For me, Mind #1 is the choice...no question. Obama can multitask. He's probably doing it right now but we're so used to watching a one trick pony we don't see it. As for political capital...he's got loads and better to spend it while he's got it because that form of money melts away fairly quickly.

Check out TheraP's blog, sorry I don't know how to give a link, but look for her essays on the DOJ. She's got some excellent information on this subject.

Only 40% of Americans believe in evolution, according to a new Gallup poll.

I guess we should become fundies.

Relax, If Odumba had any intention of enforcing the law, all those felonious tax frauding criminals he paraded before us for cabinet positions would be in jail now awaiting prosecution.

They were certainly got close enough to him for the secret service to cuff if he had even a nickel's worth of respect for 'the law'.

Re Mind 2: Why do we have to choose between health care, and justice for criminals? In terms of using capital, republicans will not vote for anything that he proposes anyway (with few small exceptions that prosecuting Bush would not change).

I just don't see this as either/or, and I see letting them get away with all they've done a terrible precedent to set which would have ramifications far worse than even our misbegotten war.

It isn't an either or proposition. The President was elected to do a job. Upholding the law of the land is a major part of it. Pursuing particular policies goals is another big part of his job. He has an obligation to do both. As our President has said numerous times: it isn't about him. So the political calculations need to take a back seat and he needs to do his best on all fronts. It isn't and should not be an option for him from either a moral or practical standpoint to simply ignore massive violations of the law such as those we're talking about that took place during Bush's years of misrule. To investigate and prosecute may compromise other political and policy priorities, but to fail to do so compromises the very content of our character as a people.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you have to do what you know is right and deal with the consequences regardless of what those consequences might be. This is something that takes real strength and real character (a quality in very short supply amongst Democrats in DC in recent times, to say nothing of the Republicans). Constructing a rationale for not doing the right thing fools no one and is simply immoral avoidance of one's obligation to the the rule of law, to justice and to civilization.

Do the deaths and all the suffering caused by the crimes of Bush and his henchmen have any meaning? Are they worth anything at all? How about the injury that is sure to take place in the future when we fail to punish those guilty of this regime's crimes? Are we so callous and so bereft of decency we will not stand up and do what justice demands in the face of this tidal wave of criminal conduct? Would it make a difference if one of the dead were your son, brother, daughter, wife, sister, mother or father? What if you had a cousin or friend among the dead, maimed or whose life and career might have been destroyed? Would that be enough to move you to seek justice? What does it take? We are not discussing an abstract set of facts, circmumstances or events after all. Many have died or been wounded and crippled numbering in the hundreds of thousands altogether. More than a handful of serious cases of corruption and illegal activity have already been discovered on the domestic front. How many Abramoffs and Cunninghams and Dusty Foggos does it take to awaken the American sense of outrage?

A truth commission is a joke and does nothing whatever to prevent further crimes of the sort committed by Bush and his criminal crew either at home or abroad. The victims who are dead, maimed, who have suffered physically and otherwise due to the criminal activity of Bush and his regime demand justice which is more than truth. We already know the truth. We know that important laws were broken by the score. We know that torture was committed by Americans and that this illegal/immoral practice was sanctioned and ordered by the President of the United States and his collaborators in crime within the upper echelons of his administration. We know that American service men and woman were required to carry out the illegal orders of these criminal conspirators. We know that domestically lawlessness and corruption was rampant in the administration and that whether it was widespread and systematic corruption at the DOJ or the Interior Department or the CIA or the DOD or the Congress that the crimes were so numerous and egregious that the integrity of our entire federal government has been compromised. We know that the criminals in the White House conspired to illegally spy on the American people as a whole. We know that they illegally and with malice aforethought, revealed the identity of a career covert agent working for central intelligence for solely political reasons. We know they have lied over and over and over about what they knew in advance of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and that their response to the attacks, such as it was on that dark day, was thoroughly incompetent from start to finish. We know the President and his minions lied about the reasons for invading Irag in violation of international law and the UN Charter. We know that an honest reading of international law would lead us to conclude that the Iraq invasion and occupation constitutes a war of aggression which is the most serious of crimes against humanity and that all the other actions taken by our government in Iraq since are subsidiary crimes.

The list of crimes, malfeasance, corruption and immorality during the Bush years could go on for a very long time. Inasmuch as we need more truth, the only way to get at is to investigate it in the manner of any criminal investigation in a professional and objective manner. If specific crimes are found to have been committed then the guilty must come before the bar of justice and answer the charges brought. The prosecution would have the burden of proving guilt as with any other case or set of cases.

Yes, the Republicans will howl, but so what? They howl because the sun rises and sets. They howl whenever they don't get their way. They howl because howling is what they do. In what other case does the government decline prosecution because the accused simply because the perpetrator complains?

Can the vast scope and scale of these crimes even be considered in the same manner that individual instances of lawbreaking have been considered in the past? I think not. If the wanton lawlessness of Bush and his cronies is not investigated and prosecuted where appropriate then there is simply no instance in which such prosecutions will ever take place.
It is absurd to play the mental games necessary to avoid the only possible responsible, civilized, and lawful course of action which is to investigate the allegations---all of them---professionally and then proceed as with any other prosecution would proceed when warranted.

This isn't a trade off where there's no real damage done as a result of the choice. We, as a nation, will be diminished if we fail to act repsonsibly in this case and we will be unable to recover our national character from it. Failure to act will result in even worse crimes in the years to come. We barely survived this crowd of crooks. The next crowd will do us in if we don't act now as we know we should and as we know we must if we are going to be an honest nation guided by the rule of law.