A Night to Remember

By John Nirenberg, March in My Name

[Nirenberg spent the past 40 days marching from Boston to Washington, D.C., with the goal of asking Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to allow the commencement of impeachment proceedings.]

The day began with research. There are calls to be made and visits to arrange. The House is now back in session and there is work to be done.

One of the most remarkable conversations I had today was with Paul Taylor, Chief of Staff and Counsel to the Judiciary Committee’s Sub-Committee on the Constitution. That means he is the ranking adviser to the Republican minority. I really wanted to understand their position and to hear from one of the most knowledgeable people connected to what would become a defense of the President and Vice President.

Let me tell you, I can see how once you begin to accept some forms of torture, applying exceptions to the rules with some categories of offenses, and using language such as “contextual” situation and “sliding scale” it isn’t hard to get on the slippery slope and accelerate your descent to the very bottom of human behavior - all in the name of national interest or security or necessity.

He was very polite. He spoke with me for over a half hour and told me how the Nuremberg Trials were not governing law and slid away from international agreements. What counts, he said are the Supreme Court decisions and so far they have articulated what he described as a sliding scale. Apparently torture is not only a matter of opinion but may even be appropriate under the “ticking bomb” scenario whereby an individual known to have information about an immanent disaster, can be treated as necessary to get the information to prevent it. Sounds down right reasonable. And he must know we Americans just love Jack Bauer, the fictional hero on 24 who casually uses torture to get the information he needs to save the day. Fictional character or not, the ticking bomb scenario is played out on that show every season - when there is no writers’ strike - and the show has a loyal and approving audience.

So Taylor basically said that as long as public opinion sees the usefulness of torture and accepts the President’s right to use it as he sees fit for the nation’s security, charging him with authorizing torture is not likely to be widely received as an actionable offense. Indeed, he didn’t believe there was any evidence of crimes committed on the part of the executive. Of course, that is exactly what you would expect from a defense attorney.

I was reminded several times that the Supreme Court’s interpretation is what counts, not international law, and that it has consented to the sliding scale concept. Given Roberts and Alito having established the Court’s solidly right wing orientation, it is unlikely that the Court will alter it’s position anytime soon. Thus, the general ambiguity surrounding our concept of what torture is and when it should or should not be used is vague enough to bog down any discussion of an article of impeachment involving its use. Remember, whether or not waterboarding is torture depends on context. Confined to terrorists, it’s apparently OK. Applied to the guy on the street, probably not - unless you can claim he is a terrorist and don’t need to prove your claim as with the case against Jose Padilla, an American citizen held for years as a terrorist and ultimately released after treatment that clearly amounts to cruel and unusual punishment at the very least. He is now free and scarred for life.

Impeachment is a political act. To “pull the trigger” on impeachment (another bizarrely violent metaphor), it requires a change in perception. Right now no branch of government feels it has the public support for impeachment.

Taylor seemed confident impeachment would remain a non-issue especially since the Republicans embarrassed the Democrats into backing off on an immediate debate about it on the floor of the house. I’d say the Republicans are smug; confident the Democrats couldn’t hold together as a party on this issue and safe in imagining they could add enough reasonable doubt into the picture that any effort would fail.

Having said how the political climate must change for impeachment to be introduced, he sincerely encouraged me to “keep doing what you’re doing…It’s because of people like you that perceptions change and issues get moved forward.” Gee, that sounded vaguely like a compliment except it came from someone convinced my efforts wouldn’t really result in moving impeachment forward.

We completely disagreed but again, I felt heard. I appreciated his time explaining his rationale.

Reading this you may be discouraged. Don’t be. Rest assured he is only right about one thing: an informed public is absolutely necessary to make the difference. It is the idea of informing the public that drives the impeachment groups to open hearings, and that spurs me on to find out more and to share it with you. When public opinion is such that it insists on opening hearings on impeachment, the hearings WILL begin. I am actually encouraged.

What’s it gonna be, The Majesty of Law or The Spirit of Justice?

