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Elizabeth Holtzman
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Elizabeth Holtzman served for eight years as a U.S. Congresswoman and won national attention for her role on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate. She also sat on the subcommittee hearing President Ford’s testimony about the Nixon pardon. She subsequently served eight years as District Attorney of Kings County (Brooklyn), the only woman ever elected DA in New York City. Holtzman was also the only woman ever elected Comptroller of New York City. She is the co-author of Cheating Justice: How Bush and Cheney Attacked the Rule of Law, Plotted to Avoid Prosecution—and What We Can Do About It, published by Beacon Press as of February 2012. She currently works at counsel with Herrick Feinstein, LLP, a New York law firm, and lives in New York City.

Blog Entries by Elizabeth Holtzman

Impunity For The Bush Administration Won't Last

0 Comments | Posted February 8, 2012 | 4:41 PM

In his State of the Union address, President Obama announced a new special unit to investigate abusive lending and packaging of mortgage risk that led to the housing and financial crisis. These abuses began years ago, under the Bush administration and possibly before. Yet since it's widely felt that impunity...

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Civil Rights Movement Celebrates 50th Anniversary

0 Comments | Posted June 2, 2011 | 12:51 PM

I am attending the 50th Anniversary of the Southwest Georgia Civil Rights Movement here in Albany, Georgia. As a first year law student, in the summer of 1963, not quite half a century ago, I worked during the summer as a law clerk for C. B. King, a noted black...

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Commemorating International Women's Day

0 Comments | Posted March 8, 2011 | 6:38 PM

As we commemorate this day, we can take note of much progress, although we need to reflect on how much more there still is to do. In the US, we have had two women serve as Secretary of State (including one who was the first woman to be taken...

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Damn Wrong: Bush Admission on Torture Should Draw Special Prosecutor

0 Comments | Posted November 15, 2010 | 2:26 PM

In his recently published book, former President George W. Bush admits that when asked to approve waterboarding, long considered torture under US and international precedents, his response was, "Damn right." This admission has created a difficult dilemma for President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

Torture is...

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Shirley Sherrod and the Dark History of Baker County

0 Comments | Posted July 22, 2010 | 4:30 PM

Shirley Sherrod's journey to self-awareness and an understanding of the hardships faced by both poor blacks and poor whites started in Baker County, a beautiful but dangerous place in rural southwest Georgia. In 1965, her father was murdered by a white man, who was never even indicted. Rather than...

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The Phony Debate About Torture

0 Comments | Posted May 20, 2009 | 4:45 PM

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has triggered a roaring debate by his recent and repeated claim that torture "worked." Last week, Senator Lindsay Graham echoed the claim that torture "works" and added that is has for five hundred years (a timescale which connects us to the Spanish Inquisition).

Recent...

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An Analysis of Kucinich's Impeachment Case Against Bush

0 Comments | Posted June 11, 2008 | 10:22 PM

Some will want to dismiss Rep. Dennis Kucinich's introduction of articles of impeachment against President Bush as quixotic, but it's not. Twenty House Republicans joined nearly all House Democrats in voting to send the articles to the Judiciary Committee. This comes on the heels of the Senate Intelligence Committee's 107-page...
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Crimes in High Places

0 Comments | Posted February 27, 2008 | 8:26 PM

Despite President Bush's frequent claim that "we don't do torture," top officials of the US government this month admitted that waterboarding was used on at least three detainees. The White House reaction was to announce that, if needed, waterboarding would be used again.

Since crimes in high places have...

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Cheney Impeachment: Courageous, But Not Surprising

0 Comments | Posted February 22, 2008 | 3:34 PM

For the first time since the Bush administration took office, three members of the House Judiciary Committee, Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), are calling for hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Richard Cheney.

Their position, while courageous, is not surprising. What is surprising...

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No Vice President is Above the Law

0 Comments | Posted December 18, 2007 | 8:17 PM

For the first time since the Bush administration took office, three members of the House Judiciary Committee, Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), are calling for hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Richard Cheney.

Their position, while courageous, is not surprising. What is surprising...

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Beyond Mukasey's Confirmation, White House Liability Issues Loom Large

0 Comments | Posted November 13, 2007 | 11:26 AM

Though it failed to send his nomination the way of Robert Bork, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey's evasiveness on the definition of torture has done something historic. It has made it unmistakably clear to mainstream observers that the President may be criminally liable for violating anti-torture laws. Criminal liability of...

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Testimony to the Washington Legislature

0 Comments | Posted March 12, 2007 | 9:15 PM

Testimony

By

Elizabeth Holtzman

On

Senate Joint Memorial 8016

Before the Government Operations and Elections Committee

of the Washington State Legislature

regarding the

Impeachment of President George W. Bush


At the request of State Senator Eric Oemig, I respectfully submit this testimony in support of Senate...

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President Bush's Grave Misconduct

0 Comments | Posted October 17, 2006 | 6:33 PM

Recent events--the Foley scandal, the Woodward book, revelations about White House scorn for evangelical Christians, the Abramoff scandal, not to mention the increasingly dire situation in Iraq--have all converged in a kind of tsunami headed for the Republican majority in the House and Senate. Of course, it could change course.

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A Case for Impeachment

0 Comments | Posted September 26, 2006 | 6:38 PM

This is my first blog on the Huffington Post and there is so much to talk about it's hard to know where to begin.

I want to start with a point I made in my new book, The Impeachment of George W. Bush, about why the framers of the...

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