

The traditional media buys into this big time, because they all want to believe they're the cool kids too. That's why Obama turning out huge crowds makes them uneasy. It's incomprehensible to them, and they don't know how to deal with that. But a man in his 70's making cutting remarks and tittering smugly away at his own wit - that's too cool. It's Presidential.

It's rare that I am going to agree with John McCain or use a Fox News link to verify a point but John McCain got something right on Wednesday.

At a staged town hall, McCain was asked his thoughts about Israel.  The pertinent part of McCain's response was as follows:

January 5, 1995

Iran May Be Able to Build an Atomic Bomb in 5 Years, U.S. and Israeli Officials Fear

By CHRIS HEDGES,
Published: January 5, 1995

Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought, and could be less than five years away from having an atomic bomb, several senior American and Israeli officials say. "The date by which Iran will have nuclear weapons is no longer 10 years from now," a senior official said recently, referring to previous estimates. "If the Iranians maintain this intensive effort to get everything they need, they could have all their components in two years. Then it will be just a matter of technology and research. If Iran is not interrupted in this program by some foreign power, it will have the device in more or less five years."

...

Reading Michael Crowley's Mark Salter profile in TNR, you wonder how real McCainiacs can really keep a straight face while arguing that the Obama campaign is the one driven by a cult of personality built around a narcissist who feels he's owed the presidency.  Salter is apparently livid that Obama has stolen McCain's themes of having matured out of a colorful childhood and been bettered by patriotism and commitment to public service.  Did Mark Salter make it through his top perch in John McCain's 2000 campaign without ever listening to a George W. Bush speech?  Salter even jokes

"I often regret that we didn't copyright 'serving a cause greater than your self-interest,'" he cracks.

Barack Obama began his speech saying he's an American citizen and a citizen of the world (his first applause line)  The McCain camp highlighted that phrase in its dismissal of Obama. Too, the dismissal spreads through the Meme-o-sphere.

But John McCain himself has used the phrase "Citizen of the World" in a speech on May 27th of this year at the University of Denver. [source]

There is such a thing as good international citizenship, and America must be a good citizen of the world—leading the way to address the danger of global warming and preserve our environment, strengthening existing international institutions and helping to build new ones, and engaging the world in a broad dialogue on the threat of violent extremists, who would, if they could, use weapons of mass destruction to attack us and our allies.

Many past Presidents (and the current one, too!) used  "citizen of the world" in their remarks. Here's a collection of them....

There is much tongue clucking amongst the mainstream media gurus in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin. Was it hubris?  Arrogance?  Too much from a United States senator, who is a presidential candidate, but not yet (or perhaps never) President of the United States?  I say no.

The Bush White House is surely twice as ethical this year as last. In July 2007 the WH staff included two "Ethics Advisors", each earning more than $100,000. That was the year in which a parade of top administration officials were telling Congressional hearings that they remembered nothing about their criminal conspiracies.

Since 2007 both Ethics Advisors have left the WH. Previously the two ethicists in 2006 had also moved on. Perhaps the work load is a problem. Sensing that something needed to be done, the WH has now doubled the number of ethicists on staff to four. The top salary has also shot up nearly 20%.

The improvement in the White House's ethical standards is apparent. Fewer and fewer administration officials are feigning memory loss. During the past year the WH favored a much cleaner solution to the problem of oversight by refusing to comply at all with Congressional subpoenas.

Presumably that's why the WH was able to eliminate the Office for Lessons Learned. Bush has learned all the lessons he wishes to learn.

Somebody sent me the plans for the upcoming George W. Bush Presidential Library... boy, they sure sound official!

Compliments of the Southwest Missouri Libertarian Party.

The George W Bush Presidential Library is now in the planning stages.

The Library will include:

The Hurricane Katrina Room,
which is still under construction.

The Alberto Gonzales Room,
where you won't be able to remember anything.

The Texas Air National Guard Room,
where you don't even have to show up.

(More below the fold.)

  Several days ago I posted a diary pointing up a story from the Albany Times Union with this catchy headline: Toxic gas-drilling technique - "Hydrofracking'' plan raises questions about water safety in state. It seems there's a new technique that can get natural gas out of shale that's now economically viable - but with significant risks of poisoning ground water in a watershed that supplies millions.

  Since the original TU article, there have been several followup stories. (more below the fold)

CodePink in DC hosted tonight's pre-impeachment hearing meeting to coordinate substance, logistics and planned official responses. In attendance were David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org, Susan Serpa and Ralph Lopez of Republicans for Impeachment and the Northeastern Impeachment Coalition, and Cynthia Papermaster, CodePink's Bay Area coordinator who also represents the National Impeachment Network.

Gael Murphy and Desiree Fairooz, CodePink hostesses extraordinaire, welcome everyone to the house in DC!

Philadelphia sketch comedy group Secret Pants collected a number of quotes from the 1960's series Batman and a number of quotes from Dubya and challenged people on the street to guess which quotes were from whom.

McCain apparently isn't as tech ignorant as we think.  Like most Republicans, he appears to be getting all his news from chain emails, because he's parroting the latest talking point that's been propagating down the pipe that brought previous bits of GOP misdirection.  

Earlier, campaigning in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., McCain credited the recent $10-a-barrel drop in the price of oil to President Bush's lifting of a presidential ban on offshore drilling, an action he has been advocating in his presidential campaign.

See, we didn't even have to drill to lower the price of oil, we only had to talk about it.  Which has to make you wonder why Bush didn't bother to remove the executive ban until after Republicans had decided to make oil the focus of their campaign.  (Oh yeah, and how is it that Democrats kept oil companies from saving us when Bush left the executive ban in effect until now?)

What's the real reason oil prices are falling?

"The worries about demand erosion in the U.S. and an economic slowdown are really pulling prices down," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with consulting firm Purvin & Gertz Inc. in Singapore.

The Energy Department's report also showed that U.S. gasoline stockpiles jumped 2.9 million barrels last week, far more than analysts surveyed by energy research firm Platts predicted. The decline in crude inventories was less than forecast.

So congratulations to McCain, Bush, and the Republicans!  They've reduced oil prices by wrecking the economy to the point where demand is falling.  I guess that's one way to satisfy the supply/demand equation.

Don't worry, none of this will make the email.

I am so mad right now I don't know what to do.  For those unfamiliar with me, I live in a small, conservative, republican town in Georgia.  I just had a HUGE argument with my next door neighbor.  After seeing my new shiny Obama sticker on my van, she launched into an attack on me that was unprovoked and very unsettling.  She asked me why he couldn't say the pledge of allegiance to which I replied, that is not true.  I then explained the details of various lies and smears.  She continued to bring up every smear out there from the pledge to the swearing in on the Koran.  I told her she needed to check her facts as these had all been disproved.  She then asked, "So if he is a Muslim, and did swear on a Koran, then would you still support him?"  I explained that I would support him because a person's religion is not an important factor to me.  Which is when she said, "I hope if he gets elected, that he is shot and killed within 24 hours!"