Big, big trouble for Mr. Yoo.

When the people involved with this, who can be shown to have committed crimes in sanctioning these obscene crimes to happen, are charged, convicted and sentenced appropriately, I will again have a slim, basic pride in the country of my birth. Until then, I remain an angry, ashamed, betrayed American.

Thank you ACLU...

I'm sending you a large chunk of my rebate check!!!!!!! (Keeping it in the U.S.)

Section 2576A is missing.

Non-collateralized debt, such as credit card debt in the post-bankruptcy-reform era, is secured by the threat of force — be it breaking legs or garnering wages.

Oh wait, now I see the memo links. I'll look at it.

Hasn't he been disbarred yet?

Even if Yoo had done nothing wrong in his life, he comes off as such a horse's ass when he appears on tv. He acts as though he is the all knowing when it comes to law. I hope his ass gets canned along with anyone else that facilitated this action.

A message from me to Yoo. Fuck Yoo, yes, fuck you.

mezurashiiiken @ 4:

When the people involved with this, who can be shown to have committed crimes in sanctioning these obscene crimes to happen, are charged, convicted and sentenced appropriately, I will again have a slim, basic pride in the country of my birth. Until then, I remain an angry, ashamed, betrayed American.

agreed....it's time obama and clinton started making commitments to prosecute these thugs, from monica goodling to john yoo to gonzalez to bush...

if they all walk away smirking, wealthy, and proud of all they did, without repercussion, then even an obama presidency won't mean all that much....

McBush/Yoo 08

For a torturous future!

How did everyone miss this in 03?

I've been rather ticked at some of the stuff the ACLU has done in the recent past, but this is something that makes me love them. Let's hear it for people who know what the United States is all about!

John Yoo @ 23:

Pursang @ 5:

Stanford should be so proud to have this war criminal as a professor of law.

I am actually currently employed at the University of California at Berkeley.

In a time of war the President is the Unitary Executive. What he says goes, whether you like it or not.

Well hello, John, nice to see you've taken time off from torturing kittens and chasing underage boys to grace us with your presence!

I'm getting awfully sick of everyday seeing more evidence of this administrations criminal and conspiratorial activities while not a peep of impeachment comes out of the congress! John's gonna walk just like Scooter. Don't see Generalissimo Gonzales doing any time do you? Fucking Cheney can get drunk and shoot a man in the face and tell the cops to piss off! I'm so sick of the pansy Democratic "leadership" sticking their heads in the sand and holding hearings that lead to nothing or better yet people just ignore the summons, I don't know what to do. I can hardly believe this is the country I grew up in!

This man should at best be disbarred and at worse tried for treason for undermining the Constitution.

Will Yoo lose his gig as professor of Law at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley?

John Yoo @ 23:

In a time of war the President is the Unitary Executive. What he says goes, whether you like it or not.

How'd you like it if you had 10,000 volts applied to your testicles? And you were innocent?

Ok, someone asked this over on FDL earlier today and I think it's vitally important in getting the seriousness of this out to the masses: how should this be correctly framed? IANAL and most voters are not, how do we best phrase this event to make it sink in?

L.A. Confidential @ 35:

So John now that 95% of the population of the planet hates your guts how ya feel?

Oooh don't be blaming it on us Johnny! You broke it! You own it!

goat hussein sage @ 37:

L.A. Confidential @ 35:

So John now that 95% of the population of the planet hates your guts how ya feel?

He probably feels he has finally earned the respect of his estranged father.
Oh, Papa, I done good, didn't I?

Oh yah. He's a big hearted guy! He just reeks compassion for his fellow human beings doesn't he?

The Legality of Evil" is still the best summation I've seen. Let's not forget Addington, Haynes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all the rest in on this...

L.A. Confidential @ 41:

Come on Johnny don't cut and run now. Tell us about all the good things your doing for people now that the surge is successful. Whats your next thing? Torturing Children for the benefit of boosting Graduation Rates?

I think he's been hanging out in Shattuck Avenue coffeehouses spiking hippie girls' lattes with date rape drugs.

A CYA document - COVER YOUR ASS.

An after the fact document - designed to justify torture that had already been on-going for months. And 28% of the people still don't see that the Bush/Cheney legacy to the Citizens of the United States was a Fascist State?

Not only is Bush the worst president ever -- and no revisionist history will remove that stain from his black as coal soul -- but he is on par with other world-class dictators, thieves, murders and war criminals.

The re-PIG-lic party - doomed forever to be cleaning up their own backsides in the political arena as a result of their own amoral and criminal behaviors.

