Completely off his rocker

That would seem to be the statement that most accurately describes the absurd legal thinking of former Deputy Attorney General John Yoo, who worked in the Bush Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel shortly after 9/11.

You remember him; he's the one who wrote the infamous memo suggesting that torturing people (including American citizens) suspected of being terrorists in order to obtain information and holding those same people indefinitely without being charging them with a crime was all perfectly legal, if the President merely wished it to be so.

It turns out that Mr. Yoo also wrote a number of other, similar memos, including ones that claimed that the President was within his rights to use the U.S. military to attack domestic civilian targets such as apartment buildings and offices, could spy on American citizens without a warrant (which we know has also already happened, thanks to some gutless phone companies) and, most chillingly, had the freedom to restrict the First Amendment and the freedom of the press, all in the name of the nebulous goal of "fighting terror":

"'First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,' Yoo wrote in the memo entitled 'Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activity Within the United States.'"

Yoo couldn't be more mistaken. The natural rights guaranteed and protected, not conferred, by the Constitution (as many people mistakenly believe) are absolute; if amendments such as the First, Second, Fourth and Fifth can be violated and/or taken away willy-nilly just because a government official says so, then we might as well not even have this system of government, because those protections are the bedrock of our society. Nowhere in the entire Constitution is there a provision for denying people their enumerated rights simply because "war (especially against an undefined enemy) needs to be waged successfully". Additionally, Congress alone is specifically given the power to suspend habeas corpus (as detailed in Article I, Section 9), not the President himself.

Oh, it's been previously done, of course; that still doesn't make it right. Two infamous examples of Presidents deciding on their own to suspend habeas and lock up people without charges are the shameful interning of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent during WWII by Franklin Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War. Unfortunately, in the first incident a Roosevelt-packed and cowardly Supreme Court with several decisions upheld the blatant rights violations of thousands of innocent citizens, and in the second Lincoln simply ignored the Taney Court's overturning of his assertion that he could do so, without being penalized by Congress (doesn't that sound an awful lot like recent history?).

"At another point, the memo advices: 'Military action might encompass making arrests, seizing documents or other property, searching persons or places or keeping them under surveillance, intercepting electronic or wireless communications, setting up roadblocks, interviewing witnesses or searching for suspects.'"

Again, Yoo is completely wrong, as these actions would certainly fall afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, which specifically bans the military having a role in domestic law-enforcement operations, save for a few special exceptions.

Mr. Yoo is now a law professor at the liberal bastion of Berkeley, ironically enough; one hopes that he's not teaching constitutional law there, because he has absolutely no understanding of its basic concepts. We also fervently wish that he never again be allowed anywhere near a government office, as naked power-grabbers like him represent the worst of the legal system.


In related news, the CIA has now admitted in a legal response to the ACLU that they destroyed 92 tapes of interrogations of terror suspects, after first denying the existence of the tapes in the first place, then admitting to destroying far fewer numbers of tapes. One can only imagine how much more evidence has gone "missing" in that building.

I guess they ran out of videotape and Best Buy was closed for the evening, so they had to make do. Or something like that. Yeah, we ran out of tape, that's the ticket.

Stop insulting our intelligence, please.

How can Americans decide if what happened during those sessions in our name was reasonable and proper if all of the records are gone? That's exactly what the spooks seem to be counting on - the fact that without the evidence, we are forced to rely solely on their word as to what happened during the interrogations. The same word, of course, that under legal duress keeps revising upward the number of destroyed tapes, so one can only imagine what any such verbal and written assertions from those selfsame "cleaners" would be worth.

In the real world in which you and I reside, the action of erasing those tapes would be called felony evidence-tampering, and the people responsible would be arrested and charged with that crime. The CIA? They seem to expect to say the magic word "classified" and get off scot-free, with no sanctions whatsoever.

Time will tell, though, and hopefully that odious agency will soon be held accountable for their obviously amateurish attempt at a coverup of their actions in regards to those interrogations.

"'The CIA intends to produce all of the information requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the plaintiffs,' states the letter."

Oh, do be quiet. You're making my head hurt.