In the Assembly, Democrats are employing tactics that seem designed to pressure the governor into signing bills. Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, D-Newark, sent a letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown asking him to investigate whether the governor's strategy is illegal. He cited a part of the state constitution that says it is a felony to seek to influence a legislative vote by means of "bribery, promise of reward, intimidation or other dishonest means."
"While politicians are certainly allowed to express their disagreements in any way they find productive, they are not allowed to refuse to perform their sworn duties in order to force the legislature to accept policy positions," Torrico wrote. "And public officials are specifically prohibited from the kind of direct 'horse trading' in which a government official agrees to take, or not take, a certain action in exchange for a specific vote."
Assembly sources said some Assembly Democrats even suggested on a conference call last week that the lower house should impeach the governor if he imposes a mass veto. The constitution says the Assembly has the "sole power of impeachment" and that it can pursue it on a majority vote for unspecified "misconduct in office." The Senate would then conduct a trial.
The idea seems to crop up every time lawmakers are frustrated with the governor, said Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco. It appears to be mostly talk for now.
"I know some members have mentioned the possibility of impeaching the governor," Torrico said, adding, "There's certainly a growing number of members who consider the governor's extortion tactics to be illegal and a dereliction of duty. But (impeachment) has not been discussed formally in the caucus as an option."
This sounds like a bluff on all counts, although the Governor's actions certainly violate the spirit and (depending on your reading) the letter of the law about using "bribery, promise of reward, intimidation or other dishonest means" to influence a legislative vote. I don't expect Jerry Brown to act on it, however, because he'd probably welcome the ability to threaten the legislature in this manner were he the Governor.
And yet, if the Governor were to veto the entire legislative session because he couldn't get his way on water (and doesn't that represent a failure of HIS leadership, not the legislature's?), I would say a case could be made that using extortion and running the state like a Hollywood negotiation is grounds for removal. What's more, while a two-thirds vote for removal in the Senate would be unlikely (though, given Schwarzenegger's standing in the Republican Party, not completely out of the question), just saddling him with the legacy of impeachment would be a crushing blow to his ego, not to mention his efforts at putting a happy face on his astonishingly awful leadership.
I don't think this is much more than a parlor game. But just so we know the rules, a Governor can be impeached for "misconduct in office" by a simple majority in the Assembly. According to Article 5 of the Constitution, it seems that during impeachment - not removal but impeachment - the Lieutenant Governor becomes Governor. ("The Lieutenant Governor shall act as Governor during the impeachment, absence from the State, or other temporary disability of the Governor or of a Governor-elect who fails to take office.") Given that John Garamendi could be elected to Congress in four weeks, the line of succession appears to show that the President Pro Tem of the Senate would be next in line. So if the unthinkable happens, by November 3 we could be looking at Governor Darrell Steinberg.
Yesterday I kicked off an action item, asking people to call and write the members of the House Judiciary Committee or their California members of Congress, informing them that the largest state Democratic Party in the country has voted to support a Congressional inquiry into Jay Bybee and other lawyers for their actions justifying torture, and that they ought to carry this through. Many people have already contacted their members of Congress and you should do the same. One thing that would help is to get them on the record. If you receive any constituent correspondence from your Congressperson about this issue, please forward it to me at david-dot-dayen-at-gmail-dot-com. We need to build a list of who supports accountability and who does not, of who in the California delegation agrees with their own party and who does not. We're starting to get some on-the-record statements, like this nonsense from Illinois Republican Donald Manzullo, who admits that waterboarding doesn't work, who calls it "more torture than not," as if there's a torture continuum of some sort (the fact that CIA interrogators had to add a tracheotomy kit to the proceedings should tell you what they were up to with waterboarding), but who then says that "no laws were broken" (which is patently false), and that, even if there were, nobody should be prosecuted because the whole thing would get "messy."
MANZULLO: Because then you are going to have to go back and you're going to have to go through every single interrogation and every single memo and the whole purpose of this is to relive again the fact that somebody made the decision to allow this.
We need on-the-record statements like this for every California Democrat, preferably in writing or on tape.
In other news, John Conyers and Jerrold Nadler announced their support to Attorney General Eric Holder for a special counsel to investigate and prosecute anyone involved in the decision-making process in the Bush Administration that led to illegal torture of detainees. That letter is here.
Finally, I will be on Angie Coiro's show on Green960 AM in San Francisco in the 7:00 hour tonight to talk about the CDP resolution, the need for an inquiry and impeachment of Jay Bybee, and the fight to restore the rule of law with respect to torture. Tune in if you can.
