photo: PoliticalActivityLaw.com via Flickr

Wow, Hans von Spakovsky has taken a page from Lynn Cheney’s “Al Qaeda Seven” slander ad and launched a patchwork quilt of personal attacks against the senior members of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. In an article appearing in the National Review he goes after each of them in a very personal way. Ultimately, I think the article backfires and Hans has jumped the shark.

The article is actually wildly entertaining if you read it as satire. How can pointing out that someone was smart and talented enough to clerk for a federal Court of Appeals judge and a Supreme Court Justice actually count as an insult?

I’m not going to dignify this hysterical screed with a link because The National Review did not earn any click-through props by printing this crap. Normally, I respect them even when I disagree with them, but this tripe is so far below their standards as to make me wonder what sort of shouting must be going on in their editorial meetings this week.

For example, Hans castigates Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez for the sins of having worked for Senator Edward Kennedy, having been elected to the Montgomery County, Maryland legislature and belonging to Casa de Maryland.  Oh, the horror of it all. Worse yet, according to Hans, is Mark Kappelhoff’s sin for daring to have worked for – wait for it – yes, the ACLU. OMG!

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Samuel Bagenstos is the aforementioned victim of Hans’s insult who clerked for 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt. Bagenstos also clerked for my personal SCOTUS fave, Justice Ruth Ginsberg. Evidently, Hans thinks these credentials are something to be ashamed of; he really enjoyed “outing” Bagenstos.

The National Review piece reads like something from The Onion. If it was meant as an April’s Fool’s piece, they are a few weeks early. I know that Hans gets paid by the Heritage Foundation to come up with attacks from the right, but are they getting value for money?  If the best he can turn out sinks to the Liz Cheney level of Epic Fail, might they might want to rethink how they are allocating their resources?

Last semi-related point:

I know that Attorney General Eric Holder thinks that the work of the Civil Rights Division is going to be his legacy—that the Civil Rights Division (CRD) is, as Senator Schumer described it,  the  “crown jewel” of DOJ.  I have to put a pin in the AG’s party balloon.

It won’t matter one tiny little bit how much or how great the work of the Civil Rights Division is if we fail to restore the rule of law in this country.

If DOJ does not have the independence to make charging and venue decisions free from political interference; if people can be captured and held indefinitely without trial or due process, then every single civil right in this country is an illusion and the talented lawyers with sterling resumes in the CRD are wasting their time as we speak.

Hans von Spakovsky’s and Liz Cheney’s efforts to delegitimize these lawyers and their work cannot compare to the effects of failing to adhere to the rule of law.

Mr. Attorney General, during your confirmation hearings you promised to restore the rule of law and you told Senator Herb Kohl that there were some things worth resigning over. Don’t let Senator Lindsey Graham destroy everything else you are trying to do.

Whether or not you are able to restore the independence and integrity of DOJ is the only legacy that matters. All of the work of the CRD or the entire DOJ hinges on this effort.

Tags: Eric Holder, Hans von Spakovsky, Lynn Cheney, The National Review

That is accurate, but it doesn’t get at the most striking data. The most important finding in the survey is the fact that clean energy and mass transit investments are vastly more popular than nuclear investments and offshore drilling.

Here is how Pew presents the data (Figure 1):

As a mini-case study on how informational graphics can add significant meaning to this sort of data, I’ve created a few simple charts.

This chart (Figure 2) shows the approval and disapproval numbers for the four policy options:

And this chart (Figure 3) shows the net approval numbers for the four policy options…

Presenting the information in text only format, as Pew chose to do in Figure 1, leaves the reader to their own devices to identify the most compelling data. While the data is technically accurate, it fails to bring the meaning of the data to the forefront. Pew’s accompanying analysis of the polling data also somehow fails to identify the massive gap in net approval for the policies they surveyed.

Creating a simple chart (Figure 2) based on the data itself adds significant value to the presentation of the data, especially for the casual reader. The reader can tell at a glance that clean energy investments are significantly more popular than polluting energy sources, and that unpopularity follows the opposite pattern.

Going one step further and doing simple arithmetic to determine the net approval for each of the policies in the survey, as I’ve done with Figure 3, brings the most striking data to the forefront. The fact that more than 50% of Americans support a variety of policies to produce-more or consume-less energy is not, in itself, especially meaningful. But the fact that the net approval for some of these policies is 40-60%, while it is barely 10% for others, is fairly compelling.

