Reports of the truth commission’s death are grossly exaggerated, says Sen. Patrick Leahy. Still, it’s clear that the idea of investigations into possible past Bush-era misdeeds is not exactly popular in the Washington establishment right now. Obama has two wars to win, a financial crisis to solve, health care to make universal, and carbon to cap, after all — government is busy enough as it is, say these transparency nay-sayers. Additionally, there’s a sense among politicians that the public wants to look forward, not backward (as the president might say). So forward we go.

Sometimes, though, it’s difficult to just plaster over past abuses of power and pretend they’re not there. In an effort to appease civil libertarians, the Obama DOJ has begun a process of releasing legal memos that were classified during the Bush administration — this is how we know, for instance, that the military had the authority to seize terror suspects within the United States without a warrant. If those documents weren’t explosive enough, the administration has hinted that new, even more shocking ones related to the practice of torture may be on the way. These memos are exactly the sort of documents that could cause enough of a public outcry to make a truth commission plausible.

Well, we can’t have that, of course. Holding people accountable for possible crimes they have committed? That’s looking backwards! And so, naturally, we see headlines like this:

Are Republicans Blackmailing Obama?

To summarize the outrageous, maddening, and altogether inevitable story linked above, Republicans have threatened to filibuster two of Obama’s nominees if Obama dares to release the damning torture memos. Dawn Johnsen (nominated for chief of the Office of Legal Council at the Justice Department) and Harold Koh (nominated as legal council for the State Department ) are therefore stuck in nomination limbo, unable to do the jobs that the president has asked them to do. The Republican strategy here is so heavy-handed that you half expect them to state their wishes in a note created from letters cut from magazines, perhaps spelling out “GIVE US THE MEMOS, WE’LL GIVE YOU THE LAWYERS.”

I had several reactions to this article, borne of anger and frustration with the way Washington appears to work:

1. Where is the mainstream news media on this? It’s easy enough to yell at Robert Gibbs and pretend you care about government transparency. If I worked for ABC News, I could do the same thing and get my own glowing article in The National Review, if I so desired — all that really takes is petulance. But this is an actual transparency issue, with actual consequences for the country. So what is Jake Tapper writing about? Hillary Clinton’s 3 a.m. commercial! I don’t mean to just pick on the ABC journalist — there is silence on this story all over.

2. Why can’t Obama just call the Republicans’ bluff? To be sure, some inside his administration are also warning against releasing the memos; “Holy hell has broken loose over this,” said one White House insider to Newsweek. But assuming that The Daily Beast article is correct, and that the real reason they have delayed in releasing these documents is the threat of Republicans filibustering two of their legal nominees, their hesitance seems unnecessarily deferential. Do the Republicans really want to attract media attention to this story — which filibustering these nominees would do? I can imagine the Democratic spin already: “Congressional Republicans blocked a popular president’s nominees in order to protect George Bush.”

3. There needs to be a loud and angry reaction to this story to force the hands of Obama and the congressional Republicans. This website makes it easy to find your representatives in government: just enter your zipcode in the box to the left of the page in order to get contact information. You then can leave a message for these representatives, mentioning how concerned you are that the confirmation process for Johnsen and Koh is becoming overly political. You can also contact the Department of Justice by sending an email to AskDOJ@usdoj.gov or calling 202-353-1555.

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