That’s the same message they’ve been getting for the last 5 years from the Democrats. Can’t really put this all on Obama.
It worked so well for the Romans!
From The Land Beyond the Blow, by Ambrose Bierce:
What’s the point of impeaching Bush after he leaves office? All the Senate could do is; remove him from office (a moot point), or ban him from ever holding a federal office again. He’s already ineligible for a third term (Praise be unto the 22nd Amendment, may it never be repealed) and I highly doubt he’s ever going to run for Congress.
He could be appointed to the Supreme Court!
I’ve considered this quote you mentioned a bit in regards to our country. I like the idea, but can’t but help think that it would make the White House appealing to only radicals and fundamentalists.
Furthermore, there’s not much incentive to be honest while in office if you know you’ll be put to death regardless.
Not in the article you linked, he didn’t.
Refresh my memory. What exactly is the extent of the Red Cross authority to bring criminal charges?
You’ve yet to demonstrate any reasonable basis for investigations. Seems like you’d prefer to just skip the formalities, and jump straight to sentencing.
And I disagree with any of these things (I had the economical and social issues in mind when I wrote my post) except the last one (preventing future abuse) being as important. We can’t allow public authorities to circumvent the law or attack our liberties. We can’t let their criminal activities go unpunished, if we don’t want to live in an elective dictatorship.
You’re close to saying : as long as we’re prosperous, the law of the land can take a backseat.
What I mean is that this kind of commissions is useful either when the crimes were committed on such a scale and/or for so long that prosecuting them all is a pipe dream or when the country is so unstable and divided that going after the culprits would seriously threaten its stability.
Since the USA isn’t in such a situation, there’s no need for a reconciliation commission to replace actual prosecution of crimes.
Honestly, I’m completely amazed by your discourse about Mr Obama. For some time, you’ve been sounding as if he had either paid you a huge amount of money specifically to spread his word on this board or hypnotized you. 
Sorry for the hijack.
[QUOTE=Ersatz Shmoe;10675168That’s one issue, without going into the fact that bypassing the FISA court was a violation of the 4th Amendment, holding prisoners of war at Gitmo without the right to a trial or having a lawyer present is at least in violation of the principle of the 5th and 6th Amendments (legal evasiveness notwithstanding), and your standard, garden variety corruption with respect to granting government contracts to cronies with no oversight, etc.
[/QUOTE]
Remind me – what’s the penalty for violation of the Fourth Amendment? How many years in prison is that again?
And where, precisely, is that penalty laid out?
Or did you just want to make up the penalty as we go?
And I’d counter that the US is indeed in this situation, at least your first description. The crimes have been on such a large scale that prosecuting them is indeed impractical. There seems to be little political will to even investigate the scope of the civil rights crimes. There are “cooler heads” in this very thread that counsel this could never happen.
A truth commission defuses much of this problem, once all the parties understand the intent: the goal is the truth of what actually happened, so light can be projected on these crimes, and historical revisionism cannot (or hopefully would not) happen. Witnesses are given blanket immunity to encourage bad actors to come clean. I submit this is an important thing to have happen: shed light on the darkness of these illegal acts, so our country can finally know what occurred. The alternative is to probably never know what took place and have the memory of these crimes disappeared.
The purpose of a government is to actually govern the country not to waste its time dividing up into two teams and competing against itself.
The penalty is that the Constitution falls into disrespect.
If I could write anywhere near as good an argument, I would not quote A Man for All Seasons. But I can’t.
I’d rather see Obama actually accomplish some of the things on his agenda rather than wasting his time and political capital trying to “bring the Bush administration to justice.”
Which carries a punishment of 5-20?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Evidently, you’ve missed some of my postings, like here for example, where I allow for a metaphysical possibility that Obama’s position on the DTV issue may not be optimal. I think the only difference between my posts and the posts of others is that my criticisms are not unfair, unfounded, or uninformed.
“Will Obama choose unity over justice…?”
Both are unattainable in an absolute sense, and they are mutually unsupportable. And O is a pragmatist. We can only hope he gives appropriate weight to those ideals he’s going to talk about in his inaugural address. If he does, he’ll sacrifice some unity to repudiate a few of the activities of the outgoing administration which are antithetical to them.
Maybe he can do that without prosecutions, and my bet is if he takes the path of repudiation, he’ll try to avoid unnecessary recrimination. Which means, depending on how you look at it, we’ll either get raisins in our thin gruel, or we’ll have to have fewer sprinkles on our ice cream than we’d like.
Cool. 
If Obama did the things this administration is believed to have done, I would be the first in line agreeing with the Republicans to investigate him.