When I started reading this, I thought it was building to the argument that of course we should trust that our saintly president hasn’t done anything shady and quit bugging him with pesky document requests already. Nope. What this guy’s actually arguing is that it’s all too likely that Obama or Holder or someone in the food chain has done something shady but that they probably had a well-meaning, pro-American reason to do so, so maybe we should just kind of go easy, huh?

Two possible explanations. One: LZ Granderson is really, seriously advocating carte blanche without oversight for whichever side is in power. (He’s willing to let Oliver North slide on his Iran-Contra dealings too.) Two: LZ Granderson is basically trolling his own site for traffic. In that case, here you go, buddy. Here’s your link.

Heads should roll because of the Fast and Furious debacle. We don’t need every detail of that operation to be made public in order for that to happen… Project Wide Receiver and Project Road Runner — the earlier versions of Fast and Furious under President Bush — were executed with the hope that they will do more good than harm. Hardly anyone in the public knows the finer points of these programs… By allowing guns to infiltrate Mexico’s drug cartel, we thought we could trace them up the ladder to the leaders. Take off the head and the body dies. As for the innocent people who lost their lives? Collateral damage. That’s the uncomfortable backstory to this scandal. And there are likely other operations like it in our nation’s history that we don’t even have a clue about. And maybe it’s better for us not to be so nosy, not to know everything because, to paraphrase the famous line from the movie “A Few Good Men,” many of us won’t be able to handle the truth.

I thought the whole point of Issa’s document request was that we don’t know for sure what the purpose of Fast & Furious was — Issa himself apparently doesn’t think it was chiefly about breaking up cartels — and that, once we find out, then we’ll have a better sense of which heads should roll. I’m actually curious: Who does Granderson want fired? Is he ready to cut Holder loose on the mere suspicion that the White House has covered something up? If so, he’s actually a step past Issa on that. Even if the White House isn’t guilty of anything, wouldn’t you want to see the documents to know how an idea as insane as gunwalking got greenlit in the first place, in case it offers some insight on how to reform the DOJ institutionally? Transparency’s pretty useful to good government. You’d think a guy who touts his award for “journalist of the year” at the top of his column would understand that.

Incidentally, White House and DOJ lawyers met today with Boehner’s aides and offered to produce 30 or so documents in return for the contempt charge against Holder being dropped. No deal. And do note: There is indeed at least one Democrat who’s planning to vote for contempt on Thursday.