G’morning, Christy.

Morning barbara..it’s a gorgeous day here — hope yours is lovely as well.

Big snow two days ago. Now moving toward mid-50s by weekend. Blue sky with patches of Bush fog everywhere. Everywhere!

FWIW, I e-mailed some questions to Prof. Yoo this morning, and I’ll let everyone know if I get any answers to them. Not exactly holding my breath, but we’ll see…

I can’t imagine this individual being allowed to pass along his idea of the “Law” to aspiring young attorneys. It doesn’t seem right. Perhaps the Federalist crowd is smiling approvingly…

Ooh, now wouldn’t THAT be interesting, if he replied. Do keep us posted!

I hope he loses his tenure, his license, and goes to jail but will settle for a Colin Powell lifetime of shame.

From Jan Crawford Greenburg’s blog Legalities, Jan notes a certain similarity in writing style, but not in reach:

In fact, there were some people at DOJ who argued for the release of this memo back in 2004—when the Washington Post broke the story about the CIA memo. Their point was that the legal analysis in this memo was essentially the same as the 2002 memo, which authorized harsh interrogation techniques by the CIA. In fact, reading it last night, I was struck by how much of it seems to have been cut-and-pasted from the 2002 CIA memo.

This memo is more expansive than the CIA memo, to be sure. It exempts military interrogators from more laws, treaties, etc than CIA–since some of those laws arguably didn’t cover CIA. It is a staggering assertion of executive power. . . .

In an earlier, first reaction post, she also says this:

—The memo alludes to other secret memos. You will certainly hear protest from Senate Democrats that those memos have not been released–including in the hearing this week with AG Mukasey.

—And you will hear outrage from civil liberties groups about a toothless and complacent Congress that for years has known about these secret memos–and done little to get them from the WH. Again, see Lederman on this.

I hope the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were up as late as you, Marcy, and other Lake dwellers reading this stuff.

How Not to Practice Law 101

I’m guessing the Dean at Boalt is not having a happy morning. This is not exactly the way that you want to see your faculty members showing up on the front page of the paper.

Good morning Christy. It is turning into a gorgeous morning here in Atlanta.
Why is Yoo still allowed to teach? Could he be disbarred over this?
Can’t wait to see if he answers any of your questions.
They really don’t believe that they are accountable to anyone.

good morning Christy and pups,i have sun,and chirping birds,and im going to plant my wildflowers,and onions,and Rape,and arugula…..im trying to be “light hearted”,cause i just read on AARP…makes ya live longer”g”

you are within 200 miles of me,and we finally have a sunny day too…wooohooo!

Oh, Professor Yoo will answer all right & we know what he’ll say, don’t we? All together now-SO?

SO? And so on.

They had to know it was coming, sooner or later — especially after the Goldsmith repudiation memo…

We all have a marvelous darwinian device. “Self-justification”.
Get on your running shoes and have fun following Mr. Yoo as he leads us on a merry chase through his patriotic legal mind….

LOL Sadlyyes. Going to prune and spray the roses today…or maybe not. May just make a Bloody Mary, sit outside and soak up some sun.;)

Yoo traitor.

Where in ATL? I’m in then Marietta area.

mornin’ all… for the legally challenged.. what’s the Youngstown connection in a nutshell?

Buckhead.

I prefer the phrase from Austin Powers. “Fuk Yoo, Fuk me”

Thanks for reading that and reporting back Christy. You have both the legal expertise and the stomach that I do not have. I equate it to reading Mein Kampf; there might be a historical significance but the thought sickens me. Still, it is important that the information be digested in total in order to be rejected in total and for that, again, I thank you.

Reminds me of the historical fact that many lawyers in Germany were early and long term supporters of the Nazi Party. They were utilized to provide legal cover for the actions of the Hitler cabal.

Yoo memo:

If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.

Its patent moral stench aside, it assumes the interrogators have in chains a verifiable Bad Guy in possession of critical information. Given that we know the aggregate WOT false positive collar rate is somewhere around 90%, as a purely utilitarian matter, it simply creates more hatred, more “terrists.”

During the Korean War Truman wanted to stop Youngstown Steel from striking during a time of war. Court said used a balancing test as to executive power. I’ll let the legal beagles expalin the rest*g*

If I wanted to write a letter to the Dean of the law school at Berkeley, asking why he continues to employ a war criminal — what kind of language should I use?

