January 20, 2001 - Today

John Hanrahan summarizes the period and, along the way, gives grounds for impeachment.

Suppose that early in 2001 someone had described to you a government that did the following: tortured enemy combatants and suspected terrorists; claimed the drowning interrogation technique known as waterboarding used on prisoners was not torture; had a network of foreign and offshore secret prisons; sent prisoners to foreign countries for interrogation and likely torture; engaged in illegal warrantless monitoring of phone calls, email messages, and Internet activity; abridged the right of habeas corpus; kidnapped individuals in other countries and held them indefinitely without trial or public acknowledgment; built a wall to seal off its southern border; launched a preventive war and claimed the right to launch preventive or preemptive wars apparently anywhere in the world.

Further, this was a government that had a president who claimed the right to ignore or flout laws passed by the national legislature by issuing hundreds of “signing statements,” as well as to hold secret tribunals in which defendants could be denied access to key evidence against them. And this same president through his attorney general was pushing for even more powers by proposing to the national legislature a measure declaring the nation is involved in an apparently perpetual “armed conflict.” Under this proposal, the president would have power to declare anyone in any country, including the United States, a “terrorist” and (in the words of the American Civil Liberties Union) “hold the person forever – without ever charging anyone with a crime.”

Additionally, this was a government that authorized its agents, without warrants, to seize from travelers their laptop computers, cell phones and cameras at airport checkpoints and download data from these devices; to coordinate with local authorities to set up special so-called “free-speech zones” as the only authorized locations for political protest when the president or other government leaders come to a community; to snoop in your financial, travel and other personal transactions; to give grants to cities to purchase surveillance cameras and license plate readers to track every car entering a city; to establish airport “no-fly lists” that for secret reasons bar certain travelers from flying. And on and on.