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.