Hope!

H/t to Devin at Dkos

Joe Biden….excuse me, future Vice President, Joe Biden:

“In an Obama-Biden administration, we will not have an attorney general who blatantly breaks the law,” Biden said at a town-hall meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida, his voice at times drowned out by applause. “We will not have a president who doesn’t understand the Constitution. And I will not be a vice-president who thinks he’s not part of any of the three branches of government.”

snip

Looking to the future but with one eye on the past, Biden also promised that an Obama-Biden government would go through Bush administration data with “a fine-toothed comb” and pursue criminal charges if necessary.  

“If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation,” he said, “they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution – out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no one, no attorney general, no president, no one is above the law.”

Encouraging stuff, especially when reinforced by Obama’s previous statement to Will Bunch:

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can’t prejudge that because we don’t have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment — I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General — having pursued, having looked at what’s out there right now — are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it’s important– one of the things we’ve got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I’ve said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law — and I think that’s roughly how I would look at it.

As always don’t get your hopes TOO high! It could turn out that the big headline out of all of this is something like; Monica Goodling Charged, lol. But like the title says….hope!

At least far more hope than with Mcthuselah and Whatshername

At rhetoric about tackling corruption in Washington, John McCain does not appear too eager to look into the current administration. When asked today about supporting independent investigations into the Bush administration, McCain replied:

“I do not agree with your sentiment that there has been widespread corruption. I just don’t accept that. And by the way my friends do you think it would be nice if the President of the United States got a little bit of credit for the fact that there has not been another attack on the United States of America since 9-11? I think he deserves some credit for that. I really do.”