Perhaps someone needs to lecture the current administration on the meaning of the word “sovereignty”. Reports now indicate that the Obama Administration may cooperate with the demands of a magistrate in Spain over the prosecution of Bush-era officials.

In speaking to reporters Wednesday, [Attorney General Eric] Holder also said it is possible the United States could cooperate with a foreign court’s investigation of Bush administration officials.

Holder spoke before the announcement that a Spanish magistrate had opened an investigation of Bush officials on harsh interrogation methods. Holder didn’t rule out cooperating in such a probe.

“Obviously, we would look at any request that would come from a court in any country and see how and whether we should comply with it,” Holder said.

“This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law and to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately created court, we would obviously respond to it,” he said.

It’s so comforting to know that the current administration is willing to consider compliance with just any loony judge in any country who decides to make charges against American wartime officials. I eagerly await the response from President Obama when some half-baked magistrate in Nigeria decides to pursue charges against one of his officials.

Via Hot Air, Dafydd ab Hugh has, I think, the right reasoning behind the Obama Administration’s consideration of complying with the Spanish court:

If Garzón has legal authority to demand we hand over evidence, he also has legal authority to demand we hand over “war criminals,” from American military personnel, to John Yoo, to Jay Bybee, to William Haynes, to Douglas Feith, to Alberto Gonzales, to Richard Myers, to Dick Cheney — even to former President George W. Bush himself.

This is even more outrageous than the suggestion that we prosecute any of these individuals ourselves, or that we form a “truth commission” and haul them before it for public show trials. This is, in essence, outsourcing the prosecution of the previous administration to foreign courts. Call it “extraordinary judicion.”

If we ever once accept that a European court — and not even a recognized “international” one! — has jurisdiction over actions committed by American officials here in the United States, and can prosecute them for “crimes” that are not even recognized here, then we have crossed a line from which we can never retreat: The United States will cease to be a sovereign power.

If Eric Holder and Barack Obama accept this idea, they will actually have brought about what used to be a paranoid fantasy among the John Birch Society and other lunatics — “one-world government,” run according to European, not American rules.

We’re not even talking about the international court — we’re talking about a judge in a foreign nation pursuing charges that don’t even exist in our country. The President of the United States should be protecting this nation’s sovereignty and Constitution. He should be telling magistrates in foreign courts that we have our own open judicial system and will pursue charges against our own citizens in compliance with our own laws if we see fit. Instead, the Obama Administration is considering complying with the magistrate in a witch hunt against political enemies.  A sad state of affairs.