The Naked Yoo

The Justice Department has released previously withheld legal memos from the Office of Legal Counsel concerning presidential authority to combat terror.  The release came after the documents were sought in a civil suit brought by Joseph Padilla, a US citizen detained for years as an enemy combatant before being convicted of crime in federal court.  The nine memos, some written or co-written by the eminent Confucian legal scholar John Yoo, now on leave from Berkeley {4/8/08, Yoo the Merciless}, demonstrate the shocking extent the Regime was willing to eliminate civil liberties while fighting terror.  Under the foregone conclusions passed by Yoo and his colleagues as legal analysis, the new and improved "Commander-in-Chief power" (nowhere enumerated in the Constitution) would trump the First, Fourth and Sixth Amendments in the Bill of Rights should the President deem it necessary to combat terror within the US.  Yoo's view--tantamount to the imposition of martial law--was considered extreme even by the office director, but he waited almost to the end of the Regime's reign of excess before rescinding the memo supporting suspension of free speech and freedom of the press. With only five days left in power, the director of OLC rescinded three other memos claiming broad powers to unilaterally rescind treaties and engage in domestic surveillance without the approval of Congress.  The Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating whether political appointees knowingly signed off on unreasonable interpretation of laws to provide cover for the Regime's anti-terror programs.