Daily Archives: June 14, 2024
Tree, d’ya remember this one?
Impeachment – Article Four
Robert Wexler (Dem. FLA) is a co-sponsor of Dennis Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment for George W. Bush. He says, “President Bush deliberately created a massive propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq to the American people and the charges detailed in this impeachment resolution indicate an unprecedented abuse of executive power.” Wexler is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and has scheduled hearings on the matter.
John Conyers (Dem. MI), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has invited former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan to testify before the committee on June 20, 2024 regarding potential obstruction of justice within the Bush White House in the matter of the Valerie Plame leak.
Article 4
MISLEADING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO BELIEVE IRAQ POSED AN IMMINENT THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES
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, executed a calculated and wide-ranging strategy to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States into believing that the nation of Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States in order to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, thereby interfering with and obstructing Congress’s lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and declaring war.
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Slavery
Some buzz this morning about this year being the 200th anniversary of the end of the transatlantic slave trade. Congratulations USA. Of course the Brits had abolished the African trade in 1807 and enforced piracy laws that effectively ended the transatlantic trade for the US with or without a congressional resolution. The 1808 USian ban on the importation of slaves from Africa avoided conflict with Britain at sea, and postponed the War of 1812 a few years.
Neither the US nor Britain saw fit to end slavery when they banned the African trade. The USian solution was to step up slave breeding efforts. The US demand for slaves was met with the products of these breeding plantations from 1808 to 1865. Old South plantations that had depleted their soil growing cotton could turn to slave breeding for income while the cotton growing moved west to Texas.
One of the aspects of the Civil War that seems most cynical and/or ironic was the emancipation proclamation, freeing slaves in the Confederacy, but not speaking to emancipation of slaves in border states. On the other hand, the ratification of the 13th amendment to the constitution in 1865 occurred just three short years after the presidential order that set the Union on the path to freeing the slaves. This is an eye-blink in Government Time.
In 1860 there were about four million slaves in the United States. The vast majority of these were born into slavery in the USA (the transatlantic trade having effectively ended 52 years prior). Today, it’s estimated that of the 27 million slaves in the world, about 500,000 are in bondage in the USA. (CIA estimates of 17,000 slaves per year being brought into the country seem to support the half a million estimate).