Nixon: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

Frost: By definition.

Nixon: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president’s decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they’re in an impossible position.

Nixon’s Views on Presidential Power: Excerpts from an Interview with David Frost [Landmark Supreme Court Cases]

Official: Obama doesn’t want interrogation charges [AP/TPM]

The smiling Dad in this picture is the Honorable Jay S. Bybee.  He is a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He’s a practicing Mormon.  He has taught constitutional and administrative law. He worked at the Department of Justice until he was nominated for the Ninth Circuit. A Bush appointee, he was confirmed in March of 2003.

During Bybee’s confirmation process, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada), Sen. John Ensign (R-Nevada), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) spoke publicly on his behalf. At the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas where Bybee was a founding member of the faculty, Dean Richard Morgan called him a “nice, humble, and decent human being, who was also a highly intelligent and accomplished lawyer and teacher.”

There’s only one problem.  Judge Bybee is also a monster.

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Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School. He appears frequently on TV as a talking head. He is known to throw tantrums and has been caught copying the work of others without attribution. I once met him and found him to be short and rather annoying.

More troubling is Professor Dershowitz’s support for torture.

After the events of Sept. 11, with many al Qaida members in custody, Dershowitz says he wants to bring the debate to the forefront. He gave the “ticking bomb” scenario – a person refusing to tell when and where a bomb will go off – as an example of the type of case warranting torture.

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You knew I’d get around to him sooner or later.

Inexplicably, John Choon Yoo is still a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley. He got his undergrad degree at Harvard and his JD at Yale.  After law school he clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit.  Later he went on to clerk for “Justice” Clarence Thomas. I am familiar with the work of both judges – rest assured that they are both right wing nutjobs who, in a just world, would be restocking vending machines or collecting bull semen.

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Failed scold Kenneth Starr has filed suit on behalf of Prop. 8 sponsors to invalidate 18,000 legal marriages in California. “Proposition 8’s brevity is matched by its clarity,” his brief argues. “There are no conditional clauses, exceptions, exemptions or exclusions.”

And sure enough, here’s the spankin’ new Article 1, Section 7.5 of the California Constitution:

Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

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Will Work for Poontang!

Everyone knows that Elliot Spitzer was taken out by the GOP operatives and insiders to make sure he was lamed around the time that he could have been very useful in putting away Wall Street executives who knew their firms were looting the public and their trading partners in the US and Europe.

While it was very convenient and we’re sure very lucrative to GOP insiders who arranged it, the tactic’s efficacy is predicated on the supposition that Spitzer would be shamed out of public life forever and a day. What if the Unicorn used some of his new thinking to hire this guy to work out some of his hunger for revenge on the gangsters of Wall Street?

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Once again Stinque presents Bad Law Professor of the Week. Today we offer Jack Landman Goldsmith for your consideration. Believe it or not, this clown teaches at Harvard, where he is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law.  And today he has an editorial in the WaPo.  Let’s dive right in.

There has been much speculation about how the Obama administration will deal with what many view as the Bush administration’s harsh, abusive and illegal interrogation program. Some have called for an investigation by Congress or the Justice Department, possibly leading to criminal sanctions. Others think such investigations are infeasible or would smack of political retribution, proposing instead that a bipartisan commission look into the matter.

These are all bad ideas. They would bring little benefit, and they would further weaken the Justice Department and the CIA in ways that would compromise our security. (I worked at the Justice Department from 2003 to 2004 on issues that probably would be subject to new investigations, so readers should consider my views accordingly.) (emphasis supplied)

This has to be the most blatant attempt at a CYA in the history of opinion journalism.

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