Comments on: Maybe, Going Forward, We Should Just Let Bernie Madoff Off?

By: MarkH

MarkH — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:59:23 +0000

If Obama doesn’t want Holder to investigate, then the least they can do is open files, so that those who might try to investigate & prosecute will have the needed information.

By: MarkH

MarkH — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:57:39 +0000

Wasn’t Sadam taken out because he had the capability and desire to reconstitute his WMD programs?

No.

By: AitchD

AitchD — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:59:48 +0000

Bully. You know, it’s like possible, even likely, that POTUS Carter’s amnesty for draft-dodgers put the venom into the wingers’ cold, black hearts, turning them to stone. You put their Big Shots in jail, you make unjust martyrs of them.

This wish for prosecution and punishment has 1865 ’s scent wafting around it.

So, yeah, I’d like to hear a ‘malice toward none, charity for all’ approach - but our new POTUS must condemn what he says he won’t condone, and he must name names.

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:20:04 +0000

That’s funny?

By: ekunin

ekunin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:46:21 +0000

During the Korean conflict I was stationed in Germany. I visited Dachau, a concentration camp and purchased an illustrated booklet in three languages with pictures of piles of bodies and other atrocities. The place was cleaned up but you smelled something in the chamber with the gas jets in the ceiling. As a Jew, I resented and felt superior to the Germans who I thought never should have let the Holocaust happen. Then came Vietnam. I joined a silent vigil and learned how difficult it was for me to keep my mouth shut for thirty minutes, protested here and there but nothing serious, nothing like the kids getting beat up in Chicago.

After that I changed my mind about the Germans. I saw how easy it was for a nation, me, to get led astray. What do you do when the choice is being a concentration camp guard or a concentration camp inmate? Just about everyone on this blog seems, like me, to have sat out the Bush years. Oh we made bitter comments, but that was it. Unless we manage to change things, it will happen again. Sure the guilty should be punished, but what if they’re not? What do we do? Do we say this too shall pass and hunker down hoping no one comes knocking on our door?

By: dakine01

dakine01 — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:44:55 +0000

So where do you draw the line at letting potential crimes not be investigated and possibly charged and punished? Only charge and punish poor people? Murder? Assault and rapes? What about embezzlement? Thievery only by porr people but not be rich? Single acts of espionage or conspiracies?

Where do YOU draw the line?

Or is Law and Order just the title of a TV show and nothing more?

By: oldoilfieldhand

oldoilfieldhand — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:36:42 +0000

Wasn’t Sadam taken out because he had the capability and desire to reconstitute his WMD programs?

By: FreedomNow

FreedomNow — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:32:24 +0000

I really don’t think the country wants a string of trials a la the English, French and Russian revolutions, where folks literally lost their heads over political disagreements. Let Obama use the political process to attempt to get his way, and let the current Administration retire…

By: Arbusto

Arbusto — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:22:18 +0000

Obama sure seems able to avoid responsibility, so far. So the first $350 billion is lost in the financial ether to be followed by another $350 billion, yet not on Obamas watch! Congress is promising more oversight this time. Yeh, pull the other one.

By: newspaperbrat

newspaperbrat — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:10:06 +0000

Oh dear, dear Jane I do so wish I could share your take:

“Obama’s appointment of Eric Holder and Leon Panetta, who have made strong statements against torture, does indeed imply that he intends to “get it right” going forward.”

I don’t know much about Eric Holder but I do know Panetta a whole lot better from his early career embrace of republican values through the end of his career in the House to present time. The conventional wisdom among my skeptical fellows, the former congressman, cum Clinton appointee is not really the brightest politician nor particularly loyal to the democratic party.

He was a tool of PG&E during a decade long grass roots battle to stop a supertanker port on Monterey bay. His recovery from that debacle was the one smart strategy I’ve ever observed him embrace when he embraced legislation making Monterey Bay a marine sanctuary. Never mind that it would have passed with or without his support.

His appointment by Obama to head CIA was met with shock by this ole brat and other district environmental activists who know what a light weight compromiser and egotiscal operative that dot his record of public service.

I’m just saying (and sadly) while he isn’t the brightest bulb in the new administration I will concede he is a loyal advocate of issues that are less bi-partisan then they appear. The only question is one never really knows which party he is, at heart, representing at any given time.