Perhaps a dog kennel. A dog trainer at least has to explain who bit off the index finger. O lawyers? Host a law party. Serve ca-can, o sardine?

What will posterity say? Crooked attorneys? O YES!

We a glutton for more self-ruin? These stray mutts,

are no finger-eater laughing hyena matter. O worst.

nick. Maybe they smoke `A child's `'play-doe' mush.

'Um heard it's colored, non-habit forming, o fat free.

The rule of law is important to defend -- even against those in high office. I think it should be a priority to prosecute lawbreakers in W's Administration -- including W himself. It establishes for the future that the President and his people aren't exempted from obeying the law just because of the president. And, even on a practical basis it establishes for Obama's own administration that he will not countenance law breaking.

Current and former members of the executive branch may have an incentive to quash investigations. But does the second branch have the inherent authority to trump whatever play is made by the first and third branches?

As today's Charlie Savage article points out:

But even if his administration rejects the calls for investigations, Mr. Obama cannot control what the courts or Congress do.

[...]

In November 1953, after Dwight D. Eisenhower became president, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed Truman to testify about why he had appointed a suspected Communist to the International Monetary Fund.

Truman decided not to comply and asked his lawyer, Samuel I. Rosenman, for help. But there was little time for research.

Edward M. Cramer, a young associate at Mr. Rosenman’s law firm, recalled being summoned with two colleagues to their boss’s office at 6 p.m. and told to come up with something. The next morning, they helped dictate Truman’s letter telling the panel he did not have to testify — or even appear at the hearing.

“I think, legally, we were wrong” about whether Truman had to show up, Mr. Cramer, now 83, said in a phone interview from his home in New York.

But the committee did not call the former president’s bluff. It dropped the matter, and Truman’s hastily devised legal claim became a historical precedent.

[...]

- - Charlie Savage

* * * * *

It's not in the president's interest or the president-elect's interest to overturn the historical (but not legal) precedent set by Truman. So it's a mistake for the Congress to sit and wait for help from the president-elect. The members of the first branch - - the people's branch - - must now be poked and prodded into standing up for their own power.

"It's not in the president's interest or the president-elect's interest to overturn the historical (but not legal) precedent set by Truman. So it's a mistake for the Congress to sit and wait for help from the president-elect. The members of the first branch - - the people's branch - - must now be poked and prodded into standing up for their own power."

-- sysprog

Yep. It's time The People learned how to herd cats and push ropes uphill.

I think the opportunity is lost.

And before the election, the argument was that an investigation would be politically damaging to Democrats.

It's the very inverse of the "criminalization of policy differences" - namely, the politicization of criminal investigation - that's exactly what's going on here.

GG:

Our political class has decided that high political officials -- particularly the President and those closest to him -- are literally exempt from the rule of law.

The people in the class shouldn't get to decide on their own exemptions; they work for us, so I quess we'll have to discipline them. A critical mass of outrage would have to be generated to have any effect, though, and that will probably only be possible when we start getting specifics on what they were actually up to. I expect this to happen; digital information is notoriously easy to transport.

Can't we just make fun of people who say stuff like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jO1EOhGkY0

The applicable lampoon starts about 5:40 into this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Things must be set up to prevent crimes in the first place, or to take action against them immediately.

This is what there are laws for. First, as a deterrent to crime, and second to punish crimes in an appropriate manner. Please read Part 1 of Title 18 of the US Code before posting again. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I.html

This is the way things have been set up "in the first place".

Glenn should try to think of ways to protect the Constitution and the rule of law without resorting to extremist partisanship.
— skeptonomist

Prosecuting criminals for crimes committed protects the Constitution and the rule of law. It is not partisanship. Prosecuting someone for his or her political beliefs or affiliations is partisanship and is both illegal and unconstitutional. The extent to which this has been done in the past eight years remains to be uncovered.

In any case, Washington DC should be treated as a crime scene.

Perhaps, but I'm not an attorney,

send "males" in the DOJ to P.R.?

They can enter a freckle contest.

We need more brevity and hopes.

Or, clean fresh undies briefs. OY!

O too silly, they devious criminal.

O UGH, and NO prodigy. O YUCK.

Fair trials, then, O Drake Passage?

No plank walks, but just try them.

Can-can. Obvious. A foggy morn.

The Democrats simply need to join the world court. Then the entire issue is out of their hands and Bush and Co. can be tried on international war crimes. Kills two birds with one stone.

Let me preface this by saying that I agree with Mr. Greenwald completely: It is absolutely proper that our political leaders be held to the same laws as the rest of us, and if being held to the law is found to be too constraining for them to execute their responsibilities in high office, we must either change the law or change our expectations of high office, difficult though this be. Ignoring the law, easy as it seems, encourages additional lawbreaking and assures the decline of Constitutional Rule.

I really think we should move forward with these prosecutions. But let's look at what that means.

On extraordinary rendition, you could make a good argument that Bush and a large part of his administration, and at least a few members of Congress who were so-briefed, and a significant portion of the CIA and perhaps military, are guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment, torture, and, because some of the detainees died, murder while in the process of committing a secondary felony (which, here in Louisiana is automatically capital first-degree murder). Even those who did not order renditions and did not participate in them, if they offered material support (such as working in a White House job that had security clearances that allowed knowledge of the renditions) could be guilty of conspiracy, or aiding and abetting, or both.

This was, in part, the argument that Vincent Bugliosi put forward in his book "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder", though he was focusing on Iraq War dead, not rendition-dead (similar arguments apply, of course).

So, to be morally consistent and treat the band of criminals in government the same way you'd treat any other band of criminals that conspired to kidnap people, torture them, murder some of them, and then cover up all evidence, you'd really have to launch a major arrest sweep that would cover giant swaths of Capitol Hill. Let me reiterate: I am TOTALLY in favor of this. Would it cause total chaos in Washington? Yes. Would it lead to incredible recriminations were such a thing to be attempted, or even seriously proposed? Yes. Could it even lead to a breakdown of civil government and some sort of an attempt at a military coup? If you're proposing indicting the Joint Chiefs for capital murder, yes, I think you have to accept some possibility of that.

In other words, you're proposing something akin to a general revolution, led by prosecutors, in which significant portions of the Executive and Legislative branches--and military--are accused of multiple, capital offenses.

There's a tendency when "demanding investigations" to assume that we'd have a few people convicted of obstruction or perjury (a la Scooter Libby), or if we were lucky, an impeachment. But at least in this case, that isn't remotely true. To ask for morally consistent prosecution of the Bush administration and its enabling government actors (which again, includes scores of willing Democrats, perhaps ALREADY including Obama due to his time in Congress, I'm sure Glenn can comment on that) is to ask our government, specifically our Justice Department, to throw a huge amount of itself in jail, much of it for life, some of it facing the death penalty.

Is there a pragmatic "third way" that straddles "totally ignoring the Bush crimes" against "declaring open prosecutorial war against the government"? Some sort of amnesty offer? Some moral compromise? How far does a pragmatist propose taking these charges?

I'd go all the way, but I'm not a pragmatist, which is probably why I'm neither a holder of office nor a blogger.