Thanks again to all of you who signed petitions and made phone calls and helped push the resolution to open a Congressional inquiry into Torture Judge Jay Bybee, which the California Democratic Party adopted at its convention yesterday. I have been told by the authors of the resolution that the pressure from the outside really aided their efforts.
The passage of the resolution was a beginning, not an ending. On the flip, come and join us in the next step.
UPDATE: Ryan Grim of The Huffington Post has the full story of the passage of the resolution at the convention.
Several weeks of hard work have paid off, and the California Democratic Party is poised to provide a major tool in the fight for justice and accountability for the Bush torture regime. The Resolutions Committee included on their consent calendar the resolution to begin a Congressional inquiry into Judge Jay Bybee and other lawyers who wrote opinions justifying and providing the fig leaf of a rationale for torture, with all punishments allowable under the law, including impeachment.
Without the release of the OLC memo from August 1, 2002, showing Bybee admitting that waterboarding gives the impression of imminent death and allowing it anyway, showing Bybee allowing the CIA to put detainees in a small box with bugs in a Room 101-style exploitation of phobias, I'm not sure this resolution would have passed. But the release massed a groundswell of support from the grassroots. My petition to urge the CDP to support the resolution gathered 4,827 signatures in about a week. Courage Campaign hopped aboard as well and got 9,000 or so sigs on their petition. Activists called the CDP offices and pushed for passage. And the party got the message.
Resolutions can go flat if they aren't picked up and used as a tool. Today, when it passes the full party on the convention floor in a few hours, we can celebrate. Tomorrow, we put this to work. Thanks to everyone who put in the time and effort to get this done.
UPDATE: Here's the full text of the resolution, on the flip:
At a press avail following her speech at the California Democratic Party convention, I asked Sen. Boxer about the Resolutions Committee passing support for a Congressional inquiry into the actions of torture judge Jay Bybee and the imposition of all possible penalties including impeachment. She said "I'm very open to that.... there is an ongoing investigation at the Justice Department into his work (at the Office of Professional Responsibility -ed), and we'll see how that goes. But I'm very open to that. And I'll remind everyone that I didn't vote for him when his nomination came up. I was one of 19 to do so."
Needless to say, the support from Sen. Boxer will be a great help in the Resolutions Committee, when they prioritize the top ten resolutions to send to the floor of the convention tomorrow.
The other interesting tidbit from the presser was that Sen. Boxer offered no indication of her endorsement on the ballot measures for the special election on May 19. She says she and Sen. Feinstein haven't studied the measures yet, and that they will get together in Washington and offer a joint statement once they make their decision. "I'll let you know when I go public. But let me say this - the budget process in California is dysfunctional, because of the super-majority needed to pass a budget and tax increases. And until we get to the root causes of changing that, it's very difficult to do anything." This pretty much tracks with what we've been saying for a long time. Until you pass #1, it won't matter if you pass #2-#10.
Other topics covered included torture investigations (Boxer supports the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Sen. Leahy recommended), the fate of cram-down provisions in the Senate ("Sen. Durbin is doing a heroic job... the banks are still a major lobbying group."), potential opponents in her 2010 re-election (I hope nobody runs against me!"), and the news of a budget reconciliation deal on health care in the Senate (she didn't have much to say on that other than that reconciliation should always be on the table, as it was during the Reagan years, and that the situation is "in flux.") Boxer was at her most eloquent answering a question about the rule of law and the impression that those at the highest levels of power, be it the banksters or the torture regime, were above it. "The law must prevail... the people should feel that something's wrong, if nothing is done on torture. If we don't like a law, we repeal it, we don't ignore it."
I'll do a fuller convention preview post in the morning, but just a final mention - I have a petition to tell the CDP to support the resolution to impeach federal Judge Jay Bybee, who sits on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals despite having been one of the architects of the flawed legal justification for torture committed in our name. There are musings about independent commissions and special prosecutors in Washington, but I believe we must press on all fronts, and the impeachment of Bybee, who sits on the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, is particularly acute here in this state. Currently I have 4,435 signatures - please sign by midnight tonight and I will present yours and everyone else's name at the Resolutions Committee tomorrow at 3pm. If we get this resolution passed, we will have a powerful tool to force California members of Congress to initiate hearings in the House Judiciary Committee to impeach Bybee. I think it's absolutely possible that we make this happen over the weekend - but the leadership of the CDP needs to know that there's a large and powerful constituency behind this effort.
