In the waning days of the Bush Administration, I'm sincerely hoping that the rats will begin to leave the sinking ship and we'll start to have a flood of whistle-blowers that will begin to expose the deepest and darkest secrets of the most corrupt Presidency we've seen in our lifetime.
I'm wondering what we on Daily Kos could do to help precipitate that. More below the fold.
Let's make a few assumptions:
- There are indeed people that will be leaving that have significant evidence against major players in the Bush Administration for prosecutable crimes.
- Some of those people are sufficiently upset enough with what they saw, angered that they didn't get all their little greedy hearts desired, or just pissy people that like to screw other nasty people. The odds say there must be folks with both knowledge and motivation to air the dirty laundry.
- It's highly likely that the Bush bunch has made it abundantly clear that anyone that does blow the whistle or testify against them will suffer repercussions. I can't even imagine what those might be but we do know that the domestic spying they've been conducting must have uncovered skeletons that could damage reputations and careers. In addition, the Republicans control a huge swath of the major financial institutions and could blackball people and prevent them from working in their promised careers. It's even possible physical threats have been made although I would hope that not to be the case.
With those assumptions, just possibly it would behoove the Kos community to pledge to help anyone willing to come forth to make up for some of these threats.
Perhaps we could start a legal defense fund or whistle-blower assistance program that we could donate to and publicize its existence. We could also pledge that we would, through our use of the media and internet, counter any smears propagated against any individual brave enough to come forward.
Now I understand the counter argument. It shouldn't be necessary to make this effort. Truly patriotic and ethical people that have knowledge of crimes shouldn't be rewarded for doing what one would consider to be an act of basic humanity but I contend we have many instances where this type of rescue and rehabilitative action has occurred. Take the ACLU for instance. They're an organization funded by donation that often takes on civil rights cases of even reprehensible individuals. Another example would be any of us that bought Scott McClellan's book.
I would suggest that any assistance we could come up with would have to have limits or the testimony these people might offer later might be tainted. Assistance should only directly counteract any slander and financial hardship incurred by coming forward, not make any of these people rich.
What do you think? I think it's a win-win situation. Even if the "foundations" never come to fruition, just the threat that we'd do it could force the Administration to be even more paranoid in their final days. Paranoid people make mistakes.