From The Mailbag – Beach Impeach!

If you live anywhere near the Golden Gate Bridge, keep September 15th open – it’s the return of the Beach Impeach Project.

BEACH IMPEACH III — REGISTRATION OPEN — Sat, Sept 15 — arrive by 1 pm, helicopter at 2 pm

The Park Service and I have finally nailed down the timing for Beach Impeach III. Participants arrive 1 pm, helicopter overhead 2 pm, whole thing should be over by 2:30 pm.

Most of you on this list are Beach Impeach veterans and therefore understand that these events are, necessarily, a work-in-progress. So although I’ve not yet got all the details worked out (I’m trying to get the Beach Impeach website updated right now), I’m going ahead with the sign-up function. Below is the link — please register:

http://www.volunteerforchange.org/event/details/1080

More information can be found at the Beach Impeach website: http://beachimpeach.com

 

At Least He Didn’t Commit Adultery…

….because, you know, that would definitely be grounds for Impeachment.

But torture? Nah

Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden “torture” and permitted use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.

Gutting Habeas Corpus? Pfffft!

…Two that particularly worried him involved U.S. citizens — Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi — who had been declared enemy combatants and denied access to lawyers.

Federal courts, Olson argued, would not go along with that. But the CIA and military interrogators opposed any outside contact, fearing relief from the isolation and dependence that they relied upon to break the will of suspected terrorists.

Flanigan said that Addington’s personal views leaned more toward Olson than against him, but that Addington beat back the proposal to grant detainees access to lawyers, “because that was the position of his client, the vice president.”

Above the will of the people, despite this being a so-called democracy? Meh

Eager to put detainee scandals behind them, Bush’s advisers spent days composing a statement in which the president would declare support for the veto-proof bill on detainee treatment. Hours before Bush signed it into law on Dec. 30, 2005, Cheney’s lawyer intercepted the accompanying statement “and just literally takes his red pen all the way through it,” according to an official with firsthand knowledge.

Addington substituted a single sentence. Bush, he wrote, would interpret the law “in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief.”

Cheney’s office had used that technique often. Like his boss, Addington disdained what he called “interagency treaties,” one official said. He had no qualms about discarding language “agreed between Cabinet secretaries,” the official said.

Go read the whole thing. This is part 2 of 4 of a WaPo exposé on Dick “Dick” Cheney.