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Tell Congress to Impeach Jay Bybee

By now, we are all too familiar with the details about the Bush administration’s use of torture. We all know that lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel prepared memos authorizing torture. These memos were specifically designed to give agents of the United States the cover necessary to conduct interrogations that violated U.S. law and international treaties.

What you may not know is that one of the lead authors of the infamous torture memos, Jay Bybee, is now a sitting judge on the federal bench. This man with no respect for the rule of law is in a position where he is expected to uphold the law on a daily basis. And he can remain on the bench for life if he wants. This is just wrong and we need to do something about it.

Congress has the power to impeach Jay Bybee and remove him from his seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The American Freedom Campaign strongly supports impeachment in this case and we hope that you will help us convince legislators in Washington to take action.

Please fill in the information below and click on "Send my message" to tell your representatives in Congress to impeach Jay Bybee and remove him from the federal bench.

November 21, 2009

Subject:

Dear Member of Congress,

Over the past seven years, you and your colleagues have collectively done far too little to express your opposition to the use of torture by the Bush administration.  In fact, the 109th Congress even passed the Military Commissions Act, which made it more difficult to prosecute individuals who had conducted or authorized torture.

Well, now it is time for you to do something that could actually have the effect of discouraging future acts of torture.  I am asking you to impeach and remove federal judge Jay Bybee from his seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

As the head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2002, Bybee produced and signed memos specifically designed to give agents of the United States the cover necessary to conduct interrogations that violated U.S. law and international treaties.

Not only was this an immoral and illegal act, but the legal “reasoning” he used in the memos demonstrate that he is entirely unfit to serve as a federal judge.  This is not just my opinion.  Consider this excerpt from the Guardian newspaper:

“Jack Goldsmith, who succeeded Jay Bybee – the author of many of these memos – at the Office of Legal Counsel, has since declared that they had ‘no foundation’ in any source of law and rested on ‘one-sided legal arguments’. Their purpose, he said, was to provide the CIA with a ‘golden shield’ against criminal prosecution of agents. After all, the US prosecuted waterboarding as torture when the Japanese used it against American troops during Second World War.”

This man with no respect for the rule of law is in a position where he is expected to uphold the law on a daily basis.  And he can remain on the bench for life if he wants.  This is just wrong.  You must help send the message that individuals who disregard the law to allow the use of torture will not be rewarded with a lifetime appointment as a judge in our court system.

Please support the impeachment of Jay Bybee and his removal from the federal bench.

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