Indeed. That would be great, I think.
 But ever since 9/11 the use of criminal prosecution, and indeed the whole notion of the courts as effective support for a civilized response to crime has just melted away. I think in part because empires seem to require a two-tiered administrative structure, with legal immunity for the enforcers,
and of course because so much of current actions are illegal in themselves.

The greatest victim of empire-think has been the whole notion of living under a system of laws that are recognized as in the main just, and are therefore obeyed, in the main.
There is no crime so heinous that good connections can't bury. "Enhanced Interrogation" indeed.
The social glue has largely melted.  

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

energy is the key to change. obama needed/needs to point to that way forward if he wants to be known as more than just america's first black president.

it's a triple win, socially, economically and politically, actually a quadruple, because ecologically is more important than the other 3 put together.

of course the lobbyists against that drive would be immensely powerful and active, but still having a presidential imprimatur on this angle of attack would galvanise it further.

he should be pounding on this message night and day, week after week, using all the considerable charm at his disposal, to convince the electorate of his good faith regarding this issue.

scratch any OCW supporter, i bet you'd find near unanimous agreement, yet it's not on any street signs at the protest that i have seen yet, (doesn't mean they aren't there.)

it's the only logical step, the unspoken half of what could/should be his jobs bill, which as it stands will not pass, seeing the surreal levels of obstructionism he has to grapple with.

there are so many lefty proposals he has ignored, even trampled on, in his pathetic eagerness not to disappoint those who taxi'd him to where he is in their mission to exploit him to further their own sachsy, warmachine agendas.

he shows no signs of bending to populist pressure, he is ahead of any repug so far in the game, and i think his touchingly naive belief in his financial advisors
 has blinded him to how it really is down on main st.

i'm cutting him slack here, as half of me hates how well he campaigns compared to how he governs, it has left all but the most credulous feeling bitterly let down, but he's fairly safe politically, the way the wind's blowing now, as no repug candidate is convincing a majority of even hard GOPers that he has a clue what better to do, if obama is in a bubble, -and he is-, the GOP are so busy trying to recreate 1955 that they are even more out of touch with reality down on the ground.

he still may have a chance of recapturing the momentum that got him to the WH, but it would take him doggedly facing down the nuke, MIC, and oil lobbies, without much support from congress or the senate.

this fake war is being sprouted in case the OCW movement goes to kent state levels of repression, and obama were to decide to mollify and a populus enraged by watching its innocent youth cut down by a heartless status quo.

bolton will leap out of the shadows to be the 'no-nonsense' leader the country will crave to unite under, with a blizzard of supportive media.

obama will either cede like kerry, or really come into his power by reconnecting that gift for rhetoric and modulating it into a full-throated support for radical change that not even he would believe in right now, good little product of his chicago environment that he is.

if he taps into the energy of OCW by showing them the shortest path to peace is alt. energy, get the unemployed busy planting trees, aiding the infirm, rolling out solar/wind with the urgency america felt upon entering WW2, then then Lord Alfred would be proud.

when the jobs numbers go up with this apollo new deal, then move to decapitating the finance industry and defenestrating its archdevils, prosecuting war crimes, and restoring free college education, legislating a guaranteed income, and single-payer HC, he'd not only multiply the political capital he mustered campaigning, (bigger that any leader's in all of world history?), but would consolidate america's reputation as bold frontrunner in modelling how a modern society can be run, positioning himself to be a possible world president by 2020.

he might even stop capitalism from self-immolation, and stop his country from a bloody civil war, if he doesn't stop a bullet first...

the temptation to first strike iran, either directly of by israeli proxy must be horribly intoxicating to those pondering the imminent demise of all they have sold their souls for for so long.

but only by getting its own house into order, will america be able to hope to make amends for its imperial forays and the hatred of so many they have engendered this last half century.

if not obama, who has the voice to enunciate a better world?

only by putting his life on the line in this way, would he be able to actually catalyse the energy birthing in the OCW movement, and even jump ahead of them to the step beyond what they are presently aware enough to know to ask for, to show them the way out of this minotaur's lair.

let those who try to insist on prolonging the status quo have no place left to hide, as the media is grudgingly forced to acknowledge the protesters are righteous, both in demands and behaviour.

the pressure's building inexorably to the point where any equivocation will be a Fail, the sheep and the goats will feel their differences, as they belatedly realise their iconic banks and institutions are facades for pseudo-regulated graft and extortion, and they too, shorn of whatever pitiful class pretensions america's fling with world domination had apparently endowed them with, realise that they are part of the 99%, the system is thrashing out of control, and the 1% will never stop trying to soak them as long as they are not carted off in straitjackets and given lodging in safe houses where they can masturbate their calculators to their hearts' content, playing out their gambling addictions with their own matchsticks and scraps of paper instead of others' money and trust, far from positions where they can bring down governments with their unrestrained psychopathologies.

by using that rhetoric to grab the brass ring, i hope obama is starting to realise what he unshackled, and how if he doesn't ride it where the great majority wants to go, his legacy will be that of a man who should have been more careful what he wanted, because when it came he flaked on following through...

events will force him to stop wiggling soon enough!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty