I gave the matter some thought.

The opposition snipes at whatever the new administration does or sets in train to be done.  They are waiting for a flub, a screwup, a misstep, so they can say they told us so, Obama's naïve, Obama's incompetent.  Some people figure the progressives, just as disenfranchised, have joined the chorus.

In the matter of the president's Justice Department and the president himself being willing to let the torture issue slide, for instance, the left has been insistent. 

Firstly, nothing can stop the screwup, whatever it will be, from happening, so they will ultimately have their talking point.  Nobody can go forever without tripping up.  The thing to do about that is ignore it, as you do all inevitable things which you can't plan against very well. It wouldn't help your chances anyway to be fretting all the time about how you can't afford to screw up.

Being less yappy is a good idea, all told. I can see that. We can make our points without rancor. 

The time will come, just as inevitably as the screwup the opposition is hoping for, when there's enough evidence to begin charging people with crimes. Justice or H.S. will doubtless need to have been involved in the investigations to produce that evidence, even before that.

And in both cases, investigating and prosecuting, the executive must be prepared to do its duty.  This kind of crime-- not mere theft, murder, assault, and kidnap but abuse of power by agents of the state-- is particularly tied to impunity.

Impunity enables corruption, and impunity sets the stage for the police state.  Of all the laws to set aside for the sake of political expediency, the ones which curb abuse of state power lose the most from lapses in enforcement. 

I didn't teach constitutional law at Harvard, like some people did.  But it seems to me, as a layman, that the executive's function is faithfully to execute the laws of the republic.  There's getting to be far and away too much case law and precedent establishing features of an imperial presidency, one which sets aside inconvenient laws at whim. 

Reagan at least had to spend a few hours telling us he didn't remember, didn't remember, when his office flouted the limits of its power, but for Cheney and Bush, impeachment was off the table despite blowing off habeas corpus, blowing off congressional subpoena, flouting due process and proper warrant procedures, starting wars unilaterally in violation of treaty and so on.  Cheney was asked on television if he cared what the American people thought about any of this, and he replied with an unadorned no.  No one lifted a finger to curb this stuff but a few progressives, the rest of whose party ducked.

The constitution goes on in detail about impeachment in several places.  It's a political process designed to curb imperial presidencies and pull the plug on lifetime appointees who abuse their position.  It was at their disposal, once they had a majority.

Say what you like about the Republican party, it knows how to act like an opposition.  The party now being given a chance to run things mostly rolled over and played dead, passing the Military Commissions Act, two PATRIOT Acts, abdicating their war powers, and ultimately, with majorities in hand, refusing to impeach.

Now, they too want to set aside laws which they don't like.  Perhaps they want an imperial presidency.  If they refuse to act about this sort of thing, I think we will have to consider that.