{"id":4062,"date":"2010-05-03T21:52:02","date_gmt":"2010-05-04T01:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4062"},"modified":"2010-05-03T22:00:10","modified_gmt":"2010-05-04T02:00:10","slug":"conduct-unbecoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/05\/03\/conduct-unbecoming\/","title":{"rendered":"conduct unbecoming&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philly.com\/inquirer\/currents\/20100502_Closing_Arguments__Supreme_Court_sanity_calls_for_filibusters.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">John Yoo&#8217;s op-ed<\/font><\/strong><\/a> with outrage and frank amazement. Here&#8217;s <strong><font color=\"#006699\">emptywheel<\/font><\/strong>&#8216;s take. Mine follows:    <\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2010\/05\/03\/john-yoo-stupid-political-hack-and-craven-addington-disciple\/\" target=\"_blank\">John Yoo: Stupid Political Hack AND  Craven Addington Disciple<\/a><\/strong><br \/>        By: <strong><font color=\"#006699\">emptywheel<\/font><\/strong><br \/>        May 3, 2010 <\/div>\n<p>        <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">If ever there were a doubt that John Yoo was not just a craven lackey  for David Addington, but also a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.philly.com\/inquirer\/currents\/20100502_Closing_Arguments__Supreme_Court_sanity_calls_for_filibusters.html\"> <strong>stupid political hack<\/strong><\/a>, his op-ed today puts that doubt to rest.  After whining about how mean the Senate Judiciary Committee was to  Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas and John Roberts and Sam Alito, Yoo  launches into the kind of fantastic ravings you&rsquo;d expect from Glenn  Beck.<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>Republicans can also use the filibuster  to return the federal government  to its proper role in our  constitutional system. When Obama chose Sonia  Sotomayor for the Supreme  Court last year, the jury was still out on  the president. It wasn&rsquo;t  clear if Obama was a moderate technocrat, as  much of the electorate  hoped, or if he was a man of the left, as  Republicans feared.<\/sup><\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>That answer is now clear. At home, Obama has launched a broad  campaign  to redistribute wealth and engineer social change. He and his  large  congressional majorities enacted a wasteful $800 billion  stimulus,  increased the national debt by 50 percent in two years, and  nationalized  the health-care sector &ndash; fully one-sixth of the economy.<\/sup><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>On national security, Obama kept to the Bush-Petraeus drawdown  schedule  for Iraq and reluctantly surged troops to Afghanistan. But he  has tried  his best to fit the war against al-Qaeda into the box  reserved for  criminal activities: He promised to shut down Guantanamo  Bay, abjured  tough questioning tactics, loosed a special prosecutor on  CIA  interrogators, announced a civilian trial in New York City for 9\/11   plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and automatically treated al-Qaeda&rsquo;s   Christmas Day bomber as a criminal suspect.<\/sup><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><sup>[snip]<\/sup><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>The GOP will earn public support for its actions, but more important  it  will be returning the Supreme Court to the original meaning and  purpose  of the Constitution. The framers wanted the federal government  to play a  limited role in domestic affairs, and an energetic one to  protect the  national security against unforeseen emergencies and war.  They did not  establish a government to redistribute income or impose a  socialistic  vision of regulated markets. The Constitution&rsquo;s preamble  declares its  purpose: to &ldquo;provide for the common defense&rdquo; and &ldquo;promote  the general  welfare,&rdquo; not balance the common defense and promote  special interests.  If President Obama doesn&rsquo;t send the Senate a nominee  who understands  those words, the Supreme Court vacancy could be  another issue to await  the results of the November elections.<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div>John Yoo, apparently, had no problem with the way George Bush  redistributed wealth to the very rich with the Wall Street Bailout and  huge cuts in the estate tax. And he seems to have missed the news that  Obama has embraced the kind of tools of unchecked executive  power&ndash;including the ability to target American citizens for death with  no due process&ndash;that John Yoo loves. And how cute that John Yoo now  questions the kind of civilian trials that Bush used with Richard Reid  and [eventually] Jose Padilla. But what I&rsquo;m most amused by is Yoo&rsquo;s critique of Obama&rsquo;s choice to  forgo torture [kind of].<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>[He] abjured  tough questioning tactics,  loosed a special prosecutor on CIA   interrogators&hellip;<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">You see, John Yoo has always pretended he neutrally read the law when  he wrote his torture memos. He claimed, repeatedly, that he just did  the legal analysis and had no stake in the policy decision. He suggested  that he didn&rsquo;t care, one way or another, whether Bush and Cheney  embraced torture, he was just the lawyer doing analysis in isolation  from those policy questions.<\/font><\/strong> He further has <a href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/wp-admin\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>claimed<\/strong><\/a>  that he only approved limited torture, not the techniques described by  the press [which happen to match what the CIA IG saw on the torture  tapes].