Senate report concludes: no proof of contact between

[Lissa]

You want them, you figure out a way to arrest them, bring them before a court, and charge them. How hard is that? File the motion that won't get thrown out of court, and you have yourself the beginnings of "the case of the century." Appealing to "international courts" that do not have even the enforcement powers, or lack thereof, of our own courts strikes me as ludicrous.

Judging by how long it took to get the information out on who actually slipped up and let Plame's name out into the public domain, fairly difficult Occhi. Another case in point, they tried to get Clinton on Impeachment for lying about a BJ, yet there has been nothing of the same against more egrious actions when the same parties control both the Legislative and Executive branches. In effect, it possible to "protect" someone from internal laws.

International law is a valid as its enforement, or its acceptance by those in the "international arena." It has no validity beyond that.

And maybe if International enforcement had some teeth, then people would take it more seriously. Like it or not, humanity is moving toward a one world government as bigotry is dying out in the most modern nations (although it does show up from time to time still).

Where the US Senate has agreed to an international protocol, per our Constitution, US citizens are bound by that law.

Yet we've seen time and time again we've seen people take actions that makes them appear to be above and beyond the reach of the law within their country.

I see no reason to abbrogate the rights of citizenship by throwing any American citizen upon the mercy of a court not made up of that citizen's "peers." Smells of tribunals and Star Chambers to me. Your trust in "international" is misplaced. The driving motivation behind a lot of this rhetoric is envy and resentment of whoever happens to be perceived as "the top dog" of the moment. The courts are used as a tool in this country -- Dylan's "justice is a game" lyric springs to mind -- which is small potatoes to the international scene.

You can have your Star Chambers, and your People's Tribunals. Ask the scions of Ho Chi Minh how to set one up.

Occhi

And yet, I point you back to what I said above. How do we deal with someone that does something and then manipulates the situation so they're effectively untouchable? Case in point, look to the recent shennigans going on the midwest (IIRC, Illinois). The governor of Illinois had done some shady things and was being brought up on charges for accepting bribes or something similar while still in office. Someone high up in the Illinois judiciary stated that he, the governor, could not be tried while in office even though he was caught red handed. Luckily he only had a few months left in his term and they tried him after it ended, but still he held of justice. So how are you going to deal with situations like that where someone can stymy the justice process?