Legally speaking, who cares - at least as far as Lakin's predicament is concerned.
Lakin is charged with missing movement and disobeying orders. Neither charge has any relevance - as a matter of military law - to Barack Obama.
"Is the military judge going to go on the record saying it makes no difference to anything?"
The military judge is going to rule that whatever alleged crimes Obama may or may have not committed, bears no relevance to Lakin's particular situation.
"Is that military judge then going to report those crimes to the proper authorities, and if he doesn’t will he himself be guilty of misprision of felony?",
No, and no. He's not going to allow such allegations because of their irrelevance, and judges enjoy judicial immunity.
A judge who knows of a felony has no responsibility to report it?
What about the other people in the trial? Do they?
Heck, if I sent my information to General Casey, would he have a responsibility to report it? Isn’t it always a question of who knew what and when?
And regarding the chain of command, why was anybody looking up the chain of command to see if the Abu Ghraib behaviors were either condoned or commanded higher up the chain of command - if the only link in the chain that matters is the one directly above the behavior in question? Wouldn’t the judge say - as you say any judge would say in Lakin’s case - that the higher links in the chain are absolutely and totally irrelevant and nobody can be allowed to go on a fishing expedition?
Also, it doesn’t matter what he allows to be spoken in the courtroom. If Lakin or anybody else is allowed the free speech to say what we already know, SOMEBODY in the military has knowledge that US law requires them to report to the proper authorities. Or are military members exempt from obeying US laws?
Why, oh why, is this so hard to undertand?
Why, oh why, is this so hard to understand?