Get a job, torture-boy

Times are tough out there. Just last month another 539,000 Americans lost their jobs. The unemployment rate is 8.9% and expected to rise to double digits. Why can't many Americans find new jobs? Well, they probably don't have many skills that are desirable in this new economy. Like what skills? I don't know, how about justifying and enabling torture during your tenure in the Justice Department? If you did that I'd bet it would be easy to find a job.

By late last year, the world already knew a great deal about John Yoo, the Philadelphia native and conservative legal scholar whose tenure in the Bush administration as a top Justice Department lawyer lies at the root of the period of greatest peril to the U.S. Constitution in modern memory. It was widely known in 2008, for example, that Yoo had argued for presidential powers far beyond anything either real or implied in the Constitution -- that the commander-in-chief could trample the powers of Congress or a free press in an endless undeclared war, or that the 4th Amendment barring unreasonable search and seizure didn't apply in fighting what Yoo called domestic terrorism.

Most famously, Yoo was known as the author of the infamous "torture memos" that in 2002 and 2003 gave the Bush and Cheney the legal cover to violate the human rights of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, based on the now mostly ridiculed claim that international and U.S. laws against such torture practices did not apply.
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Here is editorial page editor Jackson's written response, in full: John Yoo has written freelance commentaries for The Inquirer since 2005, however he entered into a contract to write a monthly column in late 2008. I won't discuss the compensation of anyone who writes for us. Of course, we know more about Mr. Yoo's actions in the Justice Department now than we did at the time we contracted him. But we did not blindly enter into our agreement. He's a Philadelphian, and very knowledgeable about the legal subjects he discusses in his commentaries. Our readers have been able to get directly from Mr. Yoo his thoughts on a number of subjects concerning law and the courts, including measures taken by the White House post-9/11. That has promoted further discourse, which is the objective of newspaper commentary.

Of course, who wouldn't want a weekly column from the stunning legal insight that if you write "I think this is legal" before your complete and total endorsement of illegal activities, then it is legal. I'm not certain, but I think Madison wrote that clause into the Bill of Rights.

But they are right, this is going to stimulate debate. Like: What was the Inquirer thinking? Are moves like hiring Yoo and paying Rick Santorum for a weekly diatribe the reason papers are going out of business, or just one of the reasons? Don't most people try to avoid hitching their wagon to a national pariah who violated the basic tenets of his profession and might soon be under prosecution for war crimes in Spain? Are 'from Philly" and 'had a legal job once' really the only qualifications you want him to have? Was a drunken dare involved in this? Can I cancel my subsciption now? Clearly the questions you want your readership to ask.