This weeks Bill Moyers had the blogosphere's brightest star, constitutional lawyer turned author Glenn Greenwald. He put the Bush legacy in sobering terms.. I hope Obama gives up the "liberties" Bush has taken with the law, but as history shows, the executive branch never gives up powers it aquires.
GLENN GREENWALD: Let's just quickly describe in the most dispassionate terms, as few of euphemisms, as possible, where we are and what has happened over the last eight years. We have a law in place that says it is a felony offense punishable by five years in prison or a $10,000 fine to eavesdrop on American citizens without warrants. We have laws in place that say that it is a felony punishable by decades in prison to subject detainees in our custody to treatment that violates the Geneva Conventions or that is inhumane or coercive.
We know that the president and his top aides have violated these laws. The facts are indisputable that they've done so. And yet as a country, as a political class, we're deciding basically in unison that the president and our highest political officials are free to break the most serious laws that we have, that our citizens have enacted, with complete impunity, without consequences, without being held accountable under the law.
And when you juxtapose that with the fact that we are a country that has probably the most merciless criminal justice system on the planet when it comes to ordinary Americans. We imprison more of our population than any country in the world. We have less than five percent of the world's population. And yet 25 percent almost of prisoners worldwide are inside the United States.
What you have is a two-tiered system of justice where ordinary Americans are subjected to the most merciless criminal justice system in the world. They break the law. The full weight of the criminal justice system comes crashing down upon them. But our political class, the same elites who have imposed that incredibly harsh framework on ordinary Americans, have essentially exempted themselves and the leaders of that political class from the law.
They have license to break the law. That's what we're deciding now as we say George Bush and his top advisors shouldn't be investigated let alone prosecuted for the laws that we know that they've broken. And I can't think of anything more damaging to our country because the rule of law is the lynchpin of everything we have.
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3 comments:
Go Dems!!!!!! "In 2002, as the WASHINGTON POST documented, Nancy Pelosi was brought to the CIA and along with Jane Harman and Bob Graham and Jay Rockefeller, the key Intelligence Committee Senators, were told about the torture program that the CIA had implemented, that we were going to water board and had water boarded certain suspects, that we were going to do things like hypothermia and stress positions and forced nudity and sleep deprivation.
All of the tactics that we've always said characterized tyrannies that used torture. That we were going to start using them ourselves, even though they clearly violate both international and domestic law. And according to all public reports, and they're not denied by the participants, every single Democrat in that session either quietly assented to it or actively approved of it.
And so the question then becomes, well, as a matter of political reality, how is Barack Obama going to encourage investigations of crimes to be undertaken when the leading members of his own party were, if not participants were certainly complicit?"
I watched it last night, and was pretty certain I'd see a recap of it here. I'm a huge fan of GG, and the rule of law for that matter.
Why doesnt someone ask Cheney, "Do you think it is okay to waterboard our troops?" Because that is the standard he is setting that it is on the table now, it is okay for the US so it is okay for everyone. I dont really give too much of a damn for waterboarding legit terrorists, but I do give a damn about it being standard practice to use on our troops when they are captured. That is one reason (other than the obvious) why we shouldnt condone torture. I hope Obama shuts down Guantanamo, the symbolism alone will help our image.
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