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“Interrogation Memos: Inquiry Suggests No Charges”

But that’s okay. With no charges, you’ll see no public trials. Instead, the punishment will happen beneath the radar, to be doled out by state bar associations.

Remind me again: to whose campaigns does the bulk of ABA contributions go again? From the NYT:

An internal Justice Department inquiry has concluded that Bush administration lawyers committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations but that they should not be prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on its findings.

The report by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice Department, is also likely to ask state bar associations to consider possible disciplinary action, which could include reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions, the officials said.

[…]

At issue is the question of whether the lawyers acted ethically and competently in writing a series of Justice Department legal opinions from 2002 to 2007.

Hey! There’s that word again.

I think I may have unwittingly stumbled across the latest in progressive code! Bitchin‘!

Anyhow, as Geoff b (who sent along the link) noted in his email:

No prosecutions, just punishment. I call it an American form of the Soviet “internal exile”.

Soviet’s would relocate you and take away your papers that allowed you to work which caused you to devote your entire life just to survival. Here they take away your papers and due to lack of resources you then have to relocate yourself and fight to make ends meet. Fascists are always very efficient.

Well, perhaps. But I don’t think we need to run around using the “f”-word, Geoff.

We don’t want people thinking us extreme, after all — perception being reality and all.

And let’s face it: it’s easier to try to change perceptions by suppressing your ideals than it is to argue that those faulty perceptions have been painstakingly constructed to discredit you.

Pragmatism, Geoff. Live it.

64 Replies to ““Interrogation Memos: Inquiry Suggests No Charges””

  1. happyfeet says:

    meya is a lot enthusiastic about this. She’s a fascist.

  2. slackjawedyokel says:

    And here I thought “Star Chamber” was where you waited befor going on “American Idol”.

  3. BJT-FREE! says:

    I don’t think the Justice Department has taken to Dr. Luntz’s lofty calling to Individualize. Personalize. Humanize. Those things are just for politicians running to win elections, I guess.

  4. J. "Trashman" Peden says:

    At issue is the question of whether the lawyers acted ethically and competently in writing a series of Justice Department legal opinions from 2002 to 2007.

    Negatory: according to the well established principles of progressive Deathworship, you can only “act ethically” if [other] people die as a result of your inaction. The “lawyers” acted and no one died. Hence they have acted unethically.

  5. J. "Trashman" Peden says:

    Of course the “right” answer is that the “lawyers” shold have, er, acted so as to advise and bring about inaction, allowing people to die.

    I’m just happy for them that they weren’t running for Miss America.

  6. JHoward says:

    Coming soon: “JHoward’s Mayflower Boatworks”.

  7. JD says:

    What does it take to get punished by the Bar? A different political perspective, perhaps?

  8. Sdferr says:

    It’s odd the DoJ goes after these fellows at all, says Andrew McCarthy: “Investigate Bush lawyers’ torture analysis one day, cite it favorably the next.”

    Given that the Bush DOJ memos in question evince an assiduous effort not to cross the line into torture — i.e., they demonstrate the very opposite of the evil motive to inflict torture that the Obama DOJ has just told a top federal court is necessary to establish a violation — it is simply shameful for the Justice Department to be pursuing this partisan witch-hunt.

  9. happyfeet says:

    What’s scarier really is the fag lawyer bars might actually go through with it. That would mean we are living in a quite different little country.

  10. Rob Crawford says:

    Yeah, Sdferr, that is an interesting twist.

  11. Sdferr says:

    McCarthy reports further, some good news, some bad (or sad, depending):

    But now there’s more. As Jan Crawford Greenburg reports at her ABC News blog, Legalities, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility — by playing partisan politics — has blown the critical filing deadline for referring Prof. Yoo for professional sanctions. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very good thing — as I’ve been arguing, there is no legal or ethical basis to pursue this cockamamie investigation. But this is an episode that should be studied given all the blather about how it was Republicans who politicized the Justice Department.

    Read the lot of it.

