Tell us what laws he has broken and we'll go from there.
In response:
“outed Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent”
After an exhaustive independent investigation, no one was charged with outing a covert agent at the CIA. The only person charged was with the crime of perjury and was convicted of perjury.
“Bush and Cheney have allowed domestic eavesdropping without warrants”
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against UNREASONABLE searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Amendment allows reasonable searches and does not protect against ALL searches.
“FDR didn't have to imprison Japanest-Americans to protect the U.S.”
Indeed, FDR didn’t have to, he just felt as if it would be the wise thing to do. It was a shameful episode, but historians tend to rank FDR among the all time great Presidents.
“ and Bush did not have to incarcerate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without the right to counsel or being read their rights or even what they were accused of having done.”
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, EXCEPT in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Article I Section 9
The PRIVILEGE of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.
The Constitution clearly has an exception and definitely refers to the writ of habeas corpus as a privilege, NOT an inalienable right.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, which resulted in at least 30,000 Americans, most Union citizens being imprisoned, some of which were tried in military court. One of those was a Maryland Congressman who was eventually banished to the CSA.
Lincoln is routinely rated as the greatest American President.
“and have damaged our democracy without having had to”
"Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death." James Madison
Democracy is a threat to democracy.
Most of our Founders believed that democracy itself was a threat to the Republic, hence the Electoral College preventing the Chief Executive from being elected through direct democracy.
“Bush and Cheney have allowed torture in foreign prisons”
Lincoln allowed a form of torture on American soil. See Sherman’s March to the Sea and his Carolina Campaign.
Homes were burned as well as food crops, livestock and feedstock were pilfered leaving Confederate civilians destitute, homeless and hungry. If that isn’t a form of torture, nothing is.
"You Cannot judge war in Harsher terms then I will. War is Cruelty and you cannot refine it, and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out." William Tecumseh Sherman in correspondence with Confederate Authorities regarding his expulsion of civilians from the City of Atlanta, and their attempts to have him change his policy.
"I’m Going to march to Richmond.....and when I go through South Carolina it will be one of the most horrible things in the history of the world. The devil himself couldn’t restrain my men in that state. " William Tecumseh Sherman prior to his infamous Campaign of the Carolinas
You should know that Bush is not the first American President to wage an undeclared war against Islamic terrorism.
Perhaps the most Libertarian President to ever hold the office was Thomas Jefferson.
In 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson met with Arab diplomats from Tunis, who were conducting terror raids and piracy against American ships.
History records them as the Barbary Pirates. In fact, they were blackmailing terrorists, hiding behind a self-serving interpretation of their Islamic faith by embracing select tracts and ignoring others. Borrowing from the Christian Crusades of centuries past, they used history as a mandate for doing the western world one better. The quisling European powers had been buying them off for years.
On March 28, 1786 Jefferson and Adams detailed what they saw as the main issue:
“We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the Grounds of their pretensions to make war upon a Nation who had done them no Injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our Friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Thomas Jefferson wanted a military solution, but decades of blackmailing the American Republic and enslaving its citizens would continue until the new American nation realized that the only answer to terrorism was force.
http://www.dojgov.net/Liberty_Watch.htm
When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."
The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war.
Why was he not deterred? He believed it was the right thing to do, in spite of the opposition.
The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean.
However, it was not until 1805, when an American fleet under Commodore John Rogers and a land force raised by an American naval agent to the Barbary powers, Captain William Eaton, threatened to capture Tripoli and install the brother of Tripoli's pasha on the throne, that a treaty brought an end to the hostilities. Negotiated by Tobias Lear, former secretary to President Washington and now consul general in Algiers, the treaty of 1805 still required the United States to pay a ransom of $60,000 for each of the sailors held by the dey of Algiers, and so it went without Senatorial consent until April 1806. Nevertheless, Jefferson was able to report in his sixth annual message to Congress in December 1806 that in addition to the successful completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition, "The states on the coast of Barbary seem generally disposed at present to respect our peace and friendship."
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjprece.html
Jefferson began the fight; Madison finished it.
In fact, it was not until the second war with Algiers, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States. European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s. However, international piracy in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters declined during this time under pressure from the Euro-American nations, who no longer viewed pirate states as mere annoyances during peacetime and potential allies during war.
It remains to be seen which President will finally victoriously conclude the current conflict. History says it won’t be Bush and I suspect the one who will, will do so many years, perhaps generations, from now.
Because of their outlaw conduct, pirates -- and modern-day terrorists -- put themselves outside protection of the law, according to military strategy expert Dave McIntyre, a former dean at the National War College. "On the high seas if you saw a pirate, you sank the bastard," he says. "You assault pirates, you don't arrest pirates."
One of the enduring lessons of the Barbary campaigns was to never give in to outlaws, whether you call them pirates or terrorists. In the late 1700s, America paid significant blackmail for peace -- shelling out $990,000 to the Algerians alone at a time when national revenues totaled just $7 million.
"Too many concessions have been made to Algiers," U.S. consul William Eaton wrote to the Secretary of State in 1799. "There is but one language which can be held to these people, and this is terror."
Entries not in quotes in last three paragraphs by Michael G. Leventhal
Editor & Publisher DOJgov.net