Time to impeach Bush and send him to the golf courses
where the only damage he can do is hit people in the head
with a stray ball because he's too much of a self centered
a.shole to yell fore.

Is George Bush a Mad Emperor?
by William Hughes
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2005/122305Hughes.shtml

"Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error."

The Roman masses finally figured out that their highly eccentric Emperor,
Caligula, was a raving lunatic when it was revealed that he was having
lavish dinner parties in honor of his favorite horse and that he had even
considered making it a Consul! Caligula's reported incestuous relationships
with his sisters was bad enough for them to stomach; the "horse thing,"
however, became the tipping point. Caligula had to go! He was soon replaced,
in a palace-orchestrated coup de dictator, by the bookish Claudius. At that
time, unfortunately for the batty Caligula, there wasn't an "impeachment
process" or "censure proceedings" in place to hasten his exit in a peaceful
and dignified manner from the then chaotic political scene in the Eternal
City.
Recently, President George W. Bush, a/k/a "Bush II,"--a would-be "Emperor"
if there ever was one--was forced to own up to the shocking fact that in
Oct., 2001, he had covertly ordered the National Security Agency (NSA), to
spy on countless U.S. residents. Is Bush, too, losing his mind? Coming on
top of his damnable lies that got the U.S. into the Iraqi War, this is
another very disturbing bombshell. Bush has been spying on our citizenry
without the required court orders and in direct violation of the liberties
guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and in other laws
of the land. Question: Is the fact that Bush is acting contemptuously, and
above the law, in this latest disgusting scandal, going to be a tipping
point for the American people? When are they going to stop putting up with
his crazed antics? Will this repulsive episode be like Caligula's "horse
thing?" Well, I sure hope so!

Bush's decision to spy on U.S. citizens is a breach of the Constitution that
goes to the very heart of our democratic system, the "Separation of Powers"
doctrine, and to rule of law. When this story broke on Monday, Dec. 19,
2005, a respected federal jurist, the Hon. James Robertson, resigned from a
secret court that oversees government snooping in intelligence cases.
Robertson said the president's authorizing a domestic spying scheme
"tainted" the court's work. According to the Washington Post, the judicial
tribunal Robertson was sitting on is labeled the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, or the "FISA Court" for short. It was set up by the
Congress in 1975 to legally empower sleuths of the federal government to
engage in: surveillance, eavesdropping, window peeping, wiretapping,
planting of bugging devices, along with the interception of snail-mail, and
now of e-mail, on suspects in espionage and terrorism-related matters. The
court warrant for surveillance, etc., however, could only be issued by one
of the judges on the 11-membered panel, if the Justice Department lawyers
could show to the presiding jurist that there was "probable cause" that the
party and/or parties under watch were "a foreign government or their
agents."

Bush is now making the highly dubious legal claim that when the U.S.
Congress authorized him, after 9/11, to use military force against Al-Qaeda,
(AUMF), that it had also by implication granted him the plenary power to
initiate warrantless searches in America of any and all suspects in supposed
terrorism matters, whether those targeted are connected to Al-Qaeda or not.
This is a preposterous notion, since the Congress, even if it wanted to,
couldn't lawfully grant the president extraconstitutional powers that it
didn't possess. This is the same President Bush who also has condoned the
torture of detainees in the Iraqi War and thinks and acts like the U.S.
Constitution and the Geneva Convention are just mere "pieces of paper." Bush
is also claiming that he has the inherent, and absolute, power, as
president, to order warrantless searches in national security cases. If that
is so, why did Congress enact the FISA law? What do you call a delusional
elected official, entrusted by the people with acting as a chief magistrate
of a nation, who insists that he has powers greater then the limited ones
specifically spelled out in the law? In Rome, during the halcyon days of its
Republic, they condemned such a person as "a dictator," "a traitor," and "an
enemy of the people."

There is more relevant history from the Ancients to ponder in this matter.
The Roman Emperor Nero, also a seriously deranged man, was reported to have
deliberately torched the city of Rome and played his fiddle while singing
the ballad, "The Sack of Troy," as it burned away. On the advice of palace
intriguers (the Neocons of that era), he then scapegoated the Christians for
the conflagration. Doesn't that sound a lot like Bush's scapegoating Saddam
Hussein after that highly suspicious 9/11 tragedy? When the tide of public
opinion turned against Nero, instead of hiring a fixer (like lobbyists Jack
Abramoff or Michael Scanlon) to mount a PR counteroffensive on his behalf,
he took his own life. Nero's last words, à la Woody Allen, were: "What a
showman the world is losing in me!" Bush isn't a "showman" or a political
leader, either. He is a demigod, who is mocked nightly for his foolishness
by comedians like Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O'Brien.

Nero and Bush, alas, have still more in common. When the imperial Bush was
governor of Texas for six years, he signed death warrants for 152 defendants
who had been convicted of capital offenses. Petitions for clemency were
regularly forwarded to him on behalf of the condemned. Some of these
individuals on death row suffered from mental retardation, and others had
cases where their lawyers were claimed to be grossly incompetent. Bush said
he "reviewed each case seriously." This is just another one of his big
whoppers. Even Nero, when he was first required to sign a death warrant,
said, "How I wish I had never learned to write." This was long before he had
lost his mind - completely.

More to the point, Bush has now confessed to the shameful fact that the
totally unnecessary Iraqi War, which he chose to launch in March, 2003, has
killed "more than 30,000 Iraqis." It has also taken the lives of 2,156
American military personnel, while wounding 16,000 more. The vast majority
of the Iraqi victims were innocent people, many of them women and children.
A British-based study by the distinguished medical journal Lancet says that
the number of Iraqi fatalities is closer to 100,000. In any event, Bush's
illegal, immoral and unjust Iraqi war has caused more deadly casualties than
the reigns of the despotic Caligula and Nero combined. Bush persists,
however, in saying that it was all about bringing "democracy" to Iraq. This
is the same kind of irrational thinking demonstrated by the unhinged Nero in
wanting to "improve" Rome by first burning it to the ground.

What Bush has brought to occupied Iraq (thanks, too, to his main partners in
merciless mayhem: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz) is not
"democracy," but death, widespread destruction, and unspeakable suffering
and human misery. He has also created a bitter hatred for America in the
Islamic World which will endure for centuries to come.

In summation, what Bush is now doing to the American people by unlawfully
spying on them is clearly an impeachable offense under the U.S.
Constitution. We are being ruled by a man who has no respect for our laws,
the Courts or our institutions. He is a one-man wrecking crew--a menace to
our society and to its revered traditions. He is also the architect of
another insidious evil--"Perpetual War." Bush is as wacky in his own flakey
ways as were the nutty Caligula and Nero in theirs. Unless "Emperor Bush" is
stopped--impeached and jailed--by an awakened people who have reached their
tipping point, he will lead America further into the abyss. It is a place
from which our Republic, founded by the gallant patriots of old, may never
be able to return.