Appeal for donations
The Constitution Summer project was initially funded with substantial out-of-pocket donations from its founders, all students and young public interest workers. We are now a nonprofit, and we need your support!
Please consider making a donation today, so that we may continue to provide the informed, nonpartisan, youth voice for constitutional accountability.
Thank you.
Bush Ratings Hit Another Low
From PoliticalWire.com:
"President Bush's approval ratings hit an all-time low in the latest Newsweek poll -- 30% -- 'and more than half the country (58%) say they wish the Bush presidency were simply over, a sentiment that is almost unanimous among Democrats (86%), and is shared by a clear majority (59%) of independents and even one in five (21%) Republicans. Half (49%) of all registered voters would rather see a Democrat elected president in 2008, compared to just 28% who’d prefer the GOP to remain in the White House.'"
Bush signing statement may allow U.S. government to open mail without warrants
From the article:
"A statement attached to postal legislation signed by President George W. Bush last month may have opened the way for the U.S. government to open mail without a warrant.
The White House denies any change in policy.
The law requires government agents to get warrants to open first-class letters.
But when he signed the postal reform act, Bush added a statement saying that his administration would construe that provision "in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances."
Constitution Summer President Geoffrey King on 960 AM The Quake
Hear it here. The interview starts at approximately 12:05.
Pentagon plans no action on FBI report of Guantanamo detainee mistreatment
From the article:
"FBI agents documented more than two dozen incidents of possible mistreatment at the facility, including one in which a detainee’s head was wrapped in duct tape because he chanted the Quran and another who pulled out his hair after hours in a sweltering room.
Some military officials and contractors told FBI agents that the interrogation practices had been approved by the Defense Department, including directly by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The documents were released in response to a request by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing Rumsfeld and others on behalf of former detainees who say they were abused."
President Ford strongly opposed Iraq War
Excerpts of President Ford's statements from the AP and E&P:
"I don't think, if I had been president—on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly—I don't think I would have ordered the Iraqi war."
"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq." (Rumsfeld was Ford's Chief of Staff, Cheney his Secretary of Defense.)
"Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people...I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman and Constitution Summer Advisory Board Member David Swanson on Hannity & Colmes
CIA admits existence of still-classified interrogation directive signed by Bush
From the article:
"The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including a directive signed by President Bush, that have guided the agency’s interrogation and detention of terror suspects.
[...]
The contents of the documents were not revealed, but one of them is 'a directive signed by President Bush granting the C.I.A. the authority to set up detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees,' the A.C.L.U. said, based on its review of published accounts."
TIME Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse
From the article:
"Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
[...]
In bringing the new case, however, the plaintiffs argue that circumstances have changed in two important ways. Rumsfeld's resignation, they say, means that the former Defense Secretary will lose the legal immunity usually accorded high government officials.
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman: "Breathing the 'I' word"
"But beyond public opinion, there are legal and constitutional considerations that make impeachment a live concern now. High crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office, may well apply to President Bush's systemic abuses of power and failures to uphold the law. . . . [Bush's] actions have disturbing parallels with offenses for which Nixon was impeached.
[...]
I served on the House Judiciary Committee which voted to impeach him. It did painstaking, bipartisan work in assessing and applying constitutional and legal standards to Nixon's actions. Measured by the same objective standards as were used in Nixon's case, an impeachment inquiry into Bush's actions would be appropriate, and a vote to impeach at the end of that inquiry would not be a surprising outcome.
Fellow students: 
