The Archetypal Bad Lawyer?

I don't expend much time on television news shows or dawdle much with the supposed "news" component of newspapers other than those articles brought to my attention by more dutiful scourers such as the able crew at Democratic Underground.

But I have the impression that the "Yoo memo," recently forced into view by an ACLU lawsuit, is getting little if any attention out there where it would do the most good.

This is a memo written back in late 2002 or so seemingly for the purpose of justifying and providing cover for what can only be called a new pro-torture program sanctioned by the Bush administration. The memo was apparently requested as a means of providing cover and a veil of purported legality for what we know to be illegal acts, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and established International as well as domestic law.

While link escapes me at the moment, I have seen some strong opinions offered to the effect that a very important side-issue here is that this appears to amount to a suborning of the established role of the Office of Legal Counsel. The OLC is supposed to provide clarifications on the nuances of the laws passed by congress, namely the implications for the executive branch. In this and other cases involving Yoo in particular but also others, the OLC seems to have been instead conscripted as a sort of law-breaking consigliere-like engine of corruption, encouraging or at least fostering a defiance of established law.

The bottom line is that there is no longer a pretext for the already laughable claim that the torture we have become aware of at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and unnamed rendition sites were merely the result of rogue low-level individuals acting at their own behest. Any dog can sniff out Cheney's sadistic streak. The man is obviously a social deviant and certifiably pathological. Rumsfeld ditto. Without their bravado, hubris, and the absolutely limp lapdog quality of the media these days, these guys would be under oath.

And isn't it astonishing what academic freedom now breeds! Yoo should probably be in shackles, but instead is a part of the faculty of the Berkeley law school! Worse, he doesn't seem to be suffering from much if any shunning from his peers. How can it possibly be that he has any positive recognition or credibility, as a major enabler of torture and law-breaking? Lawyers, please grow spines and weigh in!

At least out here in the connected world, there is quite a bit of Yoo-buzz, if you go looking. And rightly so.

Christy at Firedoglake has more to offer:

Having read through and digested the Yoo memorandum that was recently declassified, the most striking feature of it -- beyond its utter twisting of the law in a "might equals right" stomach churning justification tango -- is that it reads like a document written in an after-the-fact criminal defense posture. Especially Part IV of the memorandum which spends pages outlining potential defenses and the mindset needed therefor should anyone be accused of committing war crimes or criminal acts.

She cites an exceptional Vanity Fair piece that is definitely required reading on this important topic.

That this flies in the face of the UCMJ and the Field Manual appears to have no meaning to Mr. Yoo. That it downgrades the precepts behind all the human rights law advances that the United States used to champion for the betterment of people in more repressive societies is just a minor inconvenience for Mr. Yoo and his "superiors." That we will be generations in the repairing of this, if ever? Not even mentioned.

Whither Donald Rumsfeld in this public discussion? And, for that matter, Dick Cheney, in all of this minion kabuki? Which makes this passage from the Vanity Fair piece on the torture policy drafting all the more infuriating:

The first was a November 2002 “action memo” written by William J. (Jim) Haynes II, the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense, to his boss, Donald Rumsfeld; the document is sometimes referred to as the Haynes Memo. Haynes recommended that Rumsfeld give “blanket approval” to 15 out of 18 proposed techniques of aggressive interrogation. Rumsfeld duly did so, on December 2, 2002, signing his name firmly next to the word “Approved.” Under his signature he also scrawled a few words that refer to the length of time a detainee can be forced to stand during interrogation: “I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”

The second document on the table listed the 18 proposed techniques of interrogation, all of which went against long-standing U.S. military practice as presented in the Army Field Manual. The 15 approved techniques included certain forms of physical contact and also techniques intended to humiliate and to impose sensory deprivation. They permitted the use of stress positions, isolation, hooding, 20-hour interrogations, and nudity. Haynes and Rumsfeld explicitly did not rule out the future use of three other techniques, one of which was waterboarding, the application of a wet towel and water to induce the perception of drowning.

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There's more from Christy that I strongly encourage you to read. This is very important stuff to know about and share. Finishing the lengthy VF article is one of my assignments. Research. Disseminate. Repeat.

Great American Hypocrites

Glenn Greenwald has a new book coming out this month, and it sounds both extremely timely and compelling. Since he is a non-mainstream-insider, publicity and attention to this book, as with his others (if you somehow missed it, How Would a Patriot Act and Tragic Legacy are both required homework for this class), is far more dependent on word-of-mouth on the street and out here in the Wild Tubes, where we're all in it together.

