To those who think Congress has more important things to do than impeach Bush and Cheney

crossposted at Daily Kos, in response to a posting by Sen. Russ Feingold:

The Republicans in Congress and the president will not allow any progressive legislation to become law.

The best that the Congress can do is to conduct investigations of the misdeeds of Bush/Cheney, and the conventional hearings, even with subpoenas, are being subverted by Bush/Cheney.

The only effective investigations will be those done under impeachment.

There is no more important job of the Congress than to ensure that the claims of regal power made by Bush/Cheney will not stand.

Right now, any American citizen is subject to warrantless search of mail, person, property and electronic communications, arrest and indefinite detention without trial or attorney. All just on the say so of George W. Bush.

What is more important, what could possibly be more important, than repudiating these regal powers? what would the founding fathers do?

No oversight? that must have just been an oversight…

link

An independent oversight board created to identify intelligence abuses after the CIA scandals of the 1970s did not send any reports to the attorney general of legal violations during the first 5 1/2 years of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism effort, the Justice Department has told Congress.

Although the FBI told the board of a few hundred legal or rules violations by its agents after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the board did not identify which of them were indeed legal violations. This spring, it forwarded reports of violations in 2006, officials said.

The President’s Intelligence Oversight Board — the principal civilian watchdog of the intelligence community — is obligated under a 26-year-old executive order to tell the attorney general and the president about any intelligence activities it believes “may be unlawful.” The board was vacant for the first two years of the Bush administration.

The FBI sent copies of its violation reports directly to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. But the board’s mandate is to provide independent oversight, so the absence of such communications has prompted critics to question whether the board was doing its job.

“It’s now apparent that the IOB was not actively employed in the early part of the administration. And it was a crucial period when its counsel would seem to have been needed the most,” said Anthony Harrington, who served as the board’s chairman for most of the Clinton administration.