[Mb-civic] One more chance on Alito (mild, meek, menacing) + americans wanna impeach bush

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

All the pundits are saying that Sam Alito will be confirmed as a member of the 
Supreme Court.  Since it has not yet happened, I suggest you read the following short 
article and then, if you are so moved, that you pick up your phone and call both your 
US Senators (DC and local phone numbers at www.congress.org) and ask your 
Senator to vote against the Alito nominaton, and to filibuster it if necessary.  Miracles 
do occasionally happen, and anyway you'll feel better knowing you tried.  You can 
also read the second short piece about a Zogby poll indicating that Americans would 
like to impeach the President....

Sidney Blumenthal : Meek, Mild and Menacing

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/01/12/alito_bush/index_np.ht
ml

   Meek, mild and menacing
Samuel Alito's Willy Loman facade conceals seething resentments -- and a dangerous 
belief in unbridled presidential power.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Jan. 12, 2006 | "If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by 
crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?"

"No treaty," replied John Yoo, the former Justice Department official who wrote the 
crucial memos justifying President Bush's policies on torture, "war on terror" 
detainees and domestic surveillance without warrants. Yoo made these assertions at a 
public debate in December in Chicago, where he also espoused the radical notion of 
the "unitary executive" -- the idea that the president as commander in chief is the sole 
judge of the law, unbound by hindrances such as the Geneva Conventions, and 
possesses inherent authority to subordinate independent government agencies to his 
fiat. This concept is the cornerstone of the Bush legal doctrine.

Yoo's interlocutor, Douglass Cassel, professor at Notre Dame Law School, pointed 
out that the theory of the "unitary executive" posits the president above the other 
branches of government: "Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the 
August 2002 memo" (one of Yoo's memos justifying torture). "I think it depends on 
why the president thinks he needs to do that," said Yoo.

Unquestionably, Judge Samuel Alito's self-professed "strong" belief in executive 
power was one of his greatest if not paramount credentials for Bush's nomination of 
him to the Supreme Court. The "unitary executive" is nothing less than "gospel," 
declared Alito in 2000, a theory that "best captures the meaning of the Constitution's 
text and structure."

In his manner before the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings this week, 
Alito has been punctilious, prosaic and dutiful in repeating the talking points his 
political handlers have drilled into him. He seems like an understudy for the part of 
Willy Loman. But behind the façade of the supplicant, who wants to be liked, well 
liked, seethes a man out to settle a score.

Few public figures since Richard Nixon have worn their social resentment so 
obviously as Samuel Alito does. In his opening statement, trying to paint his self-
portrait as a self-made man, the bland Alito made a brush stroke of hostility. The son 
of a middle-class civil servant in New Jersey, he attended Princeton and Yale Law 
School, which provided him a glide path to success. "Both college and law school 
opened up new worlds of ideas," he testified. "But this was back in the late 1960s and 
early 1970s. It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very 
smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly." Despite all the 
"turmoil" around him, by all accounts Alito spent his university years undisturbed; 
there was no transforming incident in which he was rebuffed or insulted.

Alito further explained himself in his job application to the Reagan Justice 
Department. His interest in constitutional law, he wrote, was "motivated in large part 
by disagreement with Warren Court decisions," "particularly" in the area of 
"reapportionment." In fact, the Warren Court decisions in that area established the 
principle of "one person, one vote." Alito's career in the law has been a long effort to 
reverse the liberalism of the Warren Court.

When Alito served in the Justice Department, he argued that the federal government 
had no responsibility for the "health, safety and welfare" of the American people (a 
view rejected by President Reagan); that "the Constitution does not protect the right 
to an abortion"; that the executive branch should be immune from liability for illegal 
domestic wiretapping; that illegal immigrants have no "fundamental rights"; and that 
police had a right to kill an unarmed 15-year-old boy accused of stealing $10, a view 
rejected by the Supreme Court and every police group that filed briefs in the case. He 
also wrote a memo arguing that it would be legal for employers to fire and for the 
federal government to exclude from any of its funded programs people afflicted with 
AIDS because of "fear of contagion whether reasonable or not."

As a judge, he has ruled consistently for employers against individual and civil rights, 
and for unbridled executive and police power. Against the majority of his court and 
six other federal courts, he argued that regulation of machine guns by the federal 
government was unconstitutional. He approved the strip search of a mother and her 
10-year-old daughter although they were not named in a warrant, a decision 
denounced by then federal Judge Michael Chertoff, now secretary of homeland 
security, as a "cliché rubber stamp." Alito ruled in favor of a law requiring women to 
notify their husbands if they plan to have an abortion, which was overturned by the 
Supreme Court on the vote of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who stated, "A State may 
not give to a man the kind of dominion over his wife that parents exercise over their 
children."

Alito's decisions and dissents predictably flow from his politics. On the Supreme 
Court, as O'Connor's replacement, he will codify the authoritarianism of the Bush 
presidency even after it is gone.

-- By Sidney Blumenthal 

***

Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping
Submitted by david swanson

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/6796

For Release: January 16, 2006

New Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support
Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to
consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped
American citizens without a judge's approval, according
to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a
grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional
investigation of President Bush's decision to invade
Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the
highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll
interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12.