I want to be polite and respectful, but I also want to be clear and direct.

How should I put it?

Youngstown — Executive power is at its weakest point when Congress has passed specific legislation on a particular matter.

I can’t imagine this individual being allowed to pass along his idea of the “Law” to aspiring young attorneys. It doesn’t seem right. Perhaps the Federalist crowd is smiling approvingly…

That’s pretty much my first reaction too! I can’t imagine being a parent (who is paying the tuition) who has a child come home to tell them that John Yoo is his prof for a law course. I’d want my money back!

I must admit, though, the idea of being asked by “a client to give them a results-oriented memorandum justifying a particular course of action they would like to take” is common in many forms and in many businesses. I was an assistant to an MAI appraiser and one thing the ones with integrity always looked at is whether money or client desire was swaying their opinion of the value of the real estate. The head of a candy company told me once that both he and the owner had the property appraised that he wanted to buy. He said that the owner’s appraisal came out high “as expected” and his appraisal came out low, “as expected.” He figured that the property sold exactly at a market rate, because both parties started the negotiations with the appraised value.

It’s the same thing that happened when Greenspan declared Lincoln Savings perfectly solvent in a letter to the Feds before Lincoln Savings was taken over by the RTC. This sort of thing has been part of parcel of our political and business dealings for a very, very long time. The part that’s shocking is that it doesn’t usually intrude itself so close to the Oval Office itself. Could this be the very result one should expect from a President with an MBA?

Yep. It’s always…ALWAYS…dangerous to invoke Nazi Germany in any comparative argument. The resulting accusation of disingenuous hyperbole is waiting in the wings to become the point of contention rather than the comparison itself…but if the shoe fits. Did you ever think, in your wildest dreams, that there would be an American war time circumstance that was in any way, shape or form equatable to Nazi Germany? Thank god for Dancing with the Stars; if the general public where not aided by this benevolent malaise, folks might actually be mad or something.

“Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952)[1] (also commonly referred to as The Steel Seizure Case) , was a United States Supreme Court decision that limited the power of the President of the United States to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article Two of the United States Constitution or statutory authority conferred on him by Congress.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y....._v._Sawyer

Good Morning Egregious. Gonna be a hot day on the tubes.

Sorta like FISA?

It’s pretty clear that Yoo intended to write an apology for crimes about to be committed. Goldsmith, who is a least as conservative took minutes to see that Yoo’s “opinions” were hogwash. There was no intent beyond a figleaf for the cabal.

Good Morning Christy - thank you for this - it’ll take some time for me to digest it all

there’s a ton of stuff out there on Yoo’s failure to discuss Youngstown - so far can’t find anyone who disagrees with you -

somewhere there’s a debate on this btw him and another Berkeley prof (Choper ??)

but loved this one from an 06 piece - sums up the smarmy obtuse Ewe quite nicely for this dfh -

“No one is arguing John Yoo isn’t smart. But his arriviste-style meritocratic hustling, as contained in a far too aggressive OLC memo assiduously designed to please some of his elders, reminds me of a line from my old high school’s constitution, tasking the academy to educate “(y)outh from every quarter” to understand that “goodness without knowledge is weak…yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous.”

You might write that by permitting Yoo to stay on the faculty, he is holding him up as a good example that will lead a new generation of lawyers and scholars down an unconstitutional and dangerous path.

Bad enough what he did in the past, let’s not have him in a position to influence young minds.

thanks!

Taking a break for a fresh cup of tea. Good lord, I feel mentally dirty reading this. Anyone else feeling that way?

I’ve sent a few messages to Garry Trudeau, asking him when Joanie Caucus Redfern is going to lead the protest at Boalt for their having hired Yoo. It seems like she would be a logical choice to do this.

To throw it back in his and their faces: “Malefactors do not enjoy the privileges of a law to which they are foes.” Yoo memorandum at 15 n.14,quoting Gentili, 2 De Iuri Belli Libri Tres 22 (1612).