  12. gus says:

    I want to know who has approved the killing of civilians in Pakistan. We need to prosecute someone.

  13. Sdferr says:

    One can almost make out a pattern to the effect that “claims” of unethical practice on the part of Yoo and Bybee are grounded in an unethical practice of preferring to play political games to serving the law.

  14. N. O'Brain says:

    “…this is an episode that should be studied given all the blather about how it was Republicans who politicized the Justice Department.”

    Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrat.

  15. J. "Trashman" Peden says:

    Meanwhile, selflessly not willing to put any other “lawyers” at risk, Pelosi apparently didn’t even get any opinions.

  16. LTC John says:

    Any State legal oversight body (here, in IL, it is the ARDC – Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Committee, as toothless a whore as ever did exist.) that would pick up such a “complaint” and do anything other than harumph importantly and quietly deep-six the thing would be worthy of feathers, tar, rides on rails.

  17. 11B40 says:

    Greetings:

    It would be interesting to me to see if the same standards and procedures will be applied to Attorney General Holder’s minions in regard to their actions concerning Congressional representation for the District of Columbia. My understanding is that the Office of Legal Counsel recommended against it, but AG Holder came up with another switch-er-roo.

  18. N. O'Brain says:

    “other than harumph importantly…”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-cje17OGnQ

  19. happyfeet says:

    Mr. LTC John is right… it’s unimaginable that a state bar could cooperate in such an overtly fascist persecution. Unimaginable to me anyway. I just can’t imagine it. People what serve state bars are real people you could very well know. Not particularly people you’re excited about knowing but they don’t want to be known as fascists I don’t think.

  20. JD says:

    So now when the howling barking mendoucheous moonbats wail about torture, we ca objectively point out that they are liars. Nice.

  21. McGehee says:

    it’s unimaginable that a state bar could cooperate in such an overtly fascist persecution.

    Han Solo had something to say about that in the original “Star Wars” movie.

    Unimaginable to me anyway.

    Oh. Well, okay then. ;-)

  22. George Orwell says:

    Soviet’s would relocate you and take away your papers that allowed you to work which caused you to devote your entire life just to survival. Here they take away your papers and due to lack of resources you then have to relocate yourself and fight to make ends meet. Fascists are always very efficient.

    Kafka world. Where the trial itself is the punishment. This is the future: You will bend your will to the political overlords and the bureaucratic elites. If you do not, there will not be any doorknock in the middle of the night. No concentration camps. No pogroms. But… you will face hearings, audits, license reviews, excise taxes for unapproved activities. And nearly every single human activity will be subject to reams of regulations, special fines and levies, requirements for permits and examination boards. You may naturally refuse to do any of these things, but you will be ineligible for more than the minimum housing ration, your enhanced caloric intake scrip, your National Medicine card, your carbon-tracking permit to travel, and on and on. You will live the life of a prison inmate, outside of prison. If you aspire to more than 2000 calories per day and your alloted electricity quota of one hour per day, you will have to obey Leviathan. Let the gubmint find a way to arrogate to itself control of television entertainment, and society will be permanently enslaved. The Thousand-Year Reich will begin.

  23. Squid says:

    Man, I just knew those long hours of Shadowrun would come in useful one day…

  24. George Orwell says:

    The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced labour camp.

    The idea of an earthly paradise in which men should live together in a state of brotherhood, without laws and without brute labour, had haunted the human imagination for thousands of years.

    –“1984”, G. H. Orwell

    From these quotes you can derive almost all of the philosophy of our age. The idea of “freedom” today is “free to do and have and use whatever you want.” Unrestricted behavior. Society must be organized to make this possible, a paradise devoid of laws and other hidebound strictures. In order to provide this to everyone, everyone must be able to have, do, and use the same things. This requires ever more profound regimentation of society and the behavior of individuals, so that the individuals that make up society will be forced to produce what is necessary to enable everyone to have this “freedom.” Since wishes are not horses, what people are free to do and have must perforce become more and more circumscribed in the effort to make the “freedom” to have, use and consume guaranteed, universal, and uniform. You create, with each step forward, a noxious societal miscegenation wherein one is free to choose anything one wants, so long as it a want recognized by the State.

