It's been an average week at Camp Woebegon, the police came around and arrested our dark-skinned neighbors, the Al-Humahdis, on suspicion of something or other...

...we got word down at the diner that little Ahmed, who would have been a junior at Camp Wobegon High this year, was to be held for years without trial because he happened to be related to someone who might at one time have been a driver for someone who may have known one of the 642 number two men in Al-Quieda. But we didn't worry about it. After all, a little adversity is good for a young man. Make a sound Lutheran out of him, full of compassion for those who are suffering.

The father of the Al clan, Omar, was waterboarded over a hundred times in an attempt to get him to say that Obama really was born in Damascus, and had personally hidden weapons of mass destruction in his wife's afro in the 1970's. But that's all right. We midwesterners are hearty folk, and are stoic about a little water up the nose.

All the boys down at the diner were saying that they were just a bit tired of hearing about what happened to the Al's, even the ones that we have no idea what happened to, since we have more important things to worry about that a little junket to an unregistered resort somewhere in Bulgaria where the health plan includes being chained in positions that cause your legs to swell until the skin bursts.

...and that's the news from Camp Wobegon, where the men are ruthless, the women are forgetful, and the children will learn that you pay a higher price for underage drinking than you do for torturing the helpless.

Now here's a musical number from the all-star stress position band. HEAVENS, they're tasty.

I'm ashamed to have ever listened to you, Mr. Keillor.

Mr. Kellor, a word of advice:

Unless and until you are capable of guaranteeing that the men who violated the laws of the United States will never seek or obtain any position whatsoever in the US government, the US military, the court system, the prison system, or the psychiatric system, you have absolutely no business telling us not to prosecute them. Because they will do it again.

As for the consequences of the Democrats prosecuting Republican war criminals, well WHAT OF THEM?! Even when a bunch of two-faced Republican hypocrites tried and failed to impeach Bill Clinton for lying under oath about a totally irrelevant matter, they managed to parlay the fact that they had the guts to go after him into one presidential election close enough to rig, a second presidential election which they actually won, and six years with majorities in the House and Senate.

They PROFITED by going after Clinton, even though they had the worst policies ideas in half a century. Democrats only started winning elections again when they finally had the guts (or at least appeared to) to criticize and move against Republicans instead of kissing their asses. And last I checked, the vast majority of people who actually put Barack Obama in the White House did so in the understanding that he would, in fact, do exactly what you now tell us the world would end if he did.

If the last ten years have taught us anything, it should be this: cowardice profits us nothing. And your cowardice in the face of George Bush's revealed crimes will profit us nothing, too.

There are two issues here: The fear of any prosecution being seen as partisan revenge, and the need for crimes to be punished.

The first can, and should, be dealt with by creating an independent commission able to fearlessly and impartially prosecute transgressions on both sides. If a society is unable to act out of fear of being seen as biased, then the only possible long term result is corruption and lawlessness. Justice must be blind.

And if crimes remain unpunished, then they are also unlikely to be properly examined, and will be repeated with impunity. A society in which the grand crimes of the great are ignored, but the petty crimes of the poor and powerless pusued, is not one which can claim liberty and democracy.

should be "but the petty crimes of the poor and powerless pursued,"

I'm not too interested in the punishment aspects. I assume that cutting Dick Cheney's tongue out of his lying mouth would not be among the available options, however good it might be for the country.

But we need to have an investigation of the criminals, whatever the forum. Do it for the children.

We all know what happens to those who forget history.

You're in for it now.

I guess I'm all in favor of letting bygones be bygones, but only on one condition. Everyone who was tortured has to agree.

I'm rather young so I don't know, but has it always been so hard to figure out whether someone is being satirical or not? I literally have no idea whether this is, as copying the accepted defense verbatim is self parody...but what is Garrison's intent?

Garrison,

I love you, but not prosecuting Nixon, and not prosecuting the criminals in the Reagan and first Bush administration are what led to the criminals in the second Bush administration (some of them the same people).

If our elected officials do not fear being punished for criminal acts, then the only protection we have left is to rely on only electing good people to office. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be a viable strategy.

Men were tortured body and soul and all you frakking care about is your own creature comforts. People like you make me sick. News flash, America is DOOMED. The country is so messed up it can't be fixed. This is the end of the Great American Empire and we only wait for word from our new Chinese and Indian Overlords. The only thing we are morally OBLIGATED to do is not build stupid trains but to punish those who made a mockery of our values. Then we leave Lake Wobogonen and the dying remains of America and not look back. The ideas enshrined in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence are the only things worth saving.