Above the law: the Bush crime syndicate

The Bush crime syndicate genuinely believed that the president was above the law. It's not hyperbole -- it was an actual legal opinion:

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.

[...]

Sent to the Pentagon's general counsel on March 14, 2003, by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, the memo provides an expansive argument for nearly unfettered presidential power in a time of war. It contends that numerous laws and treaties forbidding torture or cruel treatment should not apply to U.S. interrogations in foreign lands because of the president's inherent wartime powers.

"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," Yoo wrote. "In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a "national and international version of the right to self-defense," Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations -- that it must "shock the conscience" -- that the Bush administration advocated for years.

"Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification," Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.

We always knew that the Bush crime syndicate was populated by ideologues and sycophants, but this takes it to a new level. How abusing those already in custody protects the U.S. from attack is beyond me ... that requires a leap of logical thought that is well outside my experience as a sentient being. That's textbook through-the-looking-glass thinking right there.

The Bush crime syndicate works on only one principle: find someone dumb enough or craven enough -- or both -- to give you the answer you want to hear, no matter what the consequences. John Yoo certainly fits that bill.

Pity I spent all that time and money on law school to learn laws that don't mean anything.

Liberal media, my ass (ver. 3.0)

Just when I thought it was safe to read the paper, I'm met with this headline on the front page (PDF) of today's Palm Beach Post:

Early votes' rise stirs unease
The state's eightfold increase since 2004 does little to boost turnout and may create errors, experts say.

What experts are quoted in the article, you ask? Let's take a look:

Although local elections supervisors have promoted absentee and early voting as a way to lure time-starved voters to the polls, some elections experts say the trend does little to improve overall turnout and injects more possibility of error into a state that has had plenty of voting blunders.

"You're maintaining three distinct (voting) systems, each with its own quirks," said John Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and author of Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises and Perils.

"Some administrators like it because they think it evens out their flow," Fortier said, "but it robs people of information when they vote a month before the election."

Ah, okay, so it's a problem because ... hey, hold on a second! Did you see that? The "expert" is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Fortier's colleagues include such notables wankers as John Bolton, Lynne Cheney, David Frum, Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Yoo. In short, the AEI is a wingnut's wet dream.

The fact is that early voting allows greater turnout, despite the right-wing's desperate spin to the contrary. Of course, more people voting generally means more Democratic voting, so it's understandable that the AEI would want to depress voter turnout. But why is the Post quoting a wingnut "expert" on the front page? Look, Post, for every so-called "expert" from the right you want to quote, I'll throw three reality-based experts at you -- how does that sound? And when your wingnut expert skews the front-page headline this badly, that's a 15-yard penalty for unjournalistlike behavior.

I believe this may actually rise to the level of a letter to the editor ... by me. Again I say, as incredulously as ever: liberal media, my ass.