Professor John Yoo has formally rejected a request from the House Judiciary Committee for his testimony, prompting a likely subpoena from the committee.
In a letter to Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), Yoo’s lawyer john Millian said that he is merely following the directions of the White House on the question:
We have been expressly advised by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice that Professor Yoo is not authorized to discuss before your Committee any specific deliberative communications, including the substance of comments on opinions or policy questions, or the confidential predecisional advice, recommendations or other positions taken by individuals or entities of the Executive Branch
The problem with a confrontation over such testimony is the refusal of the democrats in both houses to pursue the torture program as an investigation in criminal acts by the Administration. The President’s authority and privilege does not extend to the commission of crimes — despite the suggestions of the prior torture memos. As such, it is hard to maintain a refusal to share any information in an oversight investigation into such crimes. Congress has tried to play it both ways: investigating torture, but not calling it a crime. Click here.
Once again, the problem
For the full story, click here.
JT:
Had I been around, I would have advised Eichmann to do the same thing.
Will Media Remember it was Gore’s 1994 Tie-breaking Vote that Mandated Ethanol?
As the international disaster of ethanol begins taking its toll across the planet — and, maybe more important, as more and more press outlets finally begin to recognize it — will media remember that Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate requiring this oxygenate be added to gasoline by 1995?
Seems highly unlikely, doesn’t it?
But I digress. Liberals keep throwing the “torture” garbage out secretly hoping it is still enough to rile up Sadr & the militias into open civil war so they can say “told ya so”.
It is amazing how the left in America is so willing to push an agenda that is getting American soldiers killed while accomplishing a noble and worthy in a battle for Democracy for the middle east.
Of course it was the left that left Vietnam to the Communists.
Niblet,
You never cease to amaze me with your nonsense. The Left didn’t start the war in Iraq, George W. Bush and his cabal of felons are behind it with the unfortunate assistance of some Dems in Congress. Professor Turley is correct that the Democratic Congress needs to push the Torture matter for what it is. A criminal offense. By the way, the war in Iraq is not a battle of Democracy. It is a battle for Oil and corporate profit. And now you bring Vietnam into this mix? I won’t even ask what connection Vietnam has to the torture issue and Iraq. Wait a minute, I remember the connection now. We prosecuted Americans soldiers for torture during Vietnam.
Niblet:
Same old right-wing toilet-stall toe tapping crap. Farmers are now beginning to sell their water rights because they can make money without the farming hassle. When the food shortages hit the US, and they will, and hording and riots start, the NeoCons will be headed for the bunkers and leaving you and the other right-wingers out in the cold. How long do you think your ideology will sustain you?
Sometimes, my having lived for awhile brings with it an admixture of anger and despair in surveying the governmental/political scene. I remember when a congressional subpoena, or a request to testify to one who is, or was an administration official, would be complied with as a matter of course. We have watched a parade of subpoena’s ignored and no sanctions imposed. At the same time MSM attention is lavished on, pseudo-celebrities, baseball players use of steroids and political horse races devoid of positional content.
This administration has ignored the constitution, flouted political morality, betrayed our judicial system, while prosecuting an unneeded and immoral war. Yet no one is held even minimally accountable and our corporate controlled media focuses on the inane and irrelevant. I find it difficult at times, as one who loves this country and its constitutional ideals, to swallow down the despairing feeling that we have indeed become a “banana republic.” or even a fascist state.
Mr. Yoo is a disgusting symptom of how far we have fallen and the gall of it is his tenured position at a prestigious law school. Were it not for my family, friends and my hopes for their futures I would have long since allowed this despair to wash over me and allowed my attention span to focus solely on my own pleasures.
Folks:
It is my opinion that poster niblet is not a singular poster at all. My theory is that the political comments are that of team of people – I suspect students – performing a kind of experiment. The language is never consistent, nor is the logic, nor is the motivation.
At times it seems the sensitivities are reflective of feminine depth and other times not particularly insightful at all. While not a bad thing, I fear these conversations are the game or experiment of younger people, perhaps students, performing an experiment or merely occupied with something more cerebral than setting bags of poop afire on someone’s porch.
