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Torture Architect John Yoo Hypocritically
Blasts Democratic Party For Violating Constitution’s Intent
Think
Progress
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
In today’s Wall Street Journal, former Justice Department official
John
Yoo blasts the Democratic party for its “undemocratic”
system of superdelegates:
This delegate dissonance wasn’t anything the Framers
of the U.S. Constitution dreamed up. They believed that letting
Congress choose the president was a dreadful idea. Without direct election
by the people, the Framers said that the executive would lose its independence
and vigor and become a mere servant of the legislature. They had the
record of revolutionary America to go on. All but one of America’s
first state constitutions gave state assemblies the power to choose
the governor. James Madison commented that this structure allowed legislatures
to turn governors into “little more than ciphers.”
Since when did Yoo
become so concerned with the Constitution? During his time in the administration,
he aggressively urged the administration to push moral, ethical, and legal
boundaries:
– Yoo was the author of the administration’s infamous
torture memo, which argued that interrogation techniques only
constituted torture if they are “equivalent in intensity to…organ
failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” [Link,
Link]
–Thanks to Yoo’s legal work, the Bush administration justified
the creation of a new category of detainees: “illegal enemy combatants.”¯
He advised that President Bush did not have to comply with the
Geneva Conventions in handling detainees in the war on terror.
[Link]
– Yoo argued that President Bush “didn’t need to
ask Congress for permission to invade Iraq.” The 1973
War Powers Resolution, according to Yoo, is “irrelevant.”¯
[Link]
– Yoo helped craft the legal justification allowing the
Bush administration to secretly eavesdrop on Americans without court-approved
warrants. In 2001, Yoo brushed aside constitutional concerns,
stating that after 9/11, “the government may be justified in taking
measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements
of individual liberties.”[Link]
Additionally, despite what Yoo claims, the Founders never envisioned
“direct election by the people.” In fact, during the Constitutional
Convention, “a plan to have the president elected directly by the
people was
defeated twice.”
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