Putting this all-too-rare exemplar together with last week's WaPo payola scandal leads to some fundamental insights.

McClatchy's work seems largely consistent with the belief that that they are in the business of exposing and deriving value from truth. When you look at the big picture, the Washington Post is in the business of creating and deriving value from access.

The Youssef will likely have a strongly negative CWF (cocktail weenie factor) -- access to "senior administration officials" and other unnamed sources will suffer. And low CWFs are not associated with the ability to monetize that access by charging some of the people you are theoretically reporting on to speak with other people you are theoretically reporting on.

It isn't fair to compare this story to what the Post and the Times publish -- they really aren't in the same business.

To accept the central premise of our political class -- it's unfair to prosecute Bush officials for things that DOJ lawyers told them was legal -- is to destroy the rule of law in the United States.

True that. But there is no effective constituency for the rule of law. As Wikipedia tells us, the rule of law means that "decisions should be made by applying known principles or laws, without the intervention of discretion in their application. This maxim is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary governance."

But if governance cannot be arbitrary -- if an act (say, torture) is a priori defined as illegal -- then we cannot excuse some while damning others. If there is no discretion in prosecution, then we cannot jail Charles Graner and Lynndie England without even charging their superiors.

That simply will not do.

Our political class is at war. The rule of law is their enemy. They may grudgingly acknowledge that "all men are created equal" nonsense, but in their world, that equality does not survive for long. The rule of law is, at bottom, a check on power. And power seems to have outgrown the need for such bounding.

Sadly, appeals to the rule of law will go nowhere. The rule of law is the very thing the political class finds most objectionable about our silly, utopian visions.

Eric Holder has the power and the authority to do the right thing here. What he may not have is the courage. (To be fair, it will take quite a bit.)

So how do we stiffen his backbone? Equate letting Yoo et al. off with letting Marc Rich off. We know that the Rich pardon is his greatest embarrassment. So we need to make as many comparisons as possible between that that failure and this situation.

Shouldn't be too hard -- the parallels seem pretty easy to draw.

em' pa thy (noun) -- taking improper notice of how laws affect women, brown people, etc. Distinct from proper taking notice of how laws affect white males of approved provenance (see "justice").

1. It isn't that media stars aren't allowed to express opinions. Rather they are not allowed to express opinions inconsistent with village orthodoxy. Todd is on very safe ground here, because village consensus transubstantiates into fact.

2. Please don't undersell the transgression here, Glenn. You say:

What about the argument that numerous detainees died as a result of these methods?

Isn't that a FACT, not just an argument?

3. Because Chuck and his ilk are so dense, and Yoo so breathtaking in his published totalitarian views, we can make the hypothetical much more pointed: if the President determined that he needed to crush Chuck's kid's testicles for the good of the country, would he still call the issue "cable catnip"?

1. What is your job? (No, seriously. I'd love to hear him describe it.)

2. Do you think it is consistent with that job to advocate against investigation of serious, potentially impeachable offenses?

3. Have you had off-the-record conversations with current and/or former officials about such offenses?

4. What is the justification for keeping such conversations off the record?

5. Can you explain what you meant by "change the law retroactively"? Can a DoJ lawyer make law? Is the law whatever John Yoo says it is? So if John Yoo says that the President can crush your son's testicles, you're OK with that?

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”

- Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here.

I pointed to that quote a lot during the Bush years. But I now realize it is incomplete. My addendum:

And it will be completed by a liberal.

And I voted for him. I feel betrayed, but I also remember telling Republicans that they owned what Bush wrought.

We MUST derail this, Glenn.

As I watch our inspirational President do such mortal damage to what I see as our core values, I am finding it increasingly hard to resist slipping into despair.

The Onion recently had a great parody ad for a new depressive drug to treat inappropriate cheerfulness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd4tugPM83c (and at sig)

Reading about the daily (and likely irreversible) erosion of civil liberties and the rule of law, it is hard to dispute the notion that damn near any cheerfulness is inappropriate.

Richard Nixon had lawyers defending what he did in Watergate. Ronald Reagan had lawyers defending what he did in arming Iran in order to fund the Nicaraguan contras in violation of the law. George Bush had lawyers justifying his spying on Americans without warrants even though FISA criminalized exactly that. And Dick Cheney had lawyers justifying his torture regime. That's always going to be true.

Didn't Bill Clinton have lawyers defending whatever it was that he did in Whitewater? And didn't First Lady Hillary have lawyers defending her in the Travelgate nonsense?

There really doesn't seem to be a political issue unexplained by IOKIYAR.