I noticed last Friday during the Chris Matthews show that a right-wing radio personality was arguing against commissions and challenging the Obama administration to use the DOJ if they thought crimes had been committed. It struck me as odd that this Bush supporter would be taunting the administration to do exactly what I wanted them to do - follow the rule of law and go through the Justice Dept.

LARS LARSON, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Hey, I have got to tell you something. If they want to have an investigation, the way the president said, the way everybody else is prosecuted, he has got an attorney general, he has got a Justice Department. Do it that way.

But I don‘t think the president has the guts to say to his attorney general, seek prosecution of the former president and his staff.

The fact is, is that most of my listeners are saying, the American government has enough problems on its plate, the economy, two wars, all these other problems. To go off on some kind of witch-hunt after the former administration is ridiculous.

And a congressional approach to it is also ridiculous. If you want it prosecuted as a regular crime is prosecuted, then assign it to the Department of Justice and have them assign professional investigators.

Then we have Rivkin and Casey pretty much doing the same thing.

Claims that the Bush administration abused presidential powers have been thoroughly reviewed by several congressional committees, and the Justice Department is capable of considering whether any criminal charges are appropriate.

Is this false bravado or do they guys already know that the fix is in and the DOJ will do nothing?

bystander, evidently there is a virus going around Washington that causes beltway "journalists" to exhibit the symptom of dyslexia whenever they write about the most recent USA/Gallup poll. I wonder who will be infected next? Maybe the CDC needs to get involved to find the original carrier of this sickening disease that seems to only attack those journalists who advocate no accountability for Bush criminals. Hopefully this terrible virus can be contained before it infects others.

I sent an email to Bobby Ghosh at Time alerting him that his article incorrectly characterized the results of the recent USA/Gallup poll:

Leahy's Plan to Probe Bush-Era Wrongdoings

I wonder if Mr. Ghosh will take as long as Mr. Conason did in correcting his piece. What a coincidence that they both misrepresented the exact same part of the poll.

Yeah, I know about the WaPo. I thought the ombudsman, Debbie the Howler was out. Is she still hanging around?

Sorry for butchering your name Retired Military Patriot and thanks for posting that Time Magazine link.

RetriedMilitaryPatriot just posted an excerpt from Time to highlight what Leahy said but I noticed at the bottom of that snippet was the following:

Perhaps surprisingly, a majority of Americans polled recently by Gallup expressed their support for some kind of investigation into Bush-era wrongdoing such as the politicization of the Justice Department or torture, though much of the backing was for an independent panel, not a criminal probe.

Looks like we have another "journalist" deliberately mistating the facts about the USA/Gallup poll just like Joe Conason did the other day. This is obviously not an accident, but a pattern of deceit.

Yeah, Glenn in the WaPo. Why not? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I post comments there all the time telling them they need to have Greenwald as a columnist to increase their readership so why not an op-ed. I'd cc the new editor. Maybe the new guy will force old Fred to run it. lol

Glenn, why don't you submit a piece to the Post that responds to their op-ed?

The Washington Post has a piece today called:

Judges: Torture, Abuses Undermine Values in U.S., U.K.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/17/AR2009021700506.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Within the WaPo article there is actually a link to the report (I was surprised).

Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights

http://ejp.icj.org/hearing2.php3?id_article=167&lang=en

What the Post doesn't tell us, however, is that there is another report at the same site called:

ICJ Expert Legal Panel on Corporate Complicity in International Crimes

FINAL REPORT

http://icj.org/news.php3?id_article=4405&lang=en

The Expert Legal Panel on Corporate Complicity in International Crimes was set up in 2006 to explore when companies and their officials could be held legally responsible under criminal and/or civil law when they are involved with other actors in gross human rights abuses.

The report, comprising three volumes, addresses corporate complicity from the angles of criminal law, the law of civil responsibility and public policy.

Perhaps we need to send a copy of this report to the Obama administration so that they stop using the "state secrets" privilege to help the Bush administration cover up their crimes and the crimes of those corporations who were complicit in those crimes.

Bystander, many thanks for the link to The Guantánamo Testimonials Project.

I think Salon.com's higher-ups should be made aware of this, since the time has expired to post letters in Conason's Pardon-the-torturers article.

- independentminded

When I checked earlier today and saw the comments closed on the Bush piece that Conason wrote I specifically checked the previous story about Phelps that Conason wrote to see if the comments were open on that article. I can't prove it but I could have sworn that the comments section for the previous article written by Conason was still open (it's now closed). I wish now that I had posted there as I was going to do because I think the comments in the Bush piece was deliberately closed to prevent us from making comments and now the Phelps comments are closed to cover for that. But like I said I can't prove it but it sure gives me a creepy feeling.