And, thanks to a lot of blog-inspired attention, I believe "Great American Hypocrites" is near the top of the Amazon Non-fict list as of today, hallelujah, hurrah, and huzzah! Good on ya, Glenn!

And deservedly so. The sub-title is "Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics." If that doesn't grab your political vitals and warm your kittles (cockles?), what would? Greenwald has been working this territory for some time, and can be counted on to make a solid case for subject hypocrisy, sufficient to persuade any remaining actual sentient two-legged critters still needing convincing, whether through limited attention-span or just sheer stump-resemblance. Well, assuming they can either read or know some generous soul who can and will share.

I will sign up for reading chore if necessary.

This is extremely important stuff if you are a patriot and love your country. I want my Constitution and balance-of-powers back, and McCain is totally subscribed to the bushivite program that has already done severe damage to both of those vital American concepts.

Let us hope this book will get enough circulation and publicity to at least throw serious wrenches into the hard-core republican organization smear-wurlitzer and the nauseating McCain-can-do-no-wrong inclination of the MSM noted in a prior gumbo-post here.

Some insights from GG's Salon post on the book (whole post is well worth reading):

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From the time I began blogging in October, 2005, I've written about many different topics, but almost all have a similar undercurrent: the Limbaugh/Kristol/Fox-News right-wing faction that controls the Republican Party and has dominated our political life for the last 15 years, and the multiple ways that our political institutions -- and particularly the Drudgified establishment press -- enable them. Marketing packages aside, this book is about them; how they function; the weakness-driven bloodthirstiness, dishonesty and sleaze which defines them; the indispensable eagerness of the establishment media to be used by them; and what can be done by those opposed to them to change all of that.

All of the radical and reprehensible events of the last eight years -- the commencement and endless prosecution of an indescribably disastrous war, the accelerated dismantling of our Constitutional framework, the creation of a lawless Surveillance State and a virtually omnipotent President, the legitimization of truly grotesque torture and detention regimes, the complete corruption of our political discourse -- have individuals and a political movement behind them, causing all of that to happen. They have cultivated the ability to manipulate media behavior, largely as a result of a media eager to help. But what they do not have is popular support for virtually anything they are doing. And yet they continue to win elections.

How and why that happens -- the deceitful electoral tactics and manipulative personality-based myths the Right has perfected and continuously deploys to win elections, and the ways in which our slothful, vapid and complicit establishment press propagates those myths -- is the principal subject of this book. And understanding and exposing that right-wing/media partnership is a necessary precondition for weakening it.

The central paradox of our political life is that the right-wing faction that continues to dominate our political institutions and win elections embraces fringe beliefs which have little popular support. That's why their overarching objective is to remove substantive considerations from our political debates -- the more consequential the issue, the less establishment media attention it receives, the less real public debate there is over it. Instead, our elections are determined by the barren, petty personality-based distractions and mindless chatter that define the lowly Drudgian Freak Show, where our political life now almost exclusively resides.

The Right has perfected the art of creating mythical cults of personality around their leaders. They are strong, courageous, honor-bound, protective, morally upstanding salt-of-the earth Everyman-warriors -- contemptuous of elitist prerogatives, and oozing traditional masculine virtues and cultural normalcy. As important, if not more so, is the corresponding character demonization of liberals, Democrats and a growing group of miscellaneous right-wing opponents -- those weak, subversive, conniving, appeasing, gender-confused, elitist freaks, whose men are as effeminate and cowardly as their women are angry, threatening and emasculating.

These election-determinant themes are not merely petty and completely removed from what actually matters. That would be bad enough. Far worse is that they are complete fabrications. Virtually the entire leadership of the right-wing GOP is the complete opposite of these cartoon icons they are held out to be. Their lives are almost completely devoid of the virtues in which they are packaged. After all, their leaders are Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol and the whole slew of tough guy pundits from Fox News and National Review, cheering on wars while imputing to themselves the courage and virtue of those they endlessly send off to fight and prancing around as moral guardians and defenders of individual freedom while, in reality, living lives that rapidly destroy those very values.

These are the same tactics that have been used again and again -- from the era when Ronald Reagan was transformed into the wholesome, horse-riding, freedom-defending cowboy to the current incarnation, George W. Bush, dressed up in ranch hats and fighter pilot costumes and transformed into the swaggering, brush-clearing warrior. And one Democrat after the next -- Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry -- was swiftly turned into the same, now-familiar loser archetype: the overly earnest, sniveling, dishonest, elitist, subversive weakling, who bore political journalists and provided an easy target for their adolescent derision.

