You meant "let’s not talk about because it will never happen’. Gotcha.
Those are the ones I’'m talking about. The fact that Obama refuses to rule it out is illustrative. Will the Democrats be able to push Obama around if and when he makes it to the Oval Office? I imagine they would - he has essentially no executive experience, and relatively less Washington experience. On the other hand, Pelosi and Reid and the rest of the idiots are (as mentioned) unable to achieve much with a relatively weak, lame duck President. It may be the case that even a greenhorn like Obama will be able to stand up to them.
I’m thinking Clinton in his first year or so of office. He wasn’t able to bring off any significant policy changes favored by his party (he wasn’t able to pass the deficit stimulus he wanted, NAFTA was primarily due to Republican support, and Hilary care failed).
The administration owns the Justice Dept. and they say by presidential fiat that no one who the congress supoenas has to show up. Don’t you follow the news?
The American Way of Life™ isn’t under threat by the terrorists, it’s under threat by the Administration.
Let me put the shoe on the other foot for a minute. Suppose it was back in 1999 and Governor George Bush is appearing on the O’Reilly Report. And suppose O’Reilly asked Bush, “A lot of people think the Clintons and their people have committed a lot of crimes in office. Are you going to act on that?” And suppose Bush’s answer was, “One of the first things I’m going to do if elected is have my Attorney General go back over the last eight years and see if there’s any crimes we can prosecute them for.”
Now do you see how it can sound when a candidate says he’s going to go looking for crimes? You can believe that Obama’s intentions are nobler than Bush’s and he wouldn’t abuse his power but other people are going to have suspicions that if his Attorney General is directed to look for crimes, he’s going to make sure he finds something.
Everyone would have recognized that as pointless. If Ken Starr hadn’t already found it, it wasn’t there to be found.
The Bush Admin is a different time. For one thing, the U.S. Office of Independent Counsel expired in 1999, and its replacement is an office within the Justice Department – which has shown a certain political independence WRT the Plame Affair, but that’s not too impressive compared with all the ground it has left uncovered.
Except that doesn’t mirror what Obama said at all. With one little modal, you’ve made it sound like Obama’s going to be writing up tickets for cracked windshield and lack of seatbelts. Obama is looking at going through and seeing if there’s any crimes we should prosecute for. Not can. Should.
If it turns out there are egregious human rights violations that the Bush administration has been successful in covering up during their term in power, shouldn’t that be brought to light? I’m not saying there’s actually anything technically illegal that the Bush admin has done, regardless of what I believe. If the review turns up a lot of bad and ethically questionable stuff but nothing illegal, then prosecution is uncalled for and I will think less of Obama if he pursues such. But if there is evidence of illegal acts committed, should we let criminals loose simply because it might look partisan?
I think the Valerie Plame affair needs a more complete investigation. If there is evidence of the involvement of the VP then he should face trial for it.
I think the awarding of contracts in Iraq needs to be investigated. If crimes are found there, then the people responsible should face trial.
I think the ‘power’ that Karl Rove has exercised, even though he did not have any official power needs to be investigated. Perhaps what he has done is not against the law because the laws don’t cover that. There have been many instances where he gave direction to the CIA/FBI or other agencies. Direction he did not have the authority to give. If the people at those various agencies broke the law by taking that direction, then they should face trial. If Rove didn’t break the law, because there is no law to cover it, then there needs to be a law.
There are probably other things that should be investigated. Things that only the next POTUS will be able to ‘see’ and report to the Justice Department.
I would suggest that part of it, along with other reasons given, is that the ever escalating amount of money required for a seat in D.C. has created a hotbed of corruption that some Democrats are unwilling to go rooting around in. While there may be criminal activities engaged in by the Bush administration, the environment in Washington had created the perfect petri dish in which it could flourish. Which would more clearly illustrate to their constituents how such things could happen in the first place with both sides enabling that environment if all the criminal wrongdoing were to be brought to light.
Those who have been comfortable for many years with the way things are done now, on either side, don’t want to upset the apple cart as it may bring about changes that don’t include them. Or at the very least will require them to change the skill set it takes to currently retain a seat in Washington.
The DOJ and the Office of the Attorney General are part of the Executive Branch. Congress can’t tell them what to do, only the President can. Obama was specifically asked about what he would do if he was given the Executive power which Congress does not currently possess.
having said that, Congress has, tried very much to exercise the investigative powers it does possess, but the white House is stonewalling the subpoenas (and losing evidence).
Just spitballin’ here, but howzabout an “investigative amnesty”? Lets just say that the Bush Admin will be investigated, but no criminal charges will be filed so long as people tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. Because that’s all I want. I want all the rocks overturned, I want the vermin identified, I want to know who did what, when.
Of course, if they take the deal, they take the deal. They lie, its perjury.
Top of the list? The possible use of the Justice Department as a political tool for the Republican Party. I want every detail, I want who did what when. The “why” part I can work out for myself. Screw retribution, the truth will be quite sufficient.
Note: this most emphaticly does not apply to any of the Abramoff related scandals, which are just plain ol’ political whoring.
A Truth & Reconciliation Commission? I guess I could accept that, as a compromise – but why would it be legally or politically necessary to compromise at all?
The value of actual prosecutions is that it would keep a lot of Bush Admin members from waiting out the next 4-8 years and coming back to serve in a later Pub administration, as Bush inherited so many venerable scumbags from his Dad and even (in Cheney’s case) from Nixon.
Works for me. Of course, if they still find nothing then I’d like to see this subject henceforth stricken from the threads in GD at least.
Personally, while I think that Bush et al have stretched the laws or even bent them into pretzels, I have my doubts that they have broken nearly as many as folks on this board or in the Democrat party THINK they have. It’s like the ‘Iraqi war is ILLEGAL’ threads from a few years ago. The law is…flexable. While things the administration has done are distasteful and foolish (read: stupid), I have my doubts that most are illegal in a REAL, meaningful sense of the word.
Not being a lawyer perhaps I am not best qualified on this topic though…but then, most of those ranting for GW’s blood aren’t lawyers either and I have a sneaking suspicion they don’t know any more about the actual laws in play and the various legal ramification than I do. But I bet BUSH has teams of lawyers making sure that, while they might be skating close to the edge of the thin ice, they are never quite going so far as to fall into the water.
I think this who thing from Obama is yet more politican smoke and mirrors…or, perhaps it’s more like bread and circus stuff, just some bones he is tossing to the faithful. I will be VERY surprised if Obama, once elected, either goes whole hog after Bush et al or managed to nail them with anything real. I guess we’ll see…certainly I HOPE he manages to put Bush and his merry men away for something, if in fact they have done something that crosses the line. We’ll see…
Given that the term ‘egregious’ is subjective and can depend largely on the politics of the person making the assessment, and given that there is no real legal penalty that can be visited upon someone for an egregious act, I would not necessarily favor it.
Like it or not, legality is what officially decides right versus wrong in this country, and investigating people and heralding allegedly egregious but not illegal acts only leads to accusations of witch-hunting.
There have been investigations. Remember when Gonzoles was forced out of office?
But Obama is talking about what his DoJ would do, which I think is an appropriate thing for him to talk about on the campaign trail. But like I said, that’s basically throwing meet to the lions in the primary.
Or maybe there is:
NSA wiretapping
Extraordinary rendition
The Iraq War (the whole shebang, from start to non-finish)
Torture (who knew what when)
Cheney’s involvement in the Valery Plame affair
…to name a few off the top of my head
