A "Great Revulsion": The Name "Bush" is Enough to Lose a Court Case

Mere mention of Bush's name may tilt the scales of justice against you if you are the one bringing him up. The "decider" is now so reviled that professional consultants advise attorneys: if you want to win your day in court, don't even mention Bush's name in open court.

This is not front page headline vindication, but I will take it. As I have said for years now: The Bush administration is not a "Presidency"; it's a criminal conspiracy. The GOP is not a political party; it's a crime syndicate. Now, at last --some objective proof that I am no longer alone. An entire nation is revulsed by Bush.

I learned about this upon wandering into the website of a consulting firm who teaches attorneys how to win those cases that go to court. Much of this practice has to do with jury psychology and the fine art of picking a jury.

Defense motion to ban George W. Bush's name at trial defeated

Apparently President George W. Bush is now so unpopular that some lawyers believe the mere mention of his name in front of a jury could tip the scales against them.

Attorneys Michael P. Laffey and Robert P. DiDomenicis of Holsten & Associates in Media, Pa., are defending Upper Darby Township, Pa., in a civil rights suit brought by Harold Lischner, an 82-year-old doctor who claims he was falsely arrested for displaying an anti-war sign at a Bush campaign event in September 2003.

With the case set to go to trial on July 23, the defense lawyers recently filed a flurry of motions, including one that asked Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Gene E.K. Pratter to prohibit the plaintiff from mentioning Bush's name.

The motion in Lischner v. Upper Darby Township said that according to the latest Newsweek poll, Bush has "the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation," and that 62 percent of Americans believe that Bush's handling of the war in Iraq shows that he is "stubborn and unwilling to admit his mistakes."

Laffey and DiDomenicis argued that "the identity of George W. Bush has no relevance to plaintiff's claim and should not be admitted."

It's not been a good month for Bush. His immigration bill shot shot down but who is surprised. That's a no win situation and merely pressing the issue is an indication of just how desperate this administration has become. But you will not catch me romanticizing Bush's sorry plight with a word half so romantic as "desparado".

Two "key" GOP senators broke with Bush on the "surge". They are former Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar and George Voinovich. Both know the surge is a miserable failure and, at this point, I charge Bush with having puked up the "surge" plan in a fit of adolescent peak. It was put forward, as you recall, just after the Iraq Study Group had dared to put forward something, anything to pull the Shrub's sorry fat out of the fire. It doesn't matter what they proposed. Bush would have done something else. Lives don't matter.

There was a floor speech by Lugar and it was "hailed by former Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner". It was more bad news for the resident cretin, confirming that Bush, his commanders and diplomats, have only until mid-September to turn things around in Iraq. It's time for Bush to put up or shut up. Better, it's time he just resigned and spared the nation this horrible nightmare.

For his part, Lugar recalled his break with Ronald Reagan. Reagan had vetoed anti-apartheid legislation in the mid-1980s. Lugar broke with Reagan and lead the Congressional effort to override Reagan.

The cracks are showing. It's beginning to look like Paul Krugman's dream has come true.

"I have a vision — maybe just a hope — of a great revulsion: a moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy much of what is best in our country."

I wrote those words three years ago in the introduction to my column collection, "The Great Unraveling." It seemed a remote prospect at the time: Baghdad had just fallen to U.S. troops, and President Bush had a 70 percent approval rating.

--Paul Krugman, The Great Revulsion

As this "great revulsion" takes hold

Impeaching Bush State by State

The legal basis for these unprecedented state-level actions was discovered when, according to Steven Leser, Illinois Rep. Karen A. Yarbrough "stumbled on a little known and never utilized rule of the U.S. House of Representatives." The rule was written in a book formerly known as Jefferson's Manual, which, according to C-SPAN, "is a book of rules of procedure and parliamentary philosophy … written by Thomas Jefferson in 1801 … [used by the House] as a supplement to its standing rules." Section LIII, sec. 603 states, "There are various methods of setting an impeachment in motion … [one of them is] by charges transmitted from the legislature of a State …"

Each of the three resolutions mentions Iraq lies, torture and illegal spying, with slight variations in tone and specifics. Assemblyman Paul Koretz's California resolution (which includes Dick Cheney) and the Illinois resolution both include the leak of Valerie Plame's identity, while Vermont's focuses almost exclusively on Bush's most salient transgression, his illegal spying on Americans. The spying charge leads the other two resolutions' list of charges as well. ...

