John Conyers Responds to David Broder

UPDATED WITH EXCERPTS
UPDATE II

I'm grateful to see this response by Representative John Conyers to David Broder's shameful column, Why Holder is Wrong, appearing in today's Washington Post. Rep. Conyers makes some very good points. Yes, it's too little, too late--but at least a start. Thank you, Congressman Conyers. Please turn up the heat!

UPDATE
Here are a few of the highlights of Mr. Conyers' article. These show how people who care about upholding the Constitution and the Rule of Law should have been controlling the "debate" all along.

…the decision whether to investigate possible crimes connected to our interrogation programs is simply not a political one.

I do not know if Mr. Cheney broke the law, but I do know that, in my America, the law applies to him as it does to everyone else.

As the acknowledged "dean" of the Washington Press corps, David Broder is no mere observer of these events. He is an actor in the national debate, whose pronouncements help define what views are considered "reasonable." If he believes, as he claims, that accountability "should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings," he should reject those who would turn a fundamental issue of law into a "major, bitter partisan battle," not validate them as a fixed and appropriate part of the political landscape.

UPDATE II--Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on Investigations
In this article in The National Law Journal, Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) clearly lays out the legal rationale and logic behind investigations from the perspective of a former U.S. Attorney.

The only exceptional thing is the parties involved: the former vice president of the United States, his counsel David Addington, Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) lawyer John Yoo and their private contractors Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, psychologists who designed the torture program. But in America, high office does not put one outside the law. Indeed, it borders on unethical for a prosecutor to refuse to investigate the corpus delicti of a crime because of concern as to where the evidence may lead.