Please sign the petition if you haven't already. And the Courage Campaign has their own petition, with around 8,500 signatures at last count. 13,000 people arguing for impeachment is a powerful number - let's go for more.
I am the Public Policy Director for the Courage Campaign
When I read the torture memos that President Obama released, I was shocked, but I can't say I was too surprised. Nevertheless, the details are horrifying. Waterboarding a detainee 83 times in a month, cramped confinement, putting "stinging insects" into a box with a detainee, and "walling" - throwing someone's head into a wall - these are the things that Jay Bybee's August 2002 memo approved. In 2003, Bybee was nominated and confirmed to a seat on the all-important 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Last Friday David Dayen asked the Courage Campaign to join the grassroots effort to impeach Jay Bybee by helping pass this resolution. And we were happy to participate. Today we emailed our members asking them to sign up as supporters of the CDP impeach Bybee resolution.
The email we sent references the powerful NYT editorial calling for Bybee's impeachment. Since then Congressman Jerry Nadler, who chairs the House Subcomittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and is a ranking Dem on the House Judiciary Committee, has announced his support of the impeachment of Jay Bybee:
"He ought to be impeached," Nadler said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "It was not an honest legal memo. It was an instruction manual on how to break the law."...
"Any special prosecutor on torture would have to look at the authors of those torture memos," said Nadler. "And certainly you have real grounds to impeach him once the special prosecutor took a good look at that. I think there ought to be an impeachment inquiry looked at in any event. Which should happen first, I'm not sure."...
"[Bybee] should be a target. Yoo should be a target. There are a number of targets," said Nadler, referring to for Bush administration counsel John Yoo, who also authorized torture and is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Bybee, noted Nadler, "is the only one who's a federal court judge now."
As we read with growing horror the most recent torture memos released by the Obama Administration, knowing that there are more revelations to come, I think a lot of us are asking the question that mcjoan asked yesterday. "Now what?" How can we address this moral rot that continues to eat away at our legitimacy? What can be done? Mcjoan offers a couple suggestions.
The process by which our government came not only to torture, but through torturous logic try to convince themselves that it was legal is not just the product of evil. It's the product of excessive, unchecked power that has proven far too easy to seize, to hold, and to exercise.
And we can't allow that to happen again.
That's why, at the very least, there must be investigations. Whether through the special prosecutor that the ACLU has called for, or Senator Leahy's proposal for a commission of inquiry, America has to know how this happened, gruesome step by gruesome step. There is no other way to prevent it from happening again.
Mcjoan is right that our corroded, accountability-free zone in Washington will require an incredible amount of effort just to bring us to these steps. We need to counter the establishment pressure to move away from this evil with our own pressure, to support the rule of law, to recognize that justice delayed is justice denied, and that a failure to hold accountable these acts will result in them returning, in spades, in the future. Without this accounting, in a very real sense our democracy dies.
And there is an actual mechanism, a way to leverage grassroots anger and push the elected officials who can make these decisions, at least in one case. We can prove the desire for accountability in the country and take a systematic approach to restore democracy and the rule of law. And it starts with Jay Bybee.
Nota Bene: This is an open letter to Charlie Brown, Democratic candidate for CA-04's open seat. I have notified the Brown campaign of this diary by email. It is also crossposted at Daily Kos.
***
Dear Charlie,
I supported you in your race against John Doolittle back in 2006. This year I would like to support you again in your open seat race against Tom McClintock. While I would never under any circumstances vote for Tom McClintock, as things stand right now I cannot in good conscience vote for you. I do not currently intend to cast a vote in the CA-04 House race.
Almost one year ago I decided to write to you because I wanted assurance from you on a matter that became very important to me after the 2006 elections. After a few brief formalities, I wrote the following:
The board of directors of the ACLU of Southern California has passed a resolution calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for their abuses of basic civil liberties.
"When taken in concert with the statements and actions of the Administration over the past year regarding Iran, the National Intelligence Estimate reveals a pattern of willful deceit directed at the U.S. Congress, the American people, and the rest of the world on the critical matters of war and peace."
Well, Dennis Kucinich continues to speak for America rather than gross party politics. Speaking in New Hampshire, Wednesday, Kucinich stated:
the vow from his party's leadership in Congress to stand up to President Bush on ending the war in Iraq amounts to a "total fraud."
