cuz they don't have American blood on their hands -- just parking tickets. But we'll have to repossess their Korans before we release them.

Even if he pardons himself, send him to Guantanamo and hold him indefinitely without any charges and without access to lawyers. It has been done before. Pudge Cheney probably wouldn't hold up very well in the heat down there...too bad.

Our resident wingnuts are guilty of a false equivalency. The inherent condemnation for "witch hunting" (partisan or otherwise) is born from the quite obvious fact that Witches don't exist.

Bushcorp crimes against humanity do, sadly.

Yeah, that's the ticket to healing -- let's spend our time investigating Bush while the rest of the country is going to hell in a hand basket. Way to reach across the aisle!

Would you think that justice would be best served by a blanket pardon of your former tormentors?

Poor criminals do years in the state pen for sticking up liquors stores. Does violating your oath of office as President or any subordinate officer of the executive branch, detaining, abusing, and torturing people in direct violation of the Constitution, and federal and international law warrant any kind of consequence? Or are we now officially in the era of "if the President (or Fuehrer) says it is alright, it can't be illegal"?

Like many others who have posted here already, I'd like to see the whole Bushevik junta tried for war crimes, convicted, and very publicly given what's coming to them. I am thoroughly disgusted with these people and it would make me feel good to see them pay for what they've done to my country. But this alone isn't the reason. Putting BushCo behind bars (at the very least) would serve as a warning to any future would-be fascists that while they might defer their day of reckoning while in power their day will come eventually. It would also help restore some of the moral standing the US enjoyed in the pre-Bush years, though electing Obama was a very good start.

Alas it ain't never gonna happen. Impeachment is "off the table" as Pelosi put it because too much went on under that table. A lot of devil's bargains were struck under the Bush junta. If we started holding our leadership responsible for their nefarious deeds too many have too much to fear. The collateral damage would leave few standing. Neither the public nor Congress has the stomach for this.

Can one be forced to testify after being pardoned? After being granted immunity from prosecution in a plea bargain that's the case - what happens with pardons?

Getting the dirty laundry out in the open would be a lot simpler if none of the conspirators could plead the 5th.

I’m struck by the tenor of this article. The entire focus is on whether a costly and cumbersome prosecution would bear fruit in terms of convictions of the various players within the Bush administration who, in spite of all advice and international norms to the contrary, engaged in the worst kind of tortures in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention. I’m also struck by the fact that neither the Geneva Convention nor the Supreme Court decision Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was mentioned in this article.

Basically, what one comes away with from Benjamin’s assessment is that, because of the difficulty imposed by the passage of amendments to the War Crimes Act in 2006 – amendments that were pushed by the administration as a direct result of the Supreme Court’s Hamdan decision to uphold and invoke Article 3 of the Geneva Convention -- the option to prosecute the crimes committed by the Bush administration would possibly be viewed, as Benjamin characterizes, as “wrongheaded, partisan retribution.”

He further goes on to quote Kermit Roosevelt of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law who opines that perhaps, for the sake of “healing the country and moving forward,” a blanket pardon of the thousands of actors involved “followed by something like a truth and reconciliation commission . . . might not be such a bad outcome.”

I guess I have a very different definition of “healing the country.” It seems to me that, not content simply to continue the more than 100 year tradition of undermining democracies all over the world, the United States has now set its sights on itself, subverting and auto-cannibalizing its own democratic principles to the point of burlesque.

The decision is this: To prosecute such heinous acts and uphold democratic principles (and thereby truly take our medicine), or take the expedient route of treating the rule of law like an “etch-a-sketch” and simply turn it on its head and shake it till there’s nothing left but a blank slate.

I have no doubt what choice will be made. I also have no doubt that the actions employed by the Bush administration, actions that literally subvert our own democracy and international law, will continue to be the American modus operandi for many years to come.

The wounds suffered to the what John McCain blasphemously referred to as "the fabric of Democracy" in the ACORN fluff, are deep festering sores on the Constitution, civil rights and the confidence and expectations of all Americans...which the Bush administration has inflicted deliberately and systematically for the past 8 years. THEY have rent the fabric of Democracy almost beyond redemption.

Yes we need to move on. But yelps to move on are coming from those who have something to fear by finally having the light shined on the dark recesses of the actions of Bush and his cronies. It may be years (if ever) until we know the full extent of it. Can you hear the shredders humming?

They spent two years harping on an irrelevant relationship of Obama to someone who did something despicable when the candidate was 8 years old.

And now they are snarling that we need to get over the horrible deeds and policies that have wrecked this nation and destroyed our global reputation and the legacies of hope and prosperity we have worked for in the names of our children and grandchildren.

If we simply move on...they are already positioning themselves to be on target to do it again.

No one should be pardoned for the atrocities (yes atrocities!) of this administration and its enablers. Nothing should get swept under Bush's "optimistic person comes to work here" rug.

This nation will NOT heal until all those who dug into their pockets, manned the phones and took the the streets, and all those who made the choice for change in the voting booth are honored with a full accounting of the past. No free passes.

Can we still move forward with investigations going on in a couple dozen rooms on Capital Hill? YES.

Democrats, Progressives and Barack Obama (along with all those other disenfranchised categories that finally "got it") can walk and chew gum at the same time.

You betcha!