Originally posted at EnviroKnow.

Tags: alternative energy, green jobs, mass transit, nuclear energy, offshore drilling

In reconciliation, affordable education for all meets affordable health care for some (photo: Tofu Sue)

As you may know, FDL has launched the Students Not Banks campaign to get the student loan bill passed through reconciliation this year, enabling hundreds of thousands of students to afford college and ending the needless subsidies to the big banks for the privatization of the student loan market.

FDL campaigns get results! Already today, senior Democratic aides have proposed combining the student loan and the health care bills through reconciliation, the only way to pass SAFRA this year:

Senate Democratic leaders have decided to pair an overhaul of federal student lending with healthcare reform, according to a Democratic official familiar with negotiations.

“It’s going in,” said the Democratic source, in reference to the student lending measure.

But leaders may have to reverse themselves if they receive strong pushback from Democratic colleagues who represent states where lenders employ hundreds of constituents.

I’ve been working on this for most of the day, and aides aren’t really talking. But there are risks and rewards to tie in SAFRA with the reconciliation process.

First, some background, although I did go over this yesterday. SAFRA does not currently have 60 votes for passage in the Senate to clear the expected filibuster. Instructions were given last year to move SAFRA through the reconciliation process. However, you can only move one reconciliation bill a year, and the long wait on SAFRA was dictated by Senate leaders waiting to see if they needed reconciliation for health care. Now that reconciliation is the plan, the leadership has a choice: pass SAFRA tied in with health care, or basically wait another year, as higher education costs skyrocket and a major Obama Administration initiative goes by the boards. Adding to this decision is the fact that Democrats would want a tangible success for young voters, those most likely not to vote in the November midterms.

The leadership may see risks in adding student loan reform to the reconciliation bill, however. As The Hill notes, several Democrats who are likely votes for health care, particularly those in states like Delaware and Pennsylvania with a high concentration of the private student loan market, may back away from the reconciliation fixes if SAFRA gets attached. Would that be enough to sink the reconciliation bill entirely? Maybe not in the Senate, where Democrats can afford to lose 9 votes; an industry analyst only sees 7 no votes among the Democratic caucus. But in the House, where the whip count is tight, adding SAFRA could peel off needed votes.

I thought yesterday that, when push came to shove, Democratic leaders would drop SAFRA from their reconciliation plans if it threatened the health care bill. The newfound advocacy and activism around the bill will make that harder to do.

Tags: budget reconciliation, Health care, higher education, House of Representatives, Reconciliation, SAFRA, Senate, student loans, Students Not Banks

graphic: Lance Page/Truthout.org; Adapted: takomabibelot, Poe Tatum via Flickr

Yesterday when I raised the question of what techniques DOD wanted to use in spring 2004, I said there was some ambiguity about what DOD was trying to get approved. In this post I’m going to lay out the conflicting sources of information. Given the totality of information, though, it appears that what DOD asked to use in spring 2004 was extended isolation.

As you’ll recall, Jack Goldsmith originally told Jim Haynes not to rely on the March 2003 Yoo memo in late December 2003. But the OPR report describes a request to use some technique in early March 2004 that set off the more active withdrawal and replacement for the memo.

Here’s how Goldsmith describes his conversation with Haynes in December 2003 in Terror Presidency:

“Jim, I’ve got bad news,” I began. “We’ve discovered some errors in the March 2003 opinion that John wrote you on interrogation. The opinion is under review and should not be relied upon for any reason. The twenty-four techniques you approved are legal, but please come back for additional legal guidance before approving any other technique, and do not rely on the March 2003 opinion for any reason.”

Of those 24 techniques Goldsmith said he told Haynes were legal, Rummy had listed four (incentive/removal of incentive, pride and ego down, mutt and jeff, and isolation) that required advance notification (though not approval) from the Secretary of Defense.

The OPR Report described that conversation slightly differently.

Accordingly, Goldsmith telephoned Haynes in late December 2003 and told him that the Pentagon could no longer rely on the Yoo Memo, that no new interrogation techniques should be adopted without consulting OLC, and that the military could continue to use the noncontroversial techniques set forth in the Working Group Report, but that they should not use any of the techniques requiring Secretary of Defense approval without first consulting OLC.

The Working Group Report approved 26 techniques generally and another 9 in exceptional circumstances. The 26 included three not among those techniques Rummy approved (hooding, mild physical contact, and threat of transfer), and one of the techniques Rummy did approve–isolation–was among those requiring exceptional circumstances in the Working Group.

