Hint: the answer isn't "nothing".
What makes personal corruption a greater crime than playing fast and loose with human life? Bill Clinton is impeached for lying about screwing around - not for jailing Haitian refugees he himself had said it was illegal to turn back, or for bombing Iraq, which had never attacked the US. And the W sails through 8 years without so much as an impeachment hearing when he lied about "weapons of mass destruction," overthrew two governments - very likely a third - and tried to overthrow a fourth, presided over torture and "extraordinary rendition" for the purpose of torture, and pushed deregulation and other economic policies that led directly and inexorably to the worst financial and employment crisis since the Great Depression.
Likewise Blago, refusing to raise taxes and meanwhile stealing from the state employees' pension fund (with the collaboration of the legislature, to be sure), along with other economic crimes against humanity, gets impeached and removed from office for trying to sell a US Senate seat? Not that he shouldn't have been shown the door, but there were better reasons.
Now Roland Burris, with a history of opportunism so brash he would sacrifice an innocent man's life, appointed by the then-Gov. after Blago was cuffed and escorted to the can by federal agents, after the Democratic leadership promised not to accept any Blago appointee, gets in trouble now for stuff he has probably done his whole life? He never should have been senator in the first place, but not because of sneakiness or quid pro quo.
Hitler wasn't personally corrupt, as far as we know. So I guess he would be okay nowadays?
No comments:
Post a Comment