No More Incumbents Blog

We continue to applaud the efforts of our friends at IndictBush.  We must have accountability if we are ever going to be able to get responsibility out of our current or future leaders.  More importantly, this is imperative if we are to wind the war over the hearts and minds abroad, and doubly imperative to protect our own citizens and soldiers around the world.

The investigation and prosecution of Bush era officials must inevitably lead to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and other high officials.
When she was confronted by a student questioner last week, Condoleezza Rice defended torture with these words: “[By] definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.”

That argument will never hold up in court and it is not holding up with Stanford Alumni and students either. They nailed a petition to the door of the president of the university that read:

“We the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (included ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities.”

Bush’s Hall of Shame

George W. Bush raised $100 million in the 100 days since he left office for his presidential library. He and his cronies are racing to remake his legacy and fend off prosecution for his crimes. With your help, we will stop him.

Please make an urgently needed donation to help this movement continue to grow.

This is part of the swelling grassroots movement for prosecution. The people, young and old, are taking action. This will create an irresistible political force.

Please make an urgently needed donation to help this movement continue to grow.

IndictBushNow and others are holding demonstrations, rallies, press conferences, engaging in lobbying, taking out newspaper ads, and mass circulating the petition calling for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor. We are providing leaflets and petitions to people around the country.

We are printing 20,000 leaflets and posters for the upcoming June 25 demonstration at the Justice Department that will call on Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor. All of this takes money. Please make your donation today.

It was high Bush officials who ordered the torture. The Justice Department lawyers must be held accountable for their obscene and sadistic “legal memos,” but they are lower rung figures. They are the lawyerly equivalent of the guards who tortured and savagely humiliated the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. They too were following the orders of even bigger criminals.

Spain’s top investigative judge Baltazar Garzon has decided to pursue a new criminal investigation of those responsible for authorizing, planning and executing the U.S. torture program. The case could lead to arrest warrants in countries throughout Europe and it will put new pressure on the Obama administration to appoint a Special Prosecutor.

Congratulations to everyone who is working so hard in this pursuit of justice. Be sure to keep telling your friends to sign the online petition calling for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor. Sending the petition is easy to do by clicking this link.

– From all of us at IndictBushNow

From our friends at Indict Bush

Spanish Court May Indict Bush Officials
The indictment and prosecution of Bush administration officials is becoming a reality.
"A Spanish court has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials," the Associated Press confirmed.

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Click this link to make a donation to support the ongoing work of the indictment movement.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington, Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes are under scrutiny for sanctioning torture in violation of the Geneva conventions. Under Spanish law, the courts have jurisdiction to prosecute war criminals and torturers anywhere in the world. A judge has already called on prosecutors to review the charges.
Clearly, millions of people worldwide stand with the mission of IndictBushNow and all those who are fighting for accountability. Click this link to make a donation to support the ongoing work of the indictment movement.
This world wide movement will lead to criminal prosecution for the crimes committed by Bush, Cheney and others. This first step is a direct result of the pressure brought by you and millions of other people in the United States and around the world.
You can help make this movement grow by encouraging your friends to sign the referendum calling for the indictment of Bush and Cheney at http://www.indictbushnow.org/. Join with signers from all over the United States and all over the world. Spread the word by circulating this email, and putting the web button on your blog, MySpace or facebook page.
Your donation provides the support needed to power the demand to Indict Bush into a national and worldwide force. Please click here to support these efforts with a generous donation now.
– All of us at IndictBushNow.org

Let me start by stating that I have a master’s in international tax.  I do not believe that anyone should stop paying their taxes.  For that matter, I am also a whistleblower for the IRS, and turned in my former company for income tax evasion and money laundering.  You could say that I put my money where my mouth is.

So it is with irony and satire that I say that if you want to work for President Obama, that you should not pay your income taxes in a way that gives you something remotely close to plausible deniability of any intent to defraud the IRS.  I say this because we are now looking at the 4th or 5th nominee (depending on how you count) that has a serious tax issue.  Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk owe’s almost $10,000 in back taxes (that is back taxes from deductions he was not allowed to take or from income he did not report.  This infers that he had income of more than $100k that didn’t get taxed appropriately.