The working group recommends that techniques 1-26 on the attached chart be approved for use with unlawful combatants outside the United States, subject to the general limitations set forth in this Legal and Policy Analysis; and that techniques 27-35 be approved for use with unlawful combatants outside the United Stam subject to the general limitations as well as the specific limitations regarding “exceptional” techniques as follows: conducted at strategic interrogation facilities; where there is a good basis to believe that the detainee possesses critical intelligence; the detainee is medically and operationally evaluated as suitable (considering all techniques to be used in combination); interrogators are specifically trained for the technique(s); a specific interrogation plan (including reasonable safeguards, limits on duration, intervals between applications, termination criteria and the presence or availability of qualified medical personnel) is developed; appropriate supervision is provided; and, appropriate specified senior level approval is given for use with any specific detainee (after considering the foregoing and receiving legal advice).

And while the Working Group did place limits on those exceptional techniques, it did not require SecDef approval. Here’s what they say about Secretary of Defense approval.

That a procedure be established for requesting approval of additional interrogation techniques similar to that for requesting “supplementals” for ROEs; the process should require the requestor to describe the technique in detail, justify its utility, describe the potential effects on subjects, known hazards and proposed safeguards, provide a legal analysis, and recommend an appropriate decision level regarding use on specific subjects, This procedure should ensure that SECDEF is the approval authority for the addition of any technique that could be considered equivalent in degree to any of the “exceptional techniques” addressed in this report (in the chart numbers 27-35, labeled with an “E”), and that he establish the specific decision level required for application of such techniques.

The SASC Report has a third version of the Goldsmith-Haynes conversation.

Mr. Goldsmith told the Committee that he called Jim Haynes in December 2003 and told him the March 14,2003 OLC opinion was under review and could not be relied on by the Department. 1140 That opinion had been presented to the Working Group as the controlling authority for all questions of domestic and international law and was the legal foundation for the Secretary’s April 2003 authorization oftechniques for GTMO. Mr. Goldsmith told the Committee that he informed Mr. Haynes in December 2003 that he had determined that only 20 of the 24 techniques authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld were lawful, and that the remaining four techniques were under review. 114 Mr. Goldsmith also advised Mr. Haynes in December that the Department should come back to OLC for additional legal guidance before approving any technique not among those 24 specifically identified in the Secretary’s April 2003 memo.1142 Mr. Goldsmith told the Committee that Mr. Haynes did not inquire about the use of additional techniques during his tenure at OLC, which ended in June 2004.1143

1141 In his interview with Committee staff, Mr. Goldsmith said he eventually determined that all 24 were lawful. That account differs slightly from Goldsmith’s account in his book, in which he said that he told Mr. Haynes in December that all 24 techniques were lawful.

I agree with SASC: Goldsmith’s version in his book conflicts with what he told the committee, which are both somewhat different from what OPR Reports. But a May 11, 2004 memo from Goldsmith may shed some light on this issue. It memorializes Goldsmith’s prior approval, on April 23, 2004, of the four techniques approved by Rummy in April 2003 but which required advance notification before using.

On April 23, 2004, OLC advised the Department of Defense that four techniques for interrogation of a prisoner at Guantanamo would be lawful, if justified by military necessity and if conducted in accordance with the Secretary of Defense’s memorandum of April 15, 2003,

At the very least, this supports Goldsmith’s explanation to the SASC that he went on to approve these four techniques.

Curiously, to justify approving isolation, Goldsmith cites the March 2003 Yoo memo!

The fourth technique was isolation for a limited period. We had earlier advised the Department of Defense that “[a] brief stay in solitary confinement alone is insufficient to state a deprivation” of basic human needs and thus would not constitute “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment under the Convention Against Torture, let alone meet the higher standard for “torture” under that Convention and the United States criminal law implementing it, 18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A. See Memorandum for William J. Haynes, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States at 64 (Mar. 14, 2003).

While Goldsmith is not here relying on the more problematic aspects of the memo, according to the OPR Report, he and Bradbury started drafting replacements for the Yoo memo by this point.

Finally, this memo may reveal what the conflict was about: DOD appears to have been requesting 60-day isolation for this detainee.

The Department of Defense proposed that the solitary confinement might continue as long as 60 days, with an internal review after 30. We stated, however, that our advice was limited to the legality of the 30-day period and that we ought to be consulted again if the Department of Defense wished to extend that time.

