Will the rule of law survive?

Dave Neiwert in Torture and the rule of law: Did Bush just call Democrats' bluff? 11/26/08 at Crooks and Liars, to which he's apparently migrated from FireDogLake, calls attention to something that I didn't catch when I first saw this story: Sweeping Pardons 'Unnecessary': White House Is Disinclined to Grant Clemency to Officials Involved in Terror Policies by Evan Perex Wall Street Journal 11/25/08.

My thought was, great, Bush's arrogance makes him think he's immune to consequences for his criminal acts. But I figured that Dark Lord Cheney would set him down between now an Obama's inauguration and explain to him, "Look, Little George, we could all go to jail unless you issue those pardons. You don't want to go to jail, now, do you, Little George?"

Dave suggests a darker motive that is also consistent with Cheney's modus operandi. He quotes Jonathan Turley:

And so what's really happening here is a rather clever move at this intersection of law and politics. That what the administration is doing, is they know that the people that want him to pardon our torture program is primarily the Democrats, not the Republicans. The Democratic leadership would love to have a pardon so they could go to their supporters and say, "Look, there's really nothing we could do. We're just going to have this truth commission, and we'll get the truth out, but there really can't be any indictments now."

Well, the Bush administration is calling their bluff. They know that the Democratic leadership will not allow criminal investigations or indictments. And in that way the Democrats will actually repair Bush's legacy, because he will be able to say, "There was nothing stopping indictments or prosecutions, but a Democratic congress and a Democratic White House didn't think there was any basis for it." [emphasis by Dave]

Dave thinks that if Turley is right, the Dems will set up some worthless and powerless "truth commission" - I'm guessing Lee Hamilton will be the lead candidate to head it, in that case - and go their merry way.

Dave doesn't speculate about it, but I will. We know how Cheney manipulated the Vice Presidential selection process in 2000 in order to collect compromising information on leading Republicans. And we know he's been conducting the most massive spying domestic intelligence-gathering operation in the history of the world; though with Cheney involved, we know that it's largely incompetent for its nominal purposes of combating terrorism. But a "known unknown" (to use Rummy's famous terminology) is the question of how much spying Cheney's operation has been doing on Democratic Party leaders. Although I'm so thoroughly confident that he has been doing that, that I would call it an "all-but-known known".

So have the Democratic leaders already made a deal with Cheney not to push a serious investigation? And if they did, what kind of dirt did he have on them? Because I'd like to at least believe that they were blackmailed into that attitude, rather than just shrugging it off and saying, "Shoot, laws are just for black people and illegal immigrants, and us important government types shouldn't have to worry about them."

Tags: rule of law, torture