Last night on Countdown, Keith Olbermann had on Jonathan Turley to discuss the possibility of a so-called "Truth Commission" led by Senator Patrick Leahy, based around it's own dsyfunctional stated purpose to not construct any criminal indictments, but merely to "report facts".
Jonathan Turley rightfully pointed out his strong opposition to it, and his feelings that it was just another way to make sure that no one is ever prosecuted for War Crimes in the Bush administration.
Patrick Leahy's own statement about the "Truth Commission" was that it would involve the authority to obtain immunity from prosecutions.
Leahy perahps deserves some credit for being interested in getting testimony and trying to extract some facts. However, if this is all based around the construct that no one is prosecuted, then such a "Truth Commission" has no teeth, and it would ultimately be no more revealing or helpful than listening to Alberto Gonzales say "I don't know" over and over again.
Why it is so hard for The Democratic Party, and The Obama Adminstration to ever care about and actually apply the rule of law, justice, and accountability towards anyone associated with the Republican Party? They obviously have no such inhibitions when it comes to applying the rule of law towards Gov. Blagojevich, or advancing Censure/Impeachment actions against Bill Clinton for meaningless personal issues. They even treat many law-abiding, courageous truth tellers, like film maker Michael Moore, Dennis Kucinich, for example, as more unacceptable in their eyes than the guilty perpetrators of these violent War Crimes, these flagrant Constitutional violations, and the general loss of liberty, human rights, and the real moral destruction of our Country.
At some point, we either have to have honest, law-abiding government, or declare that we just do not know how to ever do this, or that we lack the sense of ethics and courage to ever implement it -- in which case we are living in an anything goes, Totalitarian Country, not a Democratic Republic.
Obama promised change. It is not enough to "look forward", when it is the continual lack of prosecution, and the continual government assured safety, that is what makes it all possible for these type of crimes to go on and be committed in the first place. The War Crimes, Government lies, political assassinations, U.S. Constitutional abuses, and Liberty infringments, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and again in the 1980s, were met with only a brief, momentary incomplete accounting (Watergate), and no real sustained application of justice for government officials, and government agencies.
Is it any wonder then, that a Dick Cheney or a Donald Rumsfeld would have no hesitation then in just repeating them all over again? As long as the absence of prosecution is assured by government and continues on, the Criminal behavior is absolutely gauranteed to be repeated.
Either the concept of Law matters, or it does not.
It cannot be applied selectively in a free society.