In any case, I’ve never been a big fan of zoos, no less to be one of its denizen.
Binx,
I never thought of that, but you could be right on the team aspect of Niblet. Maybe I will have to refer to him in the future as Niblet, et al.
I hadn’t thought of that either, it’s very possible. But I notice that every time one of us slams the Administration or those who support it’s pro-torture position, we get responses that totally distract from the topic of discussion, which is torture and the fact it’s a crime. Which I believe is intentional on their part.
There are those who for whatever reason(s) don’t WANT to see the President or anyone in the White House made accountable, either criminally or politically. So they seek to distract us — and no doubt other groups — with irrelevant rants about Vietnam and other such nonsense, hoping we’ll change the subject. Too bad for them. It isn’t going to work.
Michael, you said exactly what I feel.
To All:
from the diary of Lady Izumi Shikibu (10-11th century Japan)
From darkness
I go onto the road
of darkness.
Moon, shine on me from far
over the mountain range.
Peace people,
Jill
God Bless GW BUSH.
I left out dyslexic.
Okay – Game Over.
Jill,
Lovely poetry.
Binx, Raflaw & Susan
Remember COINTELPRO? Notice Niblet’s lacking sense of humor running through all his posts. I’m thinking Homeland Security or Rovian Republicanism gone wild. However, it might also be that the Niblet et. al. group is attempting irony, or even humor. There is something to be said for an ability to achieve boring discourse on so many levels of possibility.
Mike
I believe its humor. Although I maintain, it has all the earmarks (pardon the expression) of the burning bag of poop – snickering in the bushes (again pardon the expression) type. I think the adults should have a nice place to talk things out and ’students’ should not abuse Professor Turley’s blog-estate. Did I mention there is a confederate among them ?
Did anybody see Keith Olbermann on Letterman the other night?
The man looks like a big fat round WOODTICK that just dropped off a dog! I kid you not! I had no idea Olbermann was so grossly overweight!
“Folks:
It is my opinion that poster niblet is not a singular poster at all. My theory is that the political comments are that of team of people – I suspect students – performing a kind of experiment. The language is never consistent, nor is the logic, nor is the motivation.
At times it seems the sensitivities are reflective of feminine depth and other times not particularly insightful at all. While not a bad thing, I fear these conversations are the game or experiment of younger people, perhaps students, performing an experiment or merely occupied with something more cerebral than setting bags of poop afire on someone’s porch.”
********
Fredo, Carl, Scooter, Monica, Rummy…
Esteem for US rises in Asia
Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor | April 26, 2008
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23599516-7583,00.html
THE US war in Iraq has strengthened its strategic position, especially in terms of key alliances, and the only way this could be reversed would be if it lost the will to continue the struggle and abandoned Iraq in defeat and disarray.
Surely the author of this sentence is on the ganja, you might say. Something a little weird in the coffee? It goes against every aspect of conventional wisdom.
But the author of this thesis, stated only marginally less boldly, is one of the US’s most brilliant strategic analysts. Mike Green holds the Japan chair at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies and was for several years the Asia director at the National Security Council. He is also one of America’s foremost experts on Japan and northeast Asia generally.
His thesis, applied strictly to the US position in Asia, is correct.
First, Green states and acknowledges the negatives. He writes: “The Iraq war has had one important, pernicious impact on US interests in Asia: it has consumed US attention.”
Yet Green’s positive thesis is fascinating. The US’s three most important Asian alliances – with Australia, Japan and South Korea – have in his view been strengthened by the Iraq campaign. Each of these nations sent substantial numbers of troops to help the US in Iraq. They did this because they believed in what the US was doing in Iraq, and also because they wanted to use the Iraq campaign as an opportunity to strengthen their alliances with the US.
Tired Barack Obama resorts to aggression
By Tim Shipman, Telegraph.UK
Last Updated: 2:00am BST 27/04/2008
He seems tired, brittle and more aggressive, and some of his appealing hope and charisma have been dispensed with.
