in WashPost (and among DC pols), criminal law is not for political elites

[yurbud]

I would add one exception for this: if a politician trespasses against the rich instead of the middle class, working class, or foreigners, or even has the possible inclination to, the gloves come off. Hence the hounding out of office of Gray Davis, Elliot Spitzer and any others who even cleared their throats about Wall Streets financial crimes, and the pre-emptive strike on Bill Clinton's penis that went on for his entire presidency,including an impeachment over lying about his sex life.

Starve half a million kids to death, take away their parents ability to make a living with trade deals or dumping surplus crops, or outright kill a million people that were no threat to us solely to benefit international bankers, defense contractors, and oil companies, and that is just a polite policy difference friends.

It would be worth putting together a quiz with various crimes and have people guess what the punishment was. When I tell my students about American Nazi sympathizers, and ask them what the punishment was for a guy caught doing business with the Nazis and hiding their assets after the war, they say he was probably executed. The correct answer was he paid a fine and became a US senator.

Boldface is from the original

Saturday, Jun 4, 2011 08:05 ET
WashPost: criminal law is not for political elites
By Glenn Greenwald

(updated below - Update II)

The Washington Post Editors work in a city and live in a nation in which huge numbers of poor and minority residents are consigned to cages for petty and trivial transgressions of the criminal law -- typically involving drugs -- and pursuant to processes that are extremely tilted toward the State. Post Editors virtually never speak out against that, if they ever have. But that all changes -- that indifference disappears -- when political elites are targeted for prosecution, even for serious crimes:

The Post Editors, July 3, 2007:

IN COMMUTING I. Lewis Libby's prison sentence yesterday, President Bush took the advice of, among others, William Otis, a former federal prosecutor who wrote on the opposite page last month that Mr. Libby should neither be pardoned nor sent to prison. We agree that a pardon would have been inappropriate and that the prison sentence of 30 months was excessive. . . . Add to that Mr. Libby's long and distinguished record of public service, and we sympathize with Mr. Bush's conclusion "that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive."

The Post Editors, October 27, 2007:

The biggest sticking point concerns the question of retroactive immunity from lawsuits for communications providers that cooperated with the administration's warrantless surveillance program. As we have said, we do not believe that these companies should be held hostage to costly litigation in what is essentially a complaint about administration activities.

The Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, August 30, 2009:

This is also a nation where two political parties compete civilly and alternate power peacefully. Regimes do not seek vengeance, through the courts or otherwise, as they succeed each other. Were Obama to criminally investigate his predecessor for what George W. Bush believed to be decisions made in the national interest, it could trigger a debilitating, unending cycle. . . . There is a better, though not perfect, solution, one that the administration reportedly considered, rejected and should consider again: a high-level, respected commission to examine the choices made in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, and their consequences. . . . The alternative, for Obama, is a series of debilitating revelations, prosecutions and arguments that could drip-drip-drip through the full length of his presidency.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/06/04/washpost?source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%2520Newsletter%2520%2528Not%2520Premium%2529_7_30_110