Whether that first post by a "Krauthammer" is by the Krauthammer we all know and loathe or by some Krauthammer We All Know And Loathe wannabe, it's still fun.

And reminiscent of, get this, a West Wing scenario which, as the Krauthammers of the world always seem to forget, included a little twist called "accountability."

Remember? There was this really bad Terrorist dude who was going to blow up the Golden Gate bridge, but after the plot was stopped the same bad Terrorist dude turns out to be a foreign minister of a scary-sounding Middle Eastern country who, oh wow, is scheduled to be visiting the White House. So they agonize, inside the White House, about what to do about him. And they decide they'll have him killed. And they do.

But through the whole process, none of the participants -- not the President, not Leo, not the Joint Chiefs guy -- for even one moment suggest they think it's not something they would somehow not have to go to jail for if the story got out. The story doesn't get out, but the simple and underlying fact is that the participants in the assassination plot discuss and believe that the price to pay for violating fundamental legal rules -- conviction and imprisonment -- is in the circumstances a noble and worthy consequence.

In short, Krauthammer, where's any concept of accountability in the scenarios you describe? Instead, you and yours would substitute your Ubermensch "higher and unassailable morality" to render your chosen illegalities themselves beyond even the reach of mere mortals' law itself. That is not how it works. You want to play Decider and Decide when it's OK to obey the law and when your sense of Right tells you not to? Then face the prosecution. Even "Mission Impossible" used to start with "if any of you and your IM team are caught, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions", not with "if any of you and your IM team are caught, the Administration will enact legislation retroactively immunizing your actions" or even "you will not be prosecuted because you meant well."

So all this crap about when "torture is justified" simply leaves out the second half of the actual analysis: when does that type of argument get validly raised? It is NOT at the point where you get to declare existing laws fundamentally inapplicable in advance. It is, rather and only, in those instances in which you get to beg for mercy in the "penalty phase" following the conviction. And that is how the world works in the dimension where the Rule of Law exists and is respected. Just not in your world.

Yep, it's all hopeless, thanks for that. As Glenn responded to your most recent comment here, what's pathetic is your schtick, not those who might want to see some improvement around here.

Why don't you just thank Mr. Cheney for keeping us all safe and go somewhere else to occupy your time? That is, after all, the sum total of your "contributions". It's not only tiresome, but now even Newsweek is suggesting that the philosophy of sanctiomonious surrender you so perfectly embody is actually being considered as some kind of justification for continuing with the very things you suggest you're too savvy to trouble yourself with actually objecting to even though you presume such things to be wrong. Your attitude is a big part the problem, not any part of a solution, for everything you pretend to complain about.

Treating the Yoo memos as a "baseline" is utterly unjustifiable. Not even the perpetrators did that.

If Holder is willing to say that the Yoo memos constituted a defensible rationale for torture, that would be one thing. But Holder won't do that -- hell, not even the Bush administration ever did that. Keep in mind that while the Yoo memos were secret they were OK with Bush, but that their public disclosure resulted in (1) Rumsfeld -- RUMSFELD!, for chrissake -- issued orders rescinding -- not withdrawing, but rescinding ab initio -- the first batch, and (2) just weeks before the change of administrations this year, the Bush DOJ disavowed the rest.

Holder cannot presume validity of that which has been treated as invalid even by those who ordered its creation. These "analyses" were well understood to be unsupportable and were jettisoned the moment they were exposed. Holder risks nothing in acknowledging these facts and asking the only question that logically follows from these facts: were the analyses knowingly prepared in a manner that divests them of any presumption of "good faith"?

Of course they were. And to ignore that and just pick a few more Abu Ghraib guards to tar and feather will only further cement America's position as the most lawless nation on earth, it will strip the US Department of Justice of any claim to earnest protection of the Rule of Law.

Yoo's memos are, and have long been, the most odious of all the Bush treachery toward the Constitution and the Rule of Law. To allow them to control the actions of our government simply because they were written on a government typewriter is to abandon any concept of accountability whatsoever. That seems like a bad idea.