In her excellent post entitled What Will It Take To Put Impeachment Back On The Table BlueGirl quotes an editorial in The Washington Post at length. The Post published another editorial yesterday entitled The Gonzales Coverup pretty much on the same subject.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon has some questions for Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post Editorial Board. He notes that the Post's May 17, editorial begins
WHY IS IT only now that the disturbing story of the Bush administration's willingness to override the legal advice of its own Justice Department is emerging? The chief reason is that the administration, in the person of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, stonewalled congressional inquiries and did its best to ensure that the shameful episode never came to light.Greenwald points out that basically all the necessary information has been out there for years. Then he answers the question:
(T)he Beltway establishment, led by the likes of Hiatt, decided that the President's lawbreaking was really nothing to be too bothered by, that those who objected to it were shrill and hysterical, and they found justification, or at least sufficient mitigation, to look the other way and acquiesce to the notion that the Bush administration could break the law at will and that there ought to be no real consequences arising from that behavior.He concludes
Hiatt-like protests are welcome (even if inexcusably belated), but they must be accompanied by genuine and relentless demands for follow-up and accountability otherwise they will amount to nothing more than inconsequential rhetoric. The Attorney General lied continuously, and the administration concealed pervasive criminality at the highest levels of our government. Even Fred Hiatt says so. So now what?Fred, Tim, and all of you inside the beltway establishment types, by turning a blind eye to the president's lawless actions you have been enablers.
What are the results of your handiwork? We now have a completely politicized Department of Justice led by a serial liar, a man utterly without integrity. We are bogged down in an optional war against the wrong people. Thousands have died for little or no reason other than some neo-con dream of empire. Our government engages in torture which our Attorney General and President euphemistically call "enhanced interrogation techniques." Nine of the ten Republican presidential hopefuls endorse torture. The only one who doesn't is the only one who knows anything about it. We have repealed habeas corpus, one of the bed rocks of our democracy. Our very democracy is threatened. Did I mention that Osama Bin Ladin and his gang still run free.
Our President openly and notoriously violated the law, and you all turned a blind eye. There is only one "industry" specifically protected by the Constitution--the press. It isn't protected because you had great lobbyists. It is protected because the founders knew there would be Presidents like George Bush. They protected your business to check official lawlessness. What do we do now boys? "What will be done about James Comey's revelations?"
