Re. the GSA scandal: What are these people in Washington THINKING of? And speaking of power corrupting, time to say good night, Charlie?

When now ex-GSA Administrator Martha Johnson (seen here in 2010 with Homeland Security Sec'y Janet Napolitano at left) was finally confirmed for her job, after one of those endless Senate confirmation struggles, she said famously that ethics was "a big issue for me." Now wags want to know what exactly the issue was.


"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

-- Lord Acton (1834-1902)

by Ken

From Ed O'Keefe's washingtonpost.com "Federal Eye" blog this afternoon:

Congress will investigate GSA scandal

By Timothy R. Smith

Congress will investigate the misuse of federal money by the General Services Administration that brought down the agency's administrator and two of her senior deputies on Monday.

When Congress returns from recess April 16, the public buildings subpanel of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will conduct "a full hearing on this and other matters, trying to hold GSA accountable for taxpayer waste and inefficiency," said Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the full committee.

GSA's inspector general issued a scathing report Monday that detailed misuse of funds and federal contracting violations over an $823,000 employee training conference GSA held in Las Vegas in October 2010.

"The Las Vegas fiasco is just the tip of the iceberg," Mica said. He cited billions of dollars of misused funds and 14,000 vacant or underused buildings the government owns.

The public buildings subcommittee is chaired by Rep. Jeffrey Denham (R-Calif.).

Mica offered tepid praise of the Obama administration for not obstructing the agency's investigation and taking swift action when the revelations were made public.

A spokesperson for Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said, "The current Administration took immediate action against those accused and asked for Johnson's resignation although she was not directly involved in the scandal."

I'm thinking it was during the 2010 electoral cycle that a progressive colleague with firsthand working knowledge of the machinery of the federal government tried to rouse interest among fellow progressives in championing a concerted attack on wasteful government spending, only to be generally attacked himself on the ground that government waste is "their" issue and raising it only plays into their hands.

The colleague counterargued, still almost entirely in vain, that:

(1) There is, in fact, a good deal of wastful spending in government.

(2) Especially at a time when it's increasingly difficult to fund the legitimate functions of government properly, it's good policy as well as common sense to find needed find mind that can be redirected from wasted currently being misdirected.

(3) And it's kind of crazy, isn't it?, to unilaterally cede to the other side a talking point that tends to resonate strongly with ordinary Americans.

I thought he was 100 percent right, but then, what do I know? Smarter people with their presumed inside knowledge harrumphed that doing what this madman was suggesting would just be doing the Republicans' job for them.

Now it's in part because our side has ceded the issue of wasted spending that we're now faced with inquisitions from criminal sacks of doody like Darrell Issa, in his capacity as the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Oversignt and Government Reform, or to the impending spectacle of a hoped-headline-making, thieving-scumback-led investigation of the appalling GSA scandal.

Note that I said "the appalling GSA scandal." Is there anyone who isn't appalled. I'd like to see the response to the GSA IG's report go beyond firings to prosecutions and, ideally, executions. Now that might teach a lesson or two. At least we could expect that the person(s) executed wouldn't do it again.

What the hell goes through these people's minds? Except, of course, the universal 21st-century refrain: Me-me-me-me-me-me -- and, oh yes, ME. The guiding, er, "ethical" principle would appear to be, "Since everybody does it, I'd have to be nuts not to grab everything within reach which isn't nailed down." That is, assuming these people even feel the need for a guiding ethical principle.

And on this count, lame as Oversight Committee ranking member Elijah Cummings's response is, it does indeed count for something that in the Obama administration an ugly report like that of the GSA IG led to immediate action. This is even grudgingl acknowledged by that scourge of corruption, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica, who you'll recall "offered tepid praise of the Obama administration for not obstructing the agency's investigation and taking swift action when the revelations were made public."

Maybe Chairman Mica thought it too well-known to required pointint out that this is the exact opposite of the policy -- and it's policy that was rigidly enforced -- under the Bush regime, where the invariable practice in the executive brance was, first, to have inspectors general who either (a) were buffoons to begin with or (b) understood that any embarrassing revelations they might at any point consider revealing would be met with the most ruthless campaign of suppression mountable by people of surpassing excellence at ruthless suppression. And of course while the executive branch was being transformed into a crime ring, the Republican-controlled Congress was in 24/7's rape, pillage, and extort mode.

