Congressman Burgess asks the Speaker of the House to post the bailout bill on the internet for at least 24 hours instead of passing the largest piece of legislation in US financial history in the “dark of night.”
The most frightening part of Rep. Burgess’ one-minute floor speech is when he says, “Mr. Speaker I understand we are under Martial Law as declared by the speaker last night.”
by Mark Yannone
 John C. Yoo, now a law professor in Berkeley, Calif., defended his memo, saying, "Our legal advice to the President, in fact, was near boilerplate." |
| Photo Credit: Photo By Karen Ballard/for The |
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.
The 81-page memo, which was declassified and released publicly yesterday, argues that poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability. The document also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce "an extreme effect" calculated to "cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality."
Although the existence of the memo has long been known, its contents had not been previously disclosed.
Nine months after it was issued, Justice Department officials told the Defense Department to stop relying on it. But its reasoning provided the legal foundation for the Defense Department's use of aggressive interrogation practices at a crucial time, as captives poured into military jails from Afghanistan and U.S. forces prepared to invade Iraq.
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.
The declassified memo was sent by the Defense and Justice departments late yesterday to Democrats on Capitol Hill, including Sens. Carl M. Levin (Mich.) and Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), who had seen the document in classified form and pushed for its release.
The document is similar, although much broader, than a notorious memo primarily written by Yoo in August 2002 that narrowly defined what constitutes illegal torture. That document was also later withdrawn.
In his 2007 book, "The Terror Presidency," Jack Goldsmith, who took over the Office of Legal Counsel after Yoo departed, writes that the two memos "stood out" for "the unusual lack of care and sobriety in their legal analysis."
The documents are among the Justice Department legal memoranda that undergirded some of the highly coercive interrogation techniques employed by the Bush administration, including extreme temperatures, head-slapping and a type of simulated drowning called waterboarding.
Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, defended the memo in an e-mail yesterday, saying the Justice Department altered its opinions "for appearances' sake." He said his successors "ignored the Department's long tradition in defending the President's authority in wartime."
"Far from inventing some novel interpretation of the Constitution," Yoo wrote, "our legal advice to the President, in fact, was near boilerplate."
Yoo's 2003 memo arrived amid strong Pentagon debate about which interrogation techniques should be allowed and which might lead to legal action in domestic and international courts.
After a rebellion by military lawyers, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in December 2002 suspended a list of aggressive techniques he had approved, the most extreme of which were used on a single detainee at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The prisoner, military investigators later would determine, was subjected to stress positions, nudity, hooding, exposure to dogs and other aggressive techniques.
Largely because of Yoo's memo, however, a Pentagon working group in April 2003 endorsed the continued use of extremely aggressive tactics. The top lawyers for each military service, who were largely excluded from the group, did not receive a final copy of Yoo's March memo and did not know about the group's final report for more than a year, officials said.
Thomas J. Romig, who was then the Army's judge advocate general, said yesterday after reading the memo that it appears to argue there are no rules in a time of war, a concept Romig found "downright offensive."
Martin S. Lederman, a former lawyer with the Office of Legal Counsel who now teaches law at Georgetown University, said the Yoo memo helped create a legal environment that allowed prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib.
"What else could have been the source of belief in Iraq that the gloves were off and all laws could be disregarded with impunity?" Lederman asked. "It created a world in which everyone on the ground believed the laws did not apply. It was a law-free zone."
In a 2004 memo for the Navy inspector general's office, then-General Counsel Alberto J. Mora objected to the ideas that cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment could be allowed at Guantanamo and that the president's authority is virtually unlimited.
Mora wrote that he spoke with Yoo at the Pentagon on Feb. 6, 2003, and that Yoo "glibly" defended his own memo. "Asked whether the President could order the application of torture, Mr. Yoo responded, 'Yes,' " Mora wrote. Yoo denies saying that.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
The Supreme Court yesterday issued a broad ruling limiting presidential power and the reach of international treaties, saying neither President Bush nor the World Court has the authority to order a Texas court to reopen a death penalty case involving a foreign national.
