If you need someone to write an opinion, are you really doing the right thing?

There’s a thing in lawyerdom called an “opinion letter.” There’s also an “audit letter.” Both are waffling, weasily wonders. I won’t write the former. I have to write the latter.

There are some analogues in government: the Executive Order, the Justice Department memo and the Signing Statement.

You and I, for the most part, know what is right. We don’t always do it; but, we know what it is. Then there’s the time we want to do something that our conscience or gut tells us not to do. What to do? Rationalization. Talk to friends and family about how it really isn’t what we all know it is. If I don’t do it, someone will.

Our national government has a few handy tools to tell us what our government, and we, can do. The Constitution. The United States Code. The Code of Federal Regulations.

They haven’t been enough in recent years. We started, I think, with executive orders. I’m the President and I can’t get the damn Congress to pass the damn law that I want, so I’ll issue an executive order that people will comply with unless Congress or some damn litigant has enough balls to push it. The flip side, Congress passed a damn law that I don’t like, so I’ll issue a signing statement that turns the law on its head; and, again, functionaries will do what I say unless those other people decide it’s important enough to oppose.

Then Bush invented memos that no one saw that excused patently illegal behavior. (He may not have invented them, but he did indeed perfect them.)

Obama is releasing them in dribs and drabs. Here’s an opinion piece about the drib this week. The author is insensed by Obama’s announcement that we won’t be prosecuting “good faith” reliance on the memos' stupid legal opinions.

I’m not particularly interested in frying Cheney, Gonzales, Bradbury, Yoo, et al; though Ms. Lithwick makes a case for at least parboiling them.

What I’d like to see is Obama not acting like Bush. He’s issued Executive Orders from the day he took office. I imagine he’s ordered a few memos and signed a few statements. We have three branches of government. Let them do their jobs. If you don’t like a law, veto it. If you want a law and can’t get Congress to go along, work harder. If you don’t like the result of either process, don’t have some pet lawyer write a memo that says you’re right. And don’t use your bully pulpit to try to discourage prosecution of what based on what I can see are criminals.