Oxy Morons At Work: Bush Justice

One of the questions that comes up from time to time here (and presumably elsewhere) concerns the legitimacy (or otherwise) of using 9/11 as a "litmus test". In other words, if somebody has a different view of 9/11 than you do, can you still pay attention to what he writes, and can you still take him seriously on other issues?

I have been critical of Scott Horton [photo] over his position on 9/11 and Afghanistan, which I regard as relatively uninformed.

But I'm absolutely uninformed about plenty of topics, and clearly the world has become so complex that nobody can be well-informed about everything.

So I don't buy the "litmus test" approach, and Scott Horton provides an excellent illustration of my reasoning: on issues he knows well, Horton paints huge, vital scenes, and he does it with powerful strokes.

In "Bush Justice Department Goes After Another Democratic Lawyer (And Why This is Bad News for Yoo and Bradbury)", Scott Horton gives yet another example of the Bush administration's use of the rule of law -- as a political weapon.

If applied to their own, it would mean prison time for the lot of them.

So instead they use it capriciously against the people who dare to cross their path. How quaint!

It’s beginning to sound like a stuck record. Another strike by the Bush Justice Department, keeping the country safe. Who’s the target this time? A crack dealer? An al Qaeda terrorist? No. It’s a wing-tip shoed Miami lawyer, who served as president of the bar association, is held in universally high esteem (outside, of course, of the political hacks who run the Bush Justice Department) and who advised Al Gore in the 2000 Florida recount battle. According to the Justice Department, the lawyer’s involvement with Democratic politics has nothing to do with his being charged. Quite a few of his contemporaries are having problems buying that, and still bigger problems understanding his supposed “crime.”

What? Who? What's the crime? What's the charge? And what does this all have to do with Yoo and Bradbury?

The crux of the matter is this: Yoo and Bradbury gave legal opinions, widely held to be erroneous, which are now being used to shield torturers from accountability.

But Bush's department of "justice" is prosecuting a Florida attorney because of an opinion he gave which they say was incorrect and led to a crime.

Absurd? That's not the half of it. You have to read the whole piece. Horton spells it all out very clearly.

It's hypocrisy of the highest order, as we've grown (shrunk?) to expect from the Criminal Elite who run this country -- accusing a political opponent, on the flimsiest of evidence (or none at all), of something they do all the time, and quite openly.

Glug glug glug. Wake up and smell the Kool-Aid!