Just thinking of Moro makes me heartened.
And he had allies; surely, there are more.

However, while respecting the factual record that you point to, including Comey’s Padilla Presser, I want to ask for consideration on their behalf of possible mitigating circumstances, that are by no means clear, which may serve to expand your consideration.

My proposition here says that the Bush Administration is littered with good men and good women who found themselves in the almost surreal situation of being told that – in this time of national emergency – President Bush had become Empowered Without Limit in order to Defend the Country from the Forces of Terror – and that Bush had ‘taken-on’ the entire Moral Burden for Doing the Right Thing on Behalf of the Country.

That’s the only way it could work: he gets the unlimited-President Power, but Solely Owns the Morality of the Use of that Power.

The impact of introducing a Moral Arbiter above the Structure of the Constitution is hard to estimate, but in the case of the Haydens and Comeys of the Administration, they were immediately confronted with a Serious Conundrum:

Within the Structure of the Constitution, all these good men and good women were expected to Behave Ethically, with Exemplary Character, because they are Personally Responsible for the Rightness of their Actions – Actions of both Commission and Omission.

However, just over the line in unlimited-President Land, in BushWorld – Since Bush Owned All the Morality – what was Personal Responsibility for the Rightness of their Actions under the Constitution Was Now “Loyalty.”

So, the Haydens and Comeys and Goldsmiths found themselves straddling two worlds – Rule-of-Law-Land and BushWorld – and that has proved to be damn tricky for everyone.

These guys and gals are charged with Leading the War on Terror. They want to put every tool legally possible into the Fight – anything less to them would be Un-Patriotic.

Right off the bat, Bush tells them – Hey You All, in this time of National Emergency – this Threat to the Existence of the Nation – from Terror – I’m invoking my inherent authority in Article II to become the unlimited-President, the Legality of which is Dependent on Certain Pre-Conditions that will be Re-Certified every 45 days, which are:

President acting as CIC in Time of War (Afghanistan and Iraq) and National Emergency (Terrorist Alert color-coding).

So, according to the Never-Judicially-Tested Yoo Theory of the Unitary Executive, that Theory’s proposition for its Legality stood on nothing more than Bush, Cheney, Addington and Gonzo getting together and drawing-up a four page paper that sez: Pres/CIC/War/Emer = Unitary Executive = unlimited President.

Every 45 days, Ashcroft would turn-on CNN and see for himself that Bush was still President, acting as the Commander in Chief, we were still at War, and Chertoff was Blinking the Terrorist Alert Level like a Semaphore Signal – so, he would sign-off on the Re-Certification of Legality for Bush to have the Powers of the unlimited-President.

Upon that foundation, Bush demanded Unquestioned Loyalty over Ethical Character Considerations – it was ‘play ball’ or go spend more time with your family.

It was ‘OK’ with Bush if he pushed his subordinates ‘over the line’ of propriety, out of Loyalty. In fact, many of the early Goopers practically made a cottage industry of demonstrating their loyalty by trashing the ‘rules’ openly – making a fealty offering to Bush – Rove really liked it.

But many of the good men and good women really struggled hard with the horns of the Bush Dilemma:

Loyalty to a Legally Empowered unlimited-President or Maintenance of Professional Ethical Responsibility on Behalf of his or her Constitutional Organization?

So, all the good men and good women slopped around for years, inside the system, trying to get their arms around what the hell was going on. This was made all the more difficult because Bush invoked his unlimited-President Powers in Secret. Trying to even ‘define’ approaches to Test the Beast must have seemed like swinging blindly at a pinata, with no luck for years, until Comey finally broke through.

But, along the way, all those good men and good women splashed all over the line of legality. All of them, who spent any meaningful amount of time in BushCo, look ethically/legally challenged from some angles – and some of them are, I’m certain, actually ethically/legally challenged.

But, I give them all the benefit of the doubt for now. Here’s why:

Bush Failed in His End of the UE Proposition. He was supposed to take-on the Entire Nation’s Moral Responsibility for Action Against Terror, otherwise he couldn’t actually be the unlimited-President.

So, Bush Should have been The Moral Beacon for All of US. The absolute paragon of virtue – the very embodiment of American Honor, Prestige and Reputation – The Shining Example for All of US.

If that Were the case, then I believe Hayden, Comey, Goldsmith, et al, would have had No Problem ’seeing’ clear bright lines of legality springing from the Treasure Chest of 230 years of Precedent and Law. We would have pursued Al Qaeda, with focused purpose and maximum legal force – backed by everything good Our Forebears ever bequeathed to US, as well as everything that Our Global Neighbors have respected US for as Peacemakers.

But, Noooooooooo! Instead, the example of Bush produced Torture, Domestic Surveillance, Firing USAs for Dis-Loyalty, Outing a Spy to Discredit a Critic, and at least an Outrage a Day for eight years.

I’m trying to say that in many cases, especially those who straddled the boundary between the Constitution and the UE, imvho, it would be presumptive at this point to – in many cases – to ‘tag’ someone as a bad guy before we know the extent to which Bush’s Complete Lack of Moral Conscience, working behind a screen of Secrecy, may have manipulated them ‘over the line.’

I suspect a lot of good Americans had their Patriotic Fervor Duped Right Out of them in nefarious service to Bush’s “Above the Law, and Beyond Right and Wrong” Anything-to-Win Ideology.

There just doesn’t seem to be any way anyone could have ’stayed in the system to fix it’ without getting covered in bush-slime in the process.

But, all this is just my best guess, and comes with all the usual caveats and fine print…

Politics becomes business by other means.
And we end up with Palin and the Rovians, who view politics as serving corporate interests.

And that refers back to my post on boundaries.

bmaz, that Rolling Stone article you link to was chilling. And the WaPo definitely committed an act of journalism with the McCain article you linked — very disturbing issues raised by very credible observers — including Sen Pete Domenici (!).

Wow, this is one very strange election…!

He’s also willingly allowed and participated in selling to Congress the lies about the inability to get emergency surveillance for the kidnap situation when they were trying to jam through earlier rounds of unconstitutional surveillance legislation. He “testified around” matters that he has to have known about, like the hospital showdown, the two FISCt Chief Justices telling DOJ and through DOJ, NSA, that the program was unconstitutional, he’s not blinked at endorsing Executive branch whim over Judicial findings of illegality and unconstitutionality, and he’s whored out the whole of NSA to protect telecoms from Amnesty when the only thing they had as a fig leaf was a MILITARY ORDER to NSA that renewed at intervals as authorization.

Civilian telecoms gettting expiation for breaking the law bc of a domestically issued and domestically OPERATIVE military order?

He’s been a lie, wrapped in – another lie, wrapped in an eni…another lie. And he’s knowingly jumped from major felonies at NSA to torture and lies to the courts and evidence destruction at CIA. Why? Bc he would. Not many are that void of value.

JMO, but a strongly held one.