Gillian Findlay: I WANT TO GO BACK TO THE MEMO YOU WROTE IN AUGUST 1ST, THE INFAMOUS AUGUST 1ST MEMO. CAN YOU GIVE ME THE CONTEXT FOR THAT? WHY AT THAT PARTICULAR TIME WAS THERE A DESIRE –
John Yoo: I can't talk about that.
Gillian Findlay: WHY NOT?
John Yoo: Because it's classified.
Gillian Findlay: YOU CAN'T JUST EXPLAIN, GIVE A BROAD CONTEXT AS TO –
John Yoo: About why it was asked?
Gillian Findlay: WHY, YES, EXACTLY.
John Yoo: No, I can't.
Gillian Findlay: CAN YOU TELL ME IF IT HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH Mr. AL QAHTANI, WHO WAS BEING DETAINED AT –
John Yoo: I can't, although if you look at the details of the memos, the memos that have to do with people held at Guantanamo Bay are a different question, right? Those were handled by a Defence Department working group in the spring of 2003, I believe. And this is much earlier, this is over a year earlier, almost a year earlier.
Gillian Findlay: SO CAN YOU THEN SAY IT WASN'T RELATED TO Mr. AL QUAHTANI? WE'RE TRYING TO UNDERSTAND IF THERE WAS A LINK THERE.
John Yoo: I can't.
Gillian Findlay: YOU CAN'T?
John Yoo: No.
Gillian Findlay: THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN TELL US?
John Yoo: It's all, it's classified. If the government decides to release it, then I could talk about it. But they just, they have not.
Gillian Findlay: WHEN YOU WERE ASKED TO LOOK AT THIS QUESTION, YOU ENDED UP WITH A DEFINITION OF TORTURE EQUIVALENT IN INTENSITY TO THE PAIN ACCOMPANYING SERIOUS PHYSICAL INJURY SUCH AS ORGAN FAILURE, IMPAIRMENT OF BODILY FUNCTION OR EVEN DEATH. DO YOU NOT THINK WHEN YOU SAY THINGS LIKE THAT, YOU WRITE THINGS LIKE THAT IN THE CONTEXT THAT YOU WERE WRITING, THAT THAT OPENS THE DOOR TO THE KINDS OF ABUSE THAT WE HAVE SEEN?
John Yoo: You have to figure out what the law says and again, I think there is an important difference between law and policy. And so I think there is a legal question that has to be answered and I think it's a hard question. Don't get me wrong. What the word "torture" means when it's undefined by federal statutes is a hard question. It's never, that statute had never been interpreted by the executive branch, by courts, prosecutors, by anybody.
So I think it's a hard legal question. That's a different question in my mind than about whether, what kinds of policies ought to be drafted and shaped within the law. And I think factors like, will there be likely abuses to occur or not are certainly things policy makers should think about when they decide what policies to adopt. But it should not, it seems to me, change the legal analysis or the legal conclusion about what Congress has and has not prohibited.
Gillian Findlay: BUT TO THE EXTENT THAT YOUR LEGAL INTERPRETATION INFLUENCED THE POLICIES THAT CAME LATER, AND WE KNOW THEY DID –
John Yoo: I don't agree with that in this sense. The memos don't say: you should interrogate this way or that you should do A, B or C or D, E and F, right?
They only say: this is what the statute means. What you do in terms of interrogation techniques is something that just has to comply with that law. But it doesn't say anything about what interrogation methods to use. Policy makers could have seen that memo and said: we should just follow the Geneva Convention standards, we'll continue to follow them.
Gillian Findlay: BUT YOU OPENED THE DOOR FOR THEM, YOU GAVE THEM THE OPPORTUNITY. YOU SAID YOU CAN ESSENTIALLY DO ANYTHING AS LONG AS YOU DON'T KILL THEM.
John Yoo: The law – the memo [unclear]... it doesn't say you just can do anything but just kill them.
