When Is Breaking the Law Legal?

Even though I doubt she'll ever read it, I think I write this blog as if I were talking to my sister. She's four years younger than I; we have different fathers; and our mother (who died a dyed-in-the-wool dittohead) favored her over me. We correspond by e-mail now and then, and in a recent message she suggested I should listen to Rush (as in Limbaugh) to get my head straight. Needless to say, we grew up to be very different in our world views and politics.

Anyway, the ongoing saga of extreme politicization at the DOJ brings us a new chapter this week. Former DAG James Comey's testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee was so powerful that I fail to see how Congress can put off taking action on impeachment for one more day. Impeachment not only for Mr. Weaselwords Gonzales, but impeachment for those in the White House who tried to get an ailing AG "Let the Eagles Soar" Ashcroft to sign off on a super-secret program to spy on US citizens, and failing to gain DOJ authority, went ahead with the program anyway.

The law that created the FISA court has never been challenged. But this administration didn't want to have to go to the FISA court for some of its spying plans, so they simply ignored that law and carried on as if they had impunity from prosecution or accountability. And so far, those who are in a position to hold him accountable have so far let Bush act with impunity.

My sister says that Bush has a good soul and that he's made a few mistakes here and there but he means well and we really ought to stop being pinko traitors and just let him run the country the way he sees fit. Foreign policy disasters be damned, she knows those terrorists would be planting IEDs in her driveway if we left Iraq. Katrina victims should've listened to the warnings and fled before they drowned. And whose to say Bush broke the law anyway? Maybe it was a bad law. Maybe he needed to break it to protect us!

Maybe this administration has broken so many laws by now, using the same 9/11 excuse, that another one is meaningless. Let's think about this a minute.

• The folks at Bushco have brought us a war of aggression, clearly banned by international law.
  
• They've also sponsored in-house and outsourced torture, in Afghanistan and Iraqi prisons, at Guantanamo, and secret CIA outposts in other countries -- again, clearly banned by international treaty which is the same as the law of our land.
  
• They've instituted (and are still carrying out) illegal wiretapping on US citizens.
  
• They've failed to follow the laws that Congress has written requiring them to report on their activities and they've failed to respond to legal subpoenas to boot.
  
• They've changed the meaning of the laws Congress has written by adding "signing statements" claiming they read the laws but don't necessarily intend to follow or enforce them.
  
• They've tried to fix elections by using the DOJ as one of Karl Rove's personal political tools.
  
• There's simply not enough room to list all the intentional lies they told, from "the air in NYC (3 days after 9/11) is fine to breathe" to "there's disagreement about whether human activity is causing global warming" to "We know where they are(WMD)..."

One thing I'd like to ask my sister -- what about if a Hillary Clinton took any of these actions? Or a Ted Kennedy? Or a Harry Reid? Is it only Bush who should be immune from accountability? Or does this new impunity also apply to anyone who holds the title of President of the United States?

And I keep writing and calling members of Congress -- why aren't we impeaching them already?