A rather bizarre scene is unfolding in Berkeley’s City Council which is considering five measures attacking Berkeley Professor John Yoo. One measure demands criminal charges of Yoo for his torture memo as a Bush official while another demands that no student be compelled to take a class from him.
Yoo’s 2002 memo made a legal argument in favor of torture and it was signed by his boss, former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee. It was later rescinded by the Administration — but only after it became public.
The fact is that Yoo is protected by academic freedom and liberals should not support efforts to manage the workings of law schools. Those same advocates would be deeply aggrieved if the Texas or Kansas legislature tried to force changes in course offerings due to liberals on the faculty.
Yoo’s memo was a great offense to everyone who believes in the human rights. He will likely spend his entire life under the cloud of an academic who embraced the very antithesis of the rule of law. However, this is a matter for the legal academy and not politicians to address.
In the meantime, I am searching for past memos that might allow the DC city council to demand that I be relieved on teaching duties. There was that column on eating horses, for example. That should be good enough to strip me of access to students. Accordingly, I would like to be the first to demand that George Washington protect students from corrupt ideas and influences by transferring all of my teaching responsibilities to my colleagues. I am prepared to give a public confession of corrupt ideas to further this movement.
Come on, folks, Yoo is nothing. I am a menace. Indeed, I am looking at a pile of ungraded exams that should immediately be impounded to be given to a less controversial figure. These students deserve better than the likes of me. I know me and I know they deserve better.
For the Yoo story, click here.
Boy,
I go away for a couple of days and the trolls return. It is apparent that the City council’s censure of Yoo is for show, but that isn’t all bad. Any time we have the opportunity to display the illegal and unconsitutional actions and claims by any of the Bush regime felons, we should grab it and use it. The only way we are going to make sure that we never torture again is to shine sunlight on all the parties and all the documents involved in the torture decision and process.
Sometimes when you stand up you become the target.
In fact, I may change my handle to ‘Bullseye on my Ass’
As usual, Jill is misreading ‘the signals’ while simultaneously grossly overestimating her importance on the national stage.
The name of the game is ‘distraction’ – regardless of the
issue du jour. This is much ado about nada ie ‘small potatoes’.
However, I will say there seems to be an unspoken expectation that our newly elected President will ‘suspend his transition efforts in order to ward off the numerous repeated and ridiculous challenges to his certification as President.
He’s doing absolutely the right thing by ignoring the bulk of it and not providing anything. These neo-con spoil-sports are not worth the time of day, but they will continue on in their quest – no matter what the campaign does in response.
Believe me, if I ever had reason to believe that Barack Obama was unqualified, as ‘natural born’, to run for President, I would have wanted that information before he was ever on the ballot, having been left with no other choice but to vote for him or a Republican.
I am an Independent turned ‘registered Democrat’ and was a Clinton supporter out of the three front-runners, although NONE was my ‘first choice’.
I wanted Al Gore to run – as much as I did the last time…
Still, I resent the Kennedy’s injection of endorsements early on in the primary, including Caroline, who would like to replace Hillary as Senator in NY. I think she would be a terrible choice.
And, no matter what Bill Richardson says now, he sold Hillary out, notably after ‘The Kennedy’s” – Senator Ted D-MA, Caroline, and Patrick and Senator John Kerry D-MA stepped in. I resent that as well.
I’m sorry about Ted Kennedy’s health and Kerry’s loss against Dubya’s 2ns term, however, I still maintain, ‘they’ should have kept their mouthes shut…
I’ve noticed the troll traffic increase as well, Bob. I attribute it to fear and desperation.
What’s with all the trolls here lately?
I see the “flurry posters” are back. They show up every time there’s a posting with information on war crimes. I’m glad they show up because it always means the administration is worried about being brought up on war crimes. Keep posting people!
I vote that Col. Vandeveld and other JAG corp members who know what’s happening and object take John Yoo’s course. The following is from Alternet:
“Former Gitmo Prosecutor Breaks Silence About Torture
Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films on December 5, 2008 at 2:00 PM.
Despite Bill O’Reilly’s delusional rantings, there is no debate that the U.S. military tortured detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Not when you have former Gitmo prosecutors like Lt Col Darrel Vandeveld coming forward to testify about the atrocities that occurred there.
Col Vandeveld told the BBC this week about the Gitmo detainees who had been mistreated in order to secure confessions. In one particularly brutal case, Col Vandeveld discovered “indisputable evidence” regarding the mistreatment of an Afghan named Mohammed Jawad, who had been accused of throwing a grenade at a U.S. military vehicle.
