Oh yeah. Rock on. I listened to Bugliosi talk about this for a couple of hours and I agree and I keep repeating that he sent his book, without cost, to every DA in the country. I think the President-Elect will appoint some sort of investigatory commission. I really do. I think people will criticize before it ever gets on the ground. But can you imagine, even with all the erasures of E-Mails, the info the New Administration is going to find? w is on ABC tonite with the republican Charley G. I just read the blog on the pre-recorded interview and just finished writing my own. w is a felon. I do not think w will ever suffer for anything he has ever done in his life. I really like your post.

We have to dispense with prudential analyses that give political or practical reasons not to invoke the engine of our domestic law in bringing the principal actors in the Bush administration to justice. There will alway be good reasons not to embark on such a course. But they are irrelevant-all of them.

We should impeach (or, at the minimum, criminally prosecute) the officers of the administration, including the President and Vice President for no reason other than we respect our constitution and the rule of law.

The point of impeachment is NOT a successful conclusion resulting in removal from office of the impeached.

The point is to attempt in our poor way to uphold our own laws, our own constitution. We must at least make the attempt! No matter the outcome.

What is more important, inter-party comity and national reconciliation, or the Law? We shouldn't have to stop and ponder that.

We might just as well stop teaching Civics to our children and Constitutional Law to our young adults if we are going to let a such a prolonged assault such as we just lived through, go without even a small legal challenge.

Fact-finding committees are all well and good. But really they are only an excuse to temporize doing what is needful, which is for someone to stand up and say "The law has been broken, the lawbreakers must be taken up and prosecuted according to the laws of our country." There is nothing too complicated. Torture broke several statutes. That is to say, it was a felony and the OLC memos that tried to hedge the issue were facially wrong. Bush was aware of the torture but did not act to stop it, that is to say misprision of a felony.

It is no excuse, as Mr Mukasey would have it, that he was misadvised, for then any tyrant would install advisors who would counsel him in ways congenial to his predetermined projects.

(reposted from the Weaker Executive thread)

I couldn't not agree with you more, but the chance of Obama doing anything at all to even look into the crimes of Bush and his henchmen is zero. Absolute, total zero. It ain't gonna happen. They got away with it all. It's sick. It's disapppointing, but that's the reality of it.

Won't happen, but recommended.

I agree with prosecuting all of the criminals in the Bush regime. However, now that we are in Presidential Pardon frenzy, I think there is a vald legal question regarding whether W could pardon himself for prophylactic reasons. If he is listed as G. Walker Bush on a printout of presidential pardons, would anyone recognize this in time? There is absolutely nothing I would be surprised about concerning this man.

I never believed W had any presidential authority. He is in many ways like Ronald Reagan, an inspiring lying traitor that would sell weapons to the enemy in exchange for holding the hostages in Iran until after the 1980 presidential election. W's mission was very simple: give ridiculous tax breaks to the richest Americans. That was his entire function of his eight years in office.

Age, at times, has its value. While I was in college in late 60s and early 70s, a groups of Nixon wannabes named Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfiwitz, Donald Rumsfeld, E. Abrams, and others wanted to persuade an American president to conquer a country in Arabia for the oil. It took until W to find, even a republican president, to go along with that idea. So, the tax cuts and the war in Iraq have ruined the United States for the next 20 - 50 years. Wolfiwitz who was the principal architect of Iraq war left his Under-Secretary of Defense position to head the World Bank. He left behind his enduring legacy of unthinkable Carnage, 35,000 maimed, debilitated or disabled veterans , some with one or more amputations, psycologically ruined, and with scars, burns, and other maladies that will prevent all but the strongest and most motivated to get ahead in life with their handicaps. All of this saddens me.

So, I am in full support of any indictments. And I only wish some liberal Washington Think Tank could start developing some expressions like the republicans are so capable of doing to offset the effects of expressions like: Coalition of the Willing, Death Tax, Prolife or Culture of Life, Cut and Run, Abortion on Demand, etc.

Agreed.

But so do a lot of members of congress.

The congressional leadership has not met the obligation required of their oath of office or of the constitution.

In spite of the all too obvious, serious and multiple transgressions of the WH congress did nothing. You have to ask why?

When the nation suffers through one situation after another that ends in immense harm to citizens and to the nation, congress has to act upon those failures.

I don't really care that the senate may or may not impeach because of its political makeup. That is another issue entirely. The fact is the Bush administration adopted policies and made decisions across a range of issues that can quite easily be demonstrated as being detrimental to the interest of citizens and the nation. It can also be demonstrated that the government had every bit of information it needed to render far more appropriate decisions. There are simply no excuses for getting so much wrong. And to this day Bush is still trying to create policies and laws that are apt to end in conditions that are harmful to American citizens. And lastly, it can be demonstrated that the decisions reached by the Bush administration uniquely favored Bush or republican financial supporters and disfavored a majority of citizens and in fact harmed that majority.

Issues within the DOJ, DHS, our intelligence services, administration of social programs and a host of other cabinet departments were decided purely upon a political basis and paid little consideration to what was actually good for the country. These are inarguable facts.

Bush is absolutely a criminal. No argument. Congress though, is absolutely culpable for allowing this to occur. As long as money is allowed to corrupt our government officials we will have this result. The government and the nation will inevitably suffer a total collapse because of this. Confidence in government is at an all time low. It will never be restored if congress doesn't act in a way that addresses the issue of accountability. Repeatedly and drastically harming the country cannot go unchallenged. Neither gross incompetence or willful intent can be tolerated.

I say again. Every bit of information the government needs to make appropriate decisions is and has been available all along. Our government has made decisions based solely upon money ending up in the pockets of a minority of persons and corporations and doesn't care one bit that the vast majority of citizens is harmed in the process. Does anyone honestly think it coincidental that for these eight years a majority of individual workers 401Ks and IRA funds either had zero growth or declined? Or that the top tier income persons were the only income group that had growth? That is a highly suspect occurrence and suggests something very wrong has happened. And isn't it peculiar that at this eleventh hour of this administration the nations finacial system is in crisis which requires trillions of taxpayer dollars and that treasury has refused to precisely itemize and make transparent the way those taxpayer dollars are being allocated?

You have to be a fool not to recognize how seriously wrong this all is.

The fact remains that we elected him, sort of twice, so who is really at fault, him, us or, the Supreme Court? We and the Supreme Court are as culpable as Bush/Cheney and their tosser cabal.

Practically speaking it's time to move on. I want to see our nation through the eyes of an Obama administration defined by it's own vision and priorities, not by rehashing those of the failed previous one.

My heart is with you though my judgment says that such an effort would add to the tragedy of what this administration wrought on us all. Besides, I like the GOP right where it is; held hostage by their churches seeking cover behind the pews as they engage in a circular fire fight trying to figure out what is obvious to the rest of us; that they are an exclusive party of old white guys soon to die out. It's better to smother their niche rather than support it with a side show.