Gore: "serious violations of law by the President."

garybeck

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Thu Oct-18-07 12:37 AM
Original message

Gore: "serious violations of law by the President."

Edited on Thu Oct-18-07 12:54 AM by garybeck

Gore is the only one who realizes how bad Bush is and is willing to talk about it in public.

On Monday, January 16, 2006, an audience of over 3,000 people visited DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, DC to hear a powerful speech by former Vice President Al Gore entitled "Restoring the Rule of Law. " The event was co-sponsored by ACS and The Liberty Coalition, and broadcast live by C-SPAN.

LINK to video of speech:
http://www.acslaw.org/node/2096
Just skip the intros and go to 9:00 when Gore walks to the podium.

A few key excerpts from the transcript:

"The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is
simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on
September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.
Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government
to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more
vulnerable."

"When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the power he wanted
when they passed the AUMF, he secretly assumed that power anyway,"

"the Executive Branch has claimed a previously unrecognized authority
to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture in a pattern that
has now been documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.
Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by Executive
Branch interrogators"

"The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented
expansion of executive power is deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact
that the Executive Branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying,
withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so"

"There is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just
another cycle of overreach and regret. This Administration has come to power in the
thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of
presidential authority is exactly what our Constitution intended.
This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which
is more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the
president�s powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us
become obliterated beyond all recognition."

"Last week, for example, Vice President Cheney attempted to defend the Administration�s
eavesdropping on American citizens by saying that if it had conducted this program prior
to 9/11, they would have found out the names of some of the hijackers.
Tragically, he apparently still doesn�t know that the Administration did in fact have the
names of at least 2 of the hijackers well before 9/11 and had available to them
information that could have easily led to the identification of most of the other hijackers.
And yet, because of incompetence in the handling of this information, it was never used
to protect the American people."

"But there is yet another Constitutional player whose pulse must be taken and whose role
must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has emerged with
the efforts by the Executive Branch to dominate our constitutional system.
We the people are�collectively�still the key to the survival of America�s democracy.
We�as Lincoln put it, �ven we here��must examine our own role as citizens in
allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy."

"For example, when the Administration was attempting to persuade Congress to enact the
Medicare prescription drug benefit, many in the House and Senate raised concerns about
the cost and design of the program. But, rather than engaging in open debate on the basis
of factual data, the Administration withheld facts and prevented the Congress from
hearing testimony that it sought from the principal administration expert who had
compiled information showing in advance of the vote that indeed the true cost estimates
were far higher than the numbers given to Congress by the President."

"To take another example, scientific warnings about the catastrophic consequences of
unchecked global warming were censored by a political appointee in the White House
who had no scientific training. And today one of the leading scientific experts on global
warming in NASA has been ordered not to talk to members of the press and to keep a
careful log of everyone he meets with so that the Executive Branch can monitor and
control his discussions of global warming.
One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is
by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the
debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest."

"We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens� right not only to life but also to
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that
immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed
by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive Branch and the President�s
apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.
I endorse the words of Bob Barr, when he said, �The President has dared the American
people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will.�

A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney General to remedy
the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe
are serious violations of law by the President.