Gillian Findlay: I SAID SHORT OF KILLING. I MEAN INTENSITY OF PAIN ACCOMPANYING SERIOUS PHYSICAL INJURY, ORGAN FAILURE, IMPAIRMENT TO BODILY FUNCTION OR EVEN DEATH.
John Yoo: Right, well, that's includes a lot more –
Gillian Findlay: SHORT OF KILLING THEM.
John Yoo: Well, that includes a lot more things than just short of killing somebody.
Gillian Findlay: BUT MY POINT IS THAT YOU OPENED THE DOOR, YOU SET THE PARAMETERS –
John Yoo: I just don't want to buy into your characterization of the line that's drawn by the memo.
Gillian Findlay: YOU ALSO IN THE MEMO SAY THAT ACTIONS MAY BE CRUEL, INHUMAN OR DEGRADING BUT THEY STILL DON'T EQUAL TORTURE.
John Yoo: Yeah. I think that's a line that Congress drew. So the torture convention says you cannot engage in torture and it says you shall undertake not to engage in cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. So clearly, the people who drafted the treaty thought they were two different things. And when the Congress, when the Senate adopted the treaty, it only made torture criminal. It did not criminalize cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. So clearly, Congress thought they were different concepts. I think there is a broader category of things that people can do which are cruel, inhumane and degrading and only extreme versions of that constitute torture. Otherwise, you've expanded the definition of torture, I don't know, to include everything from you know standing at attention from an hour – Or to things that happen in basic training in our military forces, which I don' t think anyone thinks constitute torture.
Gillian Findlay: WHAT CONSTITUTES TORTURE TO YOU?
John Yoo: I think the memo is still correct in that it's extreme physical harm, extreme physical abuse, extreme mental abuse. But I think there are things which can be done which don't meet that level. I'll give you an example. Not letting someone sleep more than seven hours a night or six hours a night. There are many people probably in the international [unclear]... who think that that's cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, limiting people's sleep. I don't happen to think that's torture. There are a lot of people in this country who live under those conditions, that don't get a lot of sleep. I don't think they're being tortured.
Gillian Findlay: BUT THE OTHER THINGS – THE DOGS, THE SEXUAL HUMILIATION –
John Yoo: I don't think dogs would be – I don't think the use of dogs is, I mean it depends on how they're used. But I don't think just having a dog present is torture in and of itself.
Gillian Findlay: BUT IF THEY'RE USING TO INTIMIDATE AND TO FRIGHTEN?
John Yoo: If a person, I mean there's a definition you know the memo, if you go beyond the one sentence there, has a description about physical and mental abuse. And certainly if someone had inordinate fear of dogs, then using them could constitute mental abuse. But it would depend on the person.
Gillian Findlay: WELL, AND WE KNOW IN ARAB CULTURE THAT FEAR OF DOGS IS A VERY COMMON THING.
John Yoo: Well, if that's the case, then it might be. But it depends. You can't also say that having a dog around in all cases is torture, could you? No.
Gillian Findlay: YOU TALK A LOT ABOUT COST VERSUS BENEFIT. EVERYTHING THAT YOU NOW KNOW THAT HAPPENED IN THESE PLACES, WHETHER OR YOU NOT ACCEPT THAT THEY ARE SOMEHOW RELATED TO THE POLICY YOU WROTE –
John Yoo: Well, a lot of them I don't think can be discussed. I mean I think the United States has successfully prevented terrorist attacks on the country, some of which could have been quite devastating.
Gillian Findlay: HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?
John Yoo: I think the president just gave a speech a few weeks ago listing 10 attacks that were stopped, several of which were around the country, several of which could have led to a lot of deaths. But I don't think the United States can or should disclose publicly what those are in the middle of a war, where release of that information could give an advantage to the other side.
