In light of the recent defenses made recently on behalf of Judge Jay Bybee, John Yoo, and Steven Bradbury, this picture appears to capture their sudden emergence into the public debate.
Of course, it is important to get people to join you in the gutter when arguing that torture is excusable when committed by Americans or when torture works.. My favorite recent claim by Pat Buchanan that, since we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, anything short of atomic annihilation is now permissible — even if we later signed treaties promising to prosecute any American who engaged in torture.
On another topic I got a “nice” response about closing the border to protect America from a possible outbreak of swine flu. I was caleld a RACIST PIG by the CLOWN Anonymously Yours:
FORMER DEM
1, April 25, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Swine flu:
I think we can all agree it is time to close down the Mexico/US Border.
14 Anonymously Yours
1, April 25, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Former Dem,
May I complement you on proving you are a Racist Pig. Is there nothing you won’t attack?
I am must wondering; when CANADA closes down its border with the USA, as they are discussing doing; are CANADIANS also RACIST PIGS or it is just me because it is the MEXICAN BORDER, where the outbreak is worst, that I want to close?
GOD there are morons here.
Bob, Esq. wrote:
“Maybe it’s me, but I had a hard time accepting the cold hard fact that law is not a search for truth, but a search for process.”
_____________
That still bothers me when I am often informed that some facts are not legally admissible i.e. in a *legal* v. a factual case.
Formalism the most prevalent legal interpretation of the rule of law, is it not?
“the crime against the state lay not in the act of torture but in THE ACT OF MAKING IT PROCEDURE.”
Bob,
I find that a very compelling take, perhaps not for how you intended it. What makes the Shoah so horrible has always seemed to me to be not the genocide, but the rigid institutionalization of it. The record keeping, the bureaucratization and in the end its’ banality (Hannah Arendt?). The elimination of Native Americans, the Turks killing Armenians, enslavement of Africans, the Stalinist mass purges, Rwanda and the Asian Killing fields were equally horrific. Yet something in the structure of the killing of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Russians and mentally challenged which was done with such a governmental bureaucratic approach took on even greater horror, if that is possible. That is at least the thought I came away with from your comment.
In these rare cases, where the leaders exercise power beyond right which no one has a right to, there is NO claimed defense of “criminalizing politics” since the tool used to make the criminal act a matter of procedure is politics.
To put it another (categorical) way, the law does not allow the defense of ‘politicizing crime’ (See the Declaration of Independence).
AMPLIFICATION: Politicizing crime, as a defense, is in fact legalizing crime; i.e. tyranny.
Whether one politicizes crime directly or implicitly, viz “looking forward, the result is still the same and CANNOT be ignored.
Are there any Formalists in the house?
Maybe it’s me, but I had a hard time accepting the cold hard fact that law is not a search for truth, but a search for process.
Accordingly, when I hear pundits and politicians bemoaning particular types of torture and the pain it inflicts, I’m not moved at all. In fact, all I can think is “Boo hoo; ya had me then ya lost me.”
Why? Because the crime against the persons pales in comparison to the crime against the state; and the crime against the state lay not in the act of torture but in THE ACT OF MAKING IT PROCEDURE.
In these rare cases, where the leaders exercise power beyond right which no one has a right to, there is claimed defense of “criminalizing politics” since the tool used to make the criminal act a matter of procedure is politics.
To put it another (categorical) way, the law does not allow the defense of politicizing crime (See the Declaration of Independence).
So, at the risk of sounding ‘unfeeling’ you can cry me a river about the horrors of torture. Singing sob stories about “war crimes” in lieu of focusing on the damage inflicted upon the constitution is tantamount to playing in the dance band on the Titanic. Noble, but useless.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Mespo,
It is those varmint racoons preventing your link to work successfully.
I recall John McCain’s recent comments that Presidential advisors should not be prosecuted for giving ill-founded legal footing because that would hinder the kind of advise given to a President. Yeah, what a shame it would be if the President was only given legally sound advise? WTF!!
