Tuesday night at the monthly meeting of the largest county Democratic Party in the nation, Los Angeles, the vote was unanimous on a resolution calling for the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee, author of the famous "torture memo" -- aka "the Bybee memo."
Unanimous. LACDP spoke with one loud, clear voice on this. Next week, we'll be working this resolution at the California Democratic Party Convention in Sacramento. And I hope Democrats (and Republicans, too) will join together in crafting resolutions calling for accountability. It's time to dismantle the Bush Administration's torture policy, and bring its facilitators to account.
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.
Dday, digby and tristero have all written about it since at Hullabaloo. I agree with dday 100%. This is the beginning of how the grassroots can organize to force the beginnings of accountability in Washington. More background, info on what's to come and how to do it on the flip.
goldstone also offered this brief over-view of background info:
* The "torture memo" of August 1, 2002 was signed by Jay Bybee when he was at Justice. It's now commonly called "the Bybee memo" -- and it was the first deliberate step taken to legitimize "enhanced" interrogation by the Bush administration. Sen. Feinstein famously grilled Alberto Gonzalez about the memo at his confirmation hearings.
* In 2003, Bush appointed Bybee to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. At his confirmation hearings, he "stonewalled," refusing to divulge any legal opinions he may have rendered while at Justice.
* Our CA Sens. Feinstein and Boxer both voted against his confirmation, March, 2003.
* The "Bybee Memo" was leaked to the Washington Post over a year later, summer of 2004. No one knew of Justice Bybee's role in drafting torture memos until long after he'd been confirmed. He now has a seat for life in San Francisco.
* A compelling argument for impeaching Justice Bybee was recently made by Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School.
Here is the core of Ackerman's argument--which, you'll note, is narrowly focused on the argument for impeachment itself. One step at a time. Ackerman has already taken note of the fact that Bybee concealed his role in any such deliberations when he came up for confirmation in the Senate. He continues:
If the Senate had known the truth, it would have rejected him. The story of William Haynes offers a cautionary tale. As general counsel of the Department of Defense, Haynes also played a key role in authorizing torture; and he was also rewarded by a nomination to a leading appellate court. But before he could be confirmed, the Bush administration's involvement in torture became a matter of public record, and the Senate refused its consent to the nomination. Bybee is a judge today only because of timing and the administration's assertions of executive privilege.
This is unacceptable. The president can rightly claim privilege for his conversations with his confidential advisers. He needs their candid opinions and won't get them if they aren't assured of confidentiality. But Bybee wasn't a presidential confidant. He was the head of a division of the Justice Department that gives authoritative legal guidance to the entire bureaucracy. It goes too far to suggest that the opinions he issued in this role are privileged. This would permit the creation of a world worthy of Franz Kafka-in which the bureaucracy operated under secret rules that bore no obvious relationship to the statutes passed by Congress. Bybee's refusal to reveal his role at his Senate hearing should not insulate his actions from further scrutiny.
Under the Constitution, impeachment requires a finding of "high crimes and misdemeanors." This is a high standard. Although Bybee's opinion fails minimum tests of legal competence, he may have acted in good faith. This should protect him from conviction. But his legal distortions might also be evidence of the abdication of his fundamental legal responsibilities. Instead of engaging in a good-faith interpretation of the War Crimes Act and the Geneva Conventions, he may have merely been responding to political pressures from the White House to liberate the CIA and the military from the rule of law.
Bybee should, of course, be given a full opportunity to clarify this matter at the impeachment proceedings. But at present, his only public explanation is his extravagant appeal to executive privilege. This cannot suffice. He should be required to take personal responsibility for his actions and explain why they don't make him into a systematic enabler of the war crimes that have disgraced America.
Impeachment means he gets a chance to defend himself, and we, the people, get a chance to hear that defense in a public proceeding. This sort of openness and accountability is at the very heart of what's been lacking these last eight years.
So, back to the LA County Democratic Party resolution. Following the whereas clauses, here's the two resolved clauses:
Therefore be it resolved that the Los Angeles County Democratic Party urges that the United States House of Representatives begin impeachment proceedings against Judge Jay Bybee of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, charging him with facilitating the authorization of torture while employed by the United States Department of Justice; and,
Therefore be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution with its original authorization be sent to the Office of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and that copies of the signed resolution be sent to each member of the California delegation to the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
Everyone named, whole be receiving copies of the resolution is going to be a prime target for grassroots lobbying. With a tad more exactitude, dday had this to say:
Resolutions are somewhat toothless unless used properly AFTER the fact. In the resolution (which I'll put below), it is stipulated that "a copy of this resolution with its original authorization be sent to the Office of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and that copies of the signed resolution be sent to each member of the California delegation to the United States Senate and House of Representatives." California members of the HJC include Zoe Lofgren, Maxine Waters, Howard Berman, Brad Sherman, Adam Schiff and Linda Sanchez. The last five, at least, have part or all of LA County in their districts, and could be told RIGHT NOW that their local party has resolved unanimously to impeach Bybee. Should the entire state party agree, all the California members, including the Speaker of the House, and the two Senators (both of whom voted against confirming Bybee) can be told the same. And resolutions like this could spring up all over the country, increasing pressure from the bottom up for the Congress to act.
It starts next week in Sacramento. The Resolutions Committee meeting will be held at 3:00 on Friday, April 24, at the Sacramento Convention Center, 1400 J St., Sacramento, CA. If you're in the area or if you are a delegate, you can come to the meeting and advocate for the resolution. But the decision will likely be made beforehand. Only a few resolutions get out of committee and to the floor of the convention, and the others are tabled, or combined, or referred to a separate committee. We CANNOT let this happen. The ledership of the California Democratic Party needs to hear from constituents on this issue.
We have an opportunity to use the party apparatus to push for accountability and send it up to leaders in Washington. I urge everyone to get on board with this. Thanks.
Looking Forward
Finally, this parting shot: You want to look forward, not backward? Look forward to the day when we no longer have a war criminal sitting in judgment of ordinary Americans in the second-highest court in the land.
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