I suppose I could be doing an injustice to corruption- and waste-fighters like Chairman Mica and public buildings subcommittee Chairman Jeffrey Denham. In fairness, then, I will offer them a Hypocrisy Waiver good for all the headlines they can garner for corruption and waste dollars uncovered up to the total dollar amount each went after in the Bush regime. I don't have the exact figures handy, but I'm guess that should bank them an Earned Investigative Credit balance of roughly zero.


SPEAKING OF ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTING ABSOLUTELY,
CHARLIE RANGEL DOESN'T INTEND TO GO OUT QUIETLY

NYS Sen. Adriano Espaillat announced Sunday that he's forming an exploratory committee to consider a run for the Democratic nomination for the redrawn 13th CD, now represented by Charlie Rangel.

I was already thinking about this business of institutionalized government corruption with the announcement on Sunday that my state senator, Adriano Espaillat (who ran for the uptown Manhattan seat vacated by Eric Schneiderman in anticipation of his ultimately sucessful run for state attorney general), a good guy, is going to challenge 10-term Representative Charlie Rangel in his bid for the Democratic nomination to an 11th term. Charlie has been sweating bullets for months now to see what if anything would be left of his 13th CD under whatever redistricting plan is finally adopted, eliminating two CDs from the state's delegation. (The slugs in the state legislature couldn't get it done, so finally the courts took over.)

From DNAinfo.com yesterday:

Espaillat Announces Run for Uptown Congressional Seat

April 1, 2012 8:48pm | By Carla Zanoni, DNAinfo Social Media Editor

spaillat announced that he is planning to run for 13th Congressional District in Upper Manhattan, setting up a showdown with the longtime symbol of Harlem politics Rep. Charles Rangel, DNAinfo has learned.
The announcement was made Sunday at the annual fundraiser for the Barack Obama Democratic Club of Upper Manhattan, which Assemblyman Keith Wright, City Councilmen Robert Jackson and Ydanis Rodriguez, and several other political figures attended, sources said.
After Espaillat told the crowd about his intentions during a speech kicking off the event, several people in a packed apartment at 565 W. 169th St. began clapping enthusiastically.
Espaillat, who made history as the first Dominican-American to be elected to a state legislature in 1996, will battle Rangel because a panel of judges decided not to create a separate majority Latino district in the neighborhood, as some advocates had called for. . . .

Rangel, 81, has served Upper Manhattan since 1971 and is the dean of New York's congressional delegation.

Although he recently announced he would run for a 22nd term, people in political circles have been murmuring that he might to try to hand his seat over to someone such as Wright, if elected, rather than serve the full two-year term.

Bob Liff, Rangel's campaign spokesman, declined to comment, but reiterated that the Congressman is running to serve a full term.

Democrats Joyce Johnson, Vince Morgan, Craig Schley and Clyde Williams, a former advisor to President Bill Clinton, have also declared themselves candaites for the Congressional seat.

In recent years, Rangel's image has been marred by scandal, including the use of rent-regulated apartments for office space and failure to pay taxes.

In 2010, after a two-year ethics investigation, he was censured by the House.

And in late March, Rangel reportedly agreed to pay a $23,000 fine to settle campaign finance violations related to a rent-subsidized apartment in Harlem.

Rangel's future with Congress was further thrown in turmoil this year as a result of New York's redistricting process. . . .

There's time yet for the intricate politics of it all. In the end it may be that the free-for-all developing to shove our Charlie out of Congress winds up enabling him to keep his butt parked there. For now, though, don't you have to wonder, why can't he just call it a day?

A lot of what I think when I think of Charlie Rangel is gosh, that's sad. I like to think, at least, that he wasn't always as we see him now, that he once placed the people's business ahead of his own. But here he is now, at 81, clawing and scratching, even without his lost House chairmanship holding onto his seat for dear life. Is it just habit? Fear of sinking into invisibility if he were to just retire, unloved -- and bereft of influence? Or fear of being unable to afford the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed?