The description of isolation in Rummy’s April memo only permitted 30 days of isolation. So it appears the request may not have been for a new technique, but for an extended use of isolation.

Just one caveat to that point: SASC also includes a largely redacted paragraph just below the discussion of Goldsmith’s withdrawal of the memo that suggests DOD insitutionalized its “Frequent Flyer” program, in which detainees were moved every few hours to prevent them from sleeping, on March 26, 2004.

Tags: isolation, Jack Goldsmith, Jim Haynes, OPR report

(photo: Yersinia)

A big part of the final push for this health care reform effort is focused on how terrible the private insurance companies are. On the White House blog, communications director Dan Pfeiffer is attacking the huge premium increases and monopoly power of some private insurers. HCAN is doing a “mass citizens’ arrest of the insurance companies.” On the stump, President Obama is hitting the terrible practices of the private insurance corporations hard. From Washington Post:

Obama and his health secretary staged a two-pronged attack Monday in a stern letter to health insurance chief executives and a speech in which the president castigated insurance companies 22 times. “How much higher do premiums have to rise,” he demanded, “before we do something about it?”

The messages are part of a strategy that Obama and those around him have begun to employ lately, to ratchet up the pace and the populist appeal of their rhetoric against the health insurance industry. The barbed tone moves far beyond that of the 2008 presidential campaign, when Obama began to say that medical coverage should be accessible and affordable for more Americans.

I agree with the message. I can’t decide if I dislike the industry more for its morally reprehensible practices or its bloated, inefficient, and completely unnecessary nature. Attacking the private insurers is smart politics and should have been done months ago.

The big problem is that the messaging is incompatible with pushing for Obama’s official health care proposal. That program will use the IRS to force Americans to buy insurance from the same, terrible, private insurance industry everyone is now rallying against.

If the private insurance industry is so evil, why would you ever possibly force me to be their customer?

The messaging would make sense of Obama were pushing for a Medicare-for-all system that would completely marginalize or eliminate the private insurers. It would make sense even if the bill only had a simple public alternative, like a public option or Medicare buy-in. I could understand the message even if the bill had a broad state waiver provision that would allow for states to possibly create single payer plans. I might even except the messaging if Obama was pushing for what Switzerland did by forcing all private health insurance companies to become highly regulated non-profits. It might even be accepting if there were only the new consumer protections but no individual mandate.

The issue is that Obama’s health care proposals don’t do any of those things. It places a few good, new regulations on the private insurance companies (which will probably see a very spotty record of enforcement because that function is left up to the states), but it will now force you to buy insurance from these same, terrible, private insurance companies Obama is now attacking, or you face a fine.

To me, this sounds like pushing for a bill that would force factory farmers and slaughter houses to treat livestock 15% more humanely, but in exchange, the laws would require every American to buy triple the amount of meat.

If everyone pushing for health care reform is pointing out how awful the private insurance companies are, why is Firedoglake the bad guy for saying it is therefore immoral to force people to be customers of these admittedly terrible companies (especially when health care reform could be done without an IRS-enforced individual mandate to buy private–and only private–insurance)?

Tags: Barack Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, HCAN, Health care, health insurance, individual mandate, IRS, public option

(based on photo by Toban Black)

Student loan lobbyists have been distributing a memo around Capitol Hill, with the misleading claim that if the FFEL program is eliminated in favor of direct lending, 35,000 jobs will be lost. The claim has been repeated in Time, The Hill, the National Journal and the New York Times, just to name a few.

Read the memo here.

In fact, there are only 30,000 people employed in the entire industry, which includes three different sectors: origination, guarantee agencies and loan servicing. The number comes from a survey conducted by the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs — an association for student loan companies. The only sector that would be replaced entirely by direct lending is origination, the least labor-intensive of the three. According to Ben Miller at the Quick and the Ed:

Loan origination in its most basic form is the process of obtaining the money for student loans and transferring those funds to borrowers or to their institutions. This is a very inexpensive activity. According to information from the U.S. Department of Education, its complete cost of originating a Direct Loan last year was around $5.50. That figure includes around $1.50 in administrative and other expenses.

When you compare that with the $75 per loan that the student lenders are currently being paid for loan origination under ECASLA, you get an idea where the savings in SAFRA are going to come from.