The word “Youngstown”, per the search function of Adobe, does not appear in the memorandum. Here’s the only reference I’ve been able to find which might conceivably relate to the Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer case. It’s the only time the word “zenith” appears:

In the area of foreign affairs and war powers in particular, the avoidance canon has special force. In contrast to the domestic realm, foreign affairs and war clearly place the President in the dominant constitutional position due to his authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive and his plenary control over diplomatic relations. There can be little doubt that the conduct of war is a matter that is fundamentally executive in nature, the power over which the Framers vested in a unitary executive. “The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength,” Alexander Hamilton observed, “and the power of directing and employing the common strength’ forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.” The Federalist No. 74, at 415. Thus, earlier in this current armed conflict against the al Qaeda terrorist network, we concluded that “[t]he power of the President is at its zenith under the Constitution when-the President is directing military operations of the armed forces.” Flanigan Memorandum at 3. Correspondingly, during war Congress plays a reduced role in the war effort, and the courts generally defer to executive decisions concerning the conduct of hostilities. See, e.g., The Prize Cases, 67 U.S. (2 Black) 635,670 (1862).

(my emphasis added)

The Flanigan Memorandum, in turn , is introduced in footnote 5 as: “See, e.g., Memorandum for Timothy E. Flanigan, Deputy Counsel to the President, from John C. Yoo, Deputy . Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Re: The President’s Constitutional Authority to Conduct . Military Operations Against Terrorists and Nations Supporting Them (Sept. 25, 2001) (”Flanigan Memorandum”)”;

So, now we need to see the Flanigan Memorandum. And find out, who is this clown Flanigan, anyway.

Ooops. The paragraph I pulled, cut and pasted into mine at 40, is located on page 12 of the memo (part I, FWIW), in the section on the Commander-in-chief power and how Congress cannot limit it.

And find out, who is this clown Flanigan, anyway

Here’s a bit about him. He’s bff’s with Abramoff too.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind…..k_Abramoff

“Malefactors do not enjoy the privileges of a law to which they are foes.” Yoo memorandum at 15 n.14,quoting Gentili, 2 De Iuri Belli Libri Tres 22 (1612).

Again, assumes you’re torturing a bona fide “malefactor.” “privileges of a law” most certainly apply to the innocent.

Great point, Christy. For those who haven’t seen it yet, Glenn also has just put up an interesting post on Yoo. The release of the memo prompted an old memory and I did some digging. It turns out that Bush pushed for exemption from the International Criminal Court before 9/11. From the NYTimes of August 17, 2001:

With President Bush’s first visit to the United Nations just one month away, administration officials and House Republican leaders are working to resolve a new dispute over the United States’ payment of millions of dollars in back dues to the organization.

The dispute, first reported by The Washington Post, is no longer over whether the United States should pay money it owes the United Nations; that was worked out by the House and Senate earlier this year, after years of contentious debate. Instead, it centers on legislation that seeks to exempt Americans from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, the first permanent tribunal now being created at The Hague to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Given the agenda of the PNAC and the list of countries to be conquered without cause, it is clear that Bush had war crimes on his agenda from the start. 9/11 just hurried things along a bit.

NOW IT BECOMES CLEAR!

I’ve been wondering about the timing on the release of the memo. Consider this, from editor and publisher:

“Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau will be taking a 12-week vacation from his comic, Universal Press Syndicate announced this afternoon.

“It has been 16 years since Garry Trudeau took an extended leave from ‘Doonesbury,’” said Universal President Lee Salem in a statement. “He has requested another break — well-deserved in my mind — to work on other projects, travel, and regenerate a few creative cells.”

Salem added that the break will last from Sunday, March 23, to Monday, June 16, and that Trudeau “looks forward to resuming the strip before the two major political conventions and the general election.”

It’ll be weeks before Joanie will even be around to take a whack at this.

thanks Christy…..and to all who added to my understanding of this memo.

hizzhoner

Well, I’ve been asking him the question for two or three years now; at least since it first became clear that Yoo was involved in inappropriate activities and actions subverting the Constitution.

i loves the google . . .

I just found this and now I have to rush out to work -

“In 1946, the United States prosecuted two Justice Department lawyers for a peculiar crime. They had written memoranda which, in disregard of international law, facilitated the torture and abuse of prisoners. They were sentenced to ten years in prison, less time served. That was in the days when the Justice Department lived up to its name. The case is called United States v. Altstoetter.

Scott Horton

can’t wait to read more

Have an FDL day - mad progressive love to all

Marty Lederman’s follow-up post this morning on the Yoo memo suggests the following:

The [Yoo] memo cites numerous other, as-yet-unreleased memos that appear to contain equally outrageous legal analysis. (Recall Jack Goldsmith writing about Pat Philbin presenting him with a “short stack” of egregious memos.) Those memos should be released immediately. More importantly, I think Congress should strongly consider NOT CONSIDERING ANY ADMINISTRATION LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS UNTIL ALL OF THE MEMOS HAVE BEEN DISCLOSED AND (APPROPRIATELY) REPUDIATED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE. There is simply no excuse for Congress to have allowed itself to be manipulated like this, and to be kept in the dark about the extent to which the Administration has ignored legislative statutes and treaties. They must use some of the leverage at their disposal.

