john yoo understood better than most that even a frivolous constitutional argument is all the permission the right needs to pursue its autocratic ambitions and the legal establishment still hasn't come up with a good response
To me the scary thing about Yoo's argument is how logical it can sound. He posits that respect to interrogation there is a space between torture at one end of the spectrum and Constitutionally protected rights like the 4th and 5th amendments way down near the other end of the spectrum. (1/ )
If you buy into that premise, "all" that he is saying is that there is an area between reading someone the Miranda warning and torture as defined by treaties and international law and we can do whatever the F we want in their. It's couched as a "if it doesn't say you can't then you can" (2/ )
type of an argument. The problem of course is that then that gets turned into the interrogator getting to decide if what they are doing is torture or not. Which, ahhh, kind of defeats the whole purpose of laws against torture. (3/3)
Yeah. It also flips the law on its head expressly to violate it. Broadly written laws are meant to apply broadly; this approach pretends that broadness is license to anything not specified. It's like arguing you didn't "murder" someone cuz you stabbed them and the statute doesnt mention knives.
