Never been tried but hey, we're way past precedent now.

That would be the ultimate FU, and make for a huge and awful mess. Nothing for it but to take it to the SCOTUS and hope they don't validate; double plus really bad if they did.

Better, I think, for Obama and us if the whole thing is kept back-burner for now, until after the inaugural. If Bush reads the portents as not too threatening, he may just walk off with his big ego and feel secure enough that nobody can touch him. Make lots of threatening gestures now and no telling what he'll do. If he's already planning to pardon everyone around and himself, nothing to be done about that right now anyway.

Further, there is no way for Obama to know now what exactly has been done by BushCo, or under what constructs. Obama has said he wants to differentiate between bad policy which should not be prosecuted, that's what elections are for, and criminal behavior which should be prosecuted; fair enough. Knowing for sure and certain what crimes have been committed and by whom is something that Obama cannot be expected to know at this point in time.

What it sounds like will happen is a Church Committee sort of thing, wise heads getting together with some investigative authority from Congress to poke around and generate an accurate history. What is or is not criminal would be up to DOJ to decide some time after the commission issues a final report.

This approach does several things. One, it moves the issue of criminality and prosecution off the plate of Obama and the DOJ for a while. Obama has other fish to fry, from the economy to Iraq to Afghanistan to health care to education, last thing he needs to get bigged down with is an investigation of BushCo run by the Executive.

Second, DOJ itself needs to get rebuilt and back on the tracks; a mega-investigation of the past 8 years of BushCo is too much of an immediate burden. Third, Obama wants to be as non-partisan as possible; he doesn't want to be seen as vindictive, not his desired style/image. Better to hand it over to some third party to deal with and then act down the road if politics, power and evidence allow.

I'm not much myself on Reconciliation without punishment, but a Truth Commission would IMHO be a good approach. The case for criminal prosecution needs to be driven by those who desire it, once evidence is obtained and presented. I want it but I also want Obama to get a lot of other things done, now; I can wait a while to get BushCo properly sorted.