Not a bad suggestion, should any Judiciary Committee members or staffers be lurking around conducting research here this morning.

(And we trust that in the passage above, Marty is not speaking of any DOJ memos written by FDL’s “egregious.”)

link please, before you run

might be this one.

Rev -

one of many

would suggest one googles: Scott Horton (believe Balkan has written as well)
US v Altstoetter.

Yoo still shows up in the media to opine on legal issues. The media do this because in their twisted world Yoo is an expert and his views give balance to their reporting. It is the kind of reasoning that would lead a cooking show to invite an axe murderer on to show the best way to carve a roast or ask Himmler about his opinions on gas ovens. There is just something desperately wrong about it.

Yoo is not a good lawyer who did bad things. That would be like a Mafia lawyer who uses his/her knowledge of the law to do bad things but does it well. Nor is Yoo a bad lawyer who used the law to do bad things. Yoo is something far worse. He has no concept of what law is or what it is for.

The question I have for government, law schools, and the legal profession is how could someone like Yoo become a lawyer, a tenured professor at a prestigious law school, and hold an important post in government. What does it say about the profession that it could train and validate such a vacuous blank, such a moral leper?

Peterr — here you go.

Christy: You asked in the main post

“What’s wrong with this picture? What am I missing here — if they felt Youngstown wasn’t controlling in any way, wouldn’t putting that argument in the memo have been a way to strengthen their hand on this to attempt to quell or undercut criticisms on that score with their well-documented legal argument on the case?

Unless, of course, they didn’t have one.”

I think we have to look at timing, what we know of historical events (i.e., a timeline) and the timeline of memoranda (especially the ones we haven’t seen). Working hypothesis: by the time Yoo got around to writing this, they already felt they’d finessed their way around Youngstown and didn’t have to worry about it any more, either by bluster, unilateral action, the AUMF, or some combination of those. I suppose it goes something like this:

September 11 - boom.

September 25, 2001 - Flanigan memorandum (written by Yoo) addressing “The President’s Constitutional Authority to Conduct Military Operations Against Terrorists and Nations Supporting Them”. I’d suspect this addresses Youngstown, particularly since the quote Yoo chose from the memo he’d earlier written* uses that peculiar “zenith of his powers” construction that signals (to me, anyway) he’d addressed Youngstown there and found few, if any limits, to the C-in-C powers.

September, 2001 - AUMF, which the Admin read as a green light for anything, particularly in Youngstown terms. And which the Admin likely tries to cite (in these memos if not in their briefs) as indicating Congress signing off with approval upon the wackiness they were starting on.

September 2001 - March 2003 - People start arriving in US custody from all points of the compass, some of them having lots of information and some none. There were already rumblings about “military commissions” as early as November or December 2001, and (IIRC) reports of mistreatment or torture of persons in US custody in 2002.

By March 2003, when this memo was published (I have no doubt it went through a bunch of drafts previously - it’s too long, too well constructed and coming from too important an office to have not been thoroughly proofread and vetted by people other than the named author), there were several issues arising in the prosecution of the Bush Wars then current or planned. These would have been:
1. Prisoner resistance to interrogations taking place in Gitmo and elsewhere outside the contiguous US.
2. FBI/JAG/ordinary military being resistant to applying force to extract information from prisoners, violating the training and doctrine they had previously received in their respective schools (i.e., “torture bad; if you wouldn’t like it done to you, don’t do it”, in a phrase), and the concomitant need to have something to beat these resistant people over the head with to make them get with the program. If a soldier/FBI agent refuses to torture after being told to do it, and then being warned (as a courtesy/cajole) that “the lawyers have told us what we propose to make you do is legally OK”, that subordinate (knows he) can be prosecuted for refusing to follow a lawful order. Remember, you can refuse an unlawful one. But if you know the lawyers have said it’s OK, you have no leg to stand on.
3. The possibility (we’d have to look back at the earlier releases of FBI docs re their refusal to participate at Gitmo to check dates, etc.) that the FBI was already by then looking at criminal prosecutions of people doing the torturing. This would have been a means to short-stop that.
4. A foreseeable, coming surge of detainees in Iraq. This would have several components - deriving quick intel on possible WMDs, deriving quick intel on locations of Sadaam and his crew, and the anticipation of a likely counterinsurgency campaign having to be fought there, with the need for information to break that insurgency. This would then lead to a couple outcomes: (a) an expansion of detention facilities and a concomitant reduction in the average quality of the people doing the detaining and interrogating, (b) the heightened need for speed - not all the “bad guys” would be in custody or half a world away and the detainees’ friends might react, (c) the need to terrorize the population away from resistance, and (d) pure bloodymindedness. Giving the OK to torture would facilitate (in the minds of those demanding the intel) the interrogators into doing whatever it took to get the info - and would remove any excuses or reasons they might have had for not getting it now.
Of course, the US colonial project which is (and always was) the Iraq war, would necessarily rely upon terrorizing that populace into submission, too.

