The putative choice between "getting a Democrat elected at the cost of abandoning a clear call for principled leadership now," and "standing up for the rule of law and risking giving McCain a campaign cudgel," might best be served by distillation unto its essence, which is this:
I am not a partisan, per se, but I believe that it is absolutely crucial—to the exclusion of virtually every other consideration—that a non-Republican be elected president in ‘08.
At present, we can see only the exposed tips in the iceberg field of misdeeds that have defined the Bush Administration. Ominous as they may seem from our current perspective, common sense insists that there is untold enormity yet to be revealed, and we need to know the extent of the damage and the danger.
Visiting grief upon the telecoms presents a schadenfreudian delight of the highest order. It is, nevertheless, rather beside the point. As a practical matter, the telecoms had no choice but to comply. They were up against the Borg. The government’s manifest lack of scruple and eager willingness to retaliate (as demonstrated in so many other instances) clearly indicated that resistance was futile.
The administration was going to do what it was going to do, with or without voluntary corporate cooperation. So, the villain in this story is not AT&T. Furthermore, watching AT&T eventually fend off a punitive damage claim (at the expense of the American consumer) promises scant satisfaction.
Besides, all indications suggest that the sheer volume of data harvested in this domestic spy program was so astronomically large as to preclude any practicable application. The process of filtration and retrieval necessary to make any sense of the information accumulated by this cheeky FISA dodge would be akin a demonstrative proof of the Infinite Monkey Theorem. The whole enterprise was more stupid than dangerous, and there seems little chance or it being repeated anytime soon.
So, the smart move for the nonce is to keep the prosecutorial powder dry. Don’t waste it on the telecoms. Save it for Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Big Oil and Big Pharma—and the war crimes tribunal.
What we need is not a ritual penalization of the phone company. We need a bipartisan Council of the Elders investigation like the Nuremburg Trials or the Church Committee hearings—an open and sincere coming together of responsible grown-ups, for the purposes of assessing the damage done by the band of neocon delinquents that has occupied the White House for the past eight years, and exacting appropriate penance upon them for all the world to see.
Barack Obama is a non-Republican, unencumbered by Clintonian baggage and as yet unhobbled by recent history. For better or worse, he is a man of the future, with an appetite for the historical and an affinity for stagecraft. This renders him able to appreciate the ambitious theatricality of, say, putting Dick Cheney in the witness box, in a way John McCain simply cannot.
Whether Obama will or won't undertake such an enterprise remains to be seen, but there should be no doubt that such a spectacle will never, ever happen if McCain wins in November.
In the meantime, an encouraging pattern is developing: Gitmo inmates have constitutional rights after all. Habeas corpus is back, and the Geneva Conventions ain’t quite as quaint as they used to be. The Republican brand has been reduced to a herpes chancre, and the GOP is as Margaret Hamilton, finally bedoused by Judy Garland.
The legal victories can be traced to the quality of lawyering currently available to the DOJ. BushCo made such a fetish of litmus-testing would-be US attorneys for so long, that they have amassed a uniformly conservative-Republican, mawkishly ovine legal workforce, consisting primarily of mediocre litigators and inept administrators, whose substandard collective brainpower is irrevocably on the wane.
This is no time for hasty ideological grandstanding. The malefactors who have brought this country to such a low and shameful state will be ripe for the picking soon enough. There is too much at stake and we’re too close to resolution. The time for Obama to stand for what is right is when he has the authority to enforce such principles. Not before.
Come November, would you prefer a Democrat or a Republican in the White House?
I am not a partisan, per se, but I believe that it is absolutely crucial—to the exclusion of virtually every other consideration—that a non-Republican be elected president in ‘08.
At present, we can see only the exposed tips in the iceberg field of misdeeds that have defined the Bush Administration. Ominous as they may seem from our current perspective, common sense insists that there is untold enormity yet to be revealed, and we need to know the extent of the damage and the danger.
Visiting grief upon the telecoms presents a schadenfreudian delight of the highest order. It is, nevertheless, rather beside the point. As a practical matter, the telecoms had no choice but to comply. They were up against the Borg. The government’s manifest lack of scruple and eager willingness to retaliate (as demonstrated in so many other instances) clearly indicated that resistance was futile.
The administration was going to do what it was going to do, with or without voluntary corporate cooperation. So, the villain in this story is not AT&T. Furthermore, watching AT&T eventually fend off a punitive damage claim (at the expense of the American consumer) promises scant satisfaction.
Besides, all indications suggest that the sheer volume of data harvested in this domestic spy program was so astronomically large as to preclude any practicable application. The process of filtration and retrieval necessary to make any sense of the information accumulated by this cheeky FISA dodge would be akin a demonstrative proof of the Infinite Monkey Theorem. The whole enterprise was more stupid than dangerous, and there seems little chance or it being repeated anytime soon.
So, the smart move for the nonce is to keep the prosecutorial powder dry. Don’t waste it on the telecoms. Save it for Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Big Oil and Big Pharma—and the war crimes tribunal.
What we need is not a ritual penalization of the phone company. We need a bipartisan Council of the Elders investigation like the Nuremburg Trials or the Church Committee hearings—an open and sincere coming together of responsible grown-ups, for the purposes of assessing the damage done by the band of neocon delinquents that has occupied the White House for the past eight years, and exacting appropriate penance upon them for all the world to see.
Barack Obama is a non-Republican, unencumbered by Clintonian baggage and as yet unhobbled by recent history. For better or worse, he is a man of the future, with an appetite for the historical and an affinity for stagecraft. This renders him able to appreciate the ambitious theatricality of, say, putting Dick Cheney in the witness box, in a way John McCain simply cannot.
Whether Obama will or won't undertake such an enterprise remains to be seen, but there should be no doubt that such a spectacle will never, ever happen if McCain wins in November.
In the meantime, an encouraging pattern is developing: Gitmo inmates have constitutional rights after all. Habeas corpus is back, and the Geneva Conventions ain’t quite as quaint as they used to be. The Republican brand has been reduced to a herpes chancre, and the GOP is as Margaret Hamilton, finally bedoused by Judy Garland.
The legal victories can be traced to the quality of lawyering currently available to the DOJ. BushCo made such a fetish of litmus-testing would-be US attorneys for so long, that they have amassed a uniformly conservative-Republican, mawkishly ovine legal workforce, consisting primarily of mediocre litigators and inept administrators, whose substandard collective brainpower is irrevocably on the wane.
This is no time for hasty ideological grandstanding. The malefactors who have brought this country to such a low and shameful state will be ripe for the picking soon enough. There is too much at stake and we’re too close to resolution. The time for Obama to stand for what is right is when he has the authority to enforce such principles. Not before.
No comments:
Post a Comment