…And That’s The Way It Would Have Been…

Brian Williams NBC NEWS - latimesblogs  Good evening.  This is Brian Williams NBC News reporting your world of May 25, 2005.  Tonight, all signs point to a Presidency in crisis and the whispers of impeachment are in the air, as the Bush administration has been rocked on its heels with a series of scandals that threaten its very existence. 

Democrats howled in protest as President Bush named U.S, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to undertake an internal investigation to review potential Justice Department improprieties related to the  utilizing of Patriot Act powers to investigate reporter Seymour Hirsch of New Yorker Magazine, who built the story of U.S. atrocities at Abu Graib through anonymous sources.  In an unprecedented action that may indicate violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution, Gonzalez was recently reported to have approved naming Hirsch as a ‘co-conspirator’ in order to obtain powers to obtain Hirsch’s e-mails, phone calls and video his visits to government facilities, to get at the source of the leaks within the administration. Attorney General Gonzalez had only recently informed the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, that he had no knowledge of who had arranged for the secret investigation of the reporter. 

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware(video)”the idea that the Attorney General of the United States can investigate himself  is laughable and absurd, and points to the President using his friendship with Gonzalez as a buffer against any possible connection to himself and an effort to bury the facts.  Well, that won’t be allowed I assure you.”

The recent revelations about the Attorney General regarding Hirsch piggy back recent acknowledgements of a virtual war on the press media, with indications that the Justice Department had previously gathered over two months of Associated Press emails and telephone conversations related to the same story. NBC News  asked Constitutional Scholar Lawrence Tribe to comment.

Tribe (video) ” Brian, this is truly an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment guarantee of Free Speech and the Freedom of the Press.  Our Founding Fathers made these rights the FIRST Amendment because they considered it the vital foundation of a free society.  These series of attacks brink back haunting echoes of Nixon’s Enemies List and can not be tolerated in our democracy.”

On other news, the Senate is initiating hearings to mirror the House’s efforts regarding the President and his team’s actions in the recent calamity of the deaths of Iraqi U.S. Ambassador Paul Bremmer and 3 of his consulate associates when the consulate in Erbil was attacked by Al Qaida.   Information continues to paint a bleak picture for the competence of the Administration in the events that cost Bremmer his life as well as the events that led to it. The Administration’s attempt to suggest the attack on the consulate was the result of a spontaneous reaction to a video, as suggested by the President himself for weeks after the event, appears to have been a coordinated effort of the Administration to avoid an enormous embarrassment before the election, potentially swinging the race to John Kerry.  The meme that Al Qaida in Iraq ended with the death of Al-Zarqawi was obviously threatened by the brazen attack on the consulate and appears to have been covered up throughout the channels of command as high as Secretary of State Condeleza Rice and possibly the President himself: 

(video)Senator Barrack Obama of Illinois – ” the President is ultimately responsible for the safety of his representatives.  We need to know why Ambassador Bremmer was in Erbil in the first place.  Was he trying to arrange for arms to be smuggled to Iranian reactionaries? Where was the President in the long hours the consulate was under attack; was he completely in abrogation of his responsibilities as commander in chief while his Ambassador was assassinated? Why didn’t he call for re-enforcements to protect the survivors and protect this country’s assets and authority?  Why was the President the next day in the midst of a crisis at a fund raiser in Dallas, instead of aggressively organizing the search for survivors and meting out justice to the belligerents? This Senate Committee will not be denied answers.”

Add up such scandals for President Bush, and it appears the threshold to impeachment hearings has been crossed by the new revelation that the President or his team may have used the Internal Revenue Service to harass and suppress progressive organizations prior to the election, thereby cementing his re-election.  Further information is now pouring in from whistle blowers that the President’ re-election team may have coordinated a ‘win at all costs’ strategy that included the illegal use of IRS power to intimidate and weaken opponents such as George Soros, Media Matters, and ACORN  to suppress voter turnout and organizing enthusiasm for John Kerry. 

Senator Diane Feinstein -California (video) – ” the Internal Revenue has to be impartial and above any manipulation as its function strikes at the very foundation of the trust a  free citizen ascribes to his government.  What this Administration has allowed to take place is nothing short of tyranny and we would do well to remember that the first declared Article of Impeachment against President Richard Nixon was abuse of power by subverting the Internal Revenue Service for its own political ends. The time has come for a Special Prosecutor and real accountability.”

The firestorm this President faces from media, this Congress, and the American people is one we have seen before, and the future of President George W. Bush and his administration to maintain a viable governance is very much in doubt on this day of MAy 25th, 2005.  This is Brian Williams. Good Night.

 

(And this parody is very likely the way it would have been, just a few years and with another party at the levers of power…)

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