Impeach Jay Bybee - Why should a suspected war criminal serve as a federal judge?

[jefferson_dem]

Impeach Jay Bybee
Why should a suspected war criminal serve as a federal judge?

By Bruce Ackerman
Posted Friday, April 17, 2009, at 2:31 PM ET
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The U.S. Justice Department released four memos on Thursday detailing brutal CIA interrogation techniques. Former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee signed the first of four memos on behalf of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. In January, Bruce Ackerman made the case for Bybee's impeachment. The article is reprinted below.

Jay Bybee is currently sitting on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. As assistant attorney general in President George W. Bush's Justice Department, he was responsible for the notorious torture memos that enabled the excesses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other places. While John Yoo did most of the staff work for Bybee, Yoo was barely 35 years old—and his memos showed it. They not only took extreme positions; they were legally incompetent, failing to consider many of the most obvious counterarguments.

Bybee was 49. He was the grown-up, the seasoned jurist. He had been a law professor and had served as associate counsel to President Bush. When he was promoted to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, he became the final judge of legal matters within the executive branch. Yet his opinion on torture was so poorly reasoned that it was repudiated by his very conservative successor, Jack Goldsmith.

Bybee has never been held accountable for his distortions of the law. At the time of his confirmation hearing, news of the torture memos had not yet leaked to the public. When asked about his role in national security matters at his Senate hearing, Bybee stonewalled: "As an attorney at the Department of Justice, I am obliged to keep confidential the legal advice that I provide to others in the executive branch. I cannot comment on whether or not I have provided any such advice and, if so, the substance of that advice."

If the Senate had known the truth, it would have rejected him. The story of William Haynes offers a cautionary tale. As general counsel of the Department of Defense, Haynes also played a key role in authorizing torture; and he was also rewarded by a nomination to a leading appellate court. But before he could be confirmed, the Bush administration's involvement in torture became a matter of public record, and the Senate refused its consent to the nomination. Bybee is a judge today only because of timing and the administration's assertions of executive privilege.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2216432/?from=rss

[sharp_stick]

1. I think the entire DOJ

under Bush should be subjected to intense scrutiny. There are many individuals from John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez down to John Yoo, Jay Bybee and even that twit Monica Goodling that should be jailed and at the least disbarred. It's a disgusting thing when people with phony degrees from shitholes like liberty "university" can actually pass a bar exam and gain employment.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

2. BINGO CITIZEN

[Supersedeas]

4. not so much a phony degree--but a corp culture of pleasing and appeasing by lawyers

no matter what the real life results may be

[KT2000]

3. Yes - start with Bybee

and keep going. Time for spring cleaning.