    You will be entitled to as much medicine as you want. However, your choice of medicines will be highly restricted. Your wait to actually receive medicine will be subject to others’ needs for “free” medicine. If you try to buy some yourself, there will be no law against it. But in order to discourage the diversion of precious medical resources outside of the grand societal pool needed to supply “free” medicine, your private medical care will be subjected to very heavy taxation. Of course, high functionaries in the State will have these encumbrances waived.

    Apply this to every other human activity that we, in our age, think is a “right.” Housing, food, transport, education, pensions in old age, and so forth. Do not think that expression of opinion is immune to this process.

  25. meya says:

    “I think I may have unwittingly stumbled across the latest in progressive code! Bitchin‘! ”

    If the internet was around some decades ago:

    Mr Welch: Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

    Winger blogs: ZOMG The democrats are politicizing decency!

  26. JD says:

    It is a mendoucheous fascist every single time.

  27. happyfeet says:

    who sent me here this is very fascinating. Condi Rice is cool beans.

  28. Jeff G says:

    I have no idea what meya means.

    Which is becoming a regular occurrence.

    She doesn’t do oblique very well. Instead, she jumps right to impenetrable.

  29. McGehee says:

    She doesn’t do oblique very well. Instead, she jumps right to impenetrable.

    That’s because when she tries to be incisive she ends up being obtuse.

  30. router says:

    The democrats are politicizing decency!

    on their terms

  31. dicentra says:

    Oh, this is interesting, OT and stuff:

    On Lie to Me, they’ve got a guy who’s a sociopath that the lie-detector guy is trying to crack. And the sociopath looks just like Barack Obama. He also said that he’s been called “lightbringer.”

    Dude is smooth, charming, superintelligent, cocky, and, I swear on my grandmother’s grave, a dead ringer for Oprompta.

  32. RTO Trainer says:

    If the internet was around some decades ago:

    Me: Orange, meet Ap….
    Apple: We’ve met–on a previous thread with meya commenting.

  33. SBP says:

    Funny, the only people I see trying to chill free speech are SFAG’s fellow travellers.

    And before SFAG spins it: yes, there are Republican cosponsors.

    2 out of 19.

    Why, one might almost think that SFAG is a pathological liar.

  34. geoffb says:

    Re: #32,

    “Lie to Me” has turned into the pleasant surprise for this season for us here. I like Tim Roth as an actor which got me to watch the fist episodes. They have been quite equal about both the politicians they use as examples of expressions and in the plots as far as who the bad guys turn out to be. Keep it up is all I ask of them.

  35. geoffb says:

    first not fist, arrgh.

  36. SBP says:

    Router, Google on “Scott Levenson”. The top link (to minx.cc) goes to a classic AoSHQ comment thread “Cool Facts about Scott Levenson”.

  37. Jeff G. says:

    Not if they really really really empathize, meya.

  38. meya says:

    With eugene volokh’s amicus brief.

  39. SBP says:

    I understand the impulse behind our legislators trying to curb this sort of thing

    Your legislators, SFAG.

    And the “impulse” behind it is fascism, SFAG.

  40. meya says:

    “Your legislators, SFAG.”

    If you want to get technical, none of those sponsors are where I live.

    “And the “impulse” behind it is fascism, SFAG.”

    Could be. I saw a lot of things I was uncomfortable with when the Megan Meier thing came out.

  41. Rusty says:

    #34
    She’s lying to provea point. Which makes her point and herself useless to the debate. She is not an honest broker.

  42. JD says:

    An impenetrable wall of mendoucheity and obtusity.

  43. SDN says:

    Yeah, Jeff, but unlike He Who Shall Not Be Named, meya’s every post doesn’t invoke the “fighting words” justification for homicide. I can live with that.