Or simply put - their uncontrollable and egregious GREED.
*

Have any of you read the memo yet? Is is here /media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdfs/OLCMemo1-19.pdf?sid=ST2008040102264

and here /media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdfs/OLCMemo20-39.pdf?sid=ST2008040102264.

See for yourself what you think.

enor @ 6:

Thank you ACLU...

I'm sending you a large chunk of my rebate check!!!!!!! (Keeping it in the U.S.)

Thanks for a great idea.Yoo,John Yoo.And this guy is a law professor at U.C.,Berkley?
I was wondering how I was going to renew my membership.I`ll also renew Public Citizen.
Thanks again.

Stand proud America....now you can stand tall and proud right alongside the WWII Japanese, Stalin and his slaughterhouse, just about any heinous government that condoned torture as a means to gain info, no matter how worthless it might be.

Who better than to head this whole stinking mess than the one who was a victim of this criminal act himself, john mcbush. He has at least a few brain cells left in his head and a couple bones and tendons that are still functioning. Just ask him how much "useful information" he gave to the Vietnamese.

But hey, we call him our "hero". After all, he didn't die. Guess that would have made him a coward.

I always thought a hero was someone who did some brave act for country of for the sake of others. Nope, this man simply told them whatever they wanted to know and stayed alive. This is the new definition of "our hero".

God, how we have sank to the bottom of the barrel.

abob @ 47:

The fire bombings and nuclear attacks on Japan resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents. The area bombings of Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz killed tens of thousands of non combatants. That is the human cost of war. We are at war with terrorists hellbent on the annihilations of Americans. In our struggle to combat those Islamic extremists there is bound to be collateral damage. War is Hell. The United States is at war.

So, abob, what are you doing to help prevent the total annihilation of the USA? Sporting a yellow ribbon on your pickup?

enor @ 6:

Thank you ACLU...

I'm sending you a large chunk of my rebate check!!!!!!! (Keeping it in the U.S.)

HELLs YEAH!!!!

I already give a monthly payment to ACLU but I can't think of a better way to spend the rebate...

abob @ 47:

The fire bombings and nuclear attacks on Japan resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents. The area bombings of Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz killed tens of thousands of non combatants. That is the human cost of war. We are at war with terrorists hellbent on the annihilations of Americans. In our struggle to combat those Islamic extremists there is bound to be collateral damage. War is Hell. The United States is at war.

By that logic, we can come to your house and torture you as well!

Just because the Executive can pay some hanger-on to write an opinion that happens to be contrary to law does not serve to make it ethical, moral or legal.

Getting an opinion is as easy as asking for one. Getting the opinion you desire is as easy as bribery or blackmail.

Getting it RIGHT, that takes an intent to get it right, and lawful.

Foreign concepts in this Fascist Dictatorship.

I bet you'd like to gouge my eyeballs out with a fork eh John?

LOL go ahead kid bring it on!

Printed the memo. Will read it in the bathroom where the toilet will be much needed.

Damn, the ACLU has done more to hold them accountable than the whole dem party.

Screw donating to these spineless dems who only care about getting reelected, donate to the ACLU.

Yoo on first?
Who?
Yoo!
Me?
No, Yoo!
Me?

It was John Yoo, advocate for torturing toddlers with pliers, who declared “that the president’s wartime powers allowed him to order the N.S.A. to intercept international communication of terror suspects without a standard court warrant.” In fact, the NSA has intercepted all communication for several decades now and the international part is miniscule, as there are few terrorists plotting to blow up buildings, that is unless they are nudged in that direction by FBI infiltrators, as in the case of the hapless poor kids in Miami, said by the government to hankered to knock down the Sears tower in Chicago. Actually, these less than intellectually stellar street kids were attempting to shake down the FBI for cash.

Yoo’s “opinion” on violating the Constitution is classified, as should be expected. “It was apparently written in late 2001 or early 2002, but it was revised in 2004 by a new cast of senior lawyers at the Justice Department, who found the earlier opinion incomplete and somewhat shoddy, leaving out important case law on presidential powers. Mr. Yoo declined to discuss the issue. Even after the final legal opinions were written, lawyers at the National Security Agency were not allowed to see them, officials said.”

Yoo is a professor of law at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, and not a Constitutional scholar, not that you need one to understand the Fourth Amendment. But then Yoo works for the American Enterprise Institute, neocon central, where Bush admits he gets his “minds,” that is to say his various warmongering psychopaths. AEI is not Constitution friendly territory.

