Lawnorder

by folkbum

I realize that the vast majority of even Bush deadenders have moved on from what had long been uncritical support of George W. Bush and his administration. They revel now in pointing out how "liberal" Bush's policies have been (pause for laughter), and try desperately to remind us that John McCain is not George W. Bush.

But you just know what would happen if Barack Obama's Attorney General (Gov. Doyle? The top contender recently became, uh, unavailable) said this about violations his own staff committed: "Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime." The calls for accountability would be deafening. From the right today? Nary a peep.

This is something a number of people have been warning about for some time, that as much as the media and the right-wing squawkers have been willing to ignore lawbreaking, lawbending, and lawrunarounding (including just today!), they will not tolerate even the barest semblance of any of that from an Obama administration. Amid sputtering about how presidential authority has long been allowed to stray from Constitutional allowances, they will demand that every letter of every sentence on every piece of paper out of the Obama White House receive the strictest scrutiny. A fourth estate that has shirked its duty for seven long years will suddenly awaken with fury.

Not that I would support illegalities, especially not on the scale of the Bush ones, coming from an Obama administration. But you know as well as I the ability of the right-wing noise machine to drive the media to drive the public's attention and the national discourse. And statements like Mukasey's "Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime" will be forgotten in the rush.