The perfidious Bush Administration is capable of doing no end of 'dirty' business before Jan. 20.]

I understand that the day following election day, he and his minions set about removing environmental protection laws primarily on land bordering parks, monuments and other natural wonders. Apparently, once removed restoring their status will be next to impossible.

Bush's attitude is that he owns those lands: The American people do not.

This act was made public. Almost beyond imagining the extent of covert dirty work that has occurred for the last eight years. It's imperative that we know the whole ugly story.

Unfortunately the lack of follow through on Nixon might have led to peace and reconciliation in the short term but has proved disastrous over 30 years later.

The mild restrictions on executive power, the oversight requirements, and the trident of power have proved inadequate in resisting a planned and coherent attack from the executive to undermine the other two branches.

The neo-con attack has been multi-pronged and effective, resulting in a president who has operated way further beyond the law than even Nixon did. After all, there has been a systemic operation to infiltrate the government agencies and to tie lobbyists for a "permanent majority". An insidious corruption of the state.

Yes, the push back came about because of the controls that circumscribed the power of the presidency elicited a right-wing reaction, but we have now found out just how dangerous it is for the three branches of government not to work in some near-equal tension. The neo-cons were both wrong and dangerous to the health of democracy.

Don't make the same mistake.

Crimes need to be called and prosecuted.

The current maladministration is a direct outgrowth of that decision. It was wrong at the time, as was the subsequent failure to adequately investigate and prosecute Iran-Contra, and remains wrong today (and I lived through the whole Watergate debacle - my first vote was against Nixon). The fact that there was no accountability for Nixon's crimes simply encouraged others, particularly Rumsfield and Cheney, to go even further. There can be no rule of law if the laws are not enforced, particularly against the most powerful among us.

It can never be stressed enough in a Democracy...those who have the most power must be those who are the most vetted, watched and forced to be transparent.

The terrible condition of the Republic in November 2008 is a direct result of evil men doing evil deeds. Evil is evil, in any God's name or under any flag.

Watching these two, Bush and Cheney, walk about the face of the earth in a upright position rather than on their knees begging forgiveness, is sickening.

While I agree that people want to put the Bush administration behind us and that, as you put it, "I can only point out that many far wiser than me agreed that our nation could heal only by moving forward and abandoning any desire for retribution." While the rift would heal faster, the problems would simply rise up once again in 20 or thirty years.

Bush loyalist 20 somethings will stew and stir for the next few decades, some serving in public life, others not. They will believe that a liberal press never gave Bush and his policies a fair shot, that his view of a unitary executive is the only sensible solution to 'insert future crisis here'. Cheney, Rumsfeld and the young turks in the 70s rose to prominance in the Bush administration and took the abuses never prosecuted after the Nixon years and expanded them to frightening proportions.

The only way to stop that is to so discredit the administration and its inherents is to expose it for the sriminal enterpirse it was. It is not about their intentions, it is not about our 'mood' or need to heal, it is about our future. Justice only prevails when applied, not applying justice only invites future trouble.