Hey, Charlie, is this really what you got into public life for in the first place, back in the day?

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The Arrogance Of Being George

-by Noah

George, George, king of the bungle. The former Tree-Swinger-In-Chief just couldn’t stay away. Rather than hide out in a coconut tree on a remote island, Chimpy decided to have someone write a book in his name and then go rip off the scabs of his hurtful presidency on national TV. The book is called Decision Points. In it, the former usurper of the White House has chosen a series of points in his occupation of the Oval Office that he has decided need some re-framing and cleaning up in order to shed a more positive if untrue light on his presidency. He claims to not care about what people think but if that was true, this particular book would not exist.

Chimpy has gone on a book tour to promote the book. I’m happy to report that, unlike fellow tree-swinger, Sarah Palin, the book tour isn’t a phony bus tour. He hasn’t seen the need to create a false perception by having a bus meet him at the airport so he can pretend to be riding a bus from bookstore to bookstore like some kind of “ordinary folks” man of the people. No, in keeping with everything else that is George, he’s kept it simple. He’s just doing TV interviews (acting performances) with people like Oprah and Matt Lauer. He has bigger perceptions to hatch.
 
Try as he might as he makes the rounds, Chimpy just can’t hide his arrogance, insensitivity, and utter shallowness. When asked by Lauer about Katrina, he says “it gave critics an opportunity to kinda undermine the presidency” (Yeah. It’s all about you George, isn’t it? Not the victims. You were the victim of Katrina?) He even says his mistake was that he didn’t have Air Force One touch down in Baton Rouge so he could say hi to Governor Kathleen Blanco. He doesn’t mention her name, of course. After all, the governor was not only a woman; she was also a Democrat. Hell, she isn’t even rich! More importantly, though, in what passes for his tiny, warped beyond any semblance of normalcy or decency, “mind,” the mistake he made was not a missed opportunity of immediately offering aide, hope, and reassurance, but a missed opportunity of a photo op that would have altered appearances. With Bush, the man who doesn’t “care about perceptions,” it’s all about perception.

Had he touched down in Baton Rouge, aid efforts could have been jump-started. Instead, the confusion escalated and incompetence came from every direction of Federal, State and Local government. The ‘decisive’ guy failed to be decisive. Sure, he had a dilemma in that his legal options may have been limited, but a face-to-face meeting and asking the right questions could have gotten the ball rolling and circumvented all of that bureaucracy; if only he had cared enough. If only he was capable of feeling the pain and suffering of others. If only he wasn’t a sociopath, the perfect man to lead the Republican Party. Hey, heck of a job!
 
Lauer, playing his role in this charade, never brings up the fact that Bush did find time to go drop in on the remains of Trent Lott’s former KKK headquarters, er, a beachfront home first, and effuse about rebuilding Trent’s house. There was nothing there about rebuilding the houses of people who “don’t matter,” if you know what I mean. Even his later little walk around photo op was in what had been in a Mississippi beachfront community, not the 9th Ward of New Orleans or anything like it. All of that goes unmentioned. Then, Bush takes offense at the almost equally boorish Kanye West saying he doesn’t care about Black people. Gee, how would anyone have ever gotten that idea? Bush blew it and he actually admits it, but he gets the actual what of what he did wrong just plain wrong. Like-wise, in hindsight, he now considers his “Mission Accomplished” banner a mistake, too. It gave a wrong impression. Mistakes were made. Damn those ugly realities! 

“Did you ever ask yourself the question ‘What more could I have done to prevent this from happening.”

 
At 6:05 into this portion of the interview, as Lauer centers on the 9/11 attacks, Lauer asks the above question.

You can watch the body language of Bush’s mouth and eyes as he formulates the next big lie of his life of lies. There’s always the rapidly shifting, rapidly blinking eyes when Bush lies; always that hint of a smirk, especially at the end of his lie. The smirk is so prevalent during the interview that you begin to wonder why it isn’t as permanent as The Joker’s grotesque smile in the Batman stories.
 