  44. router says:

    Could be. I saw a lot of things I was uncomfortable with when the Megan Meier thing came out.

    how’s the birth cert going and columbia thing doing? is rev wright praying for the us destruction on the “national day of prayer”?

  45. SBP says:

    If you want to get technical,

    Read: “If you want to be a spinning, lying crapweasel”.

    Won’t alter the fact that this is a Democrat-sponsored bill, SFAG.

  46. meya says:

    “how’s the birth cert going and columbia thing doing? ”

    You know, I haven’t heard much on the birther litigation lately. Too bad right?

    “Won’t alter the fact that this is a Democrat-sponsored bill, SFAG.”

    Didn’t you tell me its sponsors were bipartisan? Were you lying? I didn’t check their affiliations, just their names.

  47. bh says:

    If you want to get technical

    How come that is never followed by a physics equation, a diagram of capacitors and resistors, or an explanation about an infinite loop problem in an improperly nested bit of code?

    I’m moving to India. Fewer lawyers, more engineers. Not that I’m either, but at least I admire engineers.

  48. SBP says:

    Didn’t you tell me its sponsors were bipartisan?

    Keep it up, liebot.

  49. router says:

    You know, I haven’t heard much on the birther litigation lately. Too bad right?

    no mclame had his senate friends prove his where’s your proof for the mulatto?

  50. SBP says:

    BTW, do SFAGs repeated incompetent lies cause anyone besides me “substantial emotional distress”?

    I’m just trying to get a handle on how many counts she’s looking at.

  51. meya says:

    “no mclame had his senate friends prove his where’s your proof for the mulatto?”

    This is precisely why I’m so interested in the litigation.

  52. SBP says:

    This is precisely why I’m so interested in the litigation.

    Liar.

  53. meya says:

    You got me there. But I was hoping that router would get fooled. Damn you SBP. Damn you!

  54. router says:

    This is precisely why I’m so interested in the litigation.

    you proggs are distortionists. you like “make up law”.

  55. router says:

    But I was hoping that router would get fooled

    by who the soto hispanic women idiot who want’s to do policy? you proggs are a sorry lot.

  56. JD says:

    I will give it credit. It has to take effort to be that dense. If it is natural, it is quite sad.

  57. SBP says:

    It is a cultist, JD.

    It’s not very bright AND it’s willing to do ANYTHING to foster its cult.

    The sad thing is that if it winds up with the system it wants, it’ll be lucky if it doesn’t wind up liquidated in the first round.

    At best, it’ll wind up as a junior bureaucrat at a collective farm or whatever.

    It has neither the intelligence nor the ruthlessness to go much further than that.

  58. Matt says:

    I can’t imagine too many state bars yanking bar licenses for issuing an opinion these guys were asked to give. Its really horseshit but I suspect its the dems attempt to satisfy their far left crazies as well as pass the buck to the state.

    Now if the obama admin treats the state bar folks like they’re treating chrysler…

  59. Rob Crawford says:

    I can’t imagine too many state bars yanking bar licenses for issuing an opinion these guys were asked to give.

    Really? In this day and age?

  60. Matt says:

    *Really? In this day and age?*

    Yeah, I know what you mean. But disbarment is pretty harsh and usually re-served for a lawyer convicted of a felony or someone who has a pattern and practice of screwing over their clients AND not responding to bar complaints. As far as I can tell, these guys haven’t violated any ethical rules in issuing these opinions. Its definately crap the dems are trying to use this as leverage but ultimately, I think the threats are hollow, like so many heads in the Obama administration.

  61. geoffb says:

    “Now if the obama admin treats the state bar folks like they’re treating chrysler…”

    With both the Trial Lawyers, and the ABA, big fans of Obama and the Dems, I expect that offers they can’t refuse can be made to the State Boards if they want to push this thing. Both sticks and carrots abound for the O!

  62. serr8d says:

    Cleanup needed in Spam 66.

    Do.Never.Click.That. XXX.

    (after 20 minutes of selfless viewing; just to make sure… )

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