Servicing jobs would actually increase, because private companies are being awarded contracts to service all of the direct loans made by the government. Nelnet (Ben Nelson’s biggest donor) saw their servicing revenues increased 13% in 2009 as a result of a contract they won to service student loans for the Department of Education, and their stock rose 6% on the news.

And most of the jobs in the guarantee agencies (roughly 4000-5000) are being saved courtesy of money stipulated in the SAFRA bill itself.

Tim Ranzetta of the independent Student Lending Analytics estimates that more realistically, “the number of U.S. based jobs related to federal student loans is likely to range from a net increase of 300 jobs to a net loss of 4,750 over the next several years.” Pedro de la Torre at the Nation puts the number “between 170 net US jobs lost under the worst interpretation, and 1,870 US jobs gained under the best.”

Whether the jobs on the origination side are even in jeopardy is open to speculation. Sallie Mae says that 2,000 of their 8,000 employees may lose their jobs, but they are also bringing 3,500 jobs back to the US in order to qualify for the servicing contract on direct loans they were recently awarded. Citibank, the second biggest student loan originator, recently reassigned 5% of its loan origination and servicing employees (43) to the company’s credit card business rather than laying them off. Citi CEO Vikram Pandit said “whether or not the government makes the loan, somebody needs to process them, and we’re doing that right now.”

None of these estimates factor in the jobs that would be saved or created by money going to state education programs with the passage of SAFRA.

Ranzetta has done a series of posts on the true jobs situation. You can read more here, here, here and here.

The bottom line: job losses in a tough economy are nothing to treat lightly, but the claims made by lobbyists don’t hold to close scrutiny, and the jobs impact must be weighed against the number of students currently enrolled in each state if money that could be going to schools is instead propping up a costly and unnecessary industry that is surviving only because of government subsidy.

Find out more about the Students, Not Banks campaign and sign the petition.

Tags: FFEL, guarantee, job loss by state, Lobbyists, memo, Nelnet, origination, Pedro de la Torre, SAFRA, servicing, Student lenders, student loans, Students Not Banks, Tim Ranzetta

Sallie Mae specializes in student loans. Many of its loans are guaranteed by the government at 98% of face value. On top of that, at least through September 30, 2010, the government will purchase the loans for an amount equal to the sum of a) the face value of the loan, b) accrued interest, and c) $75 per loan. 2010 10-K, p. F-53.

On the borrowing side, Sallie Mae has figured out a great trick. It has an insurance subsidiary, HICA Education Loan Corporation. In January, 2010, HICA became a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines. The FHLB of Des Moines agreed to lend it money at unbelievably low rates. 2010 10-K, p. F-55. Sallie Mae can borrow up to $11 billion from the FHLB. The first draw was $25 million at a rate of .23%. That’s right: 23 basis points. I’m going to assume that this fabulous rate is because FHLB is lending at 1 month LIBOR, the London Interbank Offered Rate. If so, it’s a really great deal. Sallie Mae has arranged to borrow $10 billion from a group of lenders to make government guaranteed loans. The rate is commercial paper plus .5%. 2010 10-K, p. 95. Commercial paper is earning about .3%, so the FHLB gets about .57% less than private lenders.

Between the low interest rate and the government’s purchase program, Sallie Mae is guaranteed to get a gross profit to SLM equal to the difference between the face interest rate of the loan and .23% plus $75, whether or not the borrower ever makes a payment.

Here’s an example. Suppose Sallie Mae makes a subsidized loan of $10,000 to your kid for second semester at Private U. The loan bears interest at 5.6%. Sallie Mae borrows $10,000 from the FHLB, and advances the money to Private U. on January 1. It has until September 30, 2010 to sell the loan to the Department of Education. Even though you didn’t make a payment (that’s the way subsidized loans work), Sallie Mae can sell the loan to the Department of Education for $10,492.31. If the interest rates charged by the FHLB don’t change, total interest due to FHLB is $15.88. Sallie Mae repays the FHLB loan with interest, and picks up a gross profit of $476.43. The government gets the money back only when you pay the loan.

The President wants to change this and Sallie Mae and its fellow privateers are fighting to kill the House Bill with a fake compromise. Will Congress continue to let Sallie Mae play the government for saps?

Tags: Department of Education, FHLB, sallie mae, student loans, Students Not Banks

Anyway, Byron York’s sickening beat sweetener contains this little nugget about what Rubio thinks are the “central” issues of the times.

