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Sunday, January 11, 2009

Just wonderin', is all
Posted by Jill | 10:09 PM
If I were to, say, rob a bank (and no I'm not going to, this is for illustrative purposes only), and then say to a judge, "[W]e need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards", and expect that to mean I wouldn't be prosecuted, it would be considered the height of chutzpah, and said judge would throw the book at me.

So why whould the Bush Junta criminals be given that free pass, as Barack Obama indicated they will be today while George Snuffleupagus was doing his best Tim Russert imitation?

I was curious as to what Bob Fertik, whose specific question was the one quoted, had to say about Obama's bob-and-weave around the question of actually holding people responsible when they commit crimes, even if it means the Republicans Obama seems to hold more dear than the people who actually VOTED for him. Here's his reaction:
...it's absurd to talk about "upholding the Constitution" and say "no one is above the law" if you refuse to look "back" at those who have subverted the Constitution and broken the law.


And you can't have one set of rules for "national security" and a different set of rules for everything else; there is no "national security exception" in the oath President-elect Obama will swear on January 20 in front of the people of the United States and the world:



"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."


So if there's any hope for prosecution in Obama's answer, it is that Attorney General Eric Holder will truly be "the people's lawyer" and fully represent us by prosecuting torturers, wiretappers, and other criminals who committed their crimes from secret undisclosed locations hidden within the Bush-Cheney administration.

But let's not leave this to chance. Let's all tell Attorney General Eric Holder what we want through a petition to Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor for Bush's crimes: http://www.democrats.com/special-prosecutor-for-bush-war-crimes




[snip]

Update 2: Glennzilla believes Obama's reference an independent evaluation by Eric Holder is nothing more than "lip service":

Worst of all, Obama (in response to Stephenapolous' asking him about the number one highest-voted question on Change.gov, first submitted by Bob Fertik) all but said that he does not want to pursue prosecutions for high-level lawbreakers in the Bush administration, twice repeating the standard Beltway mantra that "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards" and "my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing." Obama didn't categorically rule out prosecutions -- he paid passing lip service to the pretty idea that "nobody is above the law," implied Eric Holder would have some role in making these decisions, and said "we're going to be looking at past practices" -- but he clearly intended to convey his emphatic view that he opposes "past-looking" investigations. In the U.S., high political officials aren't investigated, let alone held accountable, for lawbreaking, and that is rather clearly something Obama has no intention of changing.



I didn't expect Barack Obama to be any kind of raging liberal. His record and overall history of caution told me that. But I didn't expect him to all but echo the Nixon Doctrine that when the President does it, it is not illegal.

Perhaps he knows that the Republicans will try to impeach him if he so much as spills a drop of orange juice in the White House kitchen and he's figuring if he grants blanket immunity to the executive branch he can somehow forestall them from doing what they do best -- harassing Democratic presidents. Note to the new President: It won't.

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