For the record, this was a big part of my argument in yesterday’s column. Here’s the open:

Hats off to Larry Summers. The president’s chief economic adviser told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that there’s nothing to be done about the fact that American International Group is contractually obliged to pay millions of dollars in bonuses to thousands of employees, some of whom helped ruin their company — and, to some extent, the national economy. “We are a country of law; there are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts.”
From what I can tell, the bonuses do stink — although some are as small as $1,000 and presumably go to people who had no significant part in the credit-default-swap-derivative mania of recent years. But let’s assume that they’re all gratuitous. Summers was still right.

Part of the problem with talking about the AIG fiasco is that there’s just too much to get mad about. I’m furious that Obama and the Dems are pretending they were surprised about something they not only knew about for a long time, but are responsible for in the first place. This is Chris Dodd’s doing, for pete’s sake. I’m furious, as Larry Kudlow noted yesterday, that Geithner et al are using AIG as a political money-laundering operation, bailing out Goldman Sachs and other firms by washing it through AIG. I’m mad about all sorts of things, some of which, alas, are necessary but no less infuriating. But I wouldn’t let my anger push me to advocate rescinding constitutional norms or the rule of law to force Dems — or anyone else — from office or take away their rights.

But Democrats are advocating using national rage to do precisely that vis a vis AIG. They’re talking about bills of attainder. Retroactive laws. Punitive taxes (who was that Congresswoman who wanted to fine these executives “1,000%”?). I’m sure some of them are sincere, just as I’m sure some of them are cynically deflecting attention and/or posing as populists. Whatever their motivations, we’re a nation of laws. As Calvin Coolidge said, one with the law on his side is a majority. Those bonuses — as bad as they might be — are just one more toxic debt we took on when we decided to bailout AIG. In fact they’re a tiny, tiny fraction of a fraction of debts we’re taking on thanks to this mess and Obama’s grand plans. But guess what? It’s always going to be ugly when the government takes over an industry — because government is very, very bad at taking over businesses.

It seems to me that if you think an “anything goes” business culture is a problem — and it is — an “anything goes” political culture is even worse. But that’s where we’re heading with this nonsense.