Of course, he answers ‘no’ by saying “we just didn’t have any solid intelligence that gave us a warning on this.” There’s no mention from Lauer of the infamous August memo, delivered to Bush at his fake (for image creation and perception only) ranch in Crawford; the memo that he treated so dismissively by arrogantly telling his briefer that he’d covered his ass and now he should leave and go back to Washington. Does ol’ go along to get along corporate media shill Lauer challenge Bush on that? What do you think?
 
I have no doubt at this point that Chimpy’s book will rise high on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller List. But then, a lot of conservatives are also pretty unhappy with Bush; at least those who are angry at him for exploding the deficit and bailing out Wall Street are, except when they are blaming President Obama for both of those. The question now is: does the book contain enough lies to eventually also make the Fiction List? If it was up to me, I’d suggest that Chimpy’s lies and his hiding behind the calculated cover of others (such as John Yoo in the case of the water-boarding but more on that in a little bit) are overrun by the magnitude of his crimes against humanity both here and abroad and they make the book ripe for syndication in True Crime Magazine. 
 
In our nation’s history, we’ve had a lot of people with issues in the White House. Nixon was a serious mental case, filled with layer upon layer of insecurities and paranoia. Reagan was senile and lord knows what was going on in Clinton’s head. Obama appears to be plagued by an over-sized desire for acceptance. But George Dubya will be fodder for shrink books and dissertations for decades to come. Already, I can suggest one. It’s called Bush On The Couch by Dr. Justin A. Frank.

Chimpy knew water-boarding was wrong. You can see it in his answers to Lauer about the subject. When mildly pressed by Lauer, he merely nervously says his lawyer, John Yoo, told him it was OK and that’s it. Never mind that that lawyer was more than likely told to come up with the desired answer. Someone had the job of providing the cover to have our country engage in water-boarding. Yoo said that Bush was not bound by the War Crimes Act so Bush ordered it. These conclusions were reached despite our own statutes and the Geneva Conventions and despite the fact that we tried and hung Japanese soldiers that water-boarded Americans during WWII and prosecuted our own soldiers who water-boarded the enemy. Since George Washington, our policy has been to not lower ourselves to torture. The first Commander-in-Chief made that very clear. In the interview, Bush makes it very, very emphatically clear that he just won’t discuss it. If he had a leg to stand on, he would discuss it, but all we get is the “My lawyer said it was legal” excuse. There he goes again, hiding behind someone else, a minion. Why get your hands dirty when you can have a staff to delegate that to? Bush didn’t invent that, but, he is a master of it. It’s like saying his father’s CIA had nothing to do with pulling out the finger nails of Chilean folk singers during the overthrow of Allende. In Dubya’s case, why sweat the details when you can’t comprehend them and you publicly pride yourself as a delegator even while you call yourself the decider? From his DUI days to his AWOL days to his fraudulent elections which put him in the Oval Office, to declaring an off the books war on Iraq, Bush has felt a grand, megalomaniacal sense of entitlement. He has always felt at home living outside the laws of the land.  It comes with being a Bush. The key thing in the discussion, though, is that Bush has admitted, on camera, to giving the order to water-board. Indictable? Yes. Will there be one? Yeah, right.
 
Lauer repeatedly lets Bush off the hook. Whether it’s not bringing up the August memo or not bringing up details that would contradict Bush’s book on the reasons for the war on Iraq, he never really challenges him. But, if Lauer was the kind to do such pushing and challenging, he wouldn’t have his job. That’s not his role in our society. This book and Lauer’s coverage of it is just another example of how the establishment propagates fairy tales and moves them along until they become accepted doctrine and fact in our society. Reality doesn’t enter into it. The Ed Schultzes of the world never get that gig. The Matt Lauers do, precisely because they can provide a dog and pony show that has the veneer of something more substantial. They provide a version of a story that people are comfortable with when the deeper reality is just too damn disturbing. It's "Hear no evil. Speak no evil. See no evil." History is written by those who have the power. The Bushes are using the compliant media to tell the story, in their terms, for posterity, but there are some cracks in this one. Already, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder is accusing Bush of lying in his book. And, the more Bush goes out in public, the more material he will unwittingly provide simply because he lacks the intellect and curiosity to understand exactly the damage he has done. His mind and personality are a treasure trove for anyone who can study him without throwing up.   

