If there was any doubt that United States more and more is sliding down the "quality of governance" index GG brings more evidence to the proceedings to support the decline.

As a matter of intersecting lines I follow Thai national politics on a day to day basis. Ex-Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra came to power in Thailand about when Bush did in USA. Thai money politics are thick and the entire Thai nation is gamed over and over by what in essence is the City-State of Bangkok.

Thaksin's rise to position of Thai PM was based on his acumen to herd personal wealth derived from his private enterprises into political power. His rise was fast and for Thailand quite new in scale of thought and process. He soon exceeded known Thai speed limits for graft,corruption and money politics and ended up on the wrong end of one of those frequent Thai military coups.

He was indicted and convicted for one of his insider deals and most of his $1.7 billion fortune was siezed by Thailand.

Of course Thaksin had plenty more money stashed abroad anyway.

In recent days his visa to England was revoked. He still has a Thai Diplomatic Passport which was taken away for a while but then given back by the PPP-Thaksins old TRT political party reconstituted in current Thai politics. The PPP is Thaksins puppet political party that is likely going to serve as his comeback bid base. The PPP is a collection of Thai carpetbagging types who regained power in Bangkok after the Thai military relinquished coup power. PPP member Samak won the PM job-then lost it-Thaksins brother-in-law is now PM. It just gets thicker from here. Thaksin is not giving up easy.

So G.W.Bush and his gang should just be able to walk off after these last eight years and go uninvestigated,unindicted and unpunished?

Political crimes really are not "crimes" you see. It is all relative to who did what and who got caught or gets away.

Or wants to come back.

A typical American breaks the law consequences often are soon to follow when caught. Evidently Imperial WashingtonDC has a different set of Law Books.

Thailand is a wonderful,exotic land. Thaksin is a Thai politician who could have done much lasting good. He did not.

Now he seeks to escape the consequences of his doing wrong.It is likely he seeks a return to power for less than noble reasons. He has his backers and supporters who want him back.

It would appear he will willingly cause more trouble to do more of what led him to this point. There is no remorse.

Bush and Cheney display little in way of remorse also.

It is too bad WashingtonDC is going down this murky pathway.

Rule of Law is only as strong as the consequences that befall those who break it. Otherwise breaking the Rules of Law becomes the norm and from there it is a steep and fast descent into the deeper realms of Dantian HellWorlds.

From whence does the assumption that taking on prosecution of Bush's crimes will be devastating to the Obama administration come?

I think another aspect of this attitude comes from a misreading of the polling done on the impeachment of Clinton. The impeachment came at a huge price to the Republican party. I think the pols are reading those results and saying that any impeachment or prosecution of high officials will come at the same price, when I would read the results as the public seeing through the triviality of the charges brought against Clinton. I think there is a true desire for justice to be served by punishing those in government who have committed crimes (and in fact, polling showed the public to want the impeachment of Bush and Cheney), but, as Glenn points out, that desire is not shared by the Beltway class.

In order to break something, that something must be recognized as real. Republicans reject the rule of law. They cannot break what does not exist. By what I have seen, Republicans do not even recongnise that the law exists much less that it applies to them. When, not if, Obama issues pardons for Bush, Cheney and the thousands of other Republican criminals, we can all join in song. Meet the new boss..........

But our political establishment venerates "centrism" and "bi-partisanship" as the highest religious concepts.

This is only true if the 'highest religious concepts' are those mouthed, but never actually followed.

In reality, we've had 8 years in which centrism and bipartisanship has been rare. Look at the number of filibusters in Congress, and the behavior of the Bush White House. No centrism or bipartisanship at either address.

So what is the real reason Obama would chose to agree with Litt, if he does so?

You're saying the Democrats are too spineless to hold "true criminal proceedings," but they have the ballz to stage a "show trial"?

Are you calling the Democratic Party a sort of oversexed jellyfish? It's certainly a striking image. I wish I could draw what I'm seeing.

Please do explain.

Over at Firedoglake, Christy Hardin Smith has put up a post with a contest for naming Bush's biography. The thread will be open for entries for 24 hours.

Caution: protect your keyboard and warn the pets in the vicinity before clicking the link. Lots of fun to be had there.