The poll found that 52% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without
the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that
Congress should consider holding him accountable
through impeachment."

43% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined
to answer. The poll has a +/- 2.9% margin of error.

"The American people are not buying Bush's outrageous
claim that he has the power to wiretap American
citizens without a warrant. Americans believe terrorism
can be fought without turning our own government into
Big Brother," said AfterDowningStreet.org co-founder
Bob Fertik.

Recently White House spokesman Scott McClellan cited a
Rasmussen poll that found 64% believe the NSA "should
be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between
terrorism suspects." Of course, that is exactly what
Congress authorized when it created the FISA courts to
issue special expedited secret warrants for terrorism
suspects. But Bush defied the FISA law and authorized
warrantless wiretaps of Americans, which has outraged
Americans to the point that a majority believe Congress
should consider Bush's impeachment.

"Bush admits he ordered illegal warantless wiretapping,
but says it began in response to 9/11 and was limited
to a small number of calls to or from Al Qaeda," Fertik
said. "But recent reports suggest wiretapping affected
a much larger number of Americans, and a report in
Friday's Truthout says the wiretapping began before
9/11."

"The upcoming Senate hearings on White House
wiretapping could be as dramatic as the Watergate
hearings in 1973. A majority of Americans have already
believe Congress should look into grounds for
impeachment, yet we have only seen the tip of the
iceberg in the Corporate Media. If Bush ordered
warrantless wiretapping long before the terrorist
attack on 9/11, then Americans will realize that George
Bush came into office determined to shred the
Constitution and take away our rights," Fertik said.

Impeachment Supported by Majorities of Many Groups

Responses to the Zogby poll varied by political party
affiliation: 66% of Democrats favored impeachment, as
did 59% of Independents, and even 23% of Republicans.
By ideology, impeachment was supported by Progressives
(90%), Libertarians (71%), Liberals (65%), and
Moderates (58%), but not by Conservatives (33%) or Very
Conservatives (28%).

Responses also varied by age, sex, race, and religion.
74% of those 18-29 favored impeachment, 47% of those
31-49, 49% of those 50-64, and 40% of those over 65.
55% of women favored impeachment, compared to 49% of
men. Among African Americans, 75% favored impeachment,
as did 56% of Hispanics and 47% of whites. Majorities
of Catholics, Jews, and Others favored impeachment,
while 44% of Protestants and 38% of Born Again
Christians did so.

Majorities favored impeachment in every region: the
East (54%), South (53%) and West (52%), and Central
states (50%). In large cities, 56% support impeachment;
in small cities, 58%; in suburbs, 46%; in rural areas,
46%.

Support for Clinton Impeachment Was Much Lower

In August and September of 1998, 16 major polls asked
about impeaching President Clinton (
http://democrats.com/clinton-impeachment-polls). Only
36% supported hearings to consider impeachment, and
only 26% supported actual impeachment and removal. Even
so, the impeachment debate dominated the news for
months, and the Republican Congress impeached Clinton
despite overwhelming public opposition.

Passion for Impeachment is Major Unreported Story

The strong support for impeachment found in this poll
is especially surprising because the views of
impeachment supporters are entirely absent from the
broadcast and print media, and can only be found on the
Internet and in street protests. The lack of coverage
of impeachment support is due in part to the fact that
not a single Democrat in Congress has called for
impeachment, despite considerable grassroots activism
by groups like Democrats.com
(http://democrats.com/impeach).

The passion of impeachment supporters is directly
responsible for the four polls commissioned by After
Downing Street. After the Zogby poll in June, activists
led by Democrats.com urged all of the major polling
organizations to include an impeachment question in
their upcoming polls. But none of the polling
organizations were willing to do so for free, so on
September 30, AfterDowningStreet.org posted a request
for donations to fund paid polls (
http://afterdowningstreet.org/polling). People
responded with small donations (on average $27) which
quickly added up to over $10,000. After Downing Street
has spent a portion of that money on the Ipsos Poll and
the two Zogby Polls.

Footnotes:

1. AfterDowningStreet.org is a rapidly growing
coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and
political activist groups that was created on May 26,
2005, following the publication of the Downing Street
Memo in London's Sunday Times on May 1. The coalition
is urging Congress to begin a formal investigation into
whether President Bush committed impeachable offenses
in connection with the Iraq war.

2. The Ipsos Public Affairs poll and the new Zogby poll
results cited above refer to surveys of U.S. adults.
The June 2005 Zogby results are from a survey of likely
voters. The new Zogby poll produced results for both
adults and likely voters: 1/06 Zogby: Adults and Likely
Voters 11/05 Zogby: Adults and Likely Voters. 10/05
Ipsos: Adults and definitions of regions. 6/05 Zogby:
Likely Voters. 3. The original impeachment question was
written by Zogby for their own poll in June 2005.
Subsequent questions were written jointly by
AfterDowningStreet.org and the pollsters. Obviously
there are many ways to word polling questions, and
wording has an effect on the results. The range of
possible questions can be seen in the 1998 polls on
impeaching President Clinton. That is why, in July
2005, we began asking the Corporate Media pollsters to
conduct their own polls, using their own wording. We
also support the efforts of MyDD's Chris Bowers to
conduct an in-depth poll on impeachment, which should
be completed soon. <25>
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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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