So it has finally come, our strange, anesthetized and vaguely dreaded day of national reckoning.
WASHINGTON - A debate over how to investigate Bush-era officials who authorized harsh interrogation tactics of terrorism suspects split Washington on Thursday, and Democrats squabbled over how to proceed.
The top Democrats in Congress differed over the creation of a special "truth commission" to investigate whether laws were violated by Bush administration officials whose legal analysis sanctioned waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, and other methods such as sleep deprivation and forced nudity.
There are not exactly throngs of Democratic Congressmembers beating
down the doors of the Justice Department demanding that Attorney
General Eric Holder appoint a special Independent Prosecutor to
investigate torture and other crimes. And now it seems that whatever
Congress does in the near term won't even be open to the public. Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said this week that he prefers that
the Senate Intelligence Committee hold private hearings.
The chair of the committee, Sen.
Those of you following the George W.
Bush prosecution trail will be interested to know that Patrick Leahy's
"truth commission" is a no-go. I was in a meeting with Leahy and four
other Vermonters on Monday when he broke the news to us.
We had asked for the meeting to learn why he supported a truth
commission over the appointment of a special prosecutor.
WASHINGTON - A leaked Red Cross report on CIA "torture" of detainees offers fresh ammunition to demands that officials from the Bush administration be prosecuted for their conduct, rights groups have revealed.
President Barack Obama has so far sidestepped calls from some fellow Democrats and from civil liberties activists to go after officials from the previous administration over torture allegations, saying he wants to "look forward."
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, deserves
credit for pressing ahead with his modest proposal to establish a truth and reconciliation commission to review the assaults on the Constitution and general lawlessness of the Bush-Cheney administration.
As Leahy said at the opening of Wednesday's Judiciary Committee hearing
on "Getting To The Truth Through A Nonpartisan Commission Of Inquiry":
Kate Winslet's Academy Award for Best Actress in The Reader surely disappointed and
outraged Ron Rosenbaum. Amid the torrent of nonsense glutting U.S. media since the movie award
nominations were announced, Rosenbaum's objections to The Reader were far more substantive and
accusatory.
More than 30 years ago, a special Senate investigation peered into
abuses that included spying on the American people by their own
government.
Can we find ideas - political ideas - big enough to be worthy of this moment?
You know, before the cynicism and the disappointment and the recession and the dumbed-down media and, oh yeah, the regrouping Republicans, conspire to dull Barack Obama's election into the bitter memory of hope and harass his presidency into something that resembles Clintonism and business slightly to the left of usual (if that).
