There are predators, and then there are enablers.

It doesn’t matter if we are talking about child sexual abuse committed by Roman Catholic priests, deceptive Wall Street bankers, or DOJ-sanctioned torture. The game being played right now is the same, in all three venues: avoid accountability.

When people accused Barack Obama of appeasing America’s enemies, I had no idea they were talking about Republicans.

There’s a reason why Gul Rahman’s killer wasn’t charged with negligent homicide. The declination memo used to analyze the death worked under the claim that such laws didn’t apply.

In response to a request for evidence indicating that Abu Zubaydah had no knowledge of pending terrorist attacks when he was captured in 2002, the government responds that they have not contended, in this proceeding, that he did have such knowledge.

When Jonathan Fredman wrote the Abu Zubaydah torture team in Thailand to tell them they had gotten the green light to torture, he cited not the Bybee One memo which had just been signed, but a July 13, 2002 Yoo fax, for his discussion of intent.

The guys who probably approved an unauthorized technique, the guys who probably had read both Bybee Memos, relied on the intent language of the Bybee One memo to excuse an unauthorized technique, and declare the deliberate exposure of someone to near-freezing temperatures not to be murder or torture.

It appears that early in July 2004, the White House dictated to DOJ what torture methods would be approved. And only after Congress got involved did the White House agree to niceties like OLC opinions.

John Kyl has officially announced he intends to waste an oversight hearing on March 23 beating up Eric Holder because he did not disclose an amicus brief opposing unlimited Presidential power.

Since Mark Benjamin has decided to claim–some 300-plus days after I did the first of many posts focusing on the details of waterboarding (to say nothing of posts drational did looking at these descriptions medically)–that, “the agency’s “enhanced interrogation program” haven’t been mined for waterboarding details until now,” I thought I’d make another point about the significance of those details.

When bureaucrats overprotect their agency, they harm the public they are hired to serve.