Marble Composition

Crushing Testicles? Oh Silly Yoo!

Our friends over at Crooks and Liars have an audio clip up that will demonstrate just how far into the septic tank this country has plummeted. Let's call this the get-to-know John Yoo post. He was a lawyer in the Justice Department who wrote the now infamous torture memo, but he does a pretty good job of torturing American law and jurisprudence in many other ways.

If you harken back to the days when you were a tike or tikette sitting in civics class you may remember that the United States of America, under provisions given to us by the Constitution, has the ability to negotiate and ratify treaties with other countries. The Senate's job is make sure everything is honky-dory with a proposed treaty with another nation or nations, and then vote to either ratify it, or reject it. Rejecting it says to the other aforementioned parties, we're OUT. We do not agree. However, ratifying it, based on what the Constitution dictates, means that it unquestionably becomes U.S. Law. As in the law of the land. As in offenses to said treaties prosecutable in U.S. courts of law. If the Senate ratified the Geneva Conventions, which bans torture of prisoners of war, then it's part of the U.S. legal code.

This fact alone drives Conservatives INSANE. They believe that we answer to no one but ourselves. For Conservatives, this is where lawyers like John Yoo come in handy. He believes the Executive branch, in this case George W. Bush, can interpret signed treaties as extra-legal, or somehow outside the perview of the courts in the United States, but in some way under the mandate of the Executive branch. He couldn't be more wrong.

Here's some excerpts from the tape:

I think that's a matter of pure domestic Constitutional law...so I think, for example, that, I don't think a treaty can constrain the Preseident as Commander in Chief.

He's arguing here that our tough guy president doesn't have to follow the law. U.S. law. Signed, ratified, law. The key dodge here is the term "domestic". There's no domestic or foreign interpretation of the Constitution. The Constitution is the Constitution. Period. Now check out how he tries to use legal-speak to muddle the whole issue, and sound like a big smart guy at the same time:

The argument you're making about adaptation of the rules is a question about what the United States should do as a matter of international law, which I treat as being a seperate and distinct body of law from domestic law.

This is where our Founding Fathers would have handed him his hat and said, hit the bricks junior, you're not quite up to snuff. The above statement violates not only the letter of the law, but the intent as well.

Now, let's get to the money shot (as they say, I don't know, somewhere they say that):

Interviewer: So, in other words, if the president deams that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty.

Interviewer: And also, so no law by Congress, that's what you wrote in the August, 2002 memo?

Yoo: I think it depends on why the president think he needs to do that, I don't think presidents....

This from a person that was obviously a darling in the Bush Justice Department. How cute. Go listen. The matter-of-fact way he's says it is absolutely loathesome. He's a cretin of the lowest sort. He can try and fudge it any way he wants, but Treaty Is Law.

It seems to me that for many Conservatives, American history began on September 12, 2001. That's about as a far back as they can recall anything. Sad, really. It's instructive to remember that after our thirteen little colonies handed British Imperialism their soundest thumping, that we used those tricky treaty thingies to ally with France and continue to fuck with King George III. Now that's fun stuff that gets lost on Legal Beagals like John Yoo (no offense to beagals as a species intended. Fine animals, really). My how history has nearly come full circle. As a side note, you may remember that France crafted and delivered the Statue of Liberty in a gracious gesture to celebrate our fledgling nation's embrace of the Enlightenment. We should give it back. Not because Rush Limbuagh and Bill O'Reilly tell us we should hate the French forever, but because we don't fucking deserve it anymore.

Want more Yoo? Here's a roundup. Josh Marshall stears us to this diddy from the New York Review of Books (I highly recommend this piece. It has the added benefit of backing up my horse-hooey above). Tbogg has a short take, here (Turkey's freak me out). Arthur Silber documents more of the ridiculous, here. (Great thinker, writer).

posted by FuzzFinger @ 12/29/2005 09:30:00 PM