Vice President Dick Cheney and former attorney General Alberto Gonzales were indicted on Tuesday by a grand jury in South Texas. The indictment cited “organized criminal activity” surrounding alleged abuse of inmates in private prisons and a “money trail” of Cheney’s ownership in prison-related enterprises. Cheney has an ownership stake in the Vanguard Group, which owns an interest in private prisons in south Texas. The indictment states that Cheney is “profiteering from depriving human beings of their liberty,” according to Reuters.
For his part, Gonzales allegedly chose to “stop the investigations as to the wrong doings” into assaults in county prisons.
I hope this is the first of many indictments for the crimes committed by the Bush administration over the last eight years. We lost our respect for the rule of law at the hands of Bill Clinton. We lost the reigns outright under Bush and Cheney. If Obama doesn’t make an example of Bush, Cheney and their cohorts, there is very little hope that the notion of justice will ever reign again over our amber waves of grain. Unfortunately, I think Obama and his team just aren’t going to be the new sheriff we need. It seems the best we can hope for is that they stay out of the way of justice.
#1 by Shelly Walston on November 19, 2008 - 3:49 pm
Take a look at the December Harper’s article “Justice After Bush”. Maybe the Obama team can figure something out with these options. It makes me sick, angry, and disgusted to think that Bush and his cronies could potentially get with everything.
Pat: I’ve got a copy of this article as a .pdf if you can’t find it to post here.
#2 by Patrick T. Lafferty on November 19, 2008 - 4:38 pm
Shelly,
I’d love to read it, as I’m sure would the readers here, but I think the prickly legal department at Harper’s might get a bit concerned if I put up the article here in PDF since they have it behind lock and key on their site. Thanks for the tip!