http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/dershowitz-needs-a-refres_b_177695.htmlLarisa AlexandrovnaPosted March 21, 2009 | 07:54 PM (EST)
Dershowitz needs a refresher course on what McCarthyism was...Apparently acclaimed attorney Alan Dershowitz does not correctly recall what McCarthyism was.
The esteemed trial lawyer and Harvard professor says the following in defense of John Yoo, of all people:
UC Berkeley leaders are wrestling with that decision as a federal investigation into John Yoo's legal advice to the Bush Administration apparently winds down. The dilemma is rare. At risk are the tenets of academic freedom that have long allowed college faculty members to speak their minds in the name of scholarship. Yoo's case revolves around his advice on dealing with accused terrorists,including a notorious memo that provides legal justification for torture. Yoo, who is temporarily teaching at Orange County's Chapman University, has long attracted protests on his home campus, but some surprising allies have come to his defense.
"I think this is simply a left-wing version of McCarthyism," said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor who disagrees strongly with Yoo's views on torture. "He should be judged solely on the merits of his academics."
But Berkeley administrators and faculty leaders said they would be concerned about Yoo teaching law students if he were found to have violated ethical or legal standards. Critics have called Yoo a yes-man for President George W. Bush, essentially telling him what he wanted to hear.
Dershowitz does not disagree strongly with Yoo on torture as some of you will recall. But that is beside the point. Yoo was hired to teach law. If he has broken the law or broken with ethical standards, then how does that qualify him to teach the topic to law students? But I do remember this argument well, as it has been used before and for the same reasons.
During the Nuremberg trials, lawyers were held accountable for providing legal cover for the illegal and immoral. Mr. Dershowitz might want to visit the Harvard Nuremberg collection in his free time. Breaking the law or knowingly misrepresenting the law so that your boss can engage in criminal activity does not compare in the slightest to the activities of Sen. Joe McCarthy's political targets. The late Senator hunted people who broke no law and engaged in no illegal conduct. He hunted them for their political views as the sole criteria and destroyed many lives in the process.
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What Yoo happens to have in common with the victims of McCarthy is that he happens to be considered an intellectual, but that is where the comparison ends. Unlike McCarthy's victims, Yoo did not simply lecture on a topic unpopular with a certain political point of view. He did not only assign homework to his students that was somehow seen as un-American. He did not have a few meetings with people of like mind who were seen as undesirables by certain politicians.
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What Yoo is accused of doing, however, is actually acting to assist others in law-breaking by perverting and twisting the law for his own ambitions. Yoo gave Bush officials a green light legally - knowing this was illegal of course - to break the law on something as basic as human rights, on the right of an accused to a fair trial, on the rights of all not to be refused legal assistance at the whim of a single man drunk on power and acting as the sole ruler of a republic.
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Where you could have been a shining light sir, you have become part of the dark blotch known as the Bush administration in the annals of American history. One has to wonder what Dershowitz's motive is. He has not cried McCarthyism when the facts of the Siegelman or Minor prosecutions became known. He has not rushed to offer his legal expertise to the victims of Bush's DOJ and the Stasi-like tactics employed by attorneys who violated ethical standards and likely violated the law for political reasons.
He has made no effort in recent years to help those who have been denied the very basic freedoms he claims to care about. Instead, he has spent his recent years defending an administration so un-American that I wager even McCarthy would have been shocked back into sanity had he seen the goings on of the last 8 years.
For shame Mr. Dershowitz.
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