Bye-Bye, George Bush... You Taught Us So Much

Offered without comment:

Just because we're not going to get a special prosecutor doesn't mean we don't need one

Who wouldn't like to see Perry Mason reduce George
or Dick to a blubbering, confessing pulp on the stand?

by Noah

There has been a lot of discussion recently -- in the blogosphere, if not in the isolated, insular community of Washington, DC -- about the possibility of bringing George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the illegitimate Bush administration to justice for crimes such as their admitted NSA law-breaking, not to mention the other not-admitted, much-discussed crimes against the Constitution, the country, and the world.

One interesting wrinkle to this discussion is that the president-elect, a very Internet-savvy man who gained much of his support through Internet marketing, has a new site, change.gov, where people can suggest and vote on just what changes they'd like to see. The site usalone.com has been e-mailing its subscribers during the last week, asking them to go to usalone.com/convict_cap.php to suggest and vote for choosing a special prosecutor to investigate Bush and Cheney and hold them accountable -- and get a free "Convict Dick & W" cap.

I think we all know where Barack "Whose Change?" Obama stands on the issue, but the idea is to make a special prosecutor the number one desire of the people, as submitted to his own site, where he supposedly cares to know what we are thinking. Well, it looks like one way to send a message, even if it will be ignored.

usalone calls it the accountability movement. I seriously doubt that anything will come of all of this, since Washington protects its own. We've already had enough of the accomplice Pelosi and her ilk. It's a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" kind of town. Cynical of me? No, I'm just a student of history. The best we'll ever get is one of those patented Washington blue-ribbon whitewash commissions.

In the meantime, easing the pain with pointed irony and bitter sarcasm, I have some suggestions to offer for this special prosecutor. Just remember: When you hear the word "commission'" coming from DC instead of "special prosecutor," think "whitewash" -- or another old Inside the Beltway standard, "sweeping it under the carpet." You know, like the 9/11 Commission or the Warren Commission.

Keep in mind that Washington makes a big show of pretending to get to the bottom of things while really covering them up, so some of these dregs of society . . . er, candidates really fit the bill:


ARLEN SPECTER, U.S. senator from Pennsylvania,
ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee

The man who, as lawyer for the Warren Commission, came up with the fantastic, phantasmagorical "single-bullet theory" as an explanation for one very magic bullet causing unbelievable numbers of wounds to two men and damage to the interior of a presidential limo on the streets of Dallas back in 1963. He may be much older now and maybe not even obsessed with the breasts of Anita Hill anymore, but I'm sure his bucket-of-sleaze brain ain't dead quite yet.


KENNETH STARR, dean, Pepperdine U. School of Law
(currently representing anti-marriage-equality Prop 8 supporters in California Supreme Court case)

The man who adopted the slogan "the rule of law" when building the case of "impeachment for a blowjob" against another globalista presidente. I'm sure it really was all about the law to Ken, and nothing else, so the Obama administration should offer this bozo the case of his dreams, an embarrassment of riches, a treasure chest of broken statutes. I wonder if he still has Monica Lewinsky's dress.


MONICA GOODLING, former chief political hatchetperson,
U.S. Dept. of "Justice"

What could be better than a graduate of the law school of Pat Robertson's Regent University, which bills itself as "America's Preeminent Christian University"? It just reeks of honesty, objectivity, and integrity. Plus, she is known for her zealousness -- picked out some nice blue drapes for those nudie statues in the great hall of the Justice Dept.


CARDINAL FRANCISCO XIMENEZ DE CISNEROS, O.F.M.,
Grand Inquisitor of Spain

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."

What could be better? The "Mr. Torture" of his time. The irony would be perfect, in a "dose of their own medicine" sort of way.

"Fetch . . . the comfy chair!"

Alas, that was five centuries ago. I can see Bush and Cheney sitting in their comfy chairs for the rest of their days, setting a horrible example for future generations of how to act in public office.