The Ohio congressman said the most recent House-passed plan to set a timetable for ending the war still would permit permanent bases in Iraq and allow Americans soldiers to train Iraqi military and police and to fight off insurgents.
A famous US patriot once said "These are the times that try men's souls." At the time, he spoke of the events and circumstances surrounding the birth of a nation destined to be defined by the rights and freedoms of the people; a nation led by government of the People, by the People and for the People, where leaders could inspire the People to stand united in spite of differing opinions or particular religious influence.
The advent of the twenty-first century has marked the most severe departure from our founding principles than ever before. We stand on the brink of self-immolation, leaderless and adrift, while selfish, arrogant hypocrites steer our ship of state toward the shoals.
Should we fail now to grow resolute and united in our determination to right this ship, we fail not only ourselves but our children, and their children's children.
It is time to look to those children for inspiration and a reminder of what we, as adults, are tasked with as parents and guardians: to create and foster an environment where children can grow to adulthood, secure in the knowledge that we have passed along the best models for ethical leadership and responsible stewardship of this nation that we know how.
Dennis Kucinich will introduce privileged resolution to force a vote on V.P. Cheney's impeachment resolution this week, probably Tuesday. It is critical that we voice our support and contact our Representatives ASAP to let them know how we feel.
However, he is reaching out to us, the American people, to do our part and claim responsibility to reclaim our constitutional democracy. Dennis understands that real change and meaningful reform can't happen without the active support of the people, and so he will be holding a live, national conference call Monday evening, November 5th, to explain how everything will work and what we can do to help. From the Kucinich campaign website:
he will go before the U.S. House of Representatives on a point of personal privilege to move the impeachment of Dick Cheney. Mr. Kucinich stated he will bring the impeachment forward before Thanksgiving.
My post about Jane Harman's remarks at a town hall meeting yesterday about the secret "torture memos" revealed this week by the New York Times is up at Think Progress, submitted through their Blog Fellows Program, which I can't recommend enough. Let me contextualize those remarks a bit more, and add some of the other interesting things Rep. Harman had to say.
I asked the question to Harman about the secret memos. Earlier this week, the White House claimed that all relevant members of Congress had been fully briefed on the classified program sanctioning harsh interrogation techniques by the CIA. At the time of the memos, Harman was a member of the "Gang Of Eight" routinely briefed on intelligence matters. Harman was shaking her head as I asked the question if she was fully briefed, chuckling almost in disbelief. Her answer:
We were not fully briefed. We were told about operational details but not these memos. Jay Rockefeller said the same thing, and I associate myself with his remarks. And we want to see these memos.
We all know about Ellen Tauscher not knowing that Alberto Gonzales can be impeached; she cleared that one up. Now we have a report from the LA National Impeachment Center, including a lot of my fellow 41st AD delegates, on a meeting they held this week with Henry Waxman:
Towards the end of the meeting, Dorothy Reik, President of Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains, urged Waxman to use the inherent contempt power of Congress to bring criminal charges against Bush and Cheney and their aides, hold a hearing in Congress on those charges, and then hand down the punishment, prison time. Reik expressed frustration with the refusal of Bush administration officials to testify before congressional committees, despite the fact that subpoenas had been issued.
Your witnesses aren't showing up -- They're ignoring your subpoenas, said Reik, so it is time for you, Congressman Waxman, to recognize that there is a precedent for members of congress to initiate and follow through on criminal proceedings.
Waxman said he was unaware of the inherent contempt power. In a follow-up letter after the meeting, Winograd emailed him information on the inherent contempt precedent.
Inherent contempt hasn't been used in decades, so it's a little excusable. But Congressmen like Waxman ought to know about all of the tools at their disposal in fighting the intransigence of the Bush Administration and getting to the truth.
Waxman's thoughts on other topics, including impeachment, on the flip.
I apologize for inaccuracies contained in any earlier correspondence. I want to set the record straight on my actions. I am a co-sponsor of two bills to remove Gonzales from office. On May 22, I co-sponsored H. Res. 417, which declares that the House of Representatives and the American people have lost confidence in Attorney General Gonzales. It calls on the President to nominate a new candidate capable of serving as the head of the Department of Justice. Additionally, I am a co-sponsor of H. Res. 589, introduced yesterday by Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington, which directs the House Judiciary Committee to initiate an impeachment investigation of the Attorney General. The resolution requests a formal investigation of the facts surrounding the Attorney General's actions in order to allow Congress to determine whether articles of impeachment are appropriate [...]
You have to appreciate someone who can admit they were wrong.
