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.

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.

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?

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..........

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.

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.

Article 8 of the Charter of Military Tribunals, which governed the conduct of the Nuremburg Trials after World War II, provides that:

"The fact that the defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determine that justice so requires."

This is the principle which addresses the "pragmatic" aspect of how to prosecute governmental illegality when it starts at the top but is implemented through a chain of command down to the guy who was "just following orders". It is true that the guy who "just followed orders" might have made a moral decision to refuse to engage in the criminal act -- but if it is argued that pursuing high executive criminality should be foregone because that might require or implicate also convicting any large number of underlings who followed the orders, the principle of Article 8 can mitigate this. Indeed, from a "precedential" perspective, if society as a whole wants to deter the kind of governmental criminality we are talking about here, which rule has the greater likelihood of doing so: one which says nobody will be prosecuted because there are too many people involved, or one which emphasizes that rooting out those who order the criminality is more important than punishing those who carried out those orders? And which principle is more likely to encourage those foot soldiers to make the tough moral choice not to follow an immoral order: the knowledge that neither the superior nor the implementer will be prosecuted, or the hope that there will be repercussions to those who give such orders and mercy to those who followed them out of fear or trust?

This isn't always easy to apply, of course, and the concentration camp prison guard is the pivotal example of that. But if the choice is between prosecuting everyone and prosecuting no one, who believes that choosing to prosecute no one is the more likely to deter future lawlessness by the government? That's what is being advocated right now. It stinks.

There is nothing wrong with focusing upon the person giving the orders. This certainly may entail charging some of those who followed the orders. Sort out relative degrees of punishment when the facts are known and justice can be applied.

But simply "moving on" is abhorrent. A former prosecutor should know better than to suggest it.