“I think one of the *south end* of the 3 animals would be most appropriate. Is there such a photo available?”
do raccoons suffer hemorrhoids?
Oh, and Patty C, you read my mind again.
Mike S:
I ‘m not hostile, I promise–just technologically impaired. 🙂
Not sure what’s up but I got the original link to work now and my reposting did not post. I suspect gremlins at work again.
Sorry guys. Here’s the link again. Don’t know what happened but it worked for me this time:
http://k41.pbase.com/u11/bret/upload/38100566.jackass.jpg
MikeA:
thank you.
What Mike A. stated seems a clear case of these lawyers’ arbitrary and capricious decisions not is accordance with available case/international/treaty law.
Bron, most of the discussion surrounding the debate over prosecution of the attorneys who drafted the memos begins with a false premise. For example, a number of people over the past several weeks have approached the subject with variations on the following question: “Do we really think that lawyers should be prosecuted for giving bad legal advice?” If the question is framed in that manner, the answer is obviously no. The fallacy is that in this instance the lawyers in question were not dealing with novel legal issues. There was already a body of international and domestic law, both statutory and decisional, directly relevant to the matter. Moreover, lawyers working at that level have access to every conceivable resource for research purposes. For criminal liability to attach, it would have to be shown that the attorneys issued opinions which ignored existing law and which were drafted for the purpose of providing legal justification for policies which the lawyers knew were illegal under existing law. Proving knowledge and intent is a burden faced daily by prosecutors. This situation is different only by virtue of the fact that the prospective defendants are professionals.
PC,
While that is a good photo, I think one of the *south end* of the 3 animals would be most appropriate. Is there such a photo available?
Also, I think the original photo is neat because raccoons do have that natural bandit mask, which is a fitting metaphor.
Excerpt;
“Spain court assigns new judge to probe US officials who backed Guantanamo”
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/04/spain-court-assigns-new-judge-to-probe.php
“A Spanish court assigned a new judge Thursday to decide whether to prosecute members of the Bush administration behind the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detention center, a court spokesperson told CNN [CNN report]. Eloy Velasco will replace Baltasar Garzon [BBC profile; JURST news archive] in determining whether to seek legal action against former US attorney general Alberto Gonzales and six other Bush administration lawyers who are accused [complaint, PDF in Spanish; JURIST report] of sanctioning torture. Velasco was given the case after Garzon recommended that the provisional case be assigned to an investigating magistrate.”
http://www.stripersonline.com/surftalk/attachment.php?attachmentid=157895&d=1219711620
While I can’t be sure this photo is exactly what mespo intended, I would agree that editorially speaking, these little darlings are (also) more accurate, although not nearly as cute.
MikeA:
“Criminal liability can only attach to those who knowingly adopted illegal policies and those who knowingly implemented them.”
How do you then “prove” that anyone was a bad actor? Isnt the defense to that “I am just a stupid lawyer and made a bad interpretation of law” And the executive defense is “I made a decision because I believed my knuckle head counsel”.
Raff wrote:
“Maybe a little Gitmo techniques will dissuade those varmints!”
Procyon lotor (doglike one who washes)
*Criminal* waterboarding does not work on ‘coons because they love water, hence their binomial (they appear to wash their vittles). I think the original thumbnail shows water flowing in the gutter from which the ‘masked bandits are peering which lends further evidence of their predilection to watery environs.
As a charter member of the benevolent RLOA, *hygenic* waterboarding—but not *washboarding*–is recognized as an acceptable method of cleaning the occipital and frontal regions of a raccoon’s head and employed briefly for flushing-out of the buccal cavity of your pet critter. The foregoing assumes that you have your permit from your local wildlife agency to possess the critter and other papers from your city, local, state, and federal health departments confirming that your raccoon is Rabies-free.
Caveat: Coonskin caps are strictly forbidden *unless* the coon is alive at the time of your donning the headgear (good luck with that)
RLOA = Raccoon Lovers of America 2 Members Strong (to date—so far as I know)