There are always tons of "good reasons" to avoid doing the right thing.  It is a wonder really that we as a society live in relative peace.

Basically, I am falling into a place I never thought I'd be able to inhabit - a place of deep cynicism.  I feel alienated from my representatives (the few that I really have) and I am having a more and more difficult time believing in this country as I once knew it.  I certainly have no respect for our leadership anymore.  My faith in humanity is waning and I sure as hell don't believe Americans are anything more than a bunch of pathetic bullies who hide behind secret memos, secret deals and under KKK-like hoods doing "secret" destruction.

For Turley, there is no debate, the answer is simple. Are we "a nation of laws," or is Obama a king, who by personal fiat can wipe criminal laws off the books? The message sent around the world would be that in the United States we have two sets of people, those who must obey the law, and those, who by Presidential decree, are above the law.

Now that the memos have been released, we have to prosecute, because of how evil we'll otherwise look to the rest of the world.

Obama has taken over for Bush in defending questionable actions.  He has to take this prosecution on.

As it stands, we have no leg to stand on when it comes to torture.

The safety of our military around the world both now and in case of war depends on getting the high ground back.  

If these memos really were a get-out-of-jail card for the people who followed them, that doesn't mean that nobody was responsible.  It makes it all the more important to determine who was responsible for creating this policy, whether the memos were generated in good faith, and a general airing of our dirty laundry.

We don't need a truth commission.  If you want a non-prosecutorial body to investigate the executive branch, then we have that in the form of congress.  Every single person who wrote and researched these memos should be sitting in front of a Senate committee next week explaining under oath how they came to write these memos.  Was there a review process?  Was there anyone pressing for a particular outcome?  I have no doubt that the story which will emerge is that someone ordered them to produce a legal justification for torture just like someone ordered the CIA to produce some evidence for the existence of weapons of mass destruction.   Even if there is no legal culpability, the person (or people) who was pushing our country in this direction needs to be identified and needs to tell us why they were not honest enough to come forward and explain the direction they would like to take our country.

We did that with Iran-Contra, other unconstitutional stuff from the Reagan crew, and what did we get? We got more and worse. From many of the same people involved in the Reagan stuff and Nixon illegalities.

So, what's the message? What do we want? What kind of government will we accept?

Lacking the eloquence to truly express the sadness I feel, I turn to a man who set the moral tone regarding the evil of torturing our captives and who helped set our nation on the path to the moral heights we once occupied.  At this time, I believe we should all reflect upon the words of our first president:

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country."

-- George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775.  

How is a decision not to prosecute today not a repudiation of Nuremberg?

I would feel much better about not prosecuting the people who did obey these orders if the DOJ announced it was going after lawyers and going after the law licenses of the lawyers who enabled this.

Future administrations should know they cannot just hide behind any lawyer they hire who gives them the legal opinion they seek.

I cannot believe that in the United States of America we are even discussing the reasons to not prosecute. If we do not forcefully address this it will happen again.

People are rabid about the debt they think we will leave our children, but when it comes to whether or not we leave them a country with any moral compass, we get crickets. WTF!

Their memos would not withstand the scrutiny of a 1L.  Bybee rewrites statutory language "pain or suffering" to read "pain and suffering" in order to conclude suffering without pain is OK. Ridiculous and clearly erroneous legal reasoning and a federal circuit court judge should know that.

Bybee also knew with substantial certainty that once distributed his knowingly faulty analysis would result in others actually torturing human beings.  

That said, I feel, in some ways, the same -- just because it could have been so much, much worse.

And that said, I think that Obama did the something that was more right than wrong, but in a rather narrowly construed (if that's the word) case. This is certainly miles better than Bush's bad applies, where he just throws the losers over the side. And I can believe that some did get caught up in the moment (there but for the grace of [your higher power] go I) -- trapped in the evil, Stanford Experiment that the criminal Bush regime deliberately created. (see the New Yorker's heartbreaking Exposure. Yes, that soldier was wrong, but she was made to go wrong by people who were much colder than she ever became.)

But I'm with andgarden. "Someone needs to be held responsible for this, or we all will be." And whoever does that accounting would be right. Bybee has to go as a judge. All of them who have tenure need to lose it. All of the generals who knew should be cashiered. And if Versailles can't prosecute the ringleaders, then they should let the Spanish do it.

I'm glad those convicted were pardoned, as they shouldn't have been prosecuted in the first place.

I think Obama really wants to prosecute but weighs the possibility that he could loose any progress he thinks he has made.

I have spoken with several senior US Senators on this issue, and each has said the same thing. Two are Dems.

Too much of politics and running our country has already become too criminalized. Generally speaking, criminal laws should not be used in matters that are mostly policy or politics, in my view.

In this situation, lawyers provided their opinions, and others, including rank and file, relied on the opinions. How could we possibly go after rank and file people who followed the orders of superiors and the opinions of lawyers.

Even if the administration pushed or encouraged the lawyers to come to the conclusions they came to, this is and should not be a criminal offense--for either the non-lawyers or the lawyers. Clients and companies, as well as policy makers, push lawyers on their opinions, and press them to re-consider, re-think or move their opinions, all the time. Good lawyers consider the views of clients and re-consider or re-think, but they won't move beyond what they believe is reasonable or supportable. While I don't know, I'm assuming that this is probably all that was done in this situation, if even this was done.

Some of the other legal memos on this subject, or portions of them, have been out previously. From having glanced at them previously, I thought they were relatively credible on their face. That is not to say that the criticism coming from experts and professors on the subject was not justified or correct. That is not to say I have any expertise in this area.

I don't think that's what he meant. I can't believe any of us, Armando and Jeralyn included, would defend it.

In Dutchess County, things have come to a halt. In order for the recount to proceed, elections officials from both sides must be present.

... they couldn't complete the recount because Republican elections Commissioner David Gamache was attending a Yankees game this afternoon.

On the other hand, getting tangled right now in an extremely divisive legal battle, would make it difficult for Obama to pass his ambitious health care, education, environment/energy program.

And this is the guy we're supposed to trust to help the auto companies?

In March, Steven Rattner, the leader of the Obama Administration's auto task force, was the man who sat face to face with General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner at a Treasury Department meeting, and fired him.

Now it's Rattner's turn on the hot seat.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday night that Rattner was involved with payments at the center of an investigation into an alleged kickback scheme at New York state's pension fund. Sourcing their information to a "person familiar with the matter," Journal reporters Craig Karmin and Peter Lattman reported that Rattner, who was then an executive at Quadrangle Group, an investment firm he co-founded, met with a "politically connected" consultant to discuss a finder's fee. Quadrangle later paid a $1.1 million fee, and received a $100 million investment from the New York State Common Retirement Fund.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been investigating whether payments to middle men by private equity firms including Quadrangle constituted improper kickbacks in exchange for investments from the pension fudn, which is worth $122 billion.

Part of the problem I'm having is I can't figure out how they could conduct a non-secret trial for any of the operator-level interrogators without sacrificing our intelligence capacity (I'm guessing these interrogators all have significant field records and overseas contacts that would be jeopardized or lost--or even killed--in the event of an open prosecution).