I have been having a twitter debate this morning with an old friend who I respect greatly @repckelly, I thought it important to set out my position in more detail. It is an important debate if and only if democracy survives this period, which is still in doubt,

First, there should be no political prosecutions, no false charges, no Andy McCabe cases, no Durham investigations. That said, I feel that what has transpired in the last 5 years has been an anomaly in American Democracy which we cannot turn a blind eye to. If we simple turn

the other cheek, this anomaly will not go away, it will become standard practice of the unscrupulous. In some cases the actions which are most destructive to Democracy may in fact not criminal, but unethical. In those cases the individuals should not be prosecuted, but laws

need to be drafted to criminalize the worst of the unethical behavior. The worst actions of this administration are 1) knowingly cooperating with a foreign adversary to undermine an election (Ron Johnson, Giuliani, Bannon) 2) Using the Federal government to further the interests

of the incumbents political campaign, 3)Using the Justice department to shield the criminals who are friends of the President, resulting in obstruction of justice. 4) politicizing intelligence to benefit and protect the President. Many of these worst offenses are arguably not a

crime, or may be shielded by Legislative privilege. They are dangerous and must be addressed. As with most criminals, these Trump folks, most likely violated other laws while they were trying to dismantle democracy while affording themselves "plausible deniability". Graft,

theft, self dealing usually go along with unethical un American activities. If they committed provable crimes they should be punished. Why, why not just forgive and forget, after all we need to "bring people together". We do, but we also need to make sure that the next

Bill Barr, the next Rudy Giuliani, the next Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, the next Grennell, Ratcliffe, are deterred from repeating actions that have brought us close to losing this grand experiment in self determination. If we don't there will be more, more devious, using the

Trump/McConnell play book. The new ones may be smarter, more devious, to be honest, Trump has not been very smart about what his has done, his great asset, is brute force, and going where others would not dare to go. A smarter Trump, less crude, might just succeed.

My solution, no political reprisals, no political prosecutions but a firm and fair reckoning where evidence shows violation of law, because if we simply "move on" that won't slow them down, it will embolden them.