The Washington Post editorial page's latest rule of law sermon

Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com

(updated below)

Jackson Diehl, Deputy Editor of the The Washington Post's Editorial Page, has an Op-Ed today that contains a stirring defense today of "the rule of law." Diehl righteously complains the "president is already in danger of making 'legal nihilism' the byword for his administration." It might be considered quite surprising that an Editorial Page that has long cheered on many of the Bush administration's most extreme acts of lawlessness is suddenly complaining about the President's "legal nihilism," except that Diehl's sermon isn't directed towards the American President, but rather towards Russia's. Acording to Dihel, Russia is demonstrating a very upsetting disregard both for domestic and international law.

That an establishment organ like The Washington Post Editorial Page continues to think it can credibly lecture the world on the rule of law and the need to abide by international norms is a potent reflection of how deluded our political class has become. Given what our political establishment has sanctioned over the last seven years, it so obviously has -- to use the phrase coined by the ex-blogger Billmon -- "forfeited its ability to chastise the human rights abuses of others without triggering a global laughing fit." That goes double for our ability to chastise other political cultures for their disregard of the rule of law, particularly basic precepts of international law.

(Continued here.)