The community is discussing impeachment proceedings against the president and possibly vice president, and it has become evident to me that the full text of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's ruling from this summer is not widely known. I believe it is important to the community to have this information. Geek that I am, I believe the full decision is breathtaking reading. I quote the decision here, and encourage Kossacks to read it in full from the pdf link at the ACLU's site:
http://www.aclu.org/...
Disclaimer: I am not an attorney or a judge. I just like reading momentous court decisions.
Judge Taylor's reasoning looks to my untrained eye ironclad in most particulars, with the exception of the discussion of standing to bring suit. This is the one point on which the court's reasoning appears to be a bit of a stretch, and may be the point on which the Bush administration has based its appeal. God knows, they'd have to appeal something, because if this decision stands, it in effect lays out articles of impeachment, and does so almost entirely based on the texts of the applicable laws and the administration's public statements.
Money quote number one:
The President of the United States, a creature of the same Constitution which gave us these Amendments, has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders as required by FISA, and accordingly has violated the First Amendment Rights of these Plaintiffs as well.
Sounds like an impeachable offense to me.
Money quote number two:
In this case, the President has acted, undisputedly, as FISA forbids. FISA is the expressed statutory policy of our Congress. The presidential power, therefore, was exercised at its lowest ebb and cannot be sustained.
Hm. That would be bad, right?
Money quote number three:
Finally, in the case of Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997), the separation of powers doctrine is again discussed and, again, some overlap of the authorities of two branches is permitted. In that case, although Article III jurisdiction of the federal courts is found intrusive and burdensome to the Chief Executive it did not follow, the court held, that separation of powers principles would be violated by allowing a lawsuit against the Chief Executive to proceed. Id. at 701. Mere burdensomeness or inconvenience did not rise to the level of superceding the doctrine of separation of powers. Id. at 703. In this case, if the teachings of Youngstown are law, the separation of powers doctrine has been violated. The President, undisputedly, has violated the provisions of FISA for a five-year period.
I find it exquisitely ironic that Judge Taylor managed to quote from the Paula Jones case in denying the administration's claims.
Finally, the context for the brief quote that made the news this summer when the decision came out, my emphasis added:
The duties and powers of the Chief Executive are carefully listed, including the duty to be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, (49) and the Presidential Oath of Office is set forth in the Constitution and requires him to swear or affirm that he “will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” (50) The Government appears to argue here that, pursuant to the penumbra of Constitutional language in Article II, and particularly because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself. We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all “inherent powers” must derive from that Constitution. We have seen in Hamdi that the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution is fully applicable to the Executive branch’s actions and therefore it can only follow that the First and Fourth Amendments must be applicable as well.
Okay, so what exactly would the House need to add to this to produce articles of impeachment that would hold water? It seems to me that what we have here is at least as clear as the evidence of Clinton's blowjob.
I suggested in a comment that people give copies of this decision to their elected representatives. I think there's certainly a lot of things that could and should be investigated, and it's certainly difficult to know where to start, the list of crimes is so damn long, but we have a neat and tidy little package of impeachment material here that would require very little additional work on the part of Congress.
I do agree that President Cheney would be a complete disaster, and I do not have a solution for that problem unless it is possible to impeach him, too--I have no idea if it is or not, or what the timing would look like, or whether it is advisable to investigate, find his dirt and nail him for it, and THEN go after the president.
The Bush administration has in the eyes of at least one federal judge broken the law of the land. We all know the scale of the damage that's been done to the country (at least I think we do...). Why is that damage okay? Failure to prosecute crime gives the impression of approval of the crime. I just can't bring myself to say that the gravest of crimes against the Constitution should get a pass.