According to the BBC, “After Jawad had tried to commit suicide by banging his head against a wall at Guantanamo, Col Vandeveld says that psychologists who assisted interrogators advised taking advantage of Mr Jawad’s vulnerability by subjecting him to specialist interrogation techniques known as ‘fear up’.” Interrogators then subjected Jawad to the sleep deprivation technique known as the “frequent flyer” program, in which prisoners were moved from cell to cell every few hours until they confessed.”
I’d take Yoo’s class. Just to piss him off. He needs to be disbarred and sent to prison as a co-conspirator. And I’d tell him so every day.
HARHAHRHRHAHHRH! OBAMA IS FOLLOWING THE BUSH PLAN FOR IRAQ!
Not a chance pal.
George War Crimes Bush’s plan includes torturing people.
This is a tremendous article by: Matthew Alexander who led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006.
AN INTERROGATOR SPEAKS
I’m Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq
By Matthew Alexander
Washington Post, Sunday, November 30, 2008; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242.html
A quote from this brave American, “How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.”
George War Crimes Bush feel free to use this label batho.
JT:
Cease and desist your grading. You clearly reference what can happen when you try to correct the mushy thinking of the youth of our day. If you persist,I suspect the potted plants substituting for professors might be hemlock.
On the Yoo issue, I agree with his right to academic freedom. I also believe that turnabout is fair play and that he should experience a touch of the misery he unleashed on others. I call that natural justice! I still don’t think he had the right to yell “torture” in a crowded concentration camp. A little uneasiness about his fate might do him some good. Sometimes what’s right has to prevail over what’s legal or prudent.
creeping
I agree that a city counsel trying to get a professor booted in pure political theater, and a waste of time. However, I don’t consider the memos he prepared for the Bush administration to have anything to do with his duties as a law professor.
Yoo, Addington and their minions were engaged in a deliberate scam to water-down the constitution. We are too polite when we see this as anything but kreeping facism. If a bunch of nut-balls on the Berkeley City Counsel what to waste time with Yoo that’s to bad for the tax payers in Berkeley. However, I hope that at some point numerous members of this administration are indicted in the Hauge.
Hopefully some of these clowns will be arrested by Interpol some day while laying on a beach somewhere.
Obama won’t prosecute a soul.
The students opting out of Yoo’s class are obviously more concerned with the retention of their souls than their grades.
After all one could argue that Joseph Goebell’s could have taught one hell of a Polysci course but attendence may be somewhat limited.
As for the previous comment about “kicking the left”, it’s not just the left who are against torture. There’s another group, known as human beings. It’s an up and coming group, and one clearly in the minority in this country, but they are there nonetheless. And something tells me that if we don’t hold ourselves accountable for the torture and crimes of rendition and imprisonment of foreign fighters, that the rest of the world, just might.
Just because we “think” we’re above the rest of the globe, and beyond the rule of international law, doesn’t mean the rest of the world does.
OBAMA GETS GOOD ADVICE: GIVE THE LEFT A GOOD SWIFT KICK OVER NATIONAL SECURITY!
National Journal columnist Stuart Taylor offers President-elect Barack Obama some national security advice in his latest piece today:
The prospect of anyone in the U.S. being inappropriately wiretapped, surveilled, or data-mined seems to stir the viscera of many Bush critics more than the prospect of thousands of people being murdered by terrorists. This despite the paucity of evidence that any innocent person anywhere has been seriously harmed in recent decades by governmental abuse of wiretapping, surveillance, or data mining.
On these and similar issues, Obama will have a choice: He can give the Left what it wants and weaken our defenses. Or he can follow the advice of his more prudent advisers, recognize that Congress, the courts, and officials including Attorney General Michael Mukasey have already moved to end the worst Bush administration abuses — and kick the hard Left gently in the teeth.
I’m betting that Obama is smart and tough enough to do the latter.
December 4, 2008
Campaign Promises on Ending the War in Iraq Now Muted by Reality
New York Times
WASHINGTON — On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama offered a pledge that electrified and motivated his liberal base, vowing to “end the war” in Iraq.
But as he moves closer to the White House, President-elect Obama is making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months.
“I said that I would remove our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, with the understanding that it might be necessary — likely to be necessary — to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said this week as he introduced his national security team.
Publicly at least, Mr. Obama has not set a firm number for that “residual force,” a phrase certain to become central to the debate on the way ahead in Iraq, though one of his national security advisers, Richard Danzig, said during the campaign that it could amount to 30,000 to 55,000 troops. Nor has Mr. Obama laid out any timetable beyond 16 months for troop drawdowns, or suggested when he believes a time might come for a declaration that the war is over.
That status-of-forces agreement remains subject to change, by mutual agreement, and Army planners acknowledge privately that they are examining projections that could see the number of Americans hovering between 30,000 and 50,000 — and some say as high as 70,000 — for a substantial time even beyond 2011.
