by David Swanson
CONTACT: http://democrats.com/contact
After five days of citizen voting at President-elect Obama’s Change.gov website, the top-ranked question seeks a non-partisan Special Prosecutor to investigate the crimes of the Bush Administration:
“Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor – ideally Patrick Fitzgerald – to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?” -Bob Fertik, New York City
The second round of questions began on December 30. As of January 4, nearly 4 million votes had been cast for over 63,000 questions. The first round of questions ended on December 15 with nearly 1 million votes cast for over 10,000 questions.
In the second round, citizen-submitted questions were separated by category: Economy, National Security, Foreign Policy, Education, Health Care, Energy & Environment, Science & Technology, and Additional Issues. The Special Prosecutor question appears in “Additional Issues” and had 19,624 votes as of noon on Sunday. The second-ranked question about accountability for bank bailouts (under Economy) had 17,033 votes.
The Special Prosecutor question was endorsed by Democrats.com, The Nation, People’s Email Network, and key bloggers including Digby and McJoan at DailyKos.com.
As noted by Ari Melber of The Nation Magazine, the Special Prosecutor question ranked sixth in the first round of voting at the Obama site. But Melber writes, “Now that Vice President Cheney confessed his support for waterboarding on national television, flouting the rule of law, the issue is even more urgent.”
According to Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, “Besides Vice President Cheney’s admissions of torture, President Bush himself has admitted to illegal spying. If these actions go unprosecuted we will be sanctioning open criminality. Moreover, the Geneva Conventions require the United States to prosecute war crimes. We can stand for the rule of law or against it; the choice cannot be avoided and the question must not be.”
President-elect Obama has promised to answer the top questions on his site. In this case it would be the first time since the Pennsylvania primary, and only the second time ever, he has had to address the issue of prosecuting the crimes of the Bush-Cheney administration. On April 14 he said, “if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law.”
At the same time, there has been increasing speculation that President Bush, who has been relatively stingy about granting other pardons, will pardon not only Vice President Cheney, but perhaps even himself in the final minutes of his term. “If George Bush pardons Dick Cheney and himself for their crimes, the American people will be outraged,” Fertik said. “Under our Constitution, Presidents swear to uphold the Constitution, not to subvert it. If a President can deliberately authorize crimes and then abuse his pardon power to protect those who commit them, we live in a dictatorship – not a democracy.”
Melber believes citizen engagement is key. “With so few journalists directly asking the President-Elect about these issues, however, it is up to the rest of us to put accountability and the rule of law on the agenda.”
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Voting remains open:
Sign in at http://change.gov/openforquestions
On the left menu, click “Additional Issues.” Bob Fertik’s question will appear at the top.
Look right for the checkbox, mouseover it so it goes from white to dark, then click to cast your vote
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David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” by Seven Stories Press and of the introduction to “The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush” published by Feral House and available at Amazon.com. Swanson holds a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson is Co-Founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ConvictBushCheney.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace, a member of the legislative working group of United for Peace and Justice, and convener of the accountability and prosecution working group of United for Peace and Justice.
Patrick Fitzgerald hardly strikes me as “ideally” the Special Prosecutor for Bush’s crimes. Look at his record:
Prosecution of the 1993 Twin Tower bombing plotters which included protecting and hiding a major perpetrator, Ali Muhammed, who was simultaneously with the Green Berets and Al Qaeda and trained terrorists. The judge in the case refused a defense motion to produce Muhammed as a key witness in a case that clearly involved FBI penetration and complicity in the plot. He was later appointed as Attorney General by Bush.
Prosecution of Scooter Libby for perjury, a much lesser charge than violation of the Agent Identities Protection Act in a way that never revealed the reasons for outing a career CIA nuclear non-proliferation monitor Valerie Plame nor went up the chain of command to Cheney, where it has been subsequently revealed it should have gone.
Prosecution of Governor Blegoyovitch in Chicago without forcing Rahm Emmanuel or others in the Obama team to testify in public about their conversations with him regarding appointment of a candidate for the Senate seat in Illinois Obama left vacant.
Fitzpatrick operates along a clearly political agenda, not a legal one. It’s comparable to having Leon Jaworski prosecute Nixon and others on Watergate crimes after his role in sabotaging the prosecution of key Nazi war criminals as an attorney at Nuremberg and his years with CIA related firms and foundations. He headed up the Texas state investigation of the Kennedy assassination as well.
These ought not to be “the most trusted men in America” – JJ
Yo Dog!
What you gonna do for the next 4 years afta Bush he be outta office?
What we are really encountering is the back end of decades of increasingly deregulated, ‘free market’, supply side economics. The lack of regulation and oversight has led to pervasive corruption (gee, who’da thunk, eh?).
Thank you, Ronald Reagan for pushing to eliminate any government interference in corporate profiteering. Now we have what you asked for – business without that big government interference… and where has that gotten us?
then presto, by October 2008, we are suddenly in a depression
You do realize, of course, that we’ve been in a recession since December 2007, right? Not that the specifics seem to matter to you or anything…
So now after 8 years of Bush economics the depression we are heading into is the Democrats fault and Obama’s fault before he even swears an oath of office?
You folks are unbelievable.
Prosecution won’t go any further than impeachment did. For the past two years, Democrats controlled Congress and therefore had every opportunity to impeach and end the war on their own white flag waving terms. They didn’t, because they know all this so-called evidence is bogus; nothing but the fevered fantasies of those on the Bush-hating far left. The surge worked, the death toll in Iraq is down, things are finally taking a turn for the better over there, so Obama and his Democrats have nothing to pin on Bush. That’s why, after the Petraeus report last year, they had their media lapdogs start chanting “recession is coming, recession is coming” till the economy went to hell exactly as Captain Ramos pointed out–all to obscure the good news from Iraq and give the left something new they could use to keep power, which is all they care about.
I predict once Obama takes office, the media will finally release the good news in Iraq–and of course they’ll give Obama all the credit for it. What a miracle-worker he is! Why, just by taking the oath of office, everything in Iraq magically improved overnight!
I look forward to the transition from “Impeach Bush for Peace” to “Prosecute Bush for Justice.” [Personal attack deleted]
Prosecute/Evict!
Come on people. Gimme a break! Is this some kind of payback for impeaching of Clinton? Why would you waste Obama’s time with such drivel. It’s not going anywhere, and besides everyone knows, the evil Rethuglikkans will seek revenge if this indeed happens, which it won’t. Tell Obama to concentrate on fixing the economy, which BTW the Demoncrats were mostly responsible for screwing up. We had 71/2 yrs of a booming economy, then presto, by October 2008, we are suddenly in a depression, and headed for depression. This recession was manufactured by the Demoncrats to turn the country to Socialism. You know, tell a man something long enough, and he will believe it. The MSM has done a very commendable job of pushing the Socialist view. May they all rot in hell for their lies!
It’s too late for impeachment–let’s PROSECUTE Bush and any others that have tried to destroy this country during the last eight years!
impeach!
Teach/Evict and impeachment continues even after,
impeach!