Memo to AG Sheldon Whitehouse on Law Revision Commission

To: Sheldon Whitehouse, Attorney General
From: Henry D. Waldenswimmer, Esq.
Date: January 22, 2009
Subject: Law Revision Commission for United States Code Annotated

Dear Shel:

You've asked my ideas on restoring the U.S. Code to some semblance of order after the havoc worked on it during the Bush Presidency/Republican Congress years. I could not agree more that major work needs to be done. Here are some of my ideas on how to proceed after the Commission completes its initial survey of the principal areas of damage:

1. Repeal any and all post facto exonerations: What a mess those clowns made of the criminal code with their paranoid escape hatches for various war crimes and violations of the Federal Anti-Torture Statute. If they all need to flee to Paraguay like their role models from another era, then let them, but don't disgrace the country with excuses for violating Geneva. Look mainly at the Detainee Treatment Act and the incorporated provision in the Military Commissions Act, with that baloney about torture being okay if done "with the advice of counsel." Now that we know all that "advice" was requested specifically so the Bushies and the Pentagon could ignore federal law and international standards of humane treatment, it isn't worth a plug nickel. (Nota bene: if an act, like waterboarding, was a crime when the act was committed, then repeal of the exoneration clause should restore it to a prosecutable offense without violating the ex post facto clause of the Constitution. You're going to be busy.) And restore habeas corpus for anyone arrested or detained by the United States other than in a declared war.

2. Get rid of the Department of Homeland Security: What next, are we going to call America "Vaterland?" Teach the "Horst Wessel" song in our grade schools? Restore FEMA, the Immigration & Naturalization Service and the Coast Guard to their previous places in the table of operations. Believe it or not, a bloated bureaucracy with new titles is not always the way to improve things. And never refer to this country as the "Homeland" again. It's the United States of America. If that was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, it's good enough for us.

3. Repeal the Patriot Act: Allow the CIA and FBI to share information on domestic surveillance concerning foreign operatives and terrorist plots, as they did not before 9/11. The attacks weren't caused because Americans enjoy civil liberties or check books out of the library; they happened because the Bush Administration was disorganized, negligent and obsessed with attacking Iraq.

4. Repeal the Bankruptcy Code revision: Just put Title 11 back where it was before the Republicans hired banking and credit card lobbyists to rewrite it.

5. Repeal No Child Left Behind: I mean, do I need to say more?

Some things are self-executing, such as allowing all of Bush's tax cuts to expire under their own terms. I guess Tom DeLay and Bush outsmarted themselves after all, passing tax cuts which they could call "permanent" when they wanted to look like champions of small government and "temporary" when they wanted favorable forecasts of future deficits. Who's got the last laugh now, with a Democratic majority of 350-85 in the House and 65-35 in the Senate? All these things are a start, anyway. Tons of deferred maintenance in restoring good governance. It's like moving back into a house and discovering that crack addicts have been using it as a shooting gallery for the last eight years.

Oh, and if you want to lighten your own docket, why doesn't the United States just sign on with International Criminal Court in the Hague? Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall when they get news of that?