You're a JD lawyer at work and one day someone asks you to work up a quick memo legalizing torture

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

You say:

A. "Sure! That ties right into my Unitary Executive theory - talk about luck!"

B. "Of course. 9/11 changed everything, including fundamental moral concepts held worldwide that define modern civilization. When do you need it by?"

C. "If I do it, can I take the next 2 Fridays off?"

D. "Uh, no. Sorry dude. Guess it's back to Berkeley for me."


A person does have choices.

[barbtries]

1. from what little i heard of today's hearing,

you wouldn't think so to hear fuckface addington tell it. i assume yooyoo did the same. they all disgust me so much i just splutter trying to even express it in words.

[EFerrari]

2. Yoo sounds like a geek to me, so I'll say A.

The worst of the academe recruited by the most criminal administration -- these people are attracted to each other like two practicing alcoholics at a convention.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

3. I'm an attorney and I say "D"

Only I'd be going back to Pitt. I have been thinking a lot over the past few days about what would make an attorney contort so much to write such a memo. We are officers of the court and take an oath to uphold the Constitution; not only the constitution of our particular states, but the US Constitution. I cannot fathom how someone would do this. But maybe there's no place in the world for an honest attorney who respects the Constitution.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

4. I've been thinking a lot about all this too

And I think that what must have caused the whole sequence of events is that a lot of "little" yet moral people on the lower echelons must have questioned the authority to do the things they were being asked/told to do. I think this was a hot potato that got passed up higher and higher for "clarification" until they finally found 2 or more people dumb enough, ambitious enough and amoral enough to write it and put their names on it and announce it as official US policy, ultimately destroying any moral authority or legitimacy we might have once had or lay claim to.

This policy has overlaid any sanctimonious world guidance by us with a deep and heavy layer of irony and hypocrisy.

[hootinholler]

5. Wouldn't that be grounds for disbarment?

Is disbarment a word?

-Hoot

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

6. Yoo and Addington are the personification of Dickens "The law is a ass"

Which I thought of when one of the Congresscritters on the panel asked Yoo if anyone could reject a legal decision by the OLC if it was purely ridiculous on the face of it.