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Did any of you go to those Obama grassroots platform parties?

I went to meeting last week in New York sponsored by a lawyers group. Some pretty heavy hitters there, including the former head of the NY chapter of the ACLU and partners at big name-brand law firms. They had two round tables: one on regulatory matters and the other on the “rule of law.” They met separately and then shared their consensus at a wrapup session at the end.

I went to the roundtable on the rule of law.

Betcha saw that one coming a mile away, eh? OK, OK so I’m predictable. What Littleprop calls boring predictability, I like to think of as comforting reliability. I know what I like, and I like the rule of law.

So, there was this proposal put forward at the rule of law roundtable to form a “Church Commission”-like body to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by the Bush administration.

If the commission found evidence of criminal wrongdoing, then -- as with ordinary criminal investigations -- a decision could be made about referring one or more cases for prosecution. Also at that point decisions could be made about whether to have DOJ prosecute or create some kind of special prosecutor to handle the matters. That’s the system I learned. Investigation -- following the facts and the law wherever they may lead -- first, followed by charging decisions, not the other way around.

Though most of the lawyers at the roundtable seemed to think ANY notion of accountability was radical and dangerous and would surely cripple Obama in the general election, lo and behold, I see that Salon has this trial balloon on its website:

[B]ehind the scenes, a slate of foreign policy and human rights experts with various degrees of connections to the Obama campaign, some of them likely to occupy positions of authority in an Obama administration, have begun to discuss that very issue, and in great detail. What they're likely to recommend to Obama, should he become president, won't fulfill the dreams of those who've hoped for immediate criminal accountability for Bush administration officials.

Members and advisors of the administration-in-waiting have formed largely informal working groups to take up a whole host of issues related to the Bush administration's legacy, like what to do about the Guantánamo detainees. While they have not been asked to develop a formal recommendation for Obama on the question of criminal accountability for torture, those who are weighing the issue, a group that includes some of the 300 people the New York Times recently described as Obama's "mini State Department," are moving toward consensus on some key points. Specifically, don't hold your breath waiting for Dick Cheney to be frog-marched into federal court. Prosecution of any officials, if it were to occur, would probably not occur during Obama's first term. Instead, we may well see a congressionally empowered commission that would seek testimony from witnesses in search of the truth about what occurred.

--snip—
But the avenues of investigation being discussed don't necessarily rule out at least an attempt at prosecuting Bush officials at some later date. The nonpartisan presidential commission that Malinowski and other people involved in the discussions are advocating would have considerable power, granted by Congress, to force cooperation. The commission would ultimately deliver recommendations to the president that would include, among other things, whether or not Cheney deserves that walk up the courthouse steps.

The first order of business, however, would be learning the truth. "I think a lot of us feel that the American people are entitled to the whole truth," said another person who knows about the discussions. "The American people are entitled to [an investigation] from an official body that has access to the classified documents that makes as much public as it can," that person added.

The commission would focus strictly on detention, torture and extraordinary rendition, or the practice of spiriting detainees to a third country for abusive interrogations.

--snip—

Instead of offering a blanket amnesty, the fact-finding commission would delay any decisions on whether or not to attempt to prosecute any Bush administration officials for their transgressions. Given the time it would take for a commission to do its work, any such decision would probably not take place till Obama's second term. That would be in accord with what Obama said in April, in what seems to be his lone statement on the issue of accountability, about not wanting his first term to be taken up by what critics would try to characterize as political retribution.

"Something like this would be unprecedented in the American experience and I think it would be absolutely necessary," Kenneth Kitts, author of "Presidential Commissions and National Security: The Politics of Damage Control," said when informed of the rough plans for the commission. "We've had panels that have looked at scandals. We've had panels that have looked at intractable political problems," said Kitts, a political science professor at South Carolina's Francis Marion University. "But nothing in terms of looking at an issue that has this array of legal, moral and even spiritual questions attached to it."

[emphasis mine]

So, did the idea discussed at the roundtable in NYC make its way up the food chain? Or it this a case of several minds thinking alike?

All I can tell you is this seems VERY doable. Fair. Methodical. Logical. No rush to judgment. No cart before horse.

And since the Salon article appears to be a trial balloon let's see if we can give the concept some support. If you like the idea, it’s letter to the editor time. It’s Obama website blog time. It’s let us know on this thread time. If you like the idea, let’s get the word out.

graphic from vitualis flickr creative commons

[See also Marcy's earlier post on this.]