Five days after losing to Hillary Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama has taken off the gloves in his battle to win the American presidency – and in so doing has left critics wondering whether he is not just another conventional politician grubbing for votes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/27/wobama127.xml
A remarkable thing happened Thursday: a press member wanted to ask Nobel Laureate Al Gore about the growing international food crisis and how it relates to ethanol and global warming hysteria. Not surprisingly, the man who cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate fourteen years ago mandating the use of ethanol wasn’t available, and a spokesman for his hysteria-driving Alliance for Climate Protection declined to comment. Isn’t that convenient? Regardless, the good news is that press outlets continue to recognize this unholy connection, and that someone, even at the conservative New York Sun, would deign to report it.
“But the author of this thesis, stated only marginally less boldly, is one of the US’s most brilliant strategic analysts.”
To paraphrase James Garner in “The Americanization of Emily.”
God save us from the brilliant strategic analysts of the world, they’re the ones that get the rest of us killed.
Carl, Fredo, Rummy, Scooter, Monica,
Getting back to Professor Turley’s blog and resuming our proper position of ignoring niblick, I’d also like to state my complete agreement with Michael’s first post about this adminstration’s overt contempt of our laws and Constitution.
I am deeply concerned that Mr Yoo’s, and others Bush administration officials’, defiance of Congress is not only a bad thing on its face, but serves as reinforcement of a far worse legacy of non-accountability this administration is leaving, for especially young Americans.
Let us remember the social implications that have echoed through our society since Bill Clinton tried to draw a distinction between his particular daliance and “hav(ing) sex with…Miss Lewinsky. Young people saw this as permission or at least a justification to act in a certain way because a) the President did it; b) he said he wasn’t the same as having sexual relations; and c) it isn’t cheating on your spouse. Not one of Mr Clinton’s better legacies.
Now reconsider the crimes and conduct of this administration vis a vis its apparent contempt for the rule of law, the fundamental protections of the Constitution, Congress and the US judicial system. How else can young people interpret what their elders are doing but that they need not fear the law, they can ignore it. They’ve been shown that Gordon Gecko was a pessimist, pre-emptive aggression is acceptable and that telling the same lie often enough can make it true. This is a far more corrupted and cynical and ultimately dangerous legacy for the republic than anything Mr Clinton’s foibles produced.
The Democrats had a controversy with Dan Rostenkowski pilching stamps. The GOP had Abramoff and DeLay. The Dems had the Clinton/Lewinsky mess. The GOP (both the executive branch and with the complicity of the GOP-held pre-2006 Congress) has done so much damage to this country, it’ll take quite a while to be rid of the stench of it.
RCampbell,
You and I agree on much. I find your concentration on the negative effect on the young to be particularly pertinent. I would add to your thoughts what I see as a complete failure by the school systems to educate our youth as to how our government and constitution are supposed to work. What I was taught in the Social Studies and Civics courses of my youth (50’s & early 60’s) gave me a good understanding of not only how government works, the historical context and the compromises made by the Founding Fathers. When my daughters were being educated in the 80’s & 90’s those elements were severely lacking. My guess is that today they are almost non-existent on the elementary and high school levels.
Is it any wonder then that many of today’s legislators on the Local, State and National level seem blithely unaware of their function and view political interactions as akin to the battling of sports teams? Since many of these legislators have law degrees some knowledge of process and principle exists. The media, however, has no such education and their pontifications expose them as truly ignorant as to how these political/legal and social processes are supposed to work.
Where is DW, this week?
*with regard to Mukasey testimony
http://jonathanturley.org/2008/01/30/mukasey-refuses-to-answer-question-on-waterboarding-in-congress/
Patty C 1, JANUARY 31, 2008 at 12:16 am
DW, having copied the time listed on CSPAN this AM, I thought I had missed it, but like you caught some of it at 3pm.
I was not impressed, except by the degree of obstinacy he employs in not answering the obvious.
I did chuckle in the referencing of Jack Goldsmith’s book when he said that “no one thought they were breaking the law.”
