When I read your post this morning, Glenn, I was reminded of something you said in you interview with Jay Rosen.

GG: Right. Now, you see this model being applied all the time -- I think currently right now, for instance, what has been relegated to the sphere of deviance is the idea that there ought to be criminal investigations and prosecutions of Bush officials for the laws that they broke, and even as you have things like yesterday, a high Bush official saying detainees at Guantanamo were tortured, and she used that word, and today Eric Holder saying that, techniques that the President himself admits to authorizing were in fact torture, which, if you put those simple propositions together, it means that high crimes were committed by the admissions of our top leaders, that the idea that they should be prosecuted, held accountable under the law, is something that you almost never hear in our mainstream discourse.

You don't hear things like, questioning about the role that the US plays in blindly supporting Israel, all kinds of examples on the most significant questions. So, do you think that the sphere of deviance ends up being vastly larger than it should be? Or is the problem that it's just sort of marginally bigger and some things end up within it that probably should be moved into the realm of legitimate debate?

If in your post of today you intended to succinctly make a clear and unequivocal case for moving the issue out of the 'sphere of deviance' section of mainstream discourse, I'd say that you were successful in making your case. Now this post needs to become 'viral'. Spread it far and wide, people.

even in english - and I approve this message!

Wonderfully and clearly laid out! Thank you so much for this latest column and for the previous columns supporting prosecution members of the current Bush administration for all their illegal acts.

I do not look for Obama to change his mind.

But I hope you will continue to write on this issue and in that way keep a little pressure on him to change it and authorize investigation and prosecution of all these acts of torture.

I could not agree more. We call the kind of practices you are writing about atrocities when they are directed by other nations' leaders. They are no more justifiable here. Keep up the good fight.

Mike Mallett

Maybe these guys ought be forced to re-read their contributions to the book The Rule of Law In the Wake of Clinton, October 2000 ("How President Clinton seriously undermined the cornerstone of American democracy -- the rule of law."), which actually has a number of prominent non-conservative contributions such as Nadine Strossen of the ACLU.

Nevertheless, they're not as entertaining as the law-honoring righties who would so honor their condemnations in the breach:

The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton contains 15 essays by scholars, lawyers, lawmakers and cultural critics that chronicle Clinton's utter disregard for "a nation of laws, not of men."...

...Timothy Lynch, director of the Cato Project for Criminal Justice, notes that "Clinton has exhibited contempt for the very Constitution he took an oath to uphold," as evidenced by his support for warrantless searches of public housing units, warrantless drug testing in public schools, a weakening of the right to trial by jury, and expanded property forfeiture. Clinton's record on economic liberties is no better. James Wootton, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, examines the administration's resistance to compensation for "regulatory takings" of private property. But when the federal government does have power to override state tort law that frustrates interstate commerce, Wootton says, Clinton refuses to use it...

...Former Assistant Attorney General Theodore B. Olson chronicles how Clinton and Reno have thoroughly politicized the Justice Department. Berkeley Law Professor John C. Yoo discusses the imperial president abroad, showing how Clinton has abused constitutional restraints on his foreign power while ceding the authority of the federal government itself to international institutions.

Finally, the book examines how and why the institutions one would normally expect to be defending the rule of law have failed. Former Justice Department attorney Daniel E. Troy, Illinois Law Professor and Cato Visiting Scholar in Constitutional Studies Ronald D. Rotunda, and author David Horowitz look, respectively, at the political parties, the bar and the legal academy, and the media and the cultural institutions, each of which not only failed but was often complicit in undermining the rule of law.

http://tinyurl.com/CATO-Rule-Law-Clinton

Yoo's greatest ire, amusingly, is that Clinton acted too multilaterally. No problem there any more, given the fig leaf game of the Coalition of the Shilling.

Lowlights:

"When it comes to using the American military, no president in recent times has had a quicker trigger finger [than Bill Clinton]." (160)

"In the summer of 1998, he used cruise missiles to hit suspected terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan." (161)

"American warplanes continue to enforce a no-fly zone in Iraq, and on occasion American cruise missiles and bombs have attacked Iraqi military assets." (161)

"...President Clinton argued that he had the sole constitutional power as commander in chief to send American servicemen and women into harm's way. Although he signaled that he would welcome congressional support, he also made clear that he would act without it." (161)

"Under President Clinton...the nation has become involved more often in what is known as 'low intensity conflict [NOTE: I hope no one told the Reaganite warriors hired in Central America and Southern Africa and Afghanistan] in which civilian leaders have employed military force for more diffuse objects, such as rebuilding nations, enforcing international peace or the status quo, and imposing costs on a hostile regime that fall short of total military and political victory." (162)

Yoo also goes into some depths on how important recent Supreme Court cases on the Appointments Clause of the Constitution (simply, it's the Executive's job to appoint any officers to enforce laws and policy's, the Legislature cannot but can advise & consent) make sure to keep one branch of government (the Legislature) was running roughshod over another branch (the poor, hobbled Executive).

And the prompt for that discussion is Yoo's hostility to any real, enforceable international Arms Control agreements.

Here is where Yoo (175) embarks on his "Unitary Executive" defense as "the only member of government elected by the entire nation," thus the bearer of superpowers.

***

As usual, it's darkly amusing to read the conditional outrage of Republicans on matters of the Imperial Presidency when it comes to Democrats; thankfully, for the moment hacks like Yoo have fairly clearly revealed themselves as the partisan monsters they are.

As you read through Yoo's essay, you get to the essence of distilled right wing paranoia; there appears to be a principled defense of Constitutional limits on Executive power; but what it's really about his how those limits failed to stop a President from pursuing ostensibly international, 'multilateral' goals.

Whereas the Republicans gladly winked at pretending the "UN" fig-leaf on their Iraq invasion was internationalism, they never once for a moment thought that the U.S. was in any way taking UN leadership seriously.

What they feared about Clinton and succeeding Democrats is that he, and they, really might.

Good thing Yoo and his colleagues took charge of the Unitarded Executrix and brought lawful restraint and separation of powers back in vogue, right?