In fact, neocons agree: you have no rights, especially when it comes to having your phone, internet, credit and medical information snooped. Congress apparently agrees as well, with the exception of a few hardy souls in the House.

Eric Lichtblau’s book may provide us with a few details, more or less useless so long as there is no legal recourse and Congress and the judiciary allow Bush — and soon enough, his successor, be it Obama or Hillary — to conduct wholesale high-tech snooping, not of average Americans, who do not yet pose a threat to our rulers, but scattered activists who need to be subverted, or as the FBI would have it, need to be “neutralized.”

http://www.infowars.com/?p=1159&cp=2

Yoo is a sociopath. This fucker needs to be locked up with Cheney, Bush, and a starved bear.

Old Billy Hussein @ 70:

Yoo is a sociopath.

Oh he's sicker then that don't kid yourself.

As an infant, Yoo emigrated with his parents from South Korea to the United States. He grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduated with a B.A., summa cum laude in American history from Harvard University in 1989 and Yale Law School in 1992.

So how this guy get into the "Club" so easily and effortlessly? Makes you wonder don't it?

Whats a guy born in Korea doing destroying the reputation of the United States?

Can anyone explain this logic?

St. Vitus @ 71:

John Yoo @ 23:

Pursang @ 5:

Stanford should be so proud to have this war criminal as a professor of law.

I am actually currently employed at the University of California at Berkeley.

In a time of war the President is the Unitary Executive. What he says goes, whether you like it or not.

1. There is no constitutional thing as "a time of war." Only Congress can declare war, and it has not done so.

2. "What the president says, goes" is not the law. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0343_0579_ZO.html

Don't they teach American Constitutional Law at Berkeley anymore?

Funny, his memo doesn't cite this case. (I read that case in law school too; wonder if they teach it at Yale)

50 Hulk says....

Just ask him how much “useful information” he gave to the Vietnamese.

Won't hold my breath, but would love to hear the question asked.

L.A. Confidential @ 74:

As an infant, Yoo emigrated with his parents from South Korea to the United States. He grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduated with a B.A., summa cum laude in American history from Harvard University in 1989 and Yale Law School in 1992.

So how this guy get into the "Club" so easily and effortlessly? Makes you wonder don't it?

Whats a guy born in Korea doing destroying the reputation of the United States?

Can anyone explain this logic?

his family name is Kim Il??

Its hard to express how much I loathe John Yoo. He works at UC Berkeley, and perhaps this is finally enough of an issue for his superiors there to realize what a giant slimy stinking loaf of feces they have on their hands in him and consequently drop him and go find some soap.

John Yoo..... Fuck that sonofabitch! He's another one I'd like to see in leg irons and cuffs before an international tribunal...

I just wonder how much good his smart-ass law degrees and big shot teaching credentials would do him strapped to a wooden bench with a blindfold and kerchief over his face as someone poured water down his nose... Better still strapped down with alligator clips and wires from a car battery attached to his balls!!! How much unitary executive privilege would he carp about then??? Fucking asshole!!!

Every U.S. service member from here on, basically since his free pass to piss on the geneva convention memo, who suffers torture at the hands of some freakin asshole of any pursuasion can, in part, thank this motherfucker for their fate... He, alone, to a large degree made it OK for Chimpy to take the gloves off and behave like any other tinpot dictator.. And for those who have been to that hell and back... I hope they think of him when they reflect on their particular circumstance. I hope they respond accordingly if they happen to run into this prick in their travels..........................

John Yoo?? YOU are the kind of motherfucker that truly gives lawyers a bad name... Maybe you should pack your bags and get the fuck out of America.. I think you've pretty much worn out your welcome ya little two-bit snivelling piece of shit! JD

nony @ 58:

Just because the Executive can pay some hanger-on to write an opinion that happens to be contrary to law does not serve to make it ethical, moral or legal.

Getting an opinion is as easy as asking for one. Getting the opinion you desire is as easy as bribery or blackmail.

Getting it RIGHT, that takes an intent to get it right, and lawful.

Foreign concepts in this Fascist Dictatorship.

Bingo! Err, is it Ditto?

Here's a pretty good summary I just read in the comments at emptywheel: "Bush Abrogated the Constitution on the Pre-text of His Own Interpretation of Executive Authority, and has since resisted every attempt at Legal Review of his Unitary Assumption of Unlimited Power."

Too many big words, probably.

It was fun being Yoo.

