A Torturous Compromise

[ChumpDumper]

Feel free to bump that thread if you have anything relevant to say in it.

[Yonivore]

It's fun watching you squirm -- like when you pretended not to be yourself with that other screen name.

Squirm? For the past several months, I've had absolutely no idea what you were posting -- except for when someone quoted you in their posts.

Keep looking. I'm not going to hold your hand.

Like I've said, our debate is just not that important and, further, settles nothing. It's not worth the time.

If you're interested in continuing you'll restate your case. I'm not going back to read the entire thread.

ducks?

Nope.

I never said you weren't unimportant.

Nobody in this forum is important to the topics discussed. If we were, we damn sure wouldn't be in here talking about them.

[ChumpDumper]

So, again, those are the only two cases you're relying on when you state, "The other relevant cases involving enemy combatants were covered."

Oh no. The other cases are there. I didn't give a full citation. There is no reason to.

I'm guessing U. S. v. Lee is a case "involving enemy combatants?"

Wrong. Seriously, you just confirmed why there is no reason for me to give a full citation. You aren't going to do anything with it, so why bother?

I stated the facts of the other cases. Parker is significant for its definition of torture, its relative recency and the administration under which that case was tried. You can see the relevance of the others if you try really hard or get someone else to help you. Right wing blogs are staying away from these cases like the plague, so don't expect much help from them.

[ChumpDumper]

Squirm? For the past several months, I've had absolutely no idea what you were posting -- except for when someone quoted you in their posts.

Ignoring is like a long-term squirm. Still fun for me.

Like I've said, our debate is just not that important and, further, settles nothing. It's not worth the time.

Which is why you continue it.

If you're interested in continuing you'll restate your case. I'm not going back to read the entire thread.

No need to. Looks like you are already reading it. I can't help you if you don't get it, but I can understand if you feel at such a disadvantage you want to quit.

Nobody in this forum is important to the topics discussed. If we were, we damn sure wouldn't be in here talking about them.

I'm not sure why you are whining about this particular point.

[Yonivore]

Ignoring is like a long-term squirm. Still fun for me.

Wow! Okay. I was glad to provide you with enjoyment....I guess.

Which is why you continue it.

No, I continue it because it helps when I actually discuss these issues with real people in the real world.

No need to. Looks like you are already reading it. I can't help you if you don't get it, but I can understand if you feel at such a disadvantage you want to quit.

Okay.

I'm not sure why you are whining about this particular point.

Who's whining? Just stating the facts. You are absolutely an insignificant, nonexistent, player in the the topic of deciding whether or not the Bush Administration engaged in torture. I'd bank on it.

[Yonivore]

Like I said, our argument makes no difference. Besides, we've been arguing the wrong issue all along.

Obama has already decided not to seek prosecution of those who committed the enhanced interrogation. He was going after lawyers for merely doing their job and offering an opinion on the law. Since when is that a crime?

It's all moot anyway, Obama is moving on...

The "torture" controversy is winding down, with the Obama administration letting it be known that the lawyers who wrote memos interpreting Congress's broad prohibition of "torture" won't be criminally prosecuted. (Nor will the Congressional Democrats who knew all about the interrogation techniques and endorsed them.) Of course not: the idea that they could convince a court that writing a legal analysis with which Eric Holder disagrees could be a criminal act, or convince a jury to convict, was ludicrous from the beginning. Instead, the administration says it may refer the matter to various state bar associations to see whether their ethics arms might want to impose some penalty on the offending lawyers. That's a little more like it: it is at least barely possible that some state bar's ethics committee might be staffed with liberals who would make a politicized decision to impose some sort of discipline. The real purpose, of course, is to discourage lawyers and others from serving in any future Republican administration.

Meanwhile, far from actually believing that the most notorious "torture memo," written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo in 2002, was a criminal act, the Obama Justice Department has just filed a brief in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in which is adopts and endorses the Bybee/Yoo thesis. Andy McCarthy [posted earlier -y.] has the details. Of course, it shouldn't be surprising that DOJ has adopted the Bybee/Yoo analysis as correct, since the same approach was endorsed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Pierre v. Attorney General, on a 10-3 vote. So the "criminal" policy of the Bush Justice Department is also the law as elucidated by the Third Circuit, en banc, and the policy of the current Department of Justice.

What we're witnessing here goes far beyond mere hypocrisy. In three months, Barack Obama and Eric Holder have succeeded in politicizing DOJ and bending it to their partisan ends, to the point of threatening their predecessors with baseless criminal prosecution as a form of political harassment.

Most Americans, fortunately, are having none of it. CNN finds that by a 50 percent to 46 percent margin, Americans approve of the use of waterboarding, etc., in interrogating terrorists.

I think I'll move on...

Until, of course, it is discovered this administration has used some questionable techniques to extract or control terrorism. Then, we'll see how you feel about it.

Unfortunately, I think we're more likely to be attacked first.

[ChumpDumper]

Like I said, our argument makes no difference. Besides, we've been arguing the wrong issue all along.

Obama has already decided not to seek prosecution of those who committed the enhanced interrogation. He was going after lawyers for merely doing their job and offering an opinion on the law. Since when is that a crime?