This is all necessarily incomplete, but seems to make sense. To me, at least.

—
*(Unless you are a Supreme Court Justice, citing yourself is, from when I taught legal writing, a sign to the reader both that you have no meritorious argument and that you shouldn’t be taken seriously in the citing or cited writings)

Let me get this straight — you’d like the entire legal profession to take responsibility for a single rotten apple? A pox on everyone, including all the lawyers who have worked their asses off to uphold the law at great personal cost — all those lawyers who do appointments cases on death penalty appeals, for example, who have to live day in and day out with the worst of what bad lawyering throws at them by trying to make the sysytem reverse its errors, all those lawyers who work their butts off on the innocence project trying to dig through old case files to free people who may not have committed a crime…all those lawyers who put in endless hours of community service law representing abused women for free in restraining order hearings or abused kids as guardian ad litems in divorce cases to make sure the kids get a voice.

They are all for shit because John Yoo has no conscience?

You have GOT to be shitting me.

Barbara, where are you?

Reading through the memo, I’m also struck by Yoo’s use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth edition (aka, DSM-IV) — the bible of mental health professionals. On the one hand, it makes sense for a memo that undertakes to define and distinguish between various kinds of mental anguish would refer to DSM-IV. On the other hand, to use it so selectively, while making the case for inflicting pain and mental anguish on captives so as to induce their cooperation . . . it makes me sick.

Others at DOD and DOJ might do well to consult the DSM-IV to see what it says about the mental condition of those who inflict such pain on prisoners, and the long term effects ON THE INTERROGATORS who carrying out the acts that this memo condones.

United States v. Altstoetter paraphrased:

The crimes charged in the Yoo case pertained to the deteriorating administration of justice in the Bush Administration. In collusion with organizations such as the CIA and GOP, members of the DOJ aided and gave effect to statutes, decrees, and orders intended to deny due process of law to individuals in America and in areas controlled by America. People’s courts held original and appellate jurisdiction in cases of high treason while special courts, attached to courts of appeal dealt with political cases. Both were notorious for the severity of punishment, secrecy of proceedings, and denial of all fairness to those accused who offended the “healthy sentiment of the people.”

What you said.

Yeah… reading the memo and it’s twisted reasoning made me feel physically sick.

Excellent work, Christy!

I hope law professors across the land will put FDL on their list of credible references, you have taught me more about Law on this blog than anywhere I have visited, and I think I speak for so many legal laymen when I say thank you for unraveling the legaleez.

My eldest son is a lawyer now, and I really enjoy sending him links and quotes from your FDL posts and Marcy’s blog, in the language he understands.

Also, the depth of your perspective (and so often Marcy’s) is always comprehensive, the ONLY site that provides such clear dissemination of such confusing legal passages. Too often, the legal eagles forget those of us without law degrees need some help understanding the complexities.

I’m no expert, but I would say this about the absence of the Youngstown reference: it makes it ever more apparent that they are cherry-picking precedent, taking what fits and ignoring what doesn’t.

Maybe the 111th will re-establish a more balanced approach to weighing the truth, rather than convenient and incomplete opinions intended to promote the status quo.

The 110th is fatally flawed by blue-dogs and K-Street.

They are all for shit because John Yoo has no conscience?

You have GOT to be shitting me.

You are using a strawman. I am not saying all lawyers are evil. But yes, I am saying that everyone of you has some resposibility for John Yoo, for what John Yoo represents, and for the other John Yoos in your profession.

