How the Presidency Regained Its Balance (John Yoo Op-Ed)

New York Times ^ | September 17, 2006 | John Yoo

[RWR8189]

FIVE years after 9/11, President Bush has taken his counterterrorism case to the American people. That’s because he has had to. This summer, a plurality of the Supreme Court found, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that Congress must explicitly approve military commissions to try suspected terrorists. So Mr. Bush has proposed legislation seeking to place the tribunals, and other aggressive antiterrorism measures, on a sounder footing.

But the president has broader goals than even fighting terrorism — he has long intended to make reinvigorating the presidency a priority. Vice President Dick Cheney has rightly deplored the “erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job” and noted that “we are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years.”

Thus the administration has gone to war to pre-empt foreign threats. It has data-mined communications in the United States to root out terrorism. It has detained terrorists without formal charges, interrogating some harshly. And it has formed military tribunals modeled on those of past wars, as when we tried and executed a group of Nazi saboteurs found in the United States.

[Verginius Rufus]

Does Yoo have anything interesting to say? (That doesn't sound grammatical.) I'm not going to register with The Treason Times, as Ann calls it. Is there a way to read the article using a fake name and password that doesn't let the folks at Pinch's paper know who you are?

[RWR8189]

I think most things Yoo says are inherently interesting.

He is a very bright man.

Check this out to get a fake registration:

http://www.bugmenot.com/view/www.nytimes.com

[phillyfanatic]

I never trust the NYTimes. Never. Today, Rasmus. had W down to 44% and 6 Pub Senators losing to Dem nudniks. One reason, McCain once again shows Pubs divided and gets folks off the Dem disaster. It is almost too much to bear as there is just 50 days left.

[RWR8189]

That's nice, but he doesn't work for the NY Times.

John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003, is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and the author of “War by Other Means.”

And be assured, the faculty at Berkley hate him with a passion.

[CWOJackson]

Screw it, I can't resist.

Yoo who?

[neverdem]

Great post & you put it in the editorial sidebar to boot! You'd be surprised at how many who don't.