For Obama to take on the prosecution of Bush's crimes during his administration it would have a devastating effect on his to ability to govern. The Republicans are already gearing up to destroy Obama just like they did with Clinton. The Justice Department is full of Bush cronies and will need to be totally purged. So are many other departments. His clear out and clean up tasks are quite daunting. I think the opportunity is lost.

First, I'm not picking on you ibivip, I picked your response because it had a list of the standard arguments in it.

From whence does the assumption that taking on prosecution of Bush's crimes will be devastating to the Obama administration come? My guess is that it comes from two sources: the belief that the right wing noise machine will go to town on it as "partisan", and the belief that it will unnecessarily spend all the political capital.

The first cannot be helped. The truth is that all it will do is provide the target for the noise machine, if you don't investigate, they will find some other target. Have you forgotten that they can manufacture a target out of a hairstyle, or simply start yelling "socialist" if they can't find anything else? Not prosecuting won't shut them up, just change the subject. Bipartisanship is junk. If there weren't a difference between the parties, there would be no point in voting, and those differences produce disputes.

The second is just an error. Spending political capital is a form of investment. It is used to forward unpopular agendas. The reason for forwarding such agendas is the belief that although they are bitter medicine, they are good in the long run for the country. If that's really true, then when the investment pays off, more political capital is accrued. It's only when your investments are for such miniscule and irrelevant incremental changes that nobody can see the worth in them that you dissipate your capital, or when you are investing in something that is not for the benefit of the nation. People (including some of the advisors) who believe that capital is a quickly dissipated entity are used to doing very small little insignificant nothings during their terms in office, and should not be listened to by anyone trying to create great change. Bringing criminals to justice for heinous or damaging felonies against the people or the human race is not an investment that dissipates capital for no reason. It restores our core beliefs and it teaches right from wrong.

The Republicans are gearing up to destroy Obama as they did Clinton? Can they? Excuse me but there are two wars going on and a 60 trillion dollar gambling racket killing off everybody's job. And you think a sex scandal or some other personal attack is going to be heard over the noise of actually fixing what's wrong with the country? If Obama keeps eyes on the prize, and truly tackles the country's grave problems, including the lawlessness and international capitulation represented by the prisoner detention policies and the wiretapping and all the rest, nobody is going to be able to bring him down with a petty scandal.

The Justice department is full of cronies that need to be purged? Agreed. The first to go will be Michael Mukasey. But what good does it do to get rid of the crony, if you are going to leave in place the policies and practices they brought to the department? Mr. Mukasey's most astounding potential legacy is the doctrine that no one can be prosecuted by the justice department if corrupt lawyers at the OLC tell them what they are doing is okay, even if what was "okay" was a crime against humanity, or some other crime prosecutable by 195 countries, for instance. Purging the cronies means also righting the wrongs they created. Should Don Siegelman not have his name cleared in the interests of bipartisanship?

The last point is your pessimistic "the opportunity is lost" feeling. I would urge you not to despair. Old sins have long shadows, and the crimes for which the Bush administration should be investigated include crimes for which our failure to prosecute will automatically trigger investigations in other countries. The British high court is now on record that Americans and Britons collaborated in a rendition to torture and conducted the interrogations. Germany and France are pursuing cases in their courts. Were Afghanistan to have a change of government and decide to prosecute any of the tortures that took place there, the ICC could prosecute the Americans in the Bush administration. There is not only no statute of limitations for some of these people's crimes, there is an obligation of every country (obligatio erga omnes) to see to it they are prosecuted. That's how bad the crimes are we are talking about. It's a pity our system doesn't have an adjective beyond 'felony' for describing them.

But, if you believe that it would be better for the United States of America to stand up for the rule of law and not have to submit eventually to having its former officials nabbed in airports, or maybe just kidnapped and rendered, perhaps there is no time to lose urging some people who think that putting the post- prefix on everything under the sun is a good post-philosophy for the post-history post-21st post-century that they should wake up and smell the post-coffee. It isn't the criminal party that should declare that bygones are bygones and every other post-country on the post-globe post-knows it.

The only post- we should be right now is post-pundit, post-spin, and post-advisor. We simply don't need tired advice right now from people who never get much done.