Pressure mounting to throw out those torture lawyers

We know these torture lawyers will not be indicted or in other terms, won't get reprimanded for crafting the torture doctrine used by the Bush Administration and soiling our image internationally, but when you do wrong, it comes back to you, two fold.

Now out west the bullseye button is on John Yoo and Judge Jay Bybee. Folks, the people are mounting to go after them.

Pressure is mounting against two former Bush administration attorneys who wrote the legal memos used to support harsh interrogation techniques that critics say constituted torture.

John Yoo, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is fighting calls for disbarment and dismissal, while Judge Jay Bybee of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals faces calls for impeachment.

Justice Department investigators have stopped short of recommending criminal charges, but suggest in a draft report that the two men should face professional sanctions. A number of groups across the country agree, and some want even stronger action.

Note, while the Justice Department will not file criminal charges, they suggest that these two should face professional sanctions, in other words, LOSE YOUR CUSHY JOBS.

Enter Demonstrations in Berkeley

Human rights and anti-war activists are planning a demonstration at the Berkeley School of Law's May 16 commencement ceremony to press for Yoo to be fired.

"It's unconscionable that the legal architect of the torture apparatus is teaching the future generation of lawyers and judges at UC Berkeley," said Stephanie Tang, an organizer with the group World Can't Wait.

Robert Cole, a professor emeritus at Berkeley's law school, said he believes the university should conduct its own investigation to determine if Yoo's work for the Bush administration violated the campus' faculty code of conduct.

"The university has got to protect its integrity," Cole said. "Every professor we put in the classroom has to have professional competence and ethical integrity."

Slow Burn in Nevada

Legal colleagues, while praising Bybee as a scholar and caring colleague, have criticized the memos, particularly for what some of them say was legal sloppiness and faulty constitutional logic not indicative of his other work.

John Podesta, president of the liberal Center for American Progress and the leader of President Barack Obama's transition team, said, "If he would do the right thing, he should just simply resign."

If he doesn't quit, Podesta said, he should be removed from office.

In the end, if you had anything to do with the Torture Crew from the Bush Administration, you are looking to eventually go down, maybe not legally but that cushy job can be stripped from you very easily. Don't believe me? Ask Alberto Gonzalez. No law firm in this country will touch him. He is poison from that Torture Crew from the Bush Administration, which is why these torture lawyers did not want any of these memos to come out in the open, they are facing very harsh criticism which can result in both losing their prestigious and cushy jobs.

No pity party here.

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Judge Bybee is Sorry

I read this Washington Post article this morning and just said, "Well, he has much to be sorry about, but it is too late." He was the key principle that signed off on the torture memos for the Bush Administration. He has legitimate gripe and should feel used by that administration, but being sorry at this time means nothing. Look where we are at? Sorry? Too bad, so sad, too late.

It was, in the private room of a public restaurant, the kind of joyless judgment that some friends and associates say the jurist arrived at well before the public release of four additional memos last week and the resulting uproar that has engulfed Washington. One of the documents, dated Aug. 1, 2002, offered a helpfully narrow definition of torture to the CIA and soon became known as the "Bybee memo," because it bore his signature.

"I've heard him express regret at the contents of the memo," said a fellow legal scholar and longtime friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while offering remarks that might appear as "piling on." "I've heard him express regret that the memo was misused. I've heard him express regret at the lack of context -- of the enormous pressure and the enormous time pressure that he was under. And anyone would have regrets simply because of the notoriety."

That notoriety worsened this week as the documents -- detailing the acceptable application of waterboarding, "walling," sleep deprivation and other procedures the Bush administration called "enhanced interrogation methods" -- prompted calls from human rights advocates and other critics for criminal investigations of the government lawyers who generated them.

Of the three former Justice Department lawyers associated with the memos, the public's attention has focused particularly harshly on Bybee because of his position as a sitting federal judge; John C. Yoo, who largely wrote the Bybee memo, returned to academic life, and Steven G. Bradbury, who signed three memos, resumed private practice at the end of the Bush administration.

Well, the public has a right to question Bybee. He is a sitting judge and as we know, judges make decisions and we can not help but question Bybee because his decision of signing off on these torture memos was a bad one. A very bad one indeed.

But for me, Bybee is only a low member of a very high totem pole. This is all about the Bush White House and how they crafted the use of torture to sell to the public. This all stinks of high heaven, but hang on, the best is still yet to come from all of this.

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