BUSH
ARTICLE III. FAILURE TO PROTECT, PRESERVE AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION

(7) Establishment of an Unconstitutional,
Parallel Legal System


Edmund Randolph stated at the Constitutional Convention that: “The Executive will have great opportunitys [sic] of abusing his power, particularly in time of war when the military force, and in some respects the public money will be in his hands.”

In direct dereliction of his duty to defend the Constitution, George Walker Bush has, during his tenure as President of the United States of America, sanctioned the establishment of a parallel legal system operating outside the scope of the Constitution under which the participants would not be bound by due process or basic rights of the accused to speedy and fair trials, access to counsel, or even the right to know the charges and evidence against them, by replacing these measures with a new form of law involving: secret and indefinite detention without trial or hearing; renditions to other countries outside the reach of law and justice; the use of military tribunals to replace civilian courts; detentions outside normal writ of habeus rules and without access to effective counsel, unmonitored conversations or judicial attention and review; exclusion of the accused from portions of the trial and from access to evidence used against them; acceptance of hearsay, including testimony gained under torture or duress; and a lack of independent judiciary or appeal of conviction.

An unknown number of individuals, many of whose names the Administration has refused to release, have already been held in undisclosed locations or secret prisons, and mass arrests have been accompanied by deportations. By failing to conduct timely status review hearings, as required under Article 5 of the Geneva Convention, the Bush Administration has made it effectively impossible to determine the status and the rights of those held in secret detention.

Although the Supreme Court has ruled that the denial of rights under the Geneva Accords is illegal [Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld], new proposals from the Bush Administration expand the definition of those who can be detained as “enemy combatants” as no longer limited to aliens abroad, and assert that neither the Uniform Code of Military Justice alone, nor federal criminal procedures will guide the functions of these new courts, whereby George Walker Bush, as President of the United States of America, in defiance the Supreme Court, and in keeping with a pattern of conduct seeking to exempt himself from its rulings and from constitutional law, did commit and was guilty of high crimes against the United States of America, as well as war crimes.

In all of this, George Walker Bush has sought to arrogate unprecedented power to his executive office and to undermine the system of checks and balances established by the Founders, by using war and national emergency as the basis for his claims in support of a unitary presidency.

Wherefore George Walker Bush, by such conduct, and in the interest of saving our Constitution and our democracy from the threat of arbitrary and tyrannical government, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

  next>>

x
 

Copyright 2008 www.groundsforimpeachment.com