RUDY

He helped put the Dapper Don, John Gotti, in a cage in Leavenworth. Why not a cage for Cheney and a cage for Bush? Plus I'd love to see Rudy Julieandrews present his evidence to Congress in a feather boa and high heels.


LARRY KING, television personality

This man rode with the Beatles in 1964. That was coolness! I never really paid much attention to Larry King of the Kloying Smarm, but shortly after the appointment of Bush, I saw him extolling the virtues of the entire Bush Crime Family on his show. I've never watched it since. It took me almost 40 years to figure it out, but when he isn't kissing the ass of a top dog, he has his head up his own.


DR. JOSEF MENGELE, medical, er, researcher

Oh, that's right, as a professional torturer he'd have to recuse himself.


OSAMA BIN LADEN, Islamofascist terror-monger

Right, same with Osama, he'd have to recuse himself. Bush has done just what he wanted: severely damaged the American economy, taken out Saddam, allowed the Taliban to regroup in Afghanistan.


ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER as Commando

"Remember when I promised to kill you last? I lied."


PERRY MASON, defense attorney

I would like to see George or Dick in one of those last-minute breakdowns on the witness stand. Sigh, that only happens on TV. In real life the verdict and punishment have been bought and sold in advance. No fun.


DENNY CRANE, name partner, Crane Poole & Schmidt law firm

Well then, Denny Crane! He's even a staunch conservative who secretly voted for Barack Obama. So what if he's a fictional character? Who better to go after a pretend president?

Hmmm. Maybe what we really need is Denny's alter-ego:
CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK, commander, starship U.S.S. Enterprise


LARRY "WIDE STANCE" CRAIG, newly retired U.S. senator from Idaho

"You've been a naughty boy, George, a naughty, naughty boy. Dick is waiting for you at the airport."


But all kidding aside, how about someone as close to "beyond reproach" as possible? Eliot Ness isn't available, but how about that rarest of rare and endangered species, a Republican with integrity? Someone like former U.S. attorney David Igelsias, who was fired by the White House (see Monica Goodling, above) for the crime of being honest? Or how about Patrick Fitzgerald? Centrist that he is, he represents the route that Obama would probably go, if he was going to do anything.

I, like so many others, wish he would, for the future of our country, if not for you and me. It would also restore our image among others in the world who used to look at America as a place of hope. I expect nothing, although a pleasant surprise would come at a very good time. Morale and morals have reached a new low here in 2009.

However, I expect this year to be a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Crime and no punishment. And we'll continue the long slide downhill, going the way of the Romans. The parallels are uncanny.

Dear President-elect Obama: Surprise me!

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This really smart professor suggests something we can do about the Bush regime's war crimes

"Absent a reckoning for those responsible for torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment -- our own federal government -- the healing cannot begin."

-- David Cole, in "What to Do About the Torturers?"
in the Jan. 15 New York Review of Books

by Ken

It's a relief to find that some really smart people are worrying about some of the same stuff I am. On Friday, you'll recall, I asked, "Is there anything we can do about the criminals Chimpy the Prez and 'Big Dick' Cheney?" Note that I was referring to the full range of crimes committed by the Bush regime, the domestic ones (notably the plundering of the Justice Dept.) as well as the international ones (including what surely need to be treated as war crimes). Since then I've had a chance to look at the above-cited review-essay by David Cole, a Georgetown law professor (and, as he notes in a footnote, a member of the board of the Center for Constitutional Law).

Among the books considered, by the way, is the painstaking investigation of the story of torture at Guantanamo by the amazing British legal scholar-activist Philippe Sands, who made such an impression with his House Judiciary Committee testimony and TV appearance with Bill Moyers last May. Another of the books is The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book by Michael Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights. (This is where Professor Cole has occasion to note his connection to the Center, adding that "I did not take part in the efforts to have criminal proceedings initiated against Rumsfeld.")

Cole isn't optimistic about real war-crimes trials against the Bush regimistas, legally warranted though they may be. For one thing, they took pains to insulate themselves from any such possibility by "grant[ing] retrospective immunity to officials involved in the interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in the wake of September 11" in the Military Commissions Act. For another, "The Justice Department's 'torture memo' would be a legal defense for any but the lawyers who wrote it."

And while it's technically possible for our suspected war criminals to be indicted and tried by tribunals abroad, Cole doesn't see that happening either: "As a matter of realpolitik, it is difficult to imagine any nation greeting the Obama administration with an international prosecution of former high-level US officials."

Still, Cole insists (bless him!), "Even if criminal prosecution seems unlikely, the acts of the past administration demand accountability." (The boldface is my embellishment.) He goes on to quote a statement from several months ago by Attorney General-designate Eric Holder:

Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution.... We owe the American people a reckoning.

Yes, Mr. Attorney General!

Cole argues, "Without prosecutions or an independent investigation, significant progress toward repudiating the administration's approval of cruelty and torture has already been made." He cites the Supreme Court's 2006 rejection of "President Bush's position that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the conflict with al-Qaeda"; the military's return to the no-torture policy set out in the Army Field Manual; reports of the CIA's abandoning waterboarding; and positions taken by various other government officials against the use of torture.

However, he understands that this still isn't enough:

The United States has never taken full responsibility for the crimes its high-level officials committed and authorized. That is unacceptable. In the long run, the best insurance against cruelty and torture becoming US policy again is a formal recognition that what we did after September 11 was wrong -- as a normative, moral, and legal matter, not just as a tactical issue. Such an acknowledgment need not take the form of a criminal prosecution; but it must take some official form.

"We have been willing to admit wrongdoing in the past," he says, citing the official apology signed by President Reagan in 1988 for the Japanese wartime internments, including payment of reparations. "That legislation, a formal repudiation of our past acts, provides an important cultural bulwark against something similar happening again."

And he concludes:

We cannot move forward in reforming the law effectively unless we are willing to account for what we did wrong in the past. The next administration or the next Congress should at a minimum appoint an independent, bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to investigate and assess responsibility for the United States' adoption of coercive interrogation policies. If it is to be effective, it must have subpoena power, sufficient funding, security clearances, access to all the relevant evidence, and, most importantly, a charge to assess responsibility, not just to look forward. We may know many of the facts already, but absent a reckoning for those responsible for torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment -- our own federal government -- the healing cannot begin.

Thanks, professor! That's something.

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Extra, extra: Bush beaned in Bagdad!

Following up on our report on the Bush regime's excellent adventure in Iraq, we can't resist passing on this report from ThinkProgress (note that their own version contains both links and video clips):

Iraqi Journalist Throws His Shoes At Bush During Press Conference In Baghdad (Updated)

President Bush is in Baghdad today on a surprise farewell visit highlighting the security deal recently reached between the U.S. and Iraq. CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware reports this afternoon that during a press conference with Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, an Iraqi man threw a shoe at Bush — "a grave insult in the Arab world" — but "it just sailed past his head":

WARE: Well, Wolf, the most extraordinary thing. You may or may not believe this. We're getting reports from the press pool that flew in with President Bush and apparently just a short, short time ago in a press conference with Prime Minister Maliki, an Iraqi man stood up in the press conference and threw a shoe at President Bush. But the reports we're getting, it just sailed past his head and while the man was dragged out of the room, President Bush is said to have remarked that, “This was a size 10 shoe he threw at me you may want to know,” even as the man was heard screaming in the hallway.

McClatchy identified the man as Iraqi television journalist Muthathar al Zaidi and reports he threw both of his shoes at Bush just after he finished prepared remarks.

The New York Times notes that the first shoe “narrowly missed” and the second shoe also missed. “This is a farewell kiss, you dog,” Zaidi shouted.

Apparently, Bush was unfazed by the incident. “I didn’t feel the least bit threatened by it,” he said.

UPDATE: MSNBC has video of the incident with correspondent Patty Culhane reporting that Bush was "not injured" but that White House Press Secretary Dana Perino received a black eye in the scuffle of trying to contain Zaidi. Watch it [clip on TP site].

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