1 Boring Old Man

The Democrats’ Super Disaster

By JOHN YOO

Until recent weeks, one of the least understood aspects of the Democrats’ primary contest was the role of superdelegates. These are Democratic Party insiders, members of Congress, and other officials who can cast ballots at the party’s national convention this summer. But now these unelected delegates are coming in for a close inspection, because neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama can win their party’s nomination without superdelegate support. The big Pennsylvania primary on April 22, for example, has only 158 delegates at stake (each of them will be pledged to support one of the candidates). By comparison, there are a total of 795 superdelegates, none of whom are required to honor the will of the voters of their state at the party’s convention. Sound undemocratic? It is…

So much for unfiltered democracy. In truth, the Democratic Party runs by rules that are the epitome of the smoke-filled room and ensure, in essence, that congressional incumbents exercise a veto power over the nomination.

This delegate dissonance wasn’t anything the Framers of the U.S. Constitution dreamed up. They believed that letting Congress choose the president was a dreadful idea. Without direct election by the people, the Framers said that the executive would lose its independence and vigor and become a mere servant of the legislature. They had the record of revolutionary America to go on. All but one of America’s first state constitutions gave state assemblies the power to choose the governor. James Madison commented that this structure allowed legislatures to turn governors into "little more than ciphers."…

Torture Architect John Yoo Hypocritically Blasts Democratic Party For Violating Constitution’s Intent

Since when did Yoo become so concerned with the Constitution? During his time in the administration, he aggressively urged the administration to push moral, ethical, and legal boundaries:

• Yoo was the author of the administration’s infamous torture memo, which argued that interrogation techniques only constituted torture if they are “equivalent in intensity to…organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” Thanks to Yoo’s legal work, the Bush administration justified the creation of a new category of detainees: “illegal enemy combatants.” 
• He advised that President Bush did not have to comply with the Geneva Conventions in handling detainees in the war on terror. 
• Yoo argued that President Bush “didn’t need to ask Congress for permission to invade Iraq.” The 1973 War Powers Resolution, according to Yoo, is “irrelevant.”
• Yoo helped craft the legal justification allowing the Bush administration to secretly eavesdrop on Americans without court-approved warrants. In 2001, Yoo brushed aside constitutional concerns, stating that after 9/11, “the government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties.”