I told you so

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/19/law/index.html

Blanket criminal immunity will be granted before President Bush leaves office, not that it is needed because Democrats in Congress are too spineless to pursue investigations of lawbreakers in government and big business. Record numbers of Americans are imprisoned daily for non-violent offenses, but to enforce the laws of the land on government officials is politically verboten -- especially against the President; to paraphrase Richard M Nixon, "if the president does it, it's not illegal."

It may never be known why Senator Obama voted for the FISA bill, forever closing the doors on any accountability for lawbreaking by officials and businesses. My theory is that the DLC, party leadership, wheelers, and dealers in the Democratic Party extorted the vote out of Obama by threatening less than enthusiastic support should their own duplicity come to light. Warrantless wiretapping, the fraudulent causus belli, and torture are all programs enabled and abetted by criminal complicity not only of Republicans but also Democrats, who have "controlled" Congress since 2006 (if by "control" you mean capitulate to every demand made by the White House).

While it is imperative that Senator Obama be elected President over John McCain, truly a terrifying prospect, once in office, it is our job as citizens to hold his feet to the fire and require a sea-change among the Democratic Party elites and politics in general.

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community, and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans, digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests.

We have come a long way since those words, spoken by our first president, warned us of falling into the very trap we are mired in. Or, to quote DLC chairman Harold Ford, "the Constitution doesn't poll well." A politician who can make this claim and still expect to have a career indicates a system rotten from the inside out, putrid and useless. Yet, no political capital is expended, making this shocking admission. Instead, it is de rigeure in American politics.

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