I've been planning to write a post week now about torture, and the Obama Administration's decision not to prosecute the people who betrayed us by authorizing and conducting torture.

I was going to write that I supported the President's decision, just as I had supported President Ford's decision to pardon Richard Nixon. Nixon deserved to go to jail, but real life is rarely as clear cut as that. There were more important purposes to be served by taking him out of political discussion altogether. The country needed to get beyond Nixon as quickly as possible, and any trial would drag out for years.

I saw the non-prosecution of torture in the same way. Both major candidates for President denounced torture. It was an ugly episode in American history, brought on by morally corrupt people. But since the body politic was agreed on this issue, I couldn't see the benefit to the country of punishing the perpetrators. I could see where such punishment could do more institutional damage (to the Central Intelligence Agency, for example) than good.

Until today.

Today Gen. Michael V. Hayden, former director of the CIA, appeared on the bogus news network to say President Obama had described "... the box within which Americans will not go beyond (sic). To me, that's very useful for our enemies, even if, as a policy matter, this president at this time had decided not to use one, any, or all of those techniques." [My emphasis.]

Senator John Ensign, a member of the Torture Party, went further on CNN's "State of the Union":

The harm is that if we ever return to those policies, one is they can train against them now. Do we really think that having advanced interrogation techniques is something we don't want to use if we find Osama bin Laden?

Let's be clear: when Senator Ensign is saying "advanced interrogation techniques," he means torture; he just doesn't have the courage to say the word.

These men think torture is not a policy for "this president at this time," but may be something we "want to use if we find Osama bin Laden."

What do we have to do to make sure we never become a torturing country again?

Speculation is beginning about GWB's use of pardons at the end of his term. Numerous members of the administration, past and present and himself included, are in serious legal jeopardy once the Torture Party is out of office.

Will Bush issue pardons? It's hard to imagine he wouldn't.

But to whom?

My guess is there are some scoundrels who will demand preemptive pardons. Cheney, Addington, and Rove will clearly be in this group. They'll have no compunctions about it, feel no shame. They'll see it as a necessity brought on by the curse of living in the same world as lesser beings. They'll see themselves as Ollie North martyrs.

There are some who will beg for pardons. Alberto Gonzalez, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, and Doug Feith would fit in this category. They're out of power now, and don't have the access they once had.

Pardons seem likely for both of the above categories.

But there might be another category. Suppose there were actually members of the Bush Administration whose moral compasses didn't point downward. Suppose there were people who thought, "Oh, my God. These people are lunatics, what should I do?" And suppose they decided, "For the good of the country I need to stay right where I am, because if I leave, I'll surely be replaced by yet another lunatic."

And by staying on, they made themselves vulnerable to prosecution, as well. Powell? Ashcroft? Rice? Someone lower on the totem poll? It would take a mind reader to know for sure.

The same personal character that caused the best to make themselves vulnerable, for the sake of the country, might keep them from requesting -- or accepting -- a pardon. How's that for bitter irony?

Finally, where do you stop giving pardons? At what level of the bureaucracy? At what level of malfeasance? And how do you keep the next level -- the first unpardoned level -- from going before the Senate investigating committees and singing their songs?

It's a dilemma.

Our President ended a private meeting of the G8 leaders with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." Ha, ha, ha.

Can we make it through the 191 days before Inaugural Day? I'm not sure. Not because of President George W. Rickles, but because of the Italy/Berlusconi insult and what it says about what's happening in the White House.

Which is this:  The rats have left the ship -- if not physically, at least mentally. The interns are doing all the work, they're 20 years old, and they're unsupervised. Anyone who's done staff work can recognize the symptoms. This was the G8 summit, folks.

Hillary was insulted from the pulpit of Obama's church. It was a racist and sexist insult. When something like that happens, it is not only the speaker who needs to apologize. It is the person in charge. When an American soldier rapes a 15-year-old girl on Okinawa, the President or Secretary of Defense apologizes to Japan, even though neither did the raping. Obama is not the person "in charge" at his church, but he is the most prominent member and the insult was made in support of his candidacy. He is the appropriate person to apologize. That's my thinking on it.

On a practical political level, there were already a lot of people shaken up by Rev. Wright's foolishness. Now this new clown. The Democratic delegates would not be wrong to wonder, "Jeez, what is it with this Trinity Church place? Is everybody there totally wacko? Even if they believe they are correct, do they not realize that they would best serve Obama if they just shut up? How many more Trinity Church eruptions are we going to have between now and November?"

Obama needs to put some distance between himself and the wackos. ASAP.

Also on a political level, I'm not sure how divisive this campaign has been, but the talking heads keeping saying it has been. Obama needs to reach out to Hillary. He needs to say, "I'm sorry that my own home church allowed this sort of ugly attack. I found it as offensive as you did." And he needs to do it publicly, for the sake of the Hillary supporters.

If he fails to do it, it will be the second opportunity Obama has squandered to reach out to Hillary and her people. (The first was his failure to come to her defense on the RFK assassination comment.) He can't keep doing this. He has got to give her a place of honor in the Democratic Party.