Here's the reality: John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld, and all the other top Defense Department officials who implemented the military torture policies can be arrested and prosecuted TODAY under U.S. federal law. The federal torture conspiracy statute can be found at 18 USC 2340A. It provides for life sentences for those convicted under its authority.

John Yoo @ 23:

Pursang @ 5:

Stanford should be so proud to have this war criminal as a professor of law.

I am actually currently employed at the University of California at Berkeley.

In a time of war the President is the Unitary Executive. What he says goes, whether you like it or not.

So to all you folks who think President Bush has some inherent authority as the Commander-in-Chief to authorize torture: Bush doesn't even get to be the President without the Constitution and the rule of law. Any basis to have argued either side of whether George W. Bush was properly elected in 2000 evaporated without reliance upon the Constitution and the rule of law.

we can only hope, that the students at berkeley will do the right thing.

Hey I 'fessed up in 88 & 89. Settle down !! Yoo's not here.

Feith: Only assholes worry about torture

this is why i joined the ACLU. good work

L.A. Confidential @ 90:

Here's the reality: John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld, and all the other top Defense Department officials who implemented the military torture policies can be arrested and prosecuted TODAY under U.S. federal law. The federal torture conspiracy statute can be found at 18 USC 2340A. It provides for life sentences for those convicted under its authority.

-HEAD-
Sec. 2340A. Torture

-STATUTE-
(a) Offense. - Whoever outside the United States commits or
attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or
imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to
any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be
punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(b) Jurisdiction. - There is jurisdiction over the activity
prohibited in subsection (a) if -
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States,
irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged
offender.

If John Yoo thinks he is not a war criminal because he doesn't physically have the blood of those tortured & killed on his hands, then someday somewhere he will be surprised. Does he think tracking down war criminals across decades applies only to the Nazis? Does he think just because he is a citizen of the United States he will never be brought to justice? Maybe he doesn't think he has done anything wrong, & if he did he probably doesn't have enough of a conscious to be concerned about the consequences of his actions. History, & the families of Yoo's victims will not forget the part he has played, & he will answer for his crimes someday.

Old Billy Hussein @ 70:

Yoo is a sociopath. This fucker needs to be locked up with Cheney, Bush, and a starved bear.

A starved bear that has been shot in the face, and is really really pissed-off.

John Yoo nests at the Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley CA.

Brendan over at brendancalling is trying to singe his proud little tailfeathers.

Check this link and if you can get behind the program, please, pass it on.

http://brendancalling.com/2008/04/02/shaming-and-shunning/

I am so so sick of these turkeys screwing up my country and then strutting off to a high paid job. AH the stupid it burns.

I always look at these people to see if I can see the mental illness on their faces.

Hey Yoo fuck !!! Why don't you pack your bags and get the fuck out of our country, you are one sick mother fucker. I recommend that you move to Iraq for 2 or 3 tours of duty!!!!!

And now for a little light reading…

Like Sun Tzu's Art of War?

It reads like military regulations done fortune cooky style.

Here's a goody

Chapter II sec. Waging War cl 17

Therefore in chariot fighting, when ten or more chariots have been taken, those should be rewarded who took the first. Our own flags should be substituted for those of the enemy, and the chariots mingled and used with ours. The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept.

Yoo is doing some pretty intricate gymnastics. His memo is a masterwork of sophistry. The memo itself should serve as pretty good evidence against him in future war crimes tribunals. That asshole needs to spend the rest of his natural life in prison.

I read the memos. The first memo refers to the 5th, 8th & 14th amendment - so - I did and ya know what? Someone is out of their mind. The 5th is about double jeopardy - the 8th is about excessive bail - the 14th is about natural born or naturalised citizens.
the second memo is out in space - lala land.

Doesn't anybody stay on point, here?

V amendment

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Interestinig that they say No Person, not no citizen...

VIII amendment

Article [8]

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel or unusual punishments be imposed.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and so many others will always have the stain of blood on them from the thousands and thousands of innocent men, women and children that they MURDERED in the war they lied to America to start. The stains may not be visible, but nonetheless they cannot be washed away. As Bush, Cheney, Rice and all of those in the administration who were complicit prepare to leave in 2009, I hope the images stay with them night and day for the rest of their sad lives. I hope they are plagued with nightmares, hear the voices of the dead and wounded, the grief stricken family members of those they murdered until the go mad.

Unfortunately I don't see that happening, for one would have to have a conscience, a heart, be able to feel empathy, and understand the horror of what they have done. These individuals are have none of these things and the only thing they will miss are their positions of power and their thirst for blood.

May each of them rot in hell!