1115.org

“You ain’t banging shit but the table
[…]
Anytime you come out, yo, I’m a talk about you
Until you let that bitch in you, walk up out you
Any last words before I hit the switch
From the immortal words of one, a bitch is a bitch” - Common “The Bitch in Yoo”

Since the very beginning of George W. Bush’s first campaign for President, one of the core tenets of his platform has been reducing the role of lawyers in American society. From the manufactured crisis that they said necessitated tort “reform” to restricting class action lawsuits to appointing judges like John Roberts, Samuel Alito and others who have records of limiting the very right of citizens to seek remedy in court, Bush and company have made it a priority to score points by bashing lawyers and impact Democratic fundraising by undercutting donations from the legal community. The 2004 campaign even saw a sustained smear on Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards, including an inexplicable attack on him for representing a young girl who was literally disemboweled by a poorly designed swimming pool drain.

But for all of their anti-lawyer bluster, (not to mention their disdain for Bill Clinton’s legal parsing) it’s hard to imagine an operation more dependent on lawyering than the current administration. We’ve been over the legal wrangling that became the foundation for the Iraq war, more recently the so-called “torture memo,” and now we have word of the legal opinion that made possible the NSA’s secret domestic surveillance without the need for pesky oversight or Constitutional safeguards. What do these three cases have in common? The fingerprints of former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo.

As someone who aspires to serve as a political advisor, I’ve often considered the quandaries faced by those responsible for advising our leaders. Slippery slope scenarios, greater good vs. political reality, anguished tradeoffs and other hard choices put these people to the test every day. But despite claims by Roberts, Alito, Yoo, and their defenders, when you make recommendations that are adopted as official policy, hiding behind “I was just representing a client” ceases to wash. Setting policy at the highest levels tests one’s principles like few other situations, and this administration has taken good care of lawyers who subjugate their principles in order to provide political cover for their masters’ repulsive policies.

As a non-Iraqi / non-enemy-combatant, the shameful legal opinions that produced injury, death and torture are little more than abstractions to me. They offend my sensibilities, my vision of America and almost certainly make us less, rather than more safe, but if I turned off my computer and ignored current events, I’d be more or less unaffected. But by advising the President to ignore the Fourth Amendment, circumvent real Congressional oversight, and sidestep the FISA court, Yoo brought unlimited Presidential power much too close to where I live.

For more than two years, I have published my thoughts on the mistakes, excesses, and criminal activity of President Bush and nearly every senior member of his administration. Through regular readers, links and Google, the ideas we put out have spread far and wide as well as generating a significant number of hits from the kind of .gov IPs that aren’t listed in any directory. This has never been welcome knowledge, but it takes on a whole new sheen when coupled with news that the administration used Yoo’s opinion to direct the NSA to spy on American citizens. Even more when the same thinking resulted in the FBI spying on PETA, Greenpeace and the ACLU.

In addition to virtually destroying a main pillar of American freedom, domestic spying creates rather than plugs, holes in our security. The main argument for the Patriot Act and secret NSA surveillance amounts to “we need to make it easier for law enforcement no matter what the Constitution says.” Likewise, critics of both are admonished and reminded that if they aren’t doing anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about. Ironic coming from the crowd that howls “activism” and “original intent” whenever possible. But in a field where resources and manpower are finite and the administration claims that it is too hard for law enforcement to do their jobs, why are we wasting time spying on ordinary Americans and respected non-violent organizations?

The answer of course is that this administration isn’t about anything other than absolute power and the rewards it produces. People like John Yoo had every opportunity to stand on principle and steer a misguided ship back to sanity. Yoo and too many others chose their careers over the law. By using spineless lawyers in this manner, the administration got the power they wanted, and advanced their war on the legal profession at the same time.