<\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\">But all that, of course, is proven to be  bullshit, as John Yoo bases his critique of Obama on the claim that  Obama has chosen not to use the illegal tactics that Yoo himself  authorized. That&rsquo;s not only an admission&ndash;on the part of Yoo&ndash;that his  claims to political neutrality were all lies. But it&rsquo;s a repudiation of  the very expansive claims to executive power that John Yoo holds dear:  after all, if the executive has absolute authority to decide how to  implement foreign policy, than the disgraced hacks from the past  Administration have no business critiquing the exercise of that  authority. The unitary executive is not a requirement that the executive  always choose the most extreme policy just for shits and giggles, but  rather that the executive has the authority to decide what to do, even  including choosing less abusive but more effective policies [which is  not to say Obama has always taken that approach].<\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">John Yoo was always an embarrassing hack. But for some reason, the  upcoming SCOTUS fight has made him reveal his hackery in full splendor.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">First off, John Yoo was a lawyer in an office that gave legal advice, not the <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Office of Policy<\/font><\/strong>.&nbsp; He has, as Marcy points out, repeatedly defended his Memos as unbiased interpretations of the Law\/Constitution, yet his op-eds have no disguise for his radical right wing views and his position as an agent-at large for the <strong>Federalist Society<\/strong>. He makes no attempt to hide his pro Torture position. In addition, what the hell is an Assistant Deputy Attorney doing filling the papers with op-ed pieces, and getting them published? And, again as <strong><font color=\"#006699\">emptywheel<\/font><\/strong> points out, what of his <strong>unitary executive<\/strong> stance. John Yoo believes in the <strong>unitary executive<\/strong> and weakening Congress for Bush, and blocking the abuse of executive power by <u>using<\/u> Congress when Obama is President. It seems like he&#8217;d at least see his inconsistency and do a better cover.<\/div>\n<p>   <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">Of course, the centerpiece for Yoo is in this <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.philly.com\/inquirer\/currents\/20100502_Closing_Arguments__Supreme_Court_sanity_calls_for_filibusters.html\"><strong>paragraph<\/strong><\/a>:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">Over the years, Senate Democrats have destroyed the confirmation process  by turning it away from qualifications to a guessing game over how  court nominees might vote on hot-button issues such as abortion, the  death penalty, and racial quotas. They began the degradation of the  advise and consent role with the <strong>1987<\/strong> rejection of Judge Robert Bork,  who would have been one of the most qualified justices in the history of  the Supreme Court, and the outrageous effort in <strong>1991<\/strong> to smear Clarence  Thomas [for whom I served as a law clerk].<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"119\" hspace=\"4\" height=\"119\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/t3.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:Q_5PpAZjPEI3eM:http:\/\/newsrealblog.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/08\/bork.jpg\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"105\" hspace=\"4\" height=\"119\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/t0.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:Ux34EYqup22HzM:http:\/\/images.salon.com\/opinion\/conason\/2009\/05\/29\/clarence_thomas\/story.jpg\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"4\" height=\"119\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/t1.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:MNkVDWK7uJ7-8M:http:\/\/www.collegeotr.com\/images\/blogs\/dd3b724e45d32c7d0be655bc905ca4f9.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">Yoo is becoming a spokesperson for the Federalist Society, a right wing legal group that is home to Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. &quot;Judge Robert Bork,  who would have been one of the most qualified  justices in the history of  the Supreme Court&quot; wasn&#8217;t how I saw him. After distinguishing himself as the most arrogant, self-important person ever in a Congressional Hearing, even worse than David Addington. And the Congress said a very appropriate &quot;No!&quot; If you read what he writes, Bork is an opinionated know-it-all. Clarence Thomas&nbsp; is different. He just votes lock-step Conservative, Federalist Society without bothering to be obnoxious like Bork. As a matter of fact, Yoo&#8217;s op-ed reminds me of the way Bork talks &#8211; sarcastic, self-righteous, and more or less wrong-thinking. But besides all of that, John Yoo, I&#8217;m beginning to think, was a &quot;plant&quot; &#8211; put in the OLC in advance by the Bush Administration ready to push the Federalist Society Agenda. 9\/11 made him even more dangerous than he was intended to be. He needs to be prosecuted for conduct unbecoming an American Citizen and\/or American Lawyer. If he wants to make policy, I suggest that he run for office [preferably in another country]&#8230;  <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I read John Yoo&#8217;s op-ed with outrage and frank amazement. Here&#8217;s emptywheel&#8216;s take. Mine follows: John Yoo: Stupid Political Hack AND Craven Addington Disciple By: emptywheel May 3, 2010 If ever there were a doubt that John Yoo was not just a craven lackey for David Addington, but also a stupid political hack, his op-ed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}