Now Ron Kirk is not your average blue collar democrat.  He earned more than a $1 million in fees last year working as a lawyer.  A lawyer with a million dollars worth of earnings can pay for a very good tax preparer and tax attorney for that matter.  These types of mistakes are not made by accident.  Someone made the decision not to report that income and someone made the decision to try and deduct season tickets for the NBA.

A lawyer that can easily afford the services of a tax lawyer, and a politician to boot, should not get a free pass for this type of mistake.  Mistakes do happen, but this smells a lot like a person that stepped heavily into the gray zone on purpose knowing that they would not be audited, and only getting caught when their ego pushed them into a political job that brought them into the light of transparency.

Aides to the Senate Finance Committee uncovered Kirk’s tax shortfall during weeks of vetting. Kirk, a lawyer and the Texas Democratic Party’s 2002 Senate nominee, will file amended tax returns for the last three years and pay the Internal Revenue Service $9,975 plus interest. That pales beside the lapses of some Obama Cabinet picks, though independent tax experts agreed that Kirk had made some "careless" errors. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner paid $43,000 in back taxes before his confirmation. Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader who withdrew his bid to lead the Health and Human Services Department, paid $128,203 in back taxes, plus interest, for failing to report as income the car and driver a friend had provided to him.

Cabinet-pick Kirk owes $10,000 in back taxes

Oh and by the way, how come the Obama team still can vet a nominee to save their lives?

Is the pool of Democratic cabinet members so corrupt that these dead beat tax payers are the cream of the crop?

Our friends at VoteToImpeach.org which was spurred on by the terrible actions of the former President and Vice President, Bush and Cheney have not taken their eyes off the ball and have launched a follow up campaign, which we fully agree with and support to indict Bush and Cheney.

Holding leaders accountable is very important in a democracy and if we let our leaders commit crimes then we are in essence guilty of those crimes ourselves, and also likely to become victims of future abuses.  Regardless of your political persuasion holding Bush and Cheney accountable for their actions is important for all Americans.

The growing nationwide movement to Indict Bush and other high officials has led to a sharp change in the political environment inside of Washington, D.C.
In the last two weeks, more than 63,000 people have signed up at IndictBushNow.

Please make a donation today and help keep the groundswell growing. Click here to make an online donation or see how to send a check.
A new, broad coalition of 30 national organizations has come together today and issued the following statement:

“We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.”

The pressure from the grassroots is making the difference. Please make another urgently needed donation today.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has proposed extending to 10 years the statute of limitations on war crimes, torture, domestic surveillance and other crimes.
In a report issued this month, Congressman Conyers and 47 other congressional representatives called for “extending the statute of limitations for potential violations of the torture statute, war crimes statute, laws prohibiting warrantless domestic surveillance, or for crimes committed against persons in United States military custody or CIA custody to 10 years.”
“To be clear, torture is currently banned under United States laws (under the anti-torture statute, the War Crimes Act, the Geneva Conventions, and the Detainee Treatment Act),” states the Congressional report.
All of us together are making a difference and we can have a huge impact. Nothing is more important for restoring the meaning of the constitution than holding high officials accountable.
Because of Bush’s and Cheney’s actions, more than 1 million people died in Iraq; tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and marines were badly wounded or killed in a war of aggression; the people lost their right to privacy in a massive government spying operation; thousands of people endured torture and had all due process rights extinguished; and the nation’s economy was so badly trashed that millions of people have lost their jobs, their homes and their pensions.
Ramsey Clark appealed last week for all of us to act and we are! We are now engaged in massive outreach and publicity. In the next days we will be announcing national call-in days to pressure Congressional representatives. We are carrying out intensive media work, and providing literature for people of conscience to distribute in cities and towns across the country.
On March 21, we will be organizing large-scale IndictBushNow contingents at big protests that are scheduled for Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco. These demonstrations will mark the 6th anniversary of Bush’s criminal “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq.
We can’t do all this work without the continued financial support of you and thousands of others. Please consider making a donation today.
–All of us at IndictBushNow