It's all here

If you want to read exactly what we've been subjected to for the last eight years, and just how utterly lawless the Bush Administration has been, it's all here, in living, lurid black and white. (Note: This is a very long PDF file and may take a while to download.)

For all that I was as outraged as anyone when Barack Obama made the incomprehensible and ridiculous statement on Sunday that no one is above the law and yet we should look forward, I would hope that after reading this report (assuming he does), he would change his mind -- after the inauguration, that is, after there's no longer the possibility of George W. Bush issuing a blanket pardon to his entire administration.

But there are those who believe that you just don't move forward and forget about it when crimes of the magnitude of those committed by the Bush Administration are staring you right in the face. And the amusingly-named Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island is one of them:

"I think that there's a lot that remains to look at, and I appreciate that President Obama doesn't want to make it his purpose as a new president, with America in real distress in many directions, to go back and look at all this, but I think we in Congress have an independent responsibility, and I fully intend to discharge that responsibility,"

If you or I robbed a bank and then claimed it was to protect our families from eviction or foreclosure, or to get the money for medical care for our child because we have no insurance, we would not escape prosecution by claiming "family security", nor would we be able to stand before a judge and say "That's all in the past, I think it's more important to look toward the future." The Bush Administration shouldn't be able to either.

(h/t: ThinkProgress)