Comments on: No Crime, Just Bad Counsel? Justice Department Conducts Internal Ethics Review on the Torture Memos

By: deeply worried

deeply worried — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:43:04 +0000

It has emerged from hiding: the March 14, 2003 Yoo memo:

http://gulcfac.typepad.com/georgetown_university_law/files/march.14.memo.part1.pdf

That is part 1. The second part has an identical url but for the numeral 2.

The analysis at Balkin is along the lines that Yoo did an a bad job of it, but I am not qualified to say anything on the matter.

FWIW

By: deeply worried

deeply worried — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:33:13 +0000

Rafflaw,

I think the events of 9′11 paralyzed all opposition to the administration’s green light on information gathering via any and all means. Everyone wanted to hunt down the perpetrators and scotch any further such attacks, and at that time squeamishness was put to the side by almost everyone.

By: rafflaw

rafflaw — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 04:01:03 +0000

I don’t understand why the fact of the previous convictions of Japanese soldiers after World War II and of American personnel from the Vietnam War for the crime of waterboarding is not spread across every newspaper in the land. I don’t understand why Feinstein and Schumer’s role in allowing Mukasey’s nomination to go forward is not held up for scorn by every progressive blogger in the land. Our nation has been duped for 8 years by the Bush Administation and it may take their departure from office to give Congress and a truly impartial Justice Department to hold them criminally responsible for their many crimes.

By: Vincent Caminiti

Vincent Caminiti — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 17:28:44 +0000

From a forensic science perspective the integrity of this crime scene has been dramatically compromised. This is further compounded by the conflation of injured parties and co-conspirators.

This eventually all sounds like noise to the majority of the American public. Norm Crosby couldn’t possibly have made this any more confusing while shrugging his shoulders in apparent amazement that it isn’t as obvious as the 200 lbs Justices Scalia and Thomas have gained collectively since their appointments to the Supreme Court.

Most not only immediately mistrust the alleged perps …. but indeed mistrust any other body declaring “J’Accuse!” with anything short of Emile Zola’s credentials. The facts transform into irrelevant annoyances because our regard for the Constitution or rather disregard for the Constitution is replaced with political collateral Our guidebook to prevent monarchy has been the knotted rope in a tug-o-war of ideologues – fighting for their own lexicon in order to put definitive words into the framers mouths, posthumously.

This eventually leads one to believe that there has to be a better way to perfect our Constitution other than continuously changing the rules by rearranging the words and those speaking them compared to the last time we heard them and that outcome based on who was in the room. I don’t mean to reap scorn by reducing the great study of law to an elaborate game of “Yeah … BUT!!!”

On the other hand, it shatters the confidence of the Nation when a buffoon is permitted to propose buffoons to sit on the most important Bench in town, only to be accepted or rejected for a plethora of suspicious reasons by another gallery of buffoons all claiming to regard above all – Lady Justice. Then in an act of utter obstruction, another buffoon is put in charge of the door.

By: Susan

Susan — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 06:17:18 +0000

DW, I fully agree with both JT’s and your words, but I have to wonder WHAT, if anything, can be done at this point. JT has already said it, those at the top levels of our Justice Department, whom we have counted on to launch necessary criminal investigations, have refused to do so. Which says, to me anyway, that they have in effect given a mass pardon to those who should have been charged with these crimes long ago. And by so doing, they have virtually abandoned the American people in the process, leaving us all to the “mercies” of a callous and indifferent government, who in turn can imprison just anyone on a whim. It is a frightening direction this country has taken. I honestly don’t know what those of us with little or no power can do when our elected officials with the most power have refused to do anything.

By: deeply worried

deeply worried — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:22:06 +0000

I could write the response of a civil libertarian to this news, but Professor Turley has pre-empted me and said what needs to be said far more eloquently and at greater detail then ever I could.

Professor, I wish I were reading this on the op-ed page of both the Post, the Times, and the LA Times, (throw in the Trib for your hometown). Can you get them to print this?

More people than just the readers of this blog need to read the above.

Really.

Everyone is used to me dusting off old Court decisions but I will give it a rest here. Over the last months we have all been exposed to the numerous rulings and statutes that made torture illegal. We know the cases dating back to the Spanish American war and the war crimes tribunal, and UNCAT, and Hilao v Marcos, and the police interrogation cases of the forties and fifties.

There is one unified, unbroken thread: neither the courts nor the congresses have ever condoned agents or our democratic government torturing human beings of any legal category, and every the practice was brought before them, they struck it down.

Frankfurter talked about brutalizing the “temper of society”. This piece of insubstantial window decoration “investigation” is a sign of the brutalization of our government.

I sometimes visualize the Framers coming back to latter-day Washington and surveying the current scene and considering how their children have carried out their vision.

In my little fantasy, they are somewhat larger than life in stature, maybe 8 feet or so and they go striding through the halls of Congress and the DOJ and the office buildings gathering up Durbin, and Rockefeller, Mukasey and Bradbury, Feinstein and McConnell, Reid and Pelosi, Bush and Cheney, and on and on, carrying them under their arms and then pitching the little latter-day midgets into the Potomac.

John Marshall and Joseph Story are in the crew and they emerge from the Supreme Court with Scalia and Thomas under their arms and pitch them into the river as well.

But they won’t appear, and we must do what we can in their stead. And for our grandchildren so we will be the fit subjects of the dreams of the future generations and not be the ignoble players in the dramas yet to come in minds, yet unborn.