Obama: Will Explore Investigation of Bush Administration As President

Here.

This is, of course, good news. However, it obviously puts Obama in a bad position. Because the Dems have relinquished their responsibilities, now Obama, who has built his candidacy around the need for bipartisanship, is left with the job of investigating the crimes of this administration. I expect that there's no one left who actually believes that investigations are not called for, though, of course, there are political motives to deny that one believes this. It's not clear to me what the outcome of such investigations would be, but nothing could be clearer than that there must be investigations. If it turns out that Bush & co. are merely scumbags, but not scumbags who broke the law, then so be it. It's genuinely terrifying, and it means that some laws will probably need to be overhauled--but if that's the way it is, that's the way it is. But it's clear that we have to know. It's our duty. In fact, it's the duty of all Democrats and Republicans, though you'd never know it. These questions need to be cleared up, for better or for worse, before the new president takes office--not, of course, that there is any real hope of that.

In my lifetime there have been three astonishingly corrupt administrations: Nixon, Reagan, and Bush '43. Er, notice any pattern here? And there's no reason to expect this sort of thing to go away if the Democrats are too cowardly to do their duty. As I've said before, I understand, though I do not agree with, Jim Wright's decision not to impeach Reagan. But in retrospect it was a mistake. Today's Dems have moved far beyond Wright, by "taking impeachment off the table," ahead of time, thus giving an already known-to-be corrupt administration carte blanche. Something's got to change, or the system of checks and balances is history.

So it will probably fall to Obama to do everyone else's job for them.

It goes without saying that Republicans will argue that to investigate the Bush administration is incompatible with bipartisanship. That argument is so transparently unsound that no one should be able to offer it with a straight face. But we'll be hearing it. Just you wait.