DoJ: More Memos, More Crimes

The day after releasing nine formerly secret documents detailing the Bush Administration's sweeping presidential powers to bypass legal constraints when fighting terrorism, the Justice Department is set to release some more.

Somewhere John Yoo is wetting himself. You know Bush doesn't have your back.

Yoo, who was the author of many of the legal opinions justifying detention and interrogation policies and seemed to base his legal opinions on nothing more than pre-existing Bush needs to justify torture, is being sued.

“This was an assault on the law itself,” Mr. Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said. “It’s as if 200 years of our history and the Constitution could just be dispensed with in the face of a terrorist attack. For me, it totally intensified the absolute need for a serious criminal investigation of both the authors of these memos as well as the people who put them up to it.”

As Bush would have said, "bring it on".“

"These memos appear to have given the Bush administration a legal blank check to trample on Americans’ civil rights,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island. Referring to the Office of Legal Counsel, the section of the Justice Department where Mr. Yoo worked, Mr. Whitehouse said, “We need to get to the bottom of what happened at O.L.C. and ensure it never happens again.”

So many memos, so many crimes: interrogation, surveillance and detention policies, domestic surveillance without warrants, harsh interrogation techniques including waterboarding are just a few. All on the wrong side of the law.

And Bush got how many convictions breaking all these laws? Jose Padilla?

Source: NYT