Are you kidding me? Every one was behaving as though the Constitution was some obstacle to circumvent instead of the guide which paves the way. Gimme a break.
John Yoo is disgusting. If you’ve seen his interviews on the Frontline documentary that came out a couple of months ago, you know that he offers little in the way of arguments in support of his position. Much like Bush and Cheney, he merely gives his own account of what he believes, and since he believes it, it must be true. I’m waiting to see if our weak Congress actually does subpoena him. It would be a nice change of events.
Mike Spindell,
While I don’t agree with everything Mr. Campbell states, I think that if there is any lack of education in the “civics” area in schools today, the culprit is the No Child Left Behind Act. The teachers now must teach to the test. Also, when you have conservatives putting out so-called science books that claim that scientists have not yet agreed upon the cause for global warming when the opposite is true; you might want to take a look at the school district administrations(school boards and administrators) that are agreeing to use these dishonest books and agreeing to remove evolution, etc. It is not the education system’s fault. It is the fault of administrators who are part of the plan to dumb us down and to control what our kids are taught. The good Benedictine Sisters that taught me in the similar era as you, would be spitting mad. And I learned the hard way to not get on the Nuns bad side! Maybe George W. and Cheney need some of the nuns discipline.
Rafflaw,
couldn’t agree with you more on “No Child
Left Behind.” I think though that this has been going on for a much longer time. The upheavals by students in the 60’s & 70’s led to a close examination of social studies teaching by educators and legislators. After all this country was founded upon the ideas of people who were the radicals of their time and represented a radical change in form of governance. From an establishment perspective perhaps we were giving our children a too “liberal” view of the rights of man. Less incendiary history began to be taught and through the years curricula became even more homogenized. NCLB was the nail in the coffin.
Hello All and especially Patty C!
I have not been on the internet much this last week. In fact I have been pretty unplugged from the news.
Yoo’s refusal is a bit surprising. I would be interested to see how he responds to a subpoena. I suppose we may see a Miers repeat, except in his case the rationale would have to be different: he was not, unlike Miers, a close and constant advisor to our constitutional Monarch.
Our supine congress probably won’t muster the energy to pursue matters. I have lost faith in them.
Yesterday, I ran across an old musty (literally) book, part of a multivolume set put out by the government printing office back in 1946. It listed documents used by the Nuremberg Commission in its prosecutions of Nazi war criminals, and reprinted in their entirety the bulk of them. 8 volumes of over a 1000 fineprint pages each.
Anyway, it was amazing how my previously light mood chilled as I read through those documents relating to interrogation (called the “third degree”) and prisoners treatment.
What a horrid road the Nazi’s travelled down, with the concurrence of their equivalent to the OLC. I read about the necessity of enhanced interrogations for partisans (their equivalent to our “enemy combatants”) all for the purpose of saving German lives. Nothing changes, we all want to protect our own… There were also legalistic opinions of the exemption from the protection of the normal laws of various populations, like Jews, Soviets, and so
forth. The same themes.
It made me think of the Lawyers cases and Yoo and Bybee and Haynes, et al and shudder a bit. All unknowingly, we were walking down the same road the Nazi’s travelled before us.
But our hands are not clean. We committed our own crimes against humanity in the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo and so many other such attacks where we knew innocent civilians would be the primary casualties. War made us into barbarians ourselves, and that is the point I suppose.
Hey DW!
I just took a walk down memory lane – reading old posts.
Nothing surprises me, anymore – and usually when I say that something still does.
A lot of this sounds like posturing.
The OLC has directed him not to appear, of course, but his interests and theirs might not be coextensive, as it were.
Deeply:
I missed your pleasant and elegant text. Don’t stay away so long.
Hello D.W.,
I was getting concerned as well. Glad to hear from you again.
Jill
What a nice set of greetings! Yes, I didn’t want to stay away so long, but sometimes it happens! I don’t know how those smiley faces got into my post above..I must have hit some wrong key in closing the parends.
