Frankly, I don't dare look to see if they followed through. I don't want to spoil the morning. But presumably the American Bar Association can follow suit, and call Yoo not-a-lawyer.--macgupta

Well, in October 2007 there was the Earlham Resolution:

Ethics Rebellion in Psychology, 10/12/07

This month, three psychology departments have gone on record saying that the association did not go far enough -- and that they consider it a violation of professional ethics to help the U.S. with interrogations in any prison outside the country where due process rights are not enforced. The votes on a resolution -- by the psychology faculties at Earlham, Guilford and Smith Colleges -- are an unusually public effort by departments to criticize collectively a key decision by their national association. A number of other departments are considering similar moves. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/12/psych#Comments

The EarlhamResolution: RESOLUTION CONCERNING PARTICIPATION OF PSYCHOLOGISTS IN MILITARY DETENTION CENTERS http://www.ethicalapa.com/files/Earlham_Resolution_and_Letter.doc

More recently, Valtin at Invictus has been following the issue:

APA Ethics Policymaker Clarifies Defense of Torture; Reveals APA-Pentagon Link, 5/18/09

Dr. Stephen Soldz-“[…] The [Bryce] Lefever NPR interview created quite a stir among psychologists, including members of the APA’s Council of Representatives, as it revealed the questionable ethical reasoning of those chosen to form policy for the APA in this critical area. […] Another very important element of this letter is that it confirms the extensive collaboration between the APA and the military in the creation of the PENS task force. […] In putting Bryce Lefever, along with the other military-intelligence members, on the PENS task force and making them their “ethics” policy-makers, and in keeping their participation secret, the APA demonstrated the extremes to which they were willing to go to do the Bush administration’s bidding. […]” http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/apa-ethics-policymaker-clarifies.html

Two Psychologists at ACLU Blog of Rights, 6/24/09

Stephen Soldz-“[…] I outlined several modes of response to the issue of psychologist involvement in abusive interrogations by APA leadership. In brief, these modes of response, described in the approximate chronological order in which they were rolled out, were: Identification with the Aggressor; Rigging the Process; Denial; We are No Different Than Others; Parsing Pain; Repressive Tolerance and Endless "Dialog"; "We are Shocked!"

Trudy Bond-The last four presidents, as well as the APA Ethics Director Stephen Behnke, have repeatedly made the same politically correct statement for four years, with absolutely no actions to support their statements. It’s become clear that the APA peddles intellectual contradiction as policy when it comes to torture, with no intent of enforcement. http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/two-psychologists-at-aclu-blog-of.html

Top US Behavioral Scientists Studies Survival Schools to Create Torture Program Over 50 Years Ago, 6/25/09

The role of former APA presidents DeLeon, Koocher, Levant, Seligman, and Matarazzo in supporting the role of military psychologists in interrogations, even after evidence of torture by the U.S. government was manifest, is perhaps unequalled in the annals of professional societies, as providing political, and possibly organizational and theoretical or practical support to unethical procedures, especially torture. […] But that is not the end of the story; it is not even the beginning. […] Debility, Dependency and Dread [History from the 50’s]; […] If more brutal forms of torture sometimes were used, especially by over-eager foreign agents or governments, DDD remained the gold standard, the programmatic core of counterintelligence interrogation at the heart of the CIA's own intelligence manuals. […]” [Lots more there] http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/top-us-behavioral-scientists-studied.html

Human Rights Groups Critique APA’s Recent Statement on Interrogations, 6/29/09

“[…] a number of psychological, health, and human rights organizations released a statement criticizing the American Psychological Association (APA) Board of Directors failure to accept responsibility for the APA’s role in facilitating psychologists' participation in abusive national security interrogations. […]”

From the statement:

“[…] The authors speak as though the information about psychologist’s involvement in torture is fresh news even though it has been available for a long time. Even now, the Board relies on the Bush Administration tactic, employed in the Abu Ghraib debacle, of blaming the abuse on a "few bad apples." This minimization of the greatest ethical crisis in our profession’s history by those who claim to lead the profession is unacceptable. […] The study should explore how the APA governance system permits the accumulation of power in the hands of a very small number of individuals who are unresponsive to the general membership. It should also propose measures to return the APA to democratic principles, scientific integrity, and beneficence, including restructuring for greater transparency and the assimilation of diverse viewpoints. […]”

http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/human-rights-groups-critique-apas.html

Getting back to the Lawyers:

The National Lawyers Guild signed the above referenced letter to the APA. They have a “Working Group on Torture Accountability”. The link is: http://www.nlginternational.org/com/main.php?cid=18

Kill them before they breed again.

It doesn't seem possible to have a corrupt President (and Vice-President), to the point where the President (& VP) commit war-crimes and openly admit to them, as well as breaking numerous federal laws, and conspiring with others to do so, without also having a corrupt (or grossly negligent, which in this position amounts to the same thing) Attorney General.

But even a corrupt POTUS, VP, & AG, cannot long survive unless you also have a corrupt (or grossly negligent, which in this position amounts to the same thing) Congress.

And even a corrupt P, VP, AG, and Congress, would be occasionally reined in, unless you also have a corrupt (or grossly negligent, which in this position amounts to the same thing) Supreme Court.

And given all of these, unless you have a thoroughly corrupt and/or grossly negligent (again, not much difference in practical terms) press, everyone would be well informed about just how corrupt their public servants really have become.

But anyway, given that nobody wants to admit that the political institutions of the most powerful nation the world has ever known are thoroughly corrupt beyond all repair, we'll just have to keep voting and hoping.

I, for example, hope you enjoy the second stimulus package as much as the first. I hope you've all read how the first one was necessary to prevent unemployment from hitting 9% in 2010. I hope you've all read how well it worked, since unemployment is already over 9.5%. I hope the Afghanis enjoy their surge. I hope the Pakistanis enjoy the uninvited guests at their border wedding parties. I hope the Iranians enjoy their sanctions/Israeli air strikes/carpet bombing/what-have-you. I hope this Depression is more fun than the last one.

But it does seem strange to me that Glenn tirelessly documents, daily, the thoroughly corrupt behaviour of the press, in that they resolutely refuse to do their job, which is to document the corruption of all the 3 branches of government, but they instead insist that the government is a noble association of saints, altruists, and humanitarians, with a few trivial human frailties not really worth mentioning; and for which tireless documentation Glenn garners a vociferously agreeable following, and still nobody wants to admit that the whole edifice of government is corrupt through and through.

I probably don't understand the timeless wonder of it all.