Jack Abramoff copped to his much-anticipated plea deal today, and Josh Marshall publishes an email from some guy who’s import I’m unable to ascertain, but who nevertheless opines that the legal system should shy away from trying cases that threaten to “alter the political balance.�

The post in full except for some preliminaries:

There is a lesson to be learned from the “Abscam” investigations that should be applied to any examination of that constellation of events that fall under the heading of “The Abramoff Matter.” (hereafter TAM). That lesson is that TAM exceeds the scope of the legal system and, specifically, the Justice Department. This is what “Abscam” taught us. If you recall “Abscam” was a DOJ sting operation that offered bribes to congressmen. It turned out that it was a very successful sting and several members of Congress were prosecuted. But then the operation was terminated although if anything was learned it was that there were more opportunities for success. It was terminated precisely because of its success. The DOJ determined that they might be able to unseat as much as a third of the sitting Congress if they continued. DOJ determined that if they did continue then what began as a law enforcement project could alter the political balance within the Legislative branch. The DOJ decided, rightly I believe, that it was not their place to fundamentally alter that political balance.

And so it will be with TAM. At some point TAM will become a potent enough matter to be profoundly political in nature and those involved in the legal system will have to withdraw. To do otherwise would be to improperly engage the legal system in a political contest and undermine the foundational premise of an independent judiciary. This is the tightrope that Fitzgerald is walking in the Plame matter. So long as he is pursuing the violation of a particular Federal statute he is on solid ground. But were he to find himself standing on the threshold of something that, if pursued, could alter the political balance of power then he would have to retreat. Otherwise he would fall into that political contest and improperly involve DOJ in the public arena of political combat.

It would be wise of those of us who are offended by the realities of TAM to resist the temptation to view TAM as a fundamentally legal matter. Rather we should debate it within the arena of political and social ethics. If we cannot win the contest on the basis of these ethical principles then no legal system can save us from ourselves.

Thoughts?

Okay. Weelll, Thought #1, Josh why do you ask for my thoughts when you don’t provide me with a convenient forum for expressing them? Huh? Thought #2, this emailer of yours, with phrases like “independent judiciary� seems to think that the judicial branch prosecutes crimes. It doesn’t. The Executive Branch does. This is not a matter of splitting hairs. It undermines quite a bit of his argument. Thought #3: Where he says “So long as he is pursuing the violation of a particular Federal statute he is on solid ground. But were he to find himself standing on the threshold of something that, if pursued, could alter the political balance of power then he would have to retreat.� I’m confused as to whether he’s stating a tautology or if he’s making a now-familiar-though-dubious argument. What happens if Fitzgerald is persuing the violation of a particular federal statute that threatens to alter the balance of political power? The phrasing is rather ambiguous. But I’ll assume he’s not making the so-obvious-one-can’t-help-but-wonder-why-anyone-would-bother-to-say-it notion that a prosecutor should not go beyond prosecuting violations of actual umm laws as codified in uh statutes, and start prosecuting people just for the sake of trying to shift the prevailing balance of power.

Thought #4, I have no idea if that’s an accurate rendition of the “Abscam� history, but it wouldn’t matter if it were. Thought #5, Why is that Washington seems to be filled with people who think politics is above the law? Paging Richard Cohen, and his addle-headed ravings concerning Judy Miller and L’affair du Plame. The whole gist of which was that the District is a self-policing town, with their own agreed upon norms and values, and they don’t need some outside prosecutor coming in and mucking things up with his talk of laws and the violations thereof, which can only have been technically violated if the transgressor is still in everyone’s good graces. This is a fucking sickness.

Thought #6, the last two lines seem to indicate that this should be viewed as an entirely political matter. If at the end of all the haymaking, the public doesn’t “kick the bums out,� then we should accept these activities as ethical and not resort to legal solutions, which in this scenario would not be up to the task of saving the Republic anyway, because the Republic could not be reformed. Well, that’s a point of view. I’d rather the take the opposite one. That violators of laws should be prosecuted regardless of the political consequences, because justice is… oh I dunno… blind, or something. The legal system performing its functions does not seem to have great consequence upon the legitimacy of the political system as expressed by the outcomes of elections. Thought #7, not directly relevant to this post, but I’ve come to believe that as much as Republicans deserve to be punished for their corruption, the Democrats really don’t deserve to benefit from it.