And, if that were not enough to convince you that Bush is on the ropes, several right wing blogs are presuming to tell Bush how to get his approval ratings back on top again. I would laugh out loud were not Bush's lies and murders so bloody tragic. I am tempted to just blow off the "conservative" bloggers with a terse: this bastard doesn't deserve high approval ratings. I might point out to the "authors" that the last time Bush enjoyed approval ratings of some 90 percent of the American people, they were in a state of shock just days after the events of 911.

Die hard conservatives, however, still wring their hands about how Bush's motives are openly questioned and reviled. How dare we suspect that Bush would "stage" another terrorist attack. Let me point out: it was NOT a liberal politician who went public with that. It was Congressman Ron Paul, a "libertarian" Republican, considered "conservative" because American usage has been screwed up by politics. Earlier, it was not liberals, but neo-consevatives, among them the PNAC, who openly pined for a "catastrophic event like Pearl Harbor" that would galvanize public opinion, presumably for the purposes of installing a right wing dictator and waging war on place like Iraq. Now that it's all come to pass, the cretins of America's morally moribund right wing will blame everyone but themselves.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

--Cassius, Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare

Shakespeare also wrote the following lines for Mark Antony:

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.

The end of a single tyrant is not the end of tyranny. Bush leaves an horrific wreck in his wake. It may take generations to undo the harm. The struggle is eternal. Bush's downfall, when it comes and come it will, is just a new beginning and a difficult one. There is much work to be done. We have a Republic to restore.

And if you think being the "Decider" is easy, do it yourself.

Linda Ronstadt: Desparado

Additional Resources

• Back To The Bunker
• Bush War Plans Delusional From Start
• The Dangers of Bush and Al Qaeda
• A Wake-up Call
US soldiers charged in Iraq murder
• Bush signs order increasing White House power over federal agencies Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship
• Senator asks Bush to explain signing statement that gives President authority to open mail without warrant
• Bush Wants Phone Firms Immune to Privacy Suits, encouraging them to continue to engage in illegal collaborations with the government
• Blueprint for Dictatorship: Recent legislation sets us up for tyranny
• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
• US Attorney General Questions the Right to a Fair Trial
• The White House is replacing U.S. Attorneys throughout the country
• US Attorney General In The Plot Against the First Amendment
• Attorneys for the District of Columbia argue that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals
• An Army of Christian Right Lawyers Is Waging War on the Constitution
• US citizens will require Homeland Security approval to get a job
• U.S. citizens to be required "clearance" to leave the United States
• An Iron Curtain is Descending on US
• Halliburton Builds Detention Camps For Political Subversives
• US Administration Approves Use of Gestapo's Torture Methods
• Cheney: Water torture is OK
• US administration says detainee shouldn't be able to tell attorney how he was tortured in secret CIA prison
• The United States is now prosecuting suspected terrorists on the basis of their intentions, not just their actions
• Man arrested for saying "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible"
• Letter to the editor prompts visit from Secret Service
• Civil Liberties Advocates' Worst Fears Realized with Patriot Act Scandal
• Police Fire Rubber Bullets, Tear Gas Into Peaceful LA Immigration March
• Lawyer Who Questioned Bush on Treason "Falls to His Death"
• Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Vocal Opponent of the Bush Administration, Dies in a Plane Crash
• Woman Who Filed a Rape Lawsuit Against Bush "Commits Suicide"
• 9,000 Iraqis "disappear" in US custody
• Abuse and torture by U.S. troops

Discoveries

• Carlos Santana - Blues for Salvador
• Clapton: Motherless Child
• Doc Watson - Deep River blues
• Chet Akins & Doc Watson

The Existentialist Cowboy

Conservative Lies
Indict Bush
Why Conservatives Hate America
GOP Crime Syndicate
Bush

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