Yoo heard it here first

December 16, 2005 8:36 PM | | Comments (473) | TrackBacks (0)

It comes as no surprise that former Administration Torture Apologist John Yoo has his fingers all over the newly-revealed NSA policy of spying on Americans in America, a clear violation of any number of statutes and court decisions.

As you may recall from earlier in the semester, I had the opportunity to meet now-Professor Yoo when he spoke on campus about the Imperial Presidency theory of war powers. Back then, I said this:

It's an entirely self-serving argument from a member of a party who doesn't think it will ever go out of power. It boils down to this: The President starts a war and then says that if Congress doesn't fund it, the troops are left peniless and stranded out on the battlefield. Unless Congress wants to spend the next election cycle explaining that it doesn't hate soldiers and doesn't want them to die on foreign shores for lack of "support," the war will go on, whatever the Congress thought about the initial rationale. It's a big game of chicken and a consitutional argument that rigs the checks and balances with a big, fat thumb on the executive branch side of the scale.

Self-serving indeed. It strikes me that letting the President do whatever he wants as long as we're in a state of war that he declares has no logical limits. First, the broad law-enforcement powers declared by the imperial President go to other, perhaps less worthy battles, such as the also-neverending War on Drugs.

Then, like in every single other government when the leader's power is unchecked, the emergency powers get transferred to the cause of maintaining power by spying on domestic critics. Check.

A little thought experiment for Prof. Yoo: How would he feel about letting the President set his own limits if that President was Bill Clinton, the enemy was a right-wing dictatorship along the lines of Pinochet or Mobutu and the domestic opposition included the Federalist Society instead of the Quakers they're after now?

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473 Comments

By Fletch on December 17, 2005 6:55 PM

I'm really excited for the NY Times to wait a year before publishing the story about the law Bush signed that let's him kidnap unpatriotic Americans and shoot them on the South Lawn!

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