There always was a tension, if not a bit of a contradiction, in the two parts of Mr. Obama’s campaign platform to “end the war” by withdrawing all combat troops by May 2010. To be sure, Mr. Obama was careful to say that the drawdowns he was promising included only combat troops. But supporters who keyed on the language of ending the war might be forgiven if they thought that would mean bringing home all of the troops.
To date, there has been no significant criticism from the antiwar left of the Democratic Party of the prospect that Mr. Obama will keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for at least several years to come.
An apparent evolution of Mr. Obama’s thinking can be heard in contrast to comments he made in July, when he called a news conference to lay out his Iraq policy in unambiguous terms.
HARHAHRHRHAHHRH! OBAMA IS FOLLOWING THE BUSH PLAN FOR IRAQ!
HEY LEFTY’S; BARRY THANKS YOU FOR THE MONEY AND VOTES! ONE IS BORN EVERY MINUTE. OK EXCUSE ME WITH LEFTY’S ONE IS BORN EVERY TWO MINUTES BECAUSE THE MOTHERS ARE PRO-CHOICE!
December 4, 2008
News Analysis
Campaign Promises on Ending the War in Iraq Now Muted by Reality
By THOM SHANKER
New York Times
WASHINGTON — On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama offered a pledge that electrified and motivated his liberal base, vowing to “end the war” in Iraq.
But as he moves closer to the White House, President-elect Obama is making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months.
“I said that I would remove our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, with the understanding that it might be necessary — likely to be necessary — to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said this week as he introduced his national security team.
Publicly at least, Mr. Obama has not set a firm number for that “residual force,” a phrase certain to become central to the debate on the way ahead in Iraq, though one of his national security advisers, Richard Danzig, said during the campaign that it could amount to 30,000 to 55,000 troops. Nor has Mr. Obama laid out any timetable beyond 16 months for troop drawdowns, or suggested when he believes a time might come for a declaration that the war is over.
That status-of-forces agreement remains subject to change, by mutual agreement, and Army planners acknowledge privately that they are examining projections that could see the number of Americans hovering between 30,000 and 50,000 — and some say as high as 70,000 — for a substantial time even beyond 2011.
There always was a tension, if not a bit of a contradiction, in the two parts of Mr. Obama’s campaign platform to “end the war” by withdrawing all combat troops by May 2010. To be sure, Mr. Obama was careful to say that the drawdowns he was promising included only combat troops. But supporters who keyed on the language of ending the war might be forgiven if they thought that would mean bringing home all of the troops.
To date, there has been no significant criticism from the antiwar left of the Democratic Party of the prospect that Mr. Obama will keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for at least several years to come.
An apparent evolution of Mr. Obama’s thinking can be heard in contrast to comments he made in July, when he called a news conference to lay out his Iraq policy in unambiguous terms.
HARHAHRHRHAHHRH! OBAMA IS FOLLOWING THE BUSH PLAN FOR IRAQ!
HEY LEFTY’S; BARRY THANKS YOU FOR THE MONEY AND VOTES! ONE IS BORN EVERY MINUTE. OK EXCUSE ME WITH LEFTY’S ONE IS BORN EVERY TWO MINUTES BECAUSE THE MOTHERS ARE PRO-CHOICE!
Obama can’t find himself a CIA Director because nobody wants a job that involves trying to keep America safe by getting information when the left wing lunatics are going to try to send you to jail for doing it.
PS: Looks like Obama is going to “take his time” closing Gitmo and “take his time” deciding just what torture is.
I agree. Regarding some aspects within legal academia, tenured Professor Jonathan Turley is ‘worse’ than tenured Professor John Yoo. Had I chosen a different profession, I would have treasured taking constitutional curricula from both scholars.
I access this blog as much out of disagreement with Professor Turley than I do for concurrence. However, his wit, wry sense of humor, decency for all humanity, and his eloquent legal brilliance are enough to keep all of the intellectually curious engaged in the mental jousting over legalese that occurs following his comments and then the debate, refutations, and discussions from his peers, colleagues, and some of us nonprofessional stragglers.
You little upstart. How dare you say that I am not as obnoxious and corrupting as Yoo? Then to have you try to opt out of a class before me is positively outrageous. What is clear is that this is a toxic situation and the best the city council can do is replace all students with paid temps and all faculty with potty plants. The result would not only protect everyone, but result in a higher quality learning environment.
I disagree that You are worse than Yoo. Different situation. Students who would rather not be in Yoo’s class are analogous to conscientious objectors. From my understanding, the school isn’t refusing to let him teach students!
So to bring that to your class, people who are vehemently opposed to hearing their classmates’ voices should be able to opt out of your class.
JT,
Can’t you just break your wrist? It worked for Stephen Colbert. He’s still milking that one. Slip on your wrist awareness band, bribe a doctor for a fake cast and your grading problems are over.