You know, I don’t know who to blame other than Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis for the failure to hold Judge Jay Bybee and Professor John Yoo accountable for their “reckless disregard” of their ethical obligations. I’m not sure why the decision rested with an Associate Deputy in the first place. I don’t know that I can blame President Obama for Margolis’s decision. In theory, the decision was made independently. And it should have been made independently. Politicization of the Justice Department is a problem the administration should solve, not perpetuate. So, it would have been inappropriate for anyone outside the Justice Department to tell them how to decide the case.
Yet, at a minimum, the Attorney General had the authority to make the final decision. And Eric Holder seems to have delegated his authority to Margolis. Is that the standard of practice for ethics investigations at the Department of Justice? I don’t know. But I am not happy with the outcome.
We may decide to hold no one accountable for the brutality of the Bush administration, but the rest of the world isn’t going to move on. And history will not be kind to us.