Did anyone resign in protest over this memo?
If so, did they go public with their reason for resigning?

hugh @53

He has no concept of what law is or what it is for.

i think yoo does have a concept of what the law is and what it is for, but it is so outrageous, so divorced any moral vision and so frightening that the mind recoils in horror from it.

scribe @55 - very helpful, thanks.

So, more broadly then. we are all complicit in the crimes of the criminals among us?

Some lovely sanctimony from a non-lawyer. I’ll take it under advisement because it was so what I needed today while I’m wading through this disgusting dreck, once again, to try and make sense out of what the latest turning of the rock has uncovered.

Although, frankly, I’m wondering why I even bother since I’m so fucking tainted along with every other lawyer out there who is trying to right the wrongs where and when they can. (Can you tell this sort of finger-pointing bullshit wasn’t what I needed while I’m going through this. Thanks heaps, Hugh — really.)

Maybe it is less than spitting in the wind, but I just called the Dean’s office of the Law School to express my deep disappointment that an institution would continue to give a teaching platform to someone of John Yoo’s opinions. I said more. The person who answered took careful notes And said she would give the message to Dean Edley. Here is the contact info if anyone else is so inclined:

Dean’s Office
University of California, Berkeley
School of Law
215 Boalt Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-7200
Phone: 510-642-6483
Fax: 510-642-9893

The whole point of having a legal “bar” to which one must be admitted, in order to practice the profession, is one way in which the legal system establishes its standards and starts the “self-policing” mechanisms needed to hold lawyers accountable.

How the legal profession deals with ethical lapses is indeed an important part of their responsibility to the law. The fact that Scooter Libby was disbarred was a slap in the face of the president who gave Libby a pass.

I will be curious to see how Boalt responds to the Yoo memo, as well as the lawyers on the Judiciary Committees, and perhaps even the CA State Bar association.

Oh give me a break. Lawyers are allegedly largely self-regulating. So they do bear direct responsibility for the bad apples. If they want to abandon the sefl-regulatory aspects of the profession, then they can escape all blame.

Yoo channels Ed Meese perfectly - essentially if they were not guilty why would we be holding them and torturing them?

Shouldn’t there be pickets every day at Boalt Hall? Back in my days at Berkeley, I would walk across campus to eat my lunch in Sproul Plaza, in front of Boalt Hall, to lend my support to the daily protests against apartheid. Yoo’s presence on campus seems to me to be a fundamental outrage at least as bad as the UC endowment investments at the time. Are there anti-Yoo demonstrations going on?

christy - are you saying that berkeley law school has no responsibility whatsoever for having hired him, based on his excellence in the field of law, into a position that is supposed to confer great deal of prestige?

No.

No, you give me a break form this patronizing BS. We are ostensibly a “self-regulating” democracy more broadly.

Christy, thanks for wading in the dreck and please slough off implied criticism. As you know, it isn’t for you. Your writing keeps me sane and informed. May a goldfinch light on your windowsill.

Bullshit. We leave law enforcement more broadly to people we hire to do it. Lawyers do it themselves, allegedly.

lol @ Yoo’s excuse: 81 pages of “boilerplate”

Yoo wrote, “our legal advice to the President, in fact, was near boilerplate.”

You mean like when Scooter Libby got disbarred recently? You mean, like that, allegedly?

crossposted in comments at Booman Tribune, and soon to appear at brendancalling:

After reading this post, Susie Madrak’s post, and Glenn Greenwald’s post on this matter, i have come to the conclusion that people like John Yoo must be publicly shamed.

So I have started writing letters, and I hope others here will do the same.

This is the ”Principles of Community” statement at UCal Berkeley, where John Yoo teaches Constitutional Law.

This is the faculty listing at Boalt Hall School of Law, UCal Berkeley’s law school. As you will see, every single one of these professors and deans has an email address and a phone number.

I think you can see what I’m getting at.

Here is a copy of one of my letters to his colleagues/employers, in this case the Assistant Dean for Student Services. I will be writing several of these letters over the course of the week. I hope to make John Yoo’s continued presence at Boalt Hall radioactive, to the point where his colleagues won’t speak to him and students won’t sign up for his classes.

Dear Ms. Ortiz:

Please pardon this communication from a stranger, but after reading the text of John Yoo’s memos, which gave the Bush Administration broad (and most likely illegal) authority to torture detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq, I was so shocked and dismayed by what I read, I felt it was proper to get in touch with Mr. Yoo’s colleagues at Boalt Hall.

