torture memo

John Yoo should be fired, disbarred and prosecuted for war crimes, according to anti-war activists who greeted the University of California at Berkeley law professor when he returned to Boalt Hall, the law school where he has tenure, on Monday.
Yoo, of course, is the author of the infamous “torture memos” that justified the abuse and [...]

Asked this morning when the Justice Department plans to release the highly-anticipated report by its internal ethics office regarding the conduct and legal conclusions of Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel lawyers, such as John Yoo and Steven Bradbury, Holder said they are “pretty close to getting their report finalized,” and “they are making changes [...]

The Daily Telegraph reports that some of the photos of prisoner abuse that President Obama has refused to release — after earlier promising to make them public — depict the brutal rape and sexual abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner [...]

Well, we knew things were bad for newspapers these days, but this is a really sad sign:  The Philadelphia Inquirer has hired John Yoo — the notorious former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer and architect of the “torture memos” that not only narrowed the definition of torture to exclude waterboarding and most other widely recognized [...]

I don’t know if former Vice President Dick Cheney just misses being in the spotlight, or if he actually believes the stuff he spews on television these days, but he conveniently skipped over at least one important problem when he told CNN’s “State of the Union” today that President Obama’s changes to the Bush administration’s [...]

Jason Leopold at The Public Record has acquired some important inside information about a still-classified report written by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility that provides more evidence of Bush administration lawbreaking.
According to Leopold, OPR director H. Marshall Jarrett reached “damning” conclusions about the advice of John Yoo and other lawyers in the Office [...]

Most of the discussion of President-elect Barack Obama’s appointments announced Monday focused on whether Leon Panetta does or doesn’t have the experience to run the CIA. However, it’s worth noting that Dawn Johnsen, Obama’s pick for the once-obscure post of head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice – made famous [...]