April 30, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

IMPEACHMENT AN ACT OF POLITICAL WILL

The Constitution uses the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" to describe the offenses that can be used to impeach a federal official. That phrase covers a wide range. Can there be any doubt that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have committed so many offenses that any one of those individual offenses justify impeachment and removal from office? When you consider the magnitude of their crimes you have to wonder why we aren't already taking steps in the Congress to impeach them. In this article Paul Worden points out the legal basis for impeachment and suggests that what we need now is the political will. The article is at www.commondreams.org:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who served as the chief prosecutor of the major Nazi war criminals, called starting a war without cause the “supreme war crime” because all other war crimes flow from it. Under the United Nations Charter, which is a binding international treaty ratified by the United States, it is illegal to attack another nation except: 1) when authorized by the Security Council; or 2) when necessary for self-defense and then only for as long as necessary to get the matter to the Security Council.

The Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441 that found Iraq in material breach of prior resolutions and warned of “severe consequences” if Iraq didn’t conform. But that resolution also explicitly stated that the Security Council remained seized of the issue and the United States assured the other members that Resolution 1441 did not authorize it to attack Iraq; the U.S. would have to return to the Security Council for another resolution before it could attack Iraq. In early 2003, the United States did return to the Security Council with a resolution authorizing an attack on Iraq. When it became clear that the proposed resolution could not muster a majority, the United States withdrew the resolution and attacked Iraq anyway. There is no crime more serious than illegally starting a war.

In garnering support for his invasion of Iraq, President Bush selectively cherry-picked the advice and intelligence that supported the end result he wanted to achieve. Many career officers at the CIA and the Pentagon quit when their reservations about the war were ignored. President Bush misled Congress when he pretended he had solid intelligence that Iraq had the ability and desire to attack America.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL DARWINISM NOT THE SAME

After publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species a guy named Herbert Spencer thought it would be a great idea to apply the idea of evolution to society. People at the top, according to Spencer, were there because they were the "fittest." There was nothing unfair about the system; it was just evolution being evolution. But Darwin's theory is about biological processes. It has nothing to do with the ordering of human society or economies. Right-wingers conveniently believe in creationism except when it comes to economics. Then they happily embrace the idea of survival of the fittest. This editorial by Don Agin is at www.scienceweek.com:

David Brooks, Op-Ed columnist at the NEW YORK TIMES, persistently promotes the idea that not only the grand schemes but also the details of human behavior are derived from Darwinian natural selection.

You can find the latest statement of his ideas in a column called "The Age of Darwin", NEW YORK TIMES, April 15, 2007.

In brief, these words from that column seem to summarize his views:

"Human beings, like all other creatures, are machines for passing along genetic code... The logic of evolution explains why people vie for status, form groups, fall in love and cherish their young. It holds that most everything that exists does so for a purpose..."

The politically conservative line of Brooks and others is that if you oppose these ideas you must be anti-biology, anti-evolution, and a Creationist. Well, I'm a professional neuroscientist, biophysicist, and psychologist, and I'm pro-biology, pro-evolutionary biology, and definitely not a Creationist -- and I think these ideas of David Brooks and his crowd are dangerous poppycock and need to be argued against and countered with science and reason any time the public is exposed to them.