Tonight was another story. At 5:00 p.m. we met with Congressman Robert Wexler, from Florida, a Judiciary Committee member. He is a recent convert to the cause of opening hearings on the charges brought against Vice President Dick Cheney. He is a passionate believer in the need for the public to get to the bottom of this.

He began his own petition-signing campaign to demonstrate to his colleagues that Internet petitions are truly valid. In only a few short weeks he gathered almost 200,000 names of supporters which he introduced on the floor of the House this evening.

He was most gracious in seeing us on the first formal day of the 2008 session - especially since it was this evening that he delivered one of the few speeches and demanded that his colleagues pressure John Conyers, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to open impeachment hearings as soon as possible.

“Whether we are talking about the manipulation of intelligence on Iraq, whether we are talking about the outing of a covert CIA agent, whether we’re talking about the illegal use of torture, whether we’re talking about the potentially unlawful firing of U.S. prosecutors - on all of these issues, the administration has thus far successfully used the power of executive privilege…But the White House could not raise a privilege claim in order to avoid answering questions from lawmakers (in an impeachment hearing).

He reminded us that the secret tapes that were critical in bringing down President Richard Nixon did not surface until the House Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings.

Wexler is one of the most outspoken critics of the Congress’s failure to act on this administration’s abuses of power. Just the “abuse of executive privilege has gotten to the point that it has neutered Congress,” he said. “So let’s hear the case and get the evidence out-in the open. Let the evidence speak for itself.”

From left: Sue Serpa with 13,000 Impeachment Petitions from Maine, Marilyn Buhlmann, Ralph Lopez, Congressman Wexler holding 177,000 signatures of his 188,000, John Nirenberg and Frank Enneking. Missing from the photo was Ethan Allen, our videographer.

The Congressman graciously offered us passes to the House Gallery to attend the opening of the resumption of the 110th Congress and to witness his speech in which he demanded impeachment hearings on Dick Cheney. We gladly accepted and were escorted to the gallery by Jesper Pedersen, his Foreign Policy Adviser.

Walking to the Capitol on a very cold crisp night under a half moon in our shirtsleeves or sweaters was required as part of the security regimen - it was just more convenient leaving our belongings in the Congressman’s office than hassling at the other end.

The churning pool of Honorables below us reminded me of school on the first day of a semester. The Congresspeople buzzed around greeting each other and checking in with the House clerk. A vote was being taken but ironically (there we go again) the electronic voting system wasn’t working this evening so they milled around a card alternative near the dais. Nancy Pelosi sat at the Speaker’s position above the mass of moving Congressmen for the initial 20 minutes as they churned through the narrow aisles and up and down the small riser steps between the seats. I couldn’t help think that I may not get much closer to her than the 100 or so feet that separated us tonight.

After the voting, procedural matters filled some time and the clerk read a Presidential veto. The members slowly drifted away having completed their duty for the evening. About an hour into the session there was a short break and we could see behind the Speaker’s side of the room through the frequently opening doorway into what looked like a very well appointed lounge for the members, inclusive of a roaring fire. I imagined bourbon and scotch poured in big goblets. We looked for togas but didn’t see any.

By the time the session resumed and Congressman Wexler rose to speak, it was after 8:00 p.m. and only 10 people remained in the Gallery; the six of us plus four Code Pink women in appropriate T-shirts that read “Arrest Bush.” It was refreshing that they were allowed in without a hassle. There were only four Congressmen on the floor and C-Span.

But he gave a rousing speech covering all the salient points in only five minutes. He was interrupted by the Speaker Pro-tempore who objected to his using the personal reference of Dick Cheney and not the formal title of Vice President. It was actually the parliamentarian who pushed a paper under her nose that raised the issue. When he finished Ralph Lopez lead us in a planned spontaneous applause that attracted the ire of the guards. One came over and said “No more clapping.” But we had seen enough. When we rose to leave another guard said “Thank you.”

As we walked through the empty halls of Congress, I noted a quote by Samuel Adams painted above a doorway heading down one of the corridors of the Capitol that seemed apt: “Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this in happy country as their last asylum.” It is stil up to us to make sure we keep that promise.

History in the making.