John Yoo

John Yoo is a 16th-rate hack, who might have a good memory or something that helped him graduate from law school, but who is amazingly unable to come up with original or useful or logical, or even coherent legal analysis on even the most basic issues. No, wait, there was one time when Yoo acted brilliantly: Very few lawyers could find anything to defend about the abominable SCOTUS decision that effectively installed bush II for the first of his two stolen terms, and Yoo was one of them. Perhaps he genuinely saw something in the decision that to his misshapen mind made sense, or, more likely, he realized that a bit of fawning sycophancy would provide the burst to what was otherwise going to be a lackluster career.

If it was the latter, his move paid off (by certain measurements). Yoo was rewarded with a job at the soon to be totally debased US Department of Justice. It was there that he penned the infamous torture memos, providing rationalizations (illegitimate regardless) for the bush II regime's fondness for torturing people. These memos reflected the sterling commitment to human values that Yoo displayed in this interview:

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

Again, for emphasis: Yoo's opinion is nothing more than the ramblings of a very sick man. Legally speaking, they're garbage.

Pretty much everything that Yoo says is garbage. Which is why is was a sad thing that he'd managed to wrangle a tenured position teaching constitutional law at UC Berkeley, and why it is an abomination that he was allowed to return there following his stint as an enabler of torture and other war crimes.

Other people think so too, and they showed up at a UC Berkeley graduation ceremony to protest this offense and to (quite reasonably) ask that this war criminal be suspended and tried. Happily enough, many attendees of the graduation ceremony agreed with them.

Other people disagreed:

William Upshaw of Oakland, who was at the event to see his wife graduate, was unhappy with the hoopla outside the theater.

“It’s interesting, but unexpected,” he said as he filed past the protest, carrying a bouquet for his wife, “and, actually, I don’t think it’s appropriate.”

To which, I must reply: "Who cares what you think?" For goodness' sake, the man would grant the "Commander-in-Chief" the right to torture children! Which is less "appropriate"? That a turd like this is educating a member of your family or that there are decent people protesting this obscenity?

Yoo is not likely to be fired for his political views, Boalt Dean Christopher Edley Jr., wrote in a memo last month. ... “My sense is that the vast majority of legal academics with a view of the matter disagree with substantial portions of Professor Yoo’s analyses, including a great many of his colleagues at Berkeley,” Edley wrote. “If, however, this strong consensus were enough to fire or sanction someone, then academic freedom would be meaningless.”

It's not that people disagree with him you stupid fuck! It's not about "academic freedom" you half-wit! Yoo has aided and abetted war crimes! The past reputation of your institution is meaningless if you hire a man who is both a monster and a dunce. If he's protected by tenure (a worthy defense of genuine academic freedom) then, as Dean of the law school and as a human being, you should have said: "I'm all for him being dragged off to prison, and I wish these activists well on their mission, but I'm legally obligated to allow him to keep his post." But to conflate providing an official document defending bush II's right to crush a child's testicles in a time of war, with "academic freedom" is sheer nonsense.

Finally, some self-important, self-pitying drivel from the moron himself:

Yoo could not be reached for comment Saturday, but he has defended his positions in several newspaper opinion articles.

“In wartime … attacking members of the enemy is not considered assassination or murder,” he wrote in a Chronicle essay in September 2005. “Killing the enemy is legal in war.”

He’s also said he’s unfazed by protests.

“I’m a conservative professor, so I’m used to people objecting to my views,” Yoo said in a 2004 interview with The Chronicle.

Oh, poor baby! The big, bad liberal media and the Marxists in academia, "the man" in other words, always conspiring to keep you down 'eh? No, you idiot. You're not a "conservative." You're a totalitarian radical. You're a war criminal. That's why people are disgusted by you.

You're also an incompetent. Your legal opinions are all worthless trash. You know this. You should have thanked your lucky stars for your teaching job, and never made the disgraceful grab at fame and power that led you to produce those memos, the legal consequences of which will haunt you to your dying day.