photo by the Eleventh Earl of Mar

Adjusting to an Obama Presidency is going to be harder for some than others.

Here’s Sheldon Whitehouse from the Eric Holder confirmation hearing:

There has been some discussion about the prosecution of false statements to Congress, in addition to the recent OIG report about false statements by Department of Justice officials to Congress. I have referred a matter involving the EPA Administrator to the Department of Justice regarding false statements made to the Environment and Public Works Committee. I think that frankly it’s been something of a recurring problem. And in addition to asking you to review the District of Columbia US Attorney’s office determination, I would ask you if you would consider working with us on what might be appropriate prosecution guidelines for such offenses and what might be appropriate notice or training to people who come before us about about the obligation that they take on when they testify. Because I think people tend to forget that are here under oath and I think I’ve heard stuff that’s everything from simply slipshod to outright cold blooded lies.

The "9/11 changed everything" crowd seem to be possessed of no firmer belief than that lying became acceptable in the aftermath for government officials when confronted by inquiry they deemed inappropriate. Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal comes to the defense of that great public servant Scooter Libby, and implores Bush to do the right thing and pardon him, or the "best people" aren’t gong to want to serve in Washington DC.

Henninger’s idea of "the best people" is obviously radical extremists who determined that the country needed to engage in nation building at any cost, or "create opportunities for democratic self-determination in a region such as the Middle East" in Henninger-speak. He has vigorously lied in the past to excuse George Bush, claiming that the Robb-Silbermann Report exonerated him on the charge that he lied about WMDs (it didn’t). He has also claimed that public disclosure Bush’s warrantless surveillance program made it ineffective (it didn’t). And the current financial meltdown? A direct result of the War On Christmas — rich robber barons and unregulated hedge funds had nothing to do with it.

He obviously has a rich fantasy life where the powerful should not be subject to the burdensome limitations of telling the truth, and writes an appropriately-titled column called "Wonder Land."

Let the subject of "illegals" come up, however, and it’s all self-righteous harumphing:

"Respect for the law" is part of the American bedrock. As Alexis de Tocqueville rightly said, each voter indirectly contributes to the making of our laws, and "however irksome an enactment may be, the citizen of the United States complies with it . . . because it originates in his own authority." That is the high-road argument against the illegal Mexicans.

Another 19th-century Frenchman close to the hearts of American conservatives is Frederic Bastiat, who had a further thought: "The surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable." Is our immigration law "respectable"? Need you ask?

The idea that there is one law for elites and another for the dirty masses has become so reflexive among the chattering class that calling for enforcement at the highest levels is dismissed as "vindictive," and sweeping the Bush Administration’s mountain of criminal acts under the carpet is deemed high minded, forward-looking and pragmatic.

Whitehouse’s statement and Holder’s affirmative response seemed such a simple and obvious exchange that it’s hard to imagine they even needed to utter these things aloud. But what they are proposing is a fundamental overhaul of the way government has operated since the "9/11 changed everything" rules went into effect. It’s a radical proposal for restoring the rule of law in a government gone rogue, and I imagine the ethically challenged punditocracy who stood on the sidelines cheering for the past eight years is going to have a rough time adjusting to the notion of one law that applies to everyone.