Greenwald votes for legality, too
With his deeper knowledge of sources to sustain the argument, Glenn Greenwald also insists that the decision on whether the telco law violations will be institutionalized go to the foundation of governmental legitimacy. The rule of law must be sacrosanct.
The corruption and sleaze here is so transparent and extreme. We’re just sitting by watching as telecoms right in front of our faces purchase from government officials the right to be exempt from lawsuits currently pending in our court system. Government officials, more or less on a bipartisan basis, are about to intervene in these lawsuits and prevent them from proceeding to a determination of whether telcoms violated numerous, long-standing laws. And Fred Hiatt and David Ignatius and Joe Klein and virtually all Beltway “journalistic” opinion-makers think that is the right thing to do, just as they insisted that the President and his aides should never be subjected to consequences for their lawbreaking either.
By definition, our Beltway establishment does not believe in the rule of law — at least not for them. They are creating a completely segregated, two-track system where high Beltway officials and their corporate enablers arrogate unto themselves the power to decide when they can break the law. They are thus literally exempt from our laws, even our criminal laws, while increasingly harsh, merciless, and inflexible punishments are doled out for the poorest and least connected criminals — who receive no consideration of any kind, let alone presidential commutations or special laws written for them by Congress retroactively rendering legal their patently criminal behavior.
The Telecom Immunity law that Congress seems well on its way to enacting is one of the most conclusive pieces of evidence yet not only that our Royal Beltway Court is corrupt and decayed at its core. It also proves that they no longer care who knows it.
And as I asserted earlier today, if Congressional members accede to this lawbreaking, they become accomplices after the fact. And then it’s up to us to deny them any right to claim to be a government.
We can swear no allegiance to a criminal gang, no matter what titles they bear. If they refuse to be an actual government, we are without one. We will have to form a new one or as a nation, we’ll simply cease to be.
