Wednesday, June 09, 2004

 

Military Lawyers Smoke Crack, Write Torture Memo

The latest legal memo to surface, the one claiming that Bush in wartime has greater powers than did the English kings under the Magna Carta (see particularly paragraphs 38 through 40), is getting the "rubber hose treatment" in the legal blogosphere. As well it should.

Aside from ignoring completely the Supreme Court's "Steel Seizure" case from the Truman administration, establishing that the President has no inherent wartime authority to do what Congress expressly forbids (which should shoot down the argument that there's "No Controlling Legal Authority"), this memo also tries to revive the moribund Nuremberg defense for those constitutional imbeciles who are expected to claim "they were just following [Bush's] orders" in the inevitable war crimes trials to follow.

If I may indulge in a bit of legalese, this memo is what we lawyers like to call "unbe-fucking-lievable." Whoever wrote it ought to be disbarred; whoever followed it needs to go to jail.

Write your Representatives and Senators, people. In longhand. On paper. Or call them on the telephone. Tell them -- in a calm, reasoned and polite manner -- that they need to grow a backbone, and to start the process of removing this tyrant and his entire vile and treasonous entourage from office immediately.

posted by Michael 11:36 AM