Gillian Findlay: BUT HOW DO WE KNOW? I MEAN, WITH ALL RESPECT TO THE PRESIDENT, YOU CAN SAY THESE THINGS. IT DOESN'T NECESSARILY MAKE THEM TRUE. HOW DO YOU KNOW –
John Yoo: He doesn't have to justify them to the people of Canada either, but he does have to justify them to the Senate and the House. I mean there are, there is a procedure for briefing the House and Senate intelligence committees about these exactly these kind of things. But they have to remain classified, so they have had it explained. If they don't like it, they could cut funding off for it, they could pass laws prohibiting it. There's a lot of things Congress can do to counter things that they don't agree with. And those you know so it is up to the president. But he also has to get the cooperation of Congress. And I think the American people generally don't want the executive branch to start explaining in great detail how certain kinds of information led to the prevention of this terrorist attack or that terrorist attack – If they understood that it could give Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda an advantage in fighting against us in the future.
Gillian Findlay: BUT YOU KNOW AS WELL THAT THERE IS A LARGE BODY OF THOUGHT OUT THERE, INCLUDING WITHIN THE MILITARY ITSELF, THAT BELIEVES THAT YOU CAN'T TRUST THE EVIDENCE YOU GET THROUGH COERCIVE INTERROGATIONS. WHY DO YOU TRUST IT?
John Yoo: I'm not saying I trust it or distrust it. I agree that that's up to experts to decide. But there are people obviously who seem to think it works and there are cases where it may not work. I'm not saying it ought to be used in all circumstances. All I'm saying is that the law does not compel us not to consider that option. But people, policy makers can certainly decide not to use it if they think the costs outweigh the benefits. That's what they should do.
Gillian Findlay: BUT I'M ASKING YOU AS SOMEBODY WHO WAS MUCH CLOSER TO WHERE THESE DECISIONS WERE BEING MADE – ARE YOU CONVINCED THAT THE COERCIVE KINDS OF INTERROGATIONS, FRANKLY THE ABUSE THAT WE HAVE SEEN, THAT WE NOW KNOW ABOUT THAT HAPPENED IN SOME OF THESE PLACES, ARE YOU CONVINCED THAT THE BENEFITS OUTWEIGH –
John Yoo: Oh, I don't think I have the information to make that judgment. I –
Gillian Findlay: YOU WOULDN'T KNOW?
John Yoo: I wouldn't know.
Gillian Findlay: SO THEY MIGHT NOT BE?
John Yoo: They might be, they might not be. Who knows? I don't know. I mean all we focus on in public are the costs. We don't focus at all on the benefits.
Gillian Findlay: WHAT ABOUT THE COSTS? WHAT HAVE BEEN THE COSTS, DO YOU THINK?
John Yoo: Yeah, I mean there have been cases of abuse. There have been cases where people have gone beyond the rules and that has been the harm. But that is certainly cost but we have to measure it against the benefits and that's what we have elections for. We had a national presidential election in the middle, right in the middle of all of the disclosures of this, in the middle of this war. And people could have elected Bush out of office if they thought this was improper and that the costs outweighed the benefits. They could have replaced –
Gillian Findlay: DO YOU THINK THAT ELECTION WAS A REFERENDUM ON THE TORTURE POLICY?
John Yoo: … it was certainly a referendum on the war on terrorism.
Gillian Findlay: SO YOU THINK HIS VICTORY VINDICATES EVERYTHING THAT'S HAPPENED?
John Yoo: No. I've used that – if people disagree with that policy, they certainly could have voted him out of office and voted the Republicans out of the House and the Senate. And there's no doubt the war on terrorism was front and centre, the primary issue that was being debated in the presidential election. And I'd point out that Senator Kerry could have raised this issue if he'd wanted to and attacked President Bush about it, as some you know some other people did. He certainly chose not to. I think if the people didn't approve of the policies – that's what elections are for. I don't see, what's the point of having elections if not for that?
I don't have real player and am anxiously awaiting someone posting this speech on youtube or another site.
Whitehouse Takes On Bush Administration on Executive Power
Lies, lies and MORE DAMNED LIES!!
