Please note the Administration’s response to the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, Sec 305. on reports tendered to congressional committees.

It prompted a signing statement from the WH:

“Violates the President’s constitutional authority to withhold information, the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, the national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive or the performance of the Executive’s constitutional duty.”

Now signing statements are of dubious force, but they do indicate how the legal thinking goes at the WH.

1. DOJ announces that the tapes were not necessarily destroyed.

2. DOJ refuses to release such tapes as they may have: defining them as sensitive prosecutorial documents for ongoing DOJ investigation(s)and subject to executive privilege. They have precedent for this tack at least in respect to a congressional subpoena.

3. Depending how determined the Dems are, the case goes to SCOTUS and the SG argues for the DOJ; 6-3 majority upholding privilege.

There is a secular religion to which I imagine Professor Turley belongs. It is a love of country, often called “patriotism”. Part of that lifelong passion is a love and respect for the Law and our system of Constitutional government. You might call it a form of patriotic fundamentalism and it is patriotism’s strongest form.

Where the problem is that the current Administration is undoubtedly patriotic, but only in the weak sense. They don’t love the deep order of laws and powers that are the very bones of America and because of this lack, they have wittingly damaged the country they undoubtedly love, but also undoubtedly do not truely understand.

First, what an idiotic defense of lawbreaking. “You’ve never been a CEO, so how can you complain about Enron?” is basically where you’re going with that line of argument.

Second, “Do you notice that the lefties who constantly complain of the harsh performance by the police, never join the force and become a gentle policeman” is in itself a dumb question, since you’d never hear about them if they did–when was the last time a gentle policeman made the news? The great majority of left-leaning Americans don’t think that all CIA agents are evil (hell, how much time has the left spent defending Valerie Plame, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern?), but aren’t blithely willing to ignore flagrant law-breaking and inhumane practices. Your willingness to not only excuse both, but to attack those who would object to them, is disgusting.

Come on Turley, bright and early in the morning, I want to see you in line applying for a job as a interrogator. If you don’t get the information and have the criminal executed, then it’s your turn.

I love the idea of using THE TRUTH, posted on DOJ’s own website, as a blunt instrument, of sorts, over which to hit the proverbial head
and nail it, so to speak.

There is a power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-
The desert and illimitable air,-
Lone wandering but not lost.

Sometime the mightiest redoubts, proof against all assaults, weaken invisibly and subtly lose cohesion of their constituent parts.

So one spring day, at the slightest wind, the whole tyranny collapses of a sudden and what we had thought invincible and beyond our powers to effect, lies in rubble at our feet.

http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/18usc23402340a2.htm

Note the citation to the 9th Circuit’s finding in the 1996 Hilao v Estate of Marcos, where a practice recognizable as waterboarding is described and categorized as torture.

Keith Olberman strayed a little bit toward the end of the interview, but overall the viewer was left with the impression that crimes had been committed and something needed to be done.

Would this be the very same DOJ that was ordered by Judge Leonie Brinkema to respond as to the existence of any tapes?

One could very easily ask the question of just how is it that the DOJ can respond negatively to Judge Leonie Brinkema’s question while the very same DOJ sat in a CIA briefing by by CIA General Counsel Scott W. Muller where the existence of such tapes were not only confirmed, but that the CIA had expressed the desire/intent to destroy said tapes.

And now the DOJ is going to “investigate” whether laws have been broken?

It is looking more and more that Michael Hayden’s investigation of Helgerson was on the order of a pre-emptive strike.

This Administration is so criminal, so debased, that it is going to pull down both enabling Parties with it.