In an opinion piece in today's Washington Post Ruth Marcus poses the question:

"Should Bush administration officials be put on trial for crimes such as authorizing torture?"

The answer to that question is a simple and unequivocal "not yes, but, Hell yes, absolutely, yer darn tootin'."

Bear in mind that I live in a flyover state where many have limited tolerance for carefully parsed, nuanced or constipated prose, preferring instead to "throw it out on the lawn and see if any dogs come up and pee on it."

Ms Marcus says, less pithily and with a bit more ambiguity, that she is:

"just relieved to have this crowd heading out of office and its policies -- on torture, on indefinite detention, on warrantless wiretapping, on overweening executive power -- soon to be inoperative."

I share her delight in the departure of this gang of criminals but I fear that if they do not leave Washington in handcuffs and leg irons aboard a Federal prison bus that the chances of rendering the "policies" stated above "inoperative" are approximately ... zero.

The Ninth Circuit yesterday refused to consider en banc a case where a murderer's conviction was overturned.  The court initially held he was denied a fair trial because the audience in his trial wore memorabilia depicting the victim's face. It's an interesting topic that isn't considered often.

Members of [the victim's] family, who sat in the front row of the gallery at trial, wore buttons on their shirts with the decedent's picture on them during each of the 14 days of the trial. The trial judge overruled defense objections to the wearing of the buttons. Convicted of first degree murder, Musladin lost his state appeals, the Court of Appeal holding that while the wearing of photographs depicting a victim should be discouraged, it did not brand the defendant as guilty in the context of the particular case.