I think it extraordinary the lengths that HiLIARy will go to get "elected" and I am also aghast at those who think her the "lesser of evils." This woman is PURE Poison. The below is a nice little highlight of how she goes about communicating with her "tribe" of morons - in a secret code. Security and prosperity is the CODE phrase for North American Union people; the "liberal" ones to use. They were strengthened by buddy, Maurice Strong, a weird billionaire cult figure shrouded in "mystery" and laying down the tracks of the Bill Clinton "mystique" having served as a mentor to Bill and HiLIARy. Right now, as I type, Maurice Strong is over in CHINA, selling hybred cars; yup, a new age of energy is upon us AFTER they sell the Chinese those nuclear reactors so that they have a way to jumpstart WWIII with EXCUSES to bomb them to smithereens to reduce the population. You just wait, they'll be pulling out all the stops on that soon. The lead paint on toyz was just the beginning. Anything to have the two-tiered Chinese system look BAD to the average MURKAN who doesn't read and accepts the TV snooze as reality. Gotta say it again . Peace and prosperity for WHOM?? I know some people (who passed this on to me) that don't like the references to Luciferianism either .. the LIGHT THAT APOLLO FIRE?? More Bohemian Grove mumbo jumbo. Scary.
Clinton would consider giving up some executive powers if elected
"I have said that I will conduct a very serious review of how the Bush-Cheney administration has grabbed power. Everywhere we look, we see that. They have ignored checks and balances, they have disregarded the separation of powers, they have this theory of the so-called unitary executive, and then Vice President Cheney has a whole different theory about how he's a fourth branch of government.she said during a rally Tuesday at Metro State College.
"We've got to take a hard look at this and say wait a minute, this is out of whack with our constitutional framework and values and I'm going to take a look at everything, and I intend to get into that, as soon as I can be inaugurated and start acting on it. We're going to get back to what I view as the constitutional framework and balance of checks that we need,"
"The reality is that Hillary Clinton, much like Bill, will say and do anything to win political office and will conveniently forget their promises in short order," he said.
LOL MARK WAS THAT YOU?? at approximately 21:40 they put a brain on you and you started twinkling I think. Hahahaha.
Good for you, Mark. Good for you!
Technically, you are absolutely right. I suppose that is a good argument you can make when you're stopped at any one of the growing number of arbitrary checkpoints across the country, as they snatch you out of the car and taser you as they drag you to a patrol car and haul you downtown. By the time you get before a judge, the charges (bogus all) against you will be so overwhelming that you won't escape scot-free.
Obviously you have not had a run-in with the "law" lately. I have. So have thousands of others. Law enforcement and the courts play by the Patriot Act "rules," not by the Constitutional prohibitions. I heard one judge, in a Larry Becraft trial, clearly say he wouldn't allow the Constitution to be quoted in his courtroom. I was there and personally heard that.
Former Texas attorney Harmon Taylor resigned the bar after losing his case before the court of appeals on the Timothy McVeigh case, when they ruled that the Constitution "is not admissible evidence of law." The public was told the 30-day delay in McVeigh's execution was because they had found some misplaced FBI files they wanted McVeigh's lawyers to see, but that delay was caused by Harmon's jurisdictional challenge based on the Constitution's requirement that wrongful death is a matter over which the State has exclusive jurisdiction, when it occurs anywhere within the state other than federally-owned property. The Murrah "Federal" building was OWNED by Oklahoma City and only portions of it were LEASED to the feds.
If I have $100 but you have it locked in your safety deposit box and won't give me access to it, is it really mine?
Fred
Public perception is worth its weight in gold. If the public is led to believe that "Ron Paul can't win," can he win? If the public is led to believe that there are "only three candidates," can Ron Paul win? If the public is led to believe that Congress voted away the Bill of Rights, do you expect the public to demand enforcement of the Bill of Rights?
But we are a nation of laws, not a nation of wishes or illusions painted by TV broadcasters and commentators. So, yes, Fred, in the hypothetical example you gave, the $100 is still yours, and if I won't surrender it then you have a right to take action to get it. My decision cannot change your entitlement.
If a judge or police officer misbehaves, he doesn't have any effect on the law. The law stands until legally changed. Americans should know this well, so that at every turn we will object loudly and boldly to illegal government behavior.