Thom ranted on the High Crimes and Misdemeanors of Karl Rove and the Bush Administration, violations of the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and particularly election fraud and voter ID.

Thom Hartmann rant on the High Crimes and Misdemeanors of Karl Rove and the Bush administration, 29 April 2008

We just spoke with Don Siegelman. This is the the high crimes and misdemeanors of Karl Rove. And this is a man, Karl Rove, who has spent literally his entire college career, his entire career since his days in college doing political dirty tricks and stealing elections. I mean, his mentor was Don Segretti, you know, Nixon's crook-in-chief. And it's, it is time that we seriously consider, it's long past time, frankly, I've been calling for this for five years or longer, time that we seriously consider and aggressive move to restore the rule of law in the United States and to restore the primacy of the constitution, say once again, 'we do live under the constitution of the United States'. The president of the United States took an oath not to protect us from from Islamofascists or from nineteen wacky guys, whacked out guys with box cutters. No, he took an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States.

In the constitution it says that the president when he is sworn into office shall raise his hand, shall take an oath. This is very straightforward. It's right there in article two of the Constitution. In fact, let me let me find it, I'll give it to you verbally, or verbatim rather. "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, - now notice what this is going to end with - "to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States"."

And you do not protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Fifth Amendment of which says use that you have a right not to speak, you know, against yourself at a trial. The Sixth, Seventh and Eighth amendments which say you have a right to a speedy trial, trial by jury, you have the right to make bail.

You don't defend the First Amendment of the Constitution which says that you have the right to free speech, the Fourth amendment the Constitution which says that you have the right to privacy, you don't defend those things by doing what was done to Don Siegelman. You don't defend those things by having secret trials. You don't defend those things by disappearing people. You don't defend those things by murdering over a hundred people in the process of torturing thousands of people. You don't defend those things by this long, I mean this long trail of abuses, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson out of the Declaration of Independence.

I mean, this long train of abuses: lying us into a war, caging over a million votes in the 2000 and 2004 elections, stealing Florida, getting your cronies, three of whom had family members working on your campaign on the Supreme Court to flip the election in your favor and then here, this weekend we were greeted to the disgusting, despicable, filthy, I'm running out of adjectives, tragic spectacle of Scalia saying, "Well, you know, get over it, that's old history". What, this was a judicial coup. This was a coup.

The summary executions, the willing killing, the willful killings, the assassinations, the violations of the Presidential Records Act. Disposing of and destroying a million emails. The warrantless wiretaps, that Bush at first came out and said, "Oh well, you know, when we're talking wiretaps, we're talking, we always get a warrant, you know, because that's..." and then when it was revealed that he was lying through his teeth; "ah, well, we didn't need a warrant, we didn't really need a warrant because we had this presidential directive". And then when it came out that that was against the law, "oh well, you know, we need to amend the FISA Act to make it legal, what I did". And then when Congress says, "No, we're not going to do that", well the Senate went along but Nancy Pelosi, God bless her, the House of Representatives refused to go along and now you've got Republicans running around going, "Oh, the FISA Act is expiring". No, the FISA Act is alive and well thank you very much. What expired was the immunity for Bush or anything close to it.

And so right now as we speak George W. Bush and members of his administration can be prosecuted along with the companies that broke the law and violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution the United States by listening in to telephone conversations. And I want to know how much further it goes. I think this is part of the reason why there's five million deleted emails, not just because they included the illegal prosecution of Don Siegelman and the illegal theft of an election in Alabama. But because they involve the illegal theft of elections all over this country.

I wanna know what happened in Ohio in 2004. I wanna know what happened in Florida in 2000. I want to know what happened in 2002 and 2006. I have seen a number of, and there's no shortage, go over to bradblog.com, Mark Crispin Miller's web site, you can you can Google markcrispinmiller.com I believe is the web site. There are, there's no shortage of these things, discussions of them constantly on the message boards over at thomhartmann.com, we have a lot of links to them, where, in all probability, there would have been thirty or forty more Democrats elected in the house of Representatives and possibly one or two more senators if this kind of election fraud - not voter fraud. We're not talking the kind of stuff that that Ann Coulter did, you know, voter fraud - registering, you know, your real estate agent's house or somebody showing up who's not a citizen and voting. I mean, you know, gee, there were three prosecutions for that in the last two years.

And we've got to have the Supreme Court decide that people now have to have photo ID to vote. So that elderly folks like my mother who no longer drives and therefore no longer has a valid photo ID cannot vote. So what's gonna happen to the vote in Florida that is reliably Democratic, the elderly vote in Florida? Well, forget that. The elderly vote in New York State that is reliably Democratic, you know what? Forget that. California? Forget that. They can't vote anymore. What about people who live in urban centers where they don't, you know, people, my best friend in New York City, Jerry Schneiderman, I'm sure Jerry has a driver's license these days but you know, for the thirty years that I've known him, only half a dozen years out of that that he owned a car. I mean, I've known people in New York City who spent their entire lives there and never never used anything other on the subway and public transportation. You're actually a little crazy to own a car in New York City.

And if you pretty much don't ever planning on getting a car then why bother getting a driver's license? There's particularly, this isn't the case with Jerry, but it's particularly the case in the African American communities in larger urban centers, particularly if you're working at a minimum wage job or if you are finding it hard to even find a job, you really don't have the money for a car, you don't have the money for insurance. You know, why why go through the expense and hassle of even getting a driver's license? Many people don't. Well, they're not going to be able to vote now.

So you can write off a good chunk of the African American community, you can write off, I mean, just the crimes of this administration; torturing people, violating Habeas Corpus, pushing through legislation when the Republicans controlled the House and Senate: the Military Commissions Act stripping Habeas Corpus out of our, out of our bodies of law, when in the Constitution itself it says you can't violated Habeas Corpus except during time of invasion or insurrection. Torturing at home and overseas. You know, Sara Taylor, Rove, violations of the Hatch Act. It just goes on and on and on; the crimes, literally the crimes of this administration.

I would love to hear Hillary Clinton agree with Barack Obama statement, and repeat it in her own words, that he said a few weeks ago, that if there is evidence that crimes were committed by this administration, that the new administration will continue the investigations into those crimes. Because that's the only way it's going to happen.

Hillary, we're waiting.