SO, DO WE BELIEVE IN RAHM EMANUEL’S INNOCENCE, OR NOT? Personally — not that I have any inside knowledge — I doubt that Emanuel has done anything actually wrong. (He may conceivably have done something that might be considered a crime in Fitzgeraldland, but you could say that about pretty much anyone). Emanuel’s smart, as even his critics acknowledge, and surely too smart to get sucked into Blagojevich’s lowbrow deal-making. At least, I’d be surprised to hear otherwise.
I dunno. If you are apprised by a criminal that he is in the process of committing a heinous crime, and you do nothing other than refuse to be a party to it, have you “done nothing?”
Is there any legal, ethical, or moral obligation to attempt to stop the crime by reporting it to the proper authorities?
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IIRC, you have no legal obligation to report a crime, but if you do anything to conceal it, you are in trouble.
Ooh, Ooh! I can finaly use something I learned in that waste-of-time liberal arts Sociology class.
Legal obligation: Democrats don’t have legal obligations, other than “don’t get caught doing anything the MSM can’t cover up for you”. (to be fair, half the Republicans don’t pay attention to legal obligations either, but they have to be more careful not to get caught, since they get no cover).
Ethical obligation: Implies you have an ethical code you subscribe to. If the code is “win at any cost”, it’s the same as not having one.
Moral obligation: Moral codes vary by culture, time, and place. In Muslim cultures, honor killings are moral. Killing Jews is moral.
In Chicago… The moral obligation would have been to dicker over the price of the senate seat. So I think when Rahm refused to do so (on the phone, anyway), it was because he knew he’d violate the legal obligation above; there are things the MSM can’t cover, and this would be one of them.
“Fitzgeraldland”? Would that be the same place where Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury because his recollection of what he said to a reporter differed from what the reporter recollected…. which was different than the reporter’s own notes at the time? Oh, and where at least one member of the jury admitted that he convicted Libby only because he wasn’t going to get to put Karl Rove or George Bush in jail?
Hypocrites.