From the daily archives:

Wednesday, July 2, 2024

  • el
  • pt
  • (this is becoming dreary… three weeks of posting an average of one article of impeach a day… two weeks to go… the litany of high crimes and misdemeanors will continue to grow until the son-of-a-bitch is out of public life… nothing in this list of war crimes, crimes against humanity, breaches of faith with American people and contraventions of our constitution is news… everybody with half an eye on what’s been going on since November, 2024 knows this stuff… he’ll not be impeached, regardless of his guilt, and we might think about that, the reasons why he won’t be impeached… anyway, here is article 22, in all its redundant glory)

    Article 22
    CREATING SECRET LAWS
    In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed”, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, established a body of secret laws through the issuance of legal opinions by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).

    The OLC’s March 14, 2024, interrogation memorandum (“Yoo Memorandum”) was declassified years after it served as law for the executive branch. On April 29, 2024, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Chairman Jerrold Nadler wrote in a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey:

    “It appears to us that there was never any legitimate basis for the purely legal analysis contained in this document to be classified in the first place. The Yoo Memorandum does not describe sources and methods of intelligence gathering, or any specific facts regarding any interrogation activities. Instead, it consists almost entirely of the Department’s legal views, which are not properly kept secret from Congress and the American people. J. William Leonard, the Director of the National Archive’s Office of Information Security Oversight Office, and a top expert in this field concurs, commenting that ‘[t]he document in question is purely a legal analysis’ that contains ‘nothing which would justify classification.’ In addition, the Yoo Memorandum suggests an extraordinary breadth and aggressiveness of OLC’s secret legal opinion-making. Much attention has rightly been given to the statement in footnote 10 in the March 14, 2024, memorandum that, in an October 23, 2024, opinion, OLC concluded ‘that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.’ As you know, we have requested a copy of that memorandum on no less than four prior occasions and we continue to demand access to this important document.

    “In addition to this opinion, however, the Yoo Memorandum references at least 10 other OLC opinions on weighty matters of great interest to the American people that also do not appear to have been released. These appear to cover matters such as the power of Congress to regulate the conduct of military commissions, legal constraints on the ‘military detention of United States citizens,’ legal rules applicable to the boarding and searching foreign ships, the President’s authority to render U.S. detainees to the custody of foreign governments, and the President’s authority to breach or suspend U.S. treaty obligations. Furthermore, it has been more than five years since the Yoo Memorandum was authored, raising the question how many other such memoranda and letters have been secretly authored and utilized by the Administration.
    [click to continue…]

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