A good rundown on the issues involved can be found here at Glenn Greenwald's column in Salon. The best point he makes is the following:
[I]n another, more important, sense, this story reveals nothing new. As a country, we've known undeniably for almost two years now that we have a lawless government and a President who routinely orders our laws to be violated. His top officials have been repeatedly caught lying outright to Congress on the most critical questions we face. They have argued out in the open that the "constitutional duty" to defend the country means that nothing -- including our "laws" -- can limit what the President does.
It has long been known that we are torturing, holding detainees in secret prisons beyond the reach of law and civilization, sending detainees to the worst human rights abusers to be tortured, and subjecting them ourselves to all sorts of treatment which both our own laws and the treaties to which we are a party plainly prohibit. None of this is new.
And we have decided, collectively as a country, to do nothing about that. Quite the contrary, with regard to most of the revelations of lawbreaking and abuse, our political elite almost in unison has declared that such behavior is understandable, if not justifiable. And our elected representatives have chosen to remain largely in the dark about what was done and, when forced by court rulings or media revelations to act at all, they have endorsed and legalized this behavior -- not investigated, outlawed or punished it.
When I first heard about the whole thing, my reaction was, "Yeah, so?" After all, the only guarantee we had that such was no longer practiced was the word of the Bush Administration. That's worth less than the paper I am writing this on right now (for those who might be wondering - there is no paper). The entire thing has a bit of the Casablanca feel to it. All those harrumphing Senators and Congress members, all the wide-eyed, slack-jawed journalists, and the idiotic lying Dana Perinno - it's all theater because, except perhaps for the journalists who might just be that stupid, no one should be "Shocked! Shocked!" that torture was re-authorized by the Bush Administration (once again, please do not insult my intelligence by questioning my use of the word "torture" - it is what it is).
And yet, no one does anything. As Glenn notes in the linked article, when confronted by the facts, the Democrats in Congress, who are in charge of the agenda, and who have promised to reign in the lawlessness, pass laws legalizing what was previously illegal, and shielding perpetrators from legal sanction. Leahy huffs and puffs and puts out statements and posts video of him acting all indignant as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee - but he's as spineless as a sea-slug, constantly pushing back due-dates for information and paperwork from the Bush Administration, postponing ever and anon the threatened subpoenas. The Bush Administration, like any three-year-old, has learned that Leahy's threats are empty, his posturing theater, and his spine non-existent (I wonder what kind of parent Patrick Leahy was, considering his lack of follow-through).
This entire problem could be solved with some judicious subpoenas and the right question to the right person at the right time. First, however, every single Democrat in Congress has to have it pounded in to their skulls that every word that flows from the Bush Administration is false, every guarantee worthless, every promise empty, and every outrage and accusation of law-breaking and double-dealing even more true than imagined at first blush. Thus it has been since Jan 20, 2001, thus it will be until Jan 19, 2009.