Legal malpractice is certainly subject to discipline by the appropriate bodies, which is exactly what is being recommended. On top of that, there are the several instances of testimony before Congress and the like by Yoo and Bybee, which will now be gone over with a fine toothed comb.

[ChumpDumper]

I think I'll move on...

Good plan -- you were getting quite the beatdown.

Until, of course, it is discovered this administration has used some questionable techniques to extract or control terrorism. Then, we'll see how you feel about it.

Your support of this form of torture is clearly partisan. My opposition to it is not.

Unfortunately, I think we're more likely to be attacked first.

Keep praying for the worst, Yoni. It's all you guys can do.

[Yonivore]

Legal malpractice is certainly subject to discipline by the appropriate bodies, which is exactly what is being recommended.

But, it's not a crime as has been represented for the past several years. And, besides, see below, it appears the Obama administration has ed up their chances of even getting sanctions.

On top of that, there are the several instances of testimony before Congress and the like by Yoo and Bybee, which will now be gone over with a fine toothed comb.

Yeah, well good luck with that.

The Torture Follies — Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Worse ...

As K-Lo notes, I have an article (posted on the homepage this afternoon) which recounts how the Obama administration is urging the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to adopt the same interpretation of federal torture law that it is investigating former Bush administration lawyers for developing. (And why shouldn't AG Eric Holder rely on the memo written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo in 2002? After all, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals already adopted it as the law of the United States in a ruling last year — as I also recount in the article).

But now there's more. As Jan Crawford Greenburg reports at her ABC News blog, Legalities, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility — by playing partisan politics — has blown the critical filing deadline for referring Prof. Yoo for professional sanctions. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good thing — as I've been arguing, there is no legal or ethical basis to pursue this amamie investigation. But this is an episode that should be studied given all the blather about how it was Republicans who politicized the Justice Department.

OPR, like the Civil [ACM CORRECTION:] RIGHTS Division, is largely a bastion of the Left at DOJ. But to get some things done, the career lawyers need sign-offs from political appointees, so they butt heads with the brass from time to time if a Republican administration is in power. Patently, they slow-walked the ethics investigation of Yoo and Bybee for years, waiting for President Bush to be on his way out and a more agreeable Democrat administration to come in. In the waning weeks of the Bush administration, they tried to slide their report by AG Michael Mukasey — perhaps figuring he was on his way out the door and wouldn't pay it much attention. Wrong! As Jan Greenburg Crawford recounts:

It appears John Yoo cannot be disciplined or disbarred for writing those memos, even if the Office of Professional Responsibility says it has evidence he should be.

That’s because OPR’s five-year investigation—carefully timed for release only as Bush was leaving the White House and Obama was coming in—dragged on too long. As a result of that timing, OPR blew the deadline for referring possible misconduct allegations against Yoo.

John Yoo is admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania. But the Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board, which would investigate any complaints against him, imposes a four-year limitation for complaints.

Yoo wrote the memos in 2002 and 2003. This is 2009. You do the math....

This is a huge issue for current DOJ officials and Attorney General Eric Holder. Because if Yoo—who wrote the memos and has been vilified as responsible for approving the interrogation program—can’t be disciplined under state bar rules, why then would OPR even refer the matter to state bar officials in the first place?

And what about Bybee? Now a federal appeals court judge, Bybee is admitted in DC and Nevada—those jurisdictions don’t have comparable limitations periods. But how strange would it be to only refer Bybee, when his involvement largely amounted making a few edits and signing Yoo’s legal work?

Then there’s the report itself. The bar for disciplinary action is incredibly high. Legal ethics experts, like Geoffrey Hazard at the University of Pennyslvania, say they expect nothing to happen, even if the state disciplinary boards were to investigate. Hazard says Yoo and Bybee have a number of strong available defenses, and that it’s awfully hard to say the memo was so “outside the range of plausible lawyered judgment that no reasonable lawyer could render it.” Without that, he says, there’s no ethical violation.

When Mukasey read the report, he was so dissatisfied, he demanded Yoo and Bybee be allowed to comment—as [Michael] Isikoff also reported back in February.

Mukasey then wrote a detailed response, also signed by Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, that was harshly critical of OPR’s efforts, which he said veered far afield into matters that were irrelevant to whether Yoo and Bybee gave bad legal advice. What would be the relevance, for example, of details of at least one CIA interrogation that went horribly wrong—if that interrogation had gone beyond what the memos approved in the first place?

So all the talk about referrals, all the leaks about how the two men erred in judgment, starts to feel a little bit like old-fashioned politics. Especially when you think about the timing of the report—as Mukasey was packing up his office and a new administration coming in—and big-time blown deadlines.

[ChumpDumper]

And what about Bybee? Now a federal appeals court judge, Bybee is admitted in DC and Nevada—those jurisdictions don’t have comparable limitations periods. But how strange would it be to only refer Bybee, when his involvement largely amounted making a few edits and signing Yoo’s legal work?

When he signed it, he made it his legal argument.

I don't even know if Yoo practices at all anymore, but it's good to know you are a fan of ty lawyering and bad government. You have zero credibility in any future complaints regarding either.