Worse Than My Lai

Former Bush administration official John Yoo has finally found a limit on executive power: Forcing federal contractors to disclose contributions to government officials. He says the "only" purpose for such a law is to pave the way for harassment and retaliation (not, apparently, transparency and fighting corruption).

TPM confirms that the editorial is silent as to whether "the President has the executive power to torture executives to force them to disclose their political donations."

Out With The Yoo, In With The Lederman

Some days the world just works out. One of those days is when anti-torture advocate Marty Lederman takes the job formerly held by John Yoo.

Yoo-Hoo

From The Archives helps Berkeley Law School out with some potential public statements on why torture-architect John Yoo remains on faculty. Examples

Dude. We love torture and wish we could crush the testicles of small children personally, but our dirty hippie neighbors won't watch our houses for us when we go on vacation if we do. Prof. Yoo is our man!

And:

It is too bad that we can't follow the train of causality between Yoo's memo and establishing a novel torture regime in the United States. These things are so complicated and all he did was write a memo. If only there were some discipline, some field that deals with responsibility for crimes, how to weigh those and what the penalties should be. But since there isn't, we don't know what to do. I guess we'll just do nothing!

Ezra Klein addresses the "tenure defense", arguing that "tenure doesn't protect those with unpopular ideas, it just makes them harder to fire, and thus raises how unpopular an idea has to be before it merits termination." So, he hypothesizes, making dumb arguments about tax cuts for the rich being the awesomest stimulus plan ever, not worth our time. Advocating killing the Jews? See you later!

I dunno. I feel like realistically, that's how tenure works (c.f., Churchill, Ward). But only to some degree (I mean Tony Martin managed to make it into normal retirement last year). And ideally, tenure gets superseded not by really bad ideas, but by actual acts of scholarly or personal misconduct. Has Yoo met that threshold? I don't know.

Torture is Pretty Terrifying

The Wall Street Journal, on several Yale Law grad attorneys bringing a suit on behalf of Jose Padilla against former Bush administration official John Yoo, seeking to hold him liable for authoring the torture memos that led to Padilla's brutal and inhumane detention for four years:

Perhaps if Mr. Yoo had decided to pursue a life of terrorism, he too could be represented by his alma mater.

At the risk of jettisoning my moderate credentials once and for all, some might question how promulgating policies of torture is distinct at all from "a life of terrorism."

Just because you're on our side, doesn't make it right.

NOTE: I make no claims as to the proper resolution of this case, or Yoo's relative culpability in creating America's torture regime. I'm merely observing that if he is culpable, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be considered a form of "terrorism."