No Comment — February 17, 2009, 9:48 am
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So, what, exactly, did President Bush mean when he told Larry King
I got legal opinions that said whatever we’re going to do is legal.
It may well have been the most revealing passage of the interview. It tells us how Bush viewed those Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions. I decided what I was going to do, it suggests, and then I told OLC to give me opinions saying it was legal.
And perhaps the Department of Justice’s internal probe establishes that this is what happened. Mike Isikoff:
Not only would this obliterate the OLC opinions as a legal defense for the torture team, it would actually mean that the OLC opinions themselves constitute further evidence of a criminal conspiracy—meaning that the memo writers joined in on the joint enterprise to introduce torture. If that were the case it would be a felony, and grounds for the disbarment of the two lawyers involved, and the impeachment of the one who subsequently became a judge.
More from Scott Horton:
No Comment — April 12, 2013, 11:11 am
A new report from Seton Hall University exposes government surveillance of attorney-client conversations
No Comment, Six Questions — March 18, 2013, 9:00 am
Rashid Khalidi on how the United States sustains the failure of the Israel-Palestine peace process
No Comment, Six Questions — February 4, 2013, 9:00 am
Alex Gibney on his documentary investigating the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of child sex-abuse cases
Years of consideration preceding the inclusion of the word “phat” in Random House’s 1996 Compact Unabridged Dictionary:
Scientists created crash helmets that stink when cracked and fruit flies to whom blue light smells delicious.
In Belize, a construction company bulldozed a 2,300-year-old Mayan temple to make road fill.
“This is the heart of the magic factory, the place where medicine is infused with the miracles of science, and I’ve come to see how it’s done.”
