I don't think this one is quite getting it.

A growing chorus of critics is demanding the creation of a special commission to "investigate" the Bush administration's alleged abuses of power, especially prosecution of the war on terrorism. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy called for a "truth commission" last week, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. has introduced legislation to establish a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties.

...

They should think twice. Attempting to prosecute political opponents at home or facilitating their prosecution abroad, however much one disagrees with their policy choices while in office, is like pouring acid into our democratic machinery. As the history of the late, unlamented independent counsel statute taught, once a Pandora's box is opened, its contents can wreak havoc equally across the political and party spectrum. If, for example, al-Qaeda is nothing more than a criminal conspiracy -- as some have claimed for many years -- President Obama's charge sheet has already been started. By authorizing continued Predator missile attacks against al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he has directly targeted those "civilians" with deadly force. That is a war crime.

Obama and the Democratic Congress are entitled to revise and reject any or all of the Bush administration's policies. But no one is entitled to hound political opponents with criminal prosecution, whether directly or through the device of a commission, and those who support such efforts now may someday regret the precedent it sets. Claims that the Bush administration abused presidential powers have been thoroughly reviewed by several congressional committees, and the Justice Department is capable of considering whether any criminal charges are appropriate. If H.R. 104 or a similar bill is passed by Congress, Obama should nip in the bud this recipe for a continuing political vendetta and veto the legislation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021601100.html

Reading the thoughts of Washington insiders is not generally illuminating. It is like asking of an onlooker at a house party his opinion of the gang rape that is occurring in one of the bedrooms. The closer one is to an event, the less his appreciation of it reflects a proper context. Really only someone outside the house possesses the context that such an act conflicts with social norms.

This is not some mere policy dispute. We're talking torture, fake wars, jackboots in the streets with M-16s, Achtung! moments of the demanding of papers, spiriting people off to foreign hellholes never to be heard from again, and eavesdropping.

Let me tell you geniuses what's happening. Your government lies in ruins. This nation no longer is in possession of lawful government. This is not a policy dispute. This is an act of war, by a foreign nation upon the United States. You have been destroyed as soundly as if tanks had rumbled down the street.

The United States has been conquered and no longer exists.

This country teeters on the knife's edge between bloody, violent revolution and a peaceful, government-sanctioned accounting of crimes. Pick one.

As goes the spiritual, so goes the physical. All the moral ingredients are there for a massive, bloody, messy, destructive revolution. The "government" has acted so lawlessly that it actually has published to the people --no less effectively than had it taken out a full-page ad in the paper-- that it is now morally proper to ignore it and, indeed, to remove it by force lest it cause further destruction of the American system of morality. Add to that that the people's bellies will be empty in six months.

You truly don't see this yet, do you?

You don't moan to a hungry man that his concern is the result of a policy dispute. He will shoot you down in the street as soon as look at you. ...and he will have every moral right to do so.

A government-sanctioned accounting of events is the last chance to salvage this stinking mess called United States.

...'cause you don't want a violent revolution. Messy, messy, messy. They rarely end well.