Speak Up, the NSA Can't Hear You

The domestic spying revelations look like another example of the malign influence of John Yoo. I know I'm late to this realization, but David Cole in the -New York Review of Books- (see the link) recently described just how important Yoo's incredibly broad interpretation of executive powers has been to Bush administration policy. Yoo, now a law professor at Berkeley, was an attorney within the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. He's evidently the author of Alberto Gonzalez's infamous "torture memo." More importantly, Yoo argues that Congress has almost no role to play in foreign policy, and that the Constitution doesn't mean what it clearly says about ratified treaties having the force of law (or more precisely, Yoo believes that the executive has carte blanche to disregard laws and treaties during times of war). Somewhere Richard Nixon is telling David Frost, "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal."