(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

It's hard to muster the energy to care anymore. 51% or more of my fellow Americans are perfectly content to continue electing politicians who are going to continue doing as they please to benefit a privileged few, at great cost to everyone else, in defiance of any sense of justice, fairness, or rightness.

Even in my weariness, though, i am jarred by this latest bit of dada from the Bush Administration:

[S]ome commentators have suggested that we should criminally prosecute the people found in the reports to have committed misconduct. Where there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing, we vigorously investigate it. And where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute. But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws.

Gee, "some commentators have suggested" that people who break the law should be prosecuted. Who, i wonder, might these "commentators" be? Um... maybe... everyone? I mean, isn't that what laws are for? You get caught breaking them, you face the music? But according to the Crony General, "not every violation of the law is a crime." Let's just throw accountability out the window, shall we?

That does not mean, as some people have suggested, that those officials who were found by the joint reports to have committed misconduct have suffered no consequences. Far from it. ... To put it in concrete terms, I doubt that anyone in this room would want to trade places with any of those people.

Oh noes! Poor Monica Goodling, poor Kyle Sampson. The Crony General has now publicly said they broke the law but won't be tried for it. Now they'll have to settle for high-paid cushy jobs at some conservative think-tank retirement-home-for-bespoiled-cronies like AEI. Or maybe they'll just take an early retirement and write their memoirs. That's some harsh justice! I'm sure the thousands of folks whose houses and cars were taken because they bought some pot, and who now earn 11 cents an hour working for UNICOR during the duration of their prison sentence, will be concerned for Goodling and Sampson.

Comments

[night101owl.livejournal.com]

I'm conflicted, because I do want people punished in a general sense for wrongdoing, but I am also opposed to expanding the authority of the state to punish. If these people have violated criminal laws, then they should be held accountable (just as those in the Bush administration who committed war crimes should be ignored for political reasons), but I don't know enough about this situation to know if any criminal laws were violated. There are a lot of laws out there which aren't criminal, and if those were the laws broken, then there shouldn't be criminal penalties.

At the same time, the civil lawsuit machine is only starting the get rolling. After all, the people harmed here were mostly lawyers-- they're not to miss out on a chance to collect.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I'd settle at this point for any kind of systematic accountability, criminal or otherwise. "I wouldn't want to be in their shoes" is not a measure of accountability.

(If only it was more than just the underlings being hung out to dry yet again...)

[iblis-kukl.livejournal.com]

Silly you, actually believing that the Justice Department has the slightest thing to do with justice....

eliazar