It is eerie, friends, reading the accounts of the Reich Ministry of Justice in the 1935-1945 period and how the steps they took to provide legal cover for the goings-on of the time were 70 years later so uncannily duplicated in the OLC and in the Congress (Patriot Act, MCA, etc) They basically established a separate court system and judiciary for “alien peoples” and created retroactive laws covering earlier misconduct, they also used “exigent circumstance” reasonings to thread their way around old laws and reclassified whole populations to put them outside the old protections. Special extra-territorial detainment facilities, restricted access to counsel, torture/interrogations, subservient judiciary. If you pick anything we have done, they did it too. Overall we have been infinitely more humane and precise in our dealings with enemy combatants, but the “War Against Terror” is young yet and the Germans abused their legal system increasingly as the years went on, and so likely would this administration were it given a Rooseveltian longevity in office. Such abuses tend to accumulate once you crack the wall of legality.
In the German’s case, the abuses got a number of the legal aid and abettors hauled up before the Nuremberg Commission.
I think Yoo is part of our mirror evolution, but such a minor player that I would reserve prosecutions for the next layer of management and up.
Deeply Worried,
Welcome back. I enjoyed reading your posting about the similarities between Nazi Germany and the Bush Administration, but I have to take exception to one comment. You suggested that Yoo was a minor player and the prosecutions should only be used for the bigger fish. I think the abuses are so serious that any party involved in the process, from top to bottom, should be prosecuted. Unless you use the minor player(s) to testify against the bigger fish, they should all have to answer for their abuses.
Hi Rafflaw,
I thought so too until recently, and then I realized that Yoo’s involvement can’t be prosecuted under any U.S. statute barring someone coming forward and testifying that Yoo was privy to the fact that people were being tortured ante his memo(s), and then maybe you have misprision of felony.
No, Yoo is probably liable under some theory of culpability in the Alien Torts Claim process and that’s where we may see him face a test.
As far as war crimes, Yoo is perhaps guilty in the same sense the Alstoetter like defendents were. But you won’t see a prosecution here under international law. It would have to be overseas I’m afraid and even a Democrat president would be under fearful local pressure to resist a foreign extradition. A Republican president wouldn’t even consider it.
Then there’s the matter of the Executive’s pardon power. I may be wrong, but I believe Mr. Bush may try to shield people like Yoo before he leaves office.
Deeply Worried,
You may be right about the pardon possibility. All of our discussions may be moot if he pardons his entire administration. Is there any precedent for pardoning the entire top tier of your Administration when a President leaves office? Who pardons George W.? Maybe we can get him after he leaves in January. Maybe someone should ask Obama and Clinton about the foreign extradition issue now.
Wooo……
(lips pursed) – just waiting for you, JT.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/06/politics/politico/thecrypt/main4074420.shtml
(The Politico) John Yoo, a former top Justice Dept. official who authored hugely controversial memos on interrogation techniques that can be used on detainees, and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, will testify before House Judiciary Committee, according to the Associated Press.
“A former Justice Department lawyer who wrote a now-repudiated memo allowing harsh interrogations of military prisoners has agreed to testify to Congress about those practices, say House Judiciary Committee officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the panel has not yet made the announcement,” the AP reported.
“Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and former Assistant Attorney General Dan Levin have also agreed to give testimony at a future hearing. Former CIA Director George Tenet is still in negotiations with the committee.”
David Addington, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney who was heavily involved in preparing the DOJ memos, is still considering whether to appear before the committee. A Judiciary subcommittee is meeting this morning to vote on authorizing subpoenas for Addington and others Bush administration officials.
UPDATE: The Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), has authorized a subpoena for Addington. The authorization resolution grants Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) to issue a subpoena for Addington’s testimony at his discretion. Conyers has not said when and if he will do so.
“Torture is un-American and yet it has been used by this government against those in our custody and control,” said Rep. Nadler. “And now we know that these so-called ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques were approved at the highest levels of government. Torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, besides being contrary to American values and traditions, have proven to be an ineffective means to obtaining actionable intelligence.”
Copyright 2008 POLITICO