Circumstances have coalesced perfectly to ensure -- in the absence of any change in the public discussion -- that the 2008 election is going to be dominated by these dynamics more than ever before. The media's unbridled, uncritical worship for John McCain The Man exceeds anything one can recall, far beyond even that of the canonized Ronald Reagan and the Conquering 2003 War Hero George W. Bush. And transforming the election into a petty, media-led Freak Show referendum on "character" -- and keeping actual issues as far away as possible from the election -- is more vital than ever for Republican success.

Their party brand has been destroyed by one of the most unpopular administrations in American history and one of the most despised wars ever. The American economy is as weak and precarious as it has been in decades. And their nominee is inextricably tied to all of the policies that have eroded our national strength on every level and made Americans dislike and distrust their government more than ever before. Even McCain supporter David Brooks recently acknowledged:

The Republican Party is more unpopular than at any point in the past 40 years. Democrats have a 50 to 36 party identification advantage, the widest in a generation. The general public prefers Democratic approaches on health care, corruption, the economy, and Iraq by double-digit margins.

In a minimally rational world, a Republican presidential candidate like John McCain who has enabled all of that would have no chance. But -- in the absence of anything changing the way this works -- the establishment press will remove those considerations from its election coverage and the GOP's exploitation of bottom-feeding personality-based psychological, cultural and gender themes will predominate. In 2008, the GOP will dedicate itself single-mindedly to these same personality-based, manipulative electoral tactics because that is their only hope for winning.

There simply cannot be any greater priority than preventing a John McCain Presidency, one which would empower the same faction and continue the same policies that have been slowly though inexorably destroying this country, its institutions and political values. Understanding and neutralizing these tactics and the enabling media behavior is a prerequisite for preventing that.

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Weekend Food Tease

I apologize for lack of imagery here - I know that as in so many things, a visual can really help. But we're here to stoke your appetite, not your libido, kid, so get over it. I do poke my camera into the kitchen at times, but have learned thre hard way that not every chef is always thrilled at that, so I try to temper my photo-journalistic zeal.

We were delighted to have the opportunity to host our (four) parents for dinner Friday night. It was a great pleasure, an opportunity that is almost certainly not available to most. Two had met the delightful new canine red-heeler Cayenne, two had not. And of course there was a canine cacophony on arrival.

I offered up some English Keen Cheddar, Italian Parmesan, French Ossau-Iraty, and true Munster. Mother-in-law surprised me with some Irish Dubliner (I'm savoring a bit now), which perfectly rounded out the cheese course. We supped on home-made pizza a la Eric, assembled on crusts rolled from Trader Joe's pre-mix (our routine for home-made now). The 'zas featured either red sauce or pesto, and permutations of salami, chicken, kalamatas, soppressata, shrooms, choke hearts, roasted peppers, and sundried tomatoes. Yum. Mom brought a great tossed salad memorably crisped up with jicama. Wine was also donated, but we indulged instead in a couple growlers filled by the Georgetown Ale outfit that produces Manny's Pale Ale, a favorite of Princess Margaret's. Good food, good drink, good times.

Saturday turned out to be novelty night, all new recipes. Eric had shrimp poor-boys on his radar screen, from food-channel or on-line. From what I could tell he worked from memory rather than actual recipe, as is his wont, dousing shrimp in seasoned flour, deep-frying, and then assembling with from-scratch roasted-corn tartar sauce a la Tom Douglas, sliced tomatos, and mixed greens. We also did some oven-chips, starting from thin-sliced (mandolined, in this case) taters, planted on pre-heated and oiled cooking sheet for 10 minutes at 400 on one side and 5 on the other. I'd do 9 and 4 or something less anyway next time, but these were devoured also. M had assembled the perfect from-scratch Kathie Casey blue-cheese dip.

But it was my dish that was the odd boy out. Still exercising new pressure-cooker, I assembled some lima beans with onion, garlic, and tomatos. I wanted to wrestle with converting a recalcitrant ingredient (dry limas) into edible food in normal dinner-prep time-frame. I've judiciously refrained from polling dinner-mates on their enthusiasm for result, but I liked it and was pleased at remarkably short stove-top time - probably just shy of an hour.

Tonight we were back to more-familiar ground. Marg marinated pot roast in a mix of bourbon, soy, garlic and various and sundry (hoisin?), an old standby, to be ably bbq'd by Prince E. She assembled a great new recipe, called out as a potato salad but with the potatoes more like a companion to the peppers and other ingredients. I contributed (prior post) Bok Choy with sauteed garlic slices (and sub rosa dried red pepper). (I tweaked it with a little sesame oil this time!)

Yum times three! Hope you get as much joy out of food exploration, preparation and consumption as I do.