As I am sure you have read, Mr. Yoo, acting as a government official, argues that the Bush Administration has the power to torture children. His memos, recently unearthed by the Washington Post, led directly to war crimes at home and abroad, staining our national reputation. Although many of his memos were ultimately rescinded, the underlying theory has led to violations of many US laws, including those surrounding the treatment of prisoners, wiretapping and surveillance, habeas corpus rights, and numerous Congressional oversight requirements.

I have already suggested to my son, who is approaching college age and is interested in law, that he consider any other institution than Berkeley until John Yoo is gone from your faculty. I will be suggesting the same to my friends and family with college-age children. However, I was wondering what you think of these revelations personally: are you comfortable being associated with a war criminal like John Yoo, who advocates for the torture of children and the violation of international law? Does John Yoo bring honor to your field and to your institution? Is John Yoo the kind of person you would want instructing your children? Does John Yoo live up to your stated principles of ”honesty and integrity”, ”affirm[ing] the dignity of all individuals and striv[ing] to uphold a just community”, ”freedom of expression and dialogue”, and ”civility and respect”?

As a concerned parent, I would be interested in hearing your views on Berkeley’s seemingly lawless law professor, John Yoo.

Sincerely,
Brendan [Mods removed last name]

I hope others will follow this model. Maybe Yoo will never end up in the Hague, but his public reputation at home can be destroyed with enough work.

i didn’t think so… that’s why i was so surprised that you would take hugh’s comment personally - i didn’t read it that way. only that we all (not just lawyers) have some responsibility for what is happening.

surely you, of all people, are doing everything and more to fufill your responsibilities as a citizen as a lawyer and as a human being. but that doesn’t mean we don’t have responsibilities - only that we must act on them.

Testy much?

only that we must act on them.

I, for one, think CHS is doing a hellava job.

Some lovely sanctimony from a non-lawyer. I’ll take it under advisement

This is an appeal to authority and is also a fallacy.

No BobbyG, I am not talking about complicity unless there is silence. I am talking about responsibility. If the legal profession can not sanction John Yoo then it debases itself and takes away precisely that authority that Christie would like to appeal to.

Peterr comes closest to the point I am making. If a profession like the law sets a bar, how can this standard have any meaning if it tolerates, validates, and rewards the likes of John Yoo?

One problem that all the comments on FDL, Harpers and Salon won’t fix is that to the authoritarian Base, authority is power and submission to authority is emotional bliss.

For those whose rationality is not so impaired, there’s the problem of framing. Glenn is right: we need to intellectually raze this administration’s after-the-fact legal justifications [sic] for its actions. That’s not enough. It won’t faze the MSM; it will have limited effect on the public, who know it’s wrong and should be stopped, but who have to wrestle with the more pressing problems of their limited resources.

Making this the bigger social as well as political and legal fiasco it should be recognized as requires a simple emotional framing. The kind of thing at which GOP hacks are masters. I think that’s because we’re fighting the Irish Sweepstakes problem: everybody thinks they’ll win, everybody thinks, deep down, that they, too, might someday need that same power to override the law. From the lowly, “I hate that meter maid; I was only parked there five minutes,” to “What if I had to protect my own?”

Hollywood makes billions from that insight, just as Cheney and Rove tried to build their legal immunity for lawlessness on it. The ungainly but artistically sensitive Charles Bronson made it his career for two decades, as have Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson. It’s the emotional attraction of police procedurals, most prominently the colonies of Law & Order and CSI that bore into our tv sets. It’s why we wanted Doyle Lonnegan to get it and Butch and Sundance to get away with it.

What to do? How about a Framing Challenge on FDL? How simply and emotionally can we describe it. Bush’s lawlessness, the corruption that unleashes power and hides its abuse. What it means if we let it pass, in a spirit of genteel compromise and shared longing for better, bipartisan days ahead.

You read this memo, and see how cheery you are. Jesus fucking christ.

We are ostensibly a “self-regulating” democracy more broadly.

yeah. and that means i have a responsibility for what is done in my name.

Yoo Shithead think the President of the United States has powers akin to the divine right claimed by kings.

This is a DEMOCRACY, yoo fuck!

Given his connections, I would not want to be on the disciplinary committee that tried to investigate John Yoo.