"Children, the law is nothing but a rag smeared with blood and sh*t.

"It is only for suckers, rubes and losers.

"Claw your way to the top -- by any means necessary -- and the law can never touch you.

"This is the American way."

Yes, as the Washington Post reports, the United States government announced today that there will be no penalties whatsoever for the lawyers who were ordered by their superiors, George Bush and Dick Cheney, to write memos "justifying" the tortures that Bush and Cheney wanted to unleash upon captives held indefinitely without charges, without evidence, without trial, without rights.

Dick Cheney has openly confessed to instructing his pathetic little minions, his nasty little modern-day Vyshinksys, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, to write the scraps of paper of twisted legalese meant to pre-emptively exonerate the top officials of the United States government for the unambiguously criminal actions they were to inflict upon their uncharged, untried prisoners -- some of whom had actually been purchased, like slaves, from traffickers in human bodies -- around the world. Cheney boasts openly of supporting and facilitating torture techniques -- such as waterboarding -- which have historically been prosecuted as high crimes by American authorities, and are, in fact, capital crimes under the laws of the United States today.

But on Friday, February 19, 2010, the administration of President Barack Obama declared that not only will it not prosecute the avowed and boastful perpetrators and accomplices of the capital crime of torture, it will not impose even the mildest of administrative or professional reprimands upon them. For the foulest of tortures, reaching even to murder, the government of the United States will do nothing: no investigation, no prosecution, no penalty.

I have run out of words to describe how vile this is. The mind recoils against fully comprehending the moral depravity of our leaders -- and the reeking stench of their pious hypocrisy.

"The kinge is in this worlde without lawe and maye at his own lust doo right and wronge and shall geve acomptes but to God only." Thus William Tyndale, in his 1528 work, Obedience of a Christian Man, helped usher in the doctrine of the "divine right of kings," overthrowing centuries of political, religious and philosophical thought and practice which had insisted that rulers too were fully subject to the law, as A.D. Nuttall points out. In support of the latter, he quotes Richard Hooker -- no radical, but a "profoundly traditional" churchman: "Where the lawe doth give dominion, who doubteth that the King who receiveth it is under the lawe?" (Shakespeare the Thinker, p. 140.)

But in our degenerate day, Hooker's reasonable formulation has been waterboarded into oblivion, and we are back to Tyndale's cringing doctrine. Our bipartisan kinges are indeed without lawe: no penalty, no punishment for these vile malefactors, these barbaric abusers and corrupters of our children.

Author's Bio: Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many others. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the "Empire Burlesque" political blog.

Feb. 19, 2010

www.opednews.com/articles/Teach-Your-Children-Well--by-Chris-Floyd-100219-522.html