Behaving Badly

I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral
principles:

Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease.
Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick
a pedestrian who has already been hit.
From which it followed, of course,
that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of
Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican
--Barabara Ehrenreich

Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions,
a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit
--Freda Adler

________

USA Today writer Jonathan Turley speculated yesterday on the "Bush J.D. Curse" (The Bush J.D. Curse: Be very afraid.)

Turley says "bad things happen to attorneys who go to work for this administration," but maybe bad things happen to them because they do bad things.

Like previous Attorney General Ashcroft, Gonzales "gamed the system: misleading or lying to Congress, continually changing positions in the courts, [and] moving around detainees and defendants to avoid judicial review." He says, "I have been thinking about the curse and how a lawyer can both serve and survive the Bush administration." But one cannot serve both God and Mammon.

"Gonzales promoted aides such as Goodling who lacked any substantive credential beyond a type of Baathist Party-like loyalty. Experienced U.S. attorneys were replaced by political cronies with little experience, such as Tim Griffin, an aide to Karl Rove."

Interesting point. Taking the analogy literally, it is possible that GWB was so violently opposed to Saddam because he was jealous of his effective control of his country. Though he has effected his own Stalin-esque purges, neither the country, nor the Republican party nor the Congress are under Bush's control now. That is how it goes grafting totalitarianism onto a true democracy. It is an ugly beast.

Turley suggests the way to avoid the curse is to stop being a crony or a sycophant. Of this behavior he gives the example of former acting A.G. James Comey, a man of integrity who refused to sign off on the on the unconstitutional domestic surveillance program and later testified before Congress.

On the basis of his decency and honesty, Comey is an American hero. Why not consider him for the AG post?

Ranger disagrees with Turley's weak approval of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, (He "showed a modicum of independence in his brief stint as a federal judge.") Chertoff deserves no approval -- he is as much a toady as any of them.

As head of the Justice Department's criminal division overseeing the department's terrorism prosecutions following 9-11, he coerced John Walker Lindh ("The American Taliban") into signing a statement swearing he had "not been intentionally mistreated" by his US captors and waiving any future right to claim mistreatment or torture.

"Further, Chertoff attached a 'special administrative measure,' essentially a gag order, barring Lindh from talking about his experience for the duration of his sentence (Chertoff and Torture)," effectively silencing exposure of early Defense Department forays into the policy of torture of Afghan and Iraqi captures held at Bagram Air Base.

This Department of Justice representative railroaded a U.S. citizen into prison, sans the niceties of a federal court trial. Lindh was tortured, never properly Miranda'd, and there was little proof of any of his actions. Does this sound like the actions of a viable nominee for the post of Attorney General?

Ranger reckons in today's corrupt corporate culture, this will be a bragging point.