The StuSie

John Yoo, Berkley's Neocon Asswipe

Two days ago John Yoo came to the St. Thomas Law School at the invitation of our Federalist Society Chapter. For those who are unfamiliar, the Federalist Society is a conservative/libertarian group that concerns itself primarily with what I would call the traditional republican party platform: small government, states' rights, fiscal conservatism and the like. I emphasized the word traditional above, since today's republicans seem to have completely abandoned such ideals in favor of irresponsible and inequitable tax cuts, enormous overreaching governmental entities and the Orwellian dominance of the federal government. So these Federalists can't be that bad, eh? After all, they should dislike the current administration as much as the rest of the world does, right? Inexplicably, that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case. Apparently they're assholes first, and Federalists second.
Anyway, they invited John Yoo, who I have previously mentioned to speak about "Presidential War Powers." Yoo is a strong supporter of Presidental domination of anything that moves. He has argued that during times of conflict, POTUS can do pretty much anything he wants, regardless of what any international law or Geneva convention might say. The fact that we've previously signed and therefore agreed to be bound by such agreements is moot if we're at war, according to Yoo. I'm not sure if it's dawned on him that these agreements mostly come into play ONLY when we're at war. If he has noticed, he's cleverly omitted that little point from his arguements. Crafty bastard.
In the days leading up to his visit our Amnesty International Chapter organized a superb lineup of speakers, all of whom decried Yoo's work and the effects it has had, not only for prisoners in Guantanimo Bay, Abu Garib and Afganistan, but also for those in the CIA prisions around the globe that we only found out about last week. It was good to see that we have a very balanced student body, with plenty of people interested in taking a strong stand against Yoo's presence.
On the day, I found out that the Federalists had, rather to my surprise, provided an opponent for Yoo, a professor from the U of M Law School, who was supposed to debate the President's ability to declare war. As it turns out, Professor Paulsen, Yoo's opponent, is just slightly less conservative. Not only did these guys not really disagree, but they were friends. It was the saddest excuse for a debate I've ever seen.
Yoo thanked Paulsen, Paulsen thanked Yoo, they complemented each other on going to Yale Law, Yoo plugged his book and then explained why the part of the Constitution that clearly gives Congress the sole ability to declare war is ambiguous. Paulsen got up, plugged Yoo's book, and briefly said that he thought Congress should be the one who declares war, and then added a monfuckingstrosity of a caveat: that if the president, in his role as commander-in-chief, was responding to an attack on the U.S. he could declare war. Now that pretty neatly makes the whole fucking argument an exercise in futility doesn't it? Perfect.

posted by Der Staubsauger @ 22:09