When Obama wins, is it a good idea to prosecute Bush & Co.?

[Tuberski]

Why is a presidential pardon applicable to anyone not charged with a crime?

That's really stupid.

ACK!

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Vesayen

This is about respect for the rule of law. Are we a nation of laws or a nation of men?

Are you kidding? Rich and powerful people are above the law. Hell, even Nixon did not do one sodding day of jail time for attempting to undermine the government. Nixon's only real screwup was that he got caught.

Politics is the shadow cast by big business. That's why they don't mind if the population squabbles about poofs getting married or nativity scenes on public property. Each party is offering more or less the same economic program with a few cosmetic differences, but we know that it isn't the economic program that most citizens would like.

Voting just serves to legitimize this horse****. Don't do it. By participating, you degrade yourself and lend credibility to fraud. The rational people are the ones who have stopped voting. How low does the voting rate have to go before we can say that democracy doesn't really exist? Below 50%? We're getting close.

If you don't like it, then become rich enough to bribe politicians yourself, or start a revolt and remove the oligarchs. Someone said today that it's funny how the western media has no trouble referring to Russian "oligarchs", but can't do the same thing for western billionaires, even though there isn't much difference.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Oerdin
OK, assuming Bush gives out the pardons to members of his administration then would that effectively kill any chance for accountability or are there other options? Is it possible that in the future the world court might go after them as they did decades after Chile gave Pinochet a pardon?

A) Eh, since the U.S. isn't a signatory to the Rome Statute and it doesn't extend to non-signatories, absolutely not.

B) Since the Rome Statute's Article 11 puts an ex post facto limitation on prosecutions for crimes that occurred prior to a country becoming a signatory, a ratification in the Obama years wouldn't make any difference.

C) You should know that Pinochet never sat before any "world court" (well, ok, maybe you wouldn't). It was a Spanish court exercising the "universal jurisdiction" authorized by the Convention Against Torture for any states which pass a harmonized local statute. In other words administration officials would merely have to avoid vacationing in the handful of harmonized countries to make prosecution impossible, since convictions in absentia are not allowed and there is certainly no power of arrest outside the indicting country's borders. And this is all assuming that there is any ironclad proof of torture more extreme than waterboarding, of which there is none, let alone ironclad proof of who specifically ordered what. And assuming that any country, even Spain or Belgium, would want to set such a precedent vis-a-vis the U.S. in particular, which is doubtful.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles
The world would be safer if we let serial killers lose in order to make prison space for these folks.

For everyone that ignored a subpoena? Wow... you just made my job as a government employee , working for an agency that has subpoena power, that much easier .

[Darius871]

You work for the government? I thought you were at some private firm helping money-grubbing divorcees scrape in an extra few cars/houses or somesuch.

[Boris Godunov]

Perhaps he works for the administration? Same difference.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The Comrade knows who I work for (I joked that I work for a more lefty group than he does )

[OneFootInTheGrave]

once unemployment reaches 20%+ this will be the only option to appease the public... Obama will build a coliseum in Washington, bring the alligators from Florida and let Bush fight them with this

[Jon Miller]

That looks pretty heavy.

JM