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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 1/11/09

What to Ask Eric Holder

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Is it legal for the Justice Department to issue opinions declaring violations of laws to be legal? Do such opinions have any force of law?

James Madison and George Mason argued that the U.S. Constitution should include the power of impeachment in case a president were ever to pardon a crime that he was himself involved with. Is it possible that they also believed that the pardon power included the right to engage in that very abuse, and that they simply refrained from ever pointing out this problem? Can a president legally order someone to commit murder and then pardon that murder? Can a president legally order someone to crush a boy's testicles and then pardon that testicle crushing? Would such pardons, in contrast to merely corrupt and abusive pardons such as you yourself have facilitated in the past, fail to actually be pardons at all, given their fundamental conflict with maintaining any system of law whatsoever?

Between 1 percent and 100 percent, please tell us what percentage of the crimes you would anticipate prosecuting will have already occurred when you prosecute them, as distinct from crimes you will prosecute that will not have occurred yet? Is there a deterrent value to punishing crimes? Do you believe that prosecuting crimes is in conflict with or in support of moving forward, advancing, looking to the future, and focusing on better days to come?

You once said: "The Attorney General is the one Cabinet member who's different from all the rest. The Attorney General serves first the people, but also serves the president. There has to be a closeness at the same time there needs to be distance." If there is a conflict between the law and the wishes of the president, which will guide your actions?

Will you create an independent prosecutor to prosecute the top officials responsible for crimes committed by the Bush administration?

Will you take steps to ensure that any commissions established by this Congress and/or the president do not delay or interfere with possible prosecutions or provide immunity to high-level criminals?

If an employee of the Justice Department publicly reveals criminal activity in the Justice Department while you are in charge of it, will that whistleblower be rewarded or punished?

If the House, Senate, and committees thereof reissue next week all of the subpoenas that have been illegally ignored by your predecessor, will you enforce them? If Congressional committees choose to use their own inherent power of contempt and compel the Capitol Police to imprison individuals held in contempt until they agree to testify openly and honestly before Congress, will you attempt in any way to interfere with the activities of the first branch of this government?

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David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union." He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online (more...)
 
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