Arrest the President and His Henchmen on Tribal Land
Our government is broken. Not, perhaps, beyond repair. That remains to be seen. Casey Stengel warned us not to prophecy, particularly about the future. But with absolutely no doubt, we are suffering through perhaps our most dangerous time in world history with by far the worst president in the history of the United States of America. He, along with the Supreme Court, stole the presidency, and then repeated that feat four years later. As well, George Bush is a war criminal. So are Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and other lesser lights. The Republican Party has one last chance, perhaps (see, e.g., Casey’s wisdom) to redeem itself as a Party. Republicans, impeach your president. Fall on your sword. This is your last chance, as a Party, to make some sort of pitiful amends. Repent.
Impeachment seems, at this point, highly unlikely. I have called for impeaching this president for seven years and counting. From before and just after 9/11. Within the next month, I will have to do something I never thought I’d do. That is, imploring the government not to impeach this boob. If impeachment cannot at least be started, by immediately calling for persons and papers, we all must work with this fool, this knave among knaves, to help this helpless greedy ignoramus, through to the end of his term. This is so because impeachment can only occur with bipartisan support. If that is not immediately forthcoming, impeachment won’t fit the crime. Impeachment is not primarily about punishing someone for “High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Rather, it is about righting the imbalance of powers separated and in check, in favor of the Congress whose powers are temporarily seized illegally by the Executive Branch. Impeachment is about saving the country from its government. It is not about revenge, or even the punishment of malefactors. That can come later, though the criminal law.
Of course, as we’ve already seen with Scooter Libby, this president knows how to feloniously hide his own misdeeds, and those of the Dark Lord, Mr. Cheney. Pardons these crooks and war criminals will all receive from George the Less. But I guarantee you, none will be able to travel without the bounds of the United States (except, of course, to Saudi Arabia, and Iraq) and be free from trial and imprisonment in any other nation in the world.
In fact, it would be most interesting for a Native American court, fully sovereign, a tribal court, to arrest the president and his henchmen on tribal land.
Fellow Democrats, seek bipartisanship, immediately, with your colleagues of the right. Or drop, within the next month, all attempts at impeaching the president. After the New Year, all we can do is support the President and pray.
Ed Firmage
November 29th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Um, actually, reciprocal agreements with other nations mean that leaders of nations and their staffs travel with some sort of immunity. I have no doubt that includes tribal lands.
Also, President Bush did not pardon Scooter Libby - he commuted his sentence.
November 29th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
This is a silly question, but If they arrest the president and his henchmen on tribal land, will it make the news?
November 30th, 2007 at 12:46 am
As Norman Mailer put it: we are a nation filled with “stupid and susceptible” people. We need to become less stupid and less susceptible before we can impeach the Grand Boob!
On the other hand, I recall on TV shows from the sixties and seventies that Indians sometimes skin people alive - maybe Bush and Cheney would like a nice little tribal getaway during their next monthly vacation. I am happy to fuel AF#1 for the trip!
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Thomas, you’re right, to a point, but perhaps you missed my point. The main thrust of my article, other than the question of impeachment, was FORMER leaders, after their sovereign immunity, and other specific immunities for sitting political leaders have passed. I was talking, mainly, about their travel after leaving office.
Can they still be held accountable, in courts throughout the world, for offences in the past? Yes. War crimes, often have no Statutes of Limitations. Murderers know no peace.
As regards Native American tribal courts.
I set up many of the tribal courts, or at least helped Native Americans revise them, following the so-called Great Society programs of the 88th Congress, when Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Horatio Humphrey occupied the White House. As one of my jobs, along with representing Humphrey in matters of civil rights, with Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, and his pal Clarence Mitchell, Whitney Young of the Urban League, and Martin Luther King, Jr., I represented Humphrey at weekly meetings of Sargeant Shriver’s War on Poverty. After I left Humphrey’s office, I turned out to be the only attorney, as far as I know, in the West with experience, gained each Thursday in our weekly meetings, over those years of creating new organizations: OEO, Legal Services, Headstart, Job Corps, Neighborhood employment and youth prorams, and all the poverty and race programs of that era, before another illegal war, the war in Vietnam, bled dry the Great Society.
So when the time came to start legal programs toward Native America, I carried the three different programs we offered, to Native American tribes and their tribal courts, west of the Mississippi. Throughout the mid-west, west, and southwest I travelled, setting up a Legal Services program: an urban street-front program, one legal program mirroring Medicare, and one I especially liked, calling for circuit-riding, as in our own Anglo-American circuit-riders, be they attorneys, judges, or for that matter, preachers.
I kept contact with these many tribal courts, for about three decades, doing the annual and every five years’ more substantial reviews, for OEO and the White House.
With this long background statement, all I can say is that I did not ever see this question raised. I may well be reaching, here. Certainly I don’t know that jurisdiction would be found. But I’d damned well like to see some tribal court give this a try.
And yes, Larry, most surely this would make the press. All over this war-sick world. Then, like a good skin rash, this precedent would spread, all over this world groaning in pain at the genocidal wars we’ve embarked upon.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, friends. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and may our nation, and indeed the whole world, live finally with the protections of the rule of law. Short of faithful anarchy, that’s the best in the West.
Ed Firmage
Salt Lake City, Utah