I attended Columbia several years before Obama. At my graduation I was amazed at how many of my fellow classmates I did not recognize and had never seen over the past four years. There were seven hundred students in each college class, in an urban campus of I think about 15,000 students. We did not have much "college life" in those days. Hardly anyone ate in the dining hall, preferring local delis and cooking on hot plates in dorm rooms or apartments. Outside of a small circle of friends, people just tended not to know a lot of their classmates.

Obama lived off campus, and only attended Columbia for two years. It is not surprising at all that a lot of his classmates did not know him.

This kind of thinking is very ingrained in a lot of people. It goes back centuries. And the people who think this way can't seem to help themselves. Before the Civil Rights Act was signed, these racist white Southerners were all Democrats. Now they are the albatross around the neck of the GOP. I wonder what Richard Nixon would think of his Southern strategy now.

Let's suppose that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld got together one day and said, we want to use the harshest possible interrogation techniques that are legally available to the CIA. But of course the US does not torture. So they asked for a legal opinion on what techniques may be used, and they directed the CIA to use whatever techniques that are legally available. So in that scenario, which might be pretty close to what actually happened, I think the torture memos might actually provide some protection to the people who directed the use of these techniques. As far as the lawyers who wrote the memos, you would probably have to show that these lawyers knew that the advice they were giving was legally unsupportable. And I think that would also be difficult because these people actually did believe and still believe that their interpretations of the law are correct. So that really leaves prosecution under international law as the most likely possible avenue for prosecution.

What the angry left also does not seem to get is that the whole point of the torture memos was to make it almost impossible to prosecute anyone under US law. There could be some consequences for Bush and Cheney if they travel to an unfriendly country that wants to prosecute under international law, but prosecution in the US does not seem feasible. You are absolutely right that this should not be the top priority of the Obama administration. Investigation of past wrongdoing should continue, but it would be fine if the investigation goes on slowly for years. The country will be more ready for it down the road. <a href="http://www.hopeandchange.net/2009/04/dealing-with..." target="_blank">http://www.hopeandchange.net/2009/04/dealing-with...

A lot of people who are criticizing the Geithner plan do not seem to understand that the alternatives to that plan are simply not viable politically, or would lead to a worse result for the economy. Your post is a good summary of the choices that are actually available.