Conyers Releases Report on Bush’s “Imperial Presidency”

This might take us a little while to get through — it’s almost 500 pages long — but House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers’ (D-Mich.)  just-released report (pdf) documenting the “abuses and excesses” of George W. Bush’s presidency and recommending changes to the new administration is a must read.

“Even after scores of hearings, investigations, and reports, we still do not have answers to some of the most fundamental questions left in the wake of Bush’s Imperial Presidency,” Conyers said in a statement.

The litany of topics the report focuses on is impressive, unsurprising, and quite frankly, a little depressing to look at when put all in one place: allegations of torture and inhumane treatment; extraordinary rendition; warrantless domestic surveillance; signing statements, the Valerie Plame Wilson-leak, and the U.S. Attorney scandal and politicization of the Justice Department, just to name a few.

The report summarizes a list of recommendations to the new administration, including suggestions for criminal probes, further committee investigations and the creation of a blue ribbon commission to “fully investigate Administration activities.”

During an interview Sunday with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, President-elect Barack Obama said he wasn’t eager to conduct criminal probes on the Bush administration, saying “we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.”

But he did intimate that the onus for appointing a special prosecutor would be passed to the attorney general – in this case, Eric Holder, Obama’s nominee – and that it wasn’t ultimately the president’s decision.

We’ll be digging through this report and updating if we find anything new or noteworthy in there.