There are so many things that I would like to write about, it kind of gets my head spinning. Lately I’ve been pretty much focused on mccain because I’m so frustrated that our upcoming election seems like it’s going to be a measurement of how many voters can the republicans scare enough to vote against Obama. I’m thinking that we may make it until November without any significant discussion of the actual issues that “matter.” My anxiety is causing me to spend a lot of time trying to do what I think Obama should be doing (and seems that he’s starting to do), which is to expose mccain for the weasel he is. However, I really do have to spend a little energy on gw before he’s gone – and keep in mind that I’m one who isn’t 100% sure he’s going to go quietly. While some kind of “national emergency” that would cause him to attempt to cancel the upcoming election seems really “out there,” for some reason the notion keeps coming to mind, so I’m praying that my mind is playing tricks on me. I’ve got lots of body parts that wouldn’t be too agreeable to hitting the streets in a guerrilla war with blackwater.

Well, back to my main thought – which is accountability for gw, cheney, rumsfeld, gonzalez, rove, rice, and others. I’m kind of feeling that the reason there are no impeachment hearings is because the plan is to “get” these criminals after the election, which kind of makes sense to me seeing that the refusals to even testify before Congress by the bush surrogates means nothing is going past the preliminary court fights anyway, at least until bush is a sour thought in our minds. Somehow I feel the “game” right now is how to go about this without being trumped by the presidential powers that he will no longer have at his disposal after January 20th of 2009.

I have a sense that bush is going to try to do some kind of blanket pardon for offenses that haven’t been brought before he leaves office. Even though that would be an admission of guilt, they have the money and I don’t think gw and dick care much about the “details.” I’m not sure if this is even possible, and it would be interesting to hear a debate about whether or not bush can pardon himself and others without any charges being leveled against them – ahead of time. I mean they have essentially admitted to some pretty serious crimes – right in front of national TV cameras. Let’s see – warrantless wiretapping; each count carries a felony with potentially 5 years imprisonment and a whopper of a fine and I’m sure they have stepped over the line thousands of times. How about “outing” a CIA agent. This is TREASON!!!! There is no doubt with anyone I know that cheney instigated this – and does anyone really think that if there was a full investigation that the buck wouldn’t stop at gw??? My republican friends believe the limbaugh and hannity water carriers who immediately, once it became apparent that the white house was involved in this, started a campaign to suggest that Valerie Plame was just a secretary at the CIA and not a covert operative – choosing to believe limbaugh and hannity over our CIA who originally brought the complaint to the justice department – I love my friends and I know that it’s just a matter of time until they see past this stonewall of liars, but Plame was an operative who had been in Iran, getting info on their nuclear program of all things, and who knows who might have paid the price for her being publicly identified.

The justice department of the US is, and mostly has been, supposed to be non-partisan because it is made up of lawyers that we all count on to fairly administer justice in this country. While it is true that the prosecuting attorneys work at the pleasure of the president, it is clearly illegal to attempt to pressure them into politically motivated prosecutions in an attempt to affect the outcome of elections, and it is illegal to hire and fire based on political loyalties. Additionally, while the president can fire a prosecuting attorney at his/her discretion it is a crime to lie about it before Congress under oath (ie gonzalez) and it may be a crime to conspire to fire a prosecuting attorney to prevent him/her from prosecuting a political ally (ie the attorney in San Diego who had prosecuted duke cunningham and was about to indict rep lewis from California who was connected to cunningham and seems to have gotten “off” – I believe her name is Carol Lam – she got fired and lewis is still probably bribing people) – of course we won’t know because bush refused to allow his surrogates, including rove, to even appear before congress let alone testify about their actions – I believe watching alberto gonzalez was enough for bush to realize that they were in so deep their best chance was to not go there, meaning to Congressional hearings, because gonzo had put them way over the threshold of how many lies can you tell in public before even the people who aren’t paying attention start to notice.

I haven’t even got into the lies that got us into Iraq. Boy, I could write about that for, well put it this way, in my day job I’m often asked when it’s my turn to speak to keep my remarks to a few minutes, and I can usually fill up those few minutes without much effort. So I’ll try to limit my remarks here, even though lying to justify an invasion of a soveriegn nation, leading to a death toll approaching seven figures is worthy of a thorough discussion that reminds us (the citizens that elected these murderers) that we have an obligation here to at least try to create an atmosphere where this won’t happen again by insisting on accountability and justice. In fact my next book is the book by Ron Suskind, “The Way of the World,” which details (as I understand it) the CIA’s forging of a document to connect Saddam Hussein with Mohammed Atta (Al Qaeda) as per the request of cheney (and I’m sure bush) as one of the many lies used to catapult us into Iraq – which from a criminal standpoint – should dwarf all of these other crimes in my view.

Back to my point; these are just a few of the issues that bush/cheney et al should have to stand to account for. Obviously, impeachment is “off the table.” I’m hoping criminal prosecution is not. I will be disappointed if Obama gets elected and then chooses not to “fix” these problems. It is my opinion that if they are not dealt with in a thorough and judicious manner, the long term consequences for our nation will be severe. We need to make a statement to ourselves, and possibly more important to the rest of the world, that we truly are a “nation of laws and not men.” The abuses of the constitution and the justice department need to be corrected and safeguards need to be in place to guarantee that no rogue administration will ever be able to abuse our system in this manner again. And, just as importantly, we need to hold these leaders (sic) to criminal accountability in front of the rest of the world – so they know that there will be no more “gitmos” – that we won’t be invading soveriegn nations unprovoked ever again – and that criminals will be prosecuted in this country. bin laden should be prosecuted and every member of the bush administration who used bin laden’s attack on our nation to enrich themselves or abuse the power they had been entrusted with should be prosecuted. people like rumsfeld, cheney, feith, and others who have profited off of our invasion of Iraq should be treated like the heinous theives that they are – THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO GET AWAY WITH THIS!!!! And gw??? well, in my mind, gw – the president who has spent about 35% of his presidency on vacation should get a REAL VACATION!!! an extended stay in Leavenworth!!!!