For Rubio, that means the economic issues — “national debt, job creation, how our tax code and government spending are discouraging job creation, and entitlement reform.”

This list could’ve been written on Sarah Palin’s hand. Let’s roll the tape, shall we?

The national debt doubled under George W. Bush and tripled under Reagan. George W. Bush had the worst job creation record in 60 years. Taxes are historically low and have been for twenty years.

But Rubio wants to continue the policies that produced all of those outcomes.

And notice: no mention about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and their $4 trillion dollar price tag, and how that’s affecting the deficit. No mention of the spiraling costs of health care, and how that’s bankrupting the country. No mention of the annual $700B bill for “defense.”

Just a vague reference “entitlement reform” — which means “less money for poor and old people.” And of course, Rubio can’t mention Social Security by name in Florida, so he just punts.

What you see in Rubio is what you see with the Republican Party as a whole today — a complete pathological refusal to accept any responsibility for the failures of Republican policies, which produces an utter unseriousness in dealing with the country’s challenges.

It really is the perfect party for Sarah Palin.

Tags: Marco Rubio, Republicans, Senate

Blanche Lincoln, directly contradicting previous statements about using reconciliation to finish off the health care bill, pronounced herself open to the process yesterday.

A moderate Democrat who had vowed to oppose any effort by party leaders to push a health care bill through the Senate with a simple majority vote is rethinking her position.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln said Tuesday that she wants to see what is in the companion bill before deciding.

If I had to guess, I would say that Lincoln’s sudden need for support from current and former Presidents drove this change. But it’s not really crucial. Reconciliation is a measure that requires only 50 votes, and public whip counts show support at that level without Lincoln. The beauty of the reconciliation process is that ConservaDems like Lincoln become irrelevant, although the fixes on offer don’t really take advantage of that fact.

But clearly, Lincoln wouldn’t need to curry favor with those who could help her re-election in Arkansas without the presence of Bill Halter’s primary challenge. So despite her insistence that she doesn’t bend to the will of any party but the people of Arkansas, clearly by her actions Lincoln shows that to be false.

The New York Times ran a “Lincoln sits in the virtuous center” story yesterday.

Tags: AR-Sen, Bill Halter, Blanche Lincoln, budget reconciliation, Health care, primaries, Reconciliation

Julian Sanchez makes a wonderful observation about the Guantanamo lawyers:

Charles Katz really was involved in illegal gambling, but it’s his case that established a Fourth Amendment right to be free from warrantless wiretaps. Klansman Clarence Brandenburg really was advocating “revengeance” against Jews and African Americans (though in the latter case I’m paraphrasing)—but I owe him my right to express radical political views as long as I’m not directly inciting violence. Crucial Fourth Amendment cases protecting the sanctity of the home involved cocaine smuggling rings, marijuana growers, and thieves.

Many of them were, to put it mildly, unsympathetic characters whose “values” I would not want to be “shared” by high-ranking attorneys in the Justice Department. Fortunately, competent attorneys argued both sides of those cases, not because of their personal feelings about the defendants, but because the legal questions at the hearts of those cases had larger implications for the kind of country we’re going to live in.

I’m sure the FDL Lawfare Crew can add much to this, but I saw Ken Starr, of all people, making the case on ‘Countdown’ that we want to “encourage young lawyers” to follow in the tradition of defending controversial clients like the Guantanamo detainees. Marc Thiessen, upholding his deeply-felt commitment to embarrassing himself and the Washington Post, responds that there was no such backlash among lawyers to the cruel slights visited upon John Yoo and David Addington and Jay Bybee for creating legal pretexts for torture. Well, yes: Lawyers tend to like it when their colleagues uphold the law rather than figure out how to evade it.

A digression on Thiessen, because his piece is indicative of a juvenile conservative persecution complex. Yoo et. al., at the behest of Bush/Cheney/Tenet et. al., create a circumstance whereby U.S. personnel violate the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, ratified by the U.S. Senate; place U.S. servicemembers under greater likelihood of being tortured themselves if captured by an enemy force; and place CIA operatives, officials and contractors in legal jeopardy, as they are now; and, of course, set the conditions for fellow human beings to be brutalized. And the problem, as Thiessen sees it, is that people are too mean to John Yoo.

Tags: al-qaeda seven, Countdown, Guantanamo, Guantanamo Lawyers, John Yoo, Julian Sanchez, Ken Starr, Marc Thiessen, Washington Post