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LIVE FEED: Bush War Crimes Conference
Saturday morning, the dean of Massachusetts School of Law at Andover will convene a two day planning session with a single focus: To arrest, put to trial and carry out sentence on criminals in the Bush Administration.
The conference, arranged by Lawrence Vevel, cofounder of the Andover school, will focus on which of Bush's officials and members of Congress could be charged with war crimes. The plan also calls for "necessary organizational structures" to be established, with the purpose of pursuing the guilty "to the ends of the Earth."
"For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders," Velvel said in a media advisory. Saturday morning, the dean of Massachusetts School of Law at Andover will convene a two day planning session with a single focus: To a... more -
Ashcroft testifies on 'torture' memos
"It was not a hard decision for me."
That was the way former U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft today described his decision to back off controversial Justice Department legal opinions produced by then-Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. John Yoo. The memoranda, written in 2002 and 2003, you may remember, spelled out the use of interrogation techniques that described torture as "extreme acts" that cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure.
The memos said, in effect, that anything short of that was OK. They have been among the most controversial documents to come to light in the Bush administration in its campaign against terrorism.
The former attorney general, who ran the Justice Department from 2001 to 2005, was the man who originally approved the memos.
But testifying before the House Judiciary Committee today, he said: “It became apparent in the further examination of those opinions, when made in another time frame, that there were matters of concerns that were brought to my opinion."
Democrats challenged Ashcroft, according to the Associated Press account of the hearing, with questions about the frequency of waterboarding -- and he said he did not think that the procedure, as the CIA then described it, was torture.
--James Gerstenzang
Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images "It was not a hard decision for me." ... more -
Is there anything the president could not order to be done to a suspect? Yoo can&#...
This has to be seen to believed. John Conyers asks John Yoo a simple question: "Is there anything the president could not order be done to a suspect?" He can't give a straight answer. So Conyers reduces it to a simple hypothetical: "Could the president order a suspect to be buried alive?" He still can't answer! It's a yes or no question!
What can be done in the face of such a disgusting evasion of simple decency from the Bush administration? Not much, but laugh. This has to be seen to believed. John Conyers asks John Yoo a simple question: "Is there anything the president could not order b... more -
former justice department attorney john yoo and torture
this is not news, 2006, but i just run into it, while reading
http://current.com/items/89015083_disclosure_of_classif...
and
http://current.com/items/88898509_yoo_disbarment_sought
suddenly I run into this article
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11488.h...
"Cassel: If the President deems 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.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."
this is literally unbelievable
http://propagandapress.org/2006/03/04/the-president-can...
someone convince me that law has not grown into a monster this is not news, 2006, but i just run into it, while reading ... more -
Disclosure of classified documents reveal total dismissal of U.S. Constitution
The American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered details pertaining to a secret Justice Department memo from October 2001 that reveals the Bush administration effectively suspended the Fourth Amendment where domestic counter terrorism operations are concerned.
The ACLU reports that the memo states the "Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations." after 9/11. In other words, the DOJ gave the White House a green light to effectively shelve Constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures in the wake of the terror attacks.
The memo was written by then deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo, also the co-author of the PATRIOT Act and author of the now notorious torture memos.
It is almost certain that Yoo's memo was written to provide a legal basis for the NSA, a military intelligence agency, to begin its warrantless wiretapping program, which was initiated in the same month.
Just days after the memo's delivery to the White House, Dick Cheney and other administration officials briefed four House and Senate leaders on the NSA's secret terrorist surveillance program for the first time.
The existence of the 2001 memo came to light via a newly declassified March 2003 document from the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) entitled Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States, which makes reference to the previous memo. The American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered details pertaining to a secret Justice Department memo from October 2001 that reveals... more -
Yoo disbarment sought
by Steve Fournier
The National Lawyers' Guild has called for the disbarment of John Yoo, the former Justice Department attorney who authored the notorious "torture memorandum," used to justify the illegal imprisonment and maltreatment of prisoners held by American military authorities as "unlawful combatants." Yoo, currently on the law faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, is guilty of "complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners," said Guild President Marjorie Cohn, who condemns Yoo as a war criminal. The Guild, the nation's biggest public interest bar organization, is also demanding that the law school, known as Boalt Hall, fire Yoo, and that Congress repeal a law that purports to give him and other torturers immunity from prosecution.
Among the most outrageous legal claims made by Yoo:
· The Justice Department has no authority to prosecute crimes committed in the course of military activities (citing Justice Department opinions)
· Congress has no authority to regulate the military, and criminal laws that explicitly cover government employees are to be interpreted to exclude the president and his military subordinates
· Torture during the interrogation of military “detainees” is exempt from criminal laws
· The President can suspend or terminate any treaty or provision of a treaty by Steve Fournier ... more -
Goddamn Piece Of Paper
With total contempt for the law and for the American people, Bush had Yoo basically declare and make the Constitution unconstitutional... But I doubt that the people of America will react in any significant manner, since it would seem that most of them have never read it. Who was it who said that people get the government that they deserve? With total contempt for the law and for the American people, Bush had Yoo basically declare and make the Constitution unconstitutional... more
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John Yoo
