If there’s one thing that many of us are good at it’s choosing which aspects of government we claim to be for and which we claim to be against when it suits our purposes. Given the nonsense that the national healthcare debate has sparked in the United States, though calling it a debate is entirely misrepresentative, it’s not been uncommon to see many railing against what they perceive to be the dangers of big government and their belief that the very existence of American democracy is at stake. Many of those people tend to evoke the sanctity of the Constitution claiming that its principles are under threat by an administration bent on conducting a full blown authoritarian crusade.

Despite the fact that it utterly boggles the mind that this sort of tripe is getting the attention that it is, there are those in the United States that actually believe that President Obama is a radical bent on transforming the nation into something unrecognizable – and all because of proposed healthcare legislation that in most every other industrialized nation in the world would be considered weak at best. It is here that a very important question has to be asked though – what about the transgressions of the Bush Administration with regards to the Constitution?

Like it or not, the passing of the Patriot Act was one of the most glaring attacks on the sanctity of the Constitution in US history. Further, other initiatives implemented during the Bush era were also equally as shocking, such as warrantless wiretaps, illegal detention, and the implementation of a system of prisoner abuse that was, by no means, the brainchild of ‘a few bad apples’ at Abu Ghraib. Those that spoke out about those issues were, of course, viewed as absolute lunatics at the time by the very same people that are now using the ‘sanctity’ of the Constitution to defend their position.

Lost in the white noise currently prevalent in the US is Attorney General Eric Holder’s preliminary investigation into the use of torture by the CIA. With regards to the ‘sanctity’ of the principles of the Constitution, never mind federal criminal law, this issue trumps almost everything else.

From CIA veteran Ray McGovern…

“For the CIA supervisors and operatives responsible for torture, the chickens are coming home to roost; that is, if President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder mean it when they say no one is above the law – and if they don’t fall victim to brazen intimidation.

Unable to prevent Holder from starting an investigation of torture and other war crimes that implicate CIA officials past and present, those same CIA officials, together with what those in the intelligence trade call “agents of influence” in the media, are pulling out all the stops to quash the Justice Department’s preliminary investigation.

In what should be seen as a bizarre twist, seven CIA directors – including three who are themselves implicated in planning and conducting torture and assassination – have asked the president to call off Holder.

Please, tell me how could the whole thing be more transparent?

The most vulnerable of the Gang of Seven, George Tenet, is not the brightest star in the heavens, but even he was able to figure out years ago that he and his accomplices might end up having to pay a heavy price for violating international and U.S. criminal law.

In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet notes that what the CIA needed were “the right authorities” and policy determination to do the bidding of then-president George W. Bush:

“Sure, it was a risky proposition when you looked at it from a policy maker’s point of view. We were asking for and we would be given as many authorities as CIA had ever had. Things could blow up. People, me among them, could end up spending some of the worst days of our lives justifying before congressional overseers our new freedom to act.” (p. 178)

Tenet and his masters assumed, correctly, that given the mood of the times and the lack of spine among lawmakers, congressional “overseers” would relax into their accustomed role as congressional overlookers.

Unfortunately for him, Tenet seems to have confined his concern at the time to the invertebrates in Congress, not anticipating a rejuvenated Justice Department that might take its role in enforcing the law seriously.”

In the end, you can lie a nation into war, you can even disregard international and domestic law, and people will tolerate it. But try and propose changes to ensure that those without heath coverage are going to receive it and all hell breaks loose.

Now you tell me – what’s wrong with this picture?