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Dude, it’s Berkeley!
And John Yoo, the plump, nebbishy law instructor who loved to write memos justifying torture and the Unitary Executive, just came face to face with the ghost of Mario Savio!
The home of free speech has freely spoken about Yoo and his role in unleashing one of the darkest episodes in recent American history. The Berkeley City Council voted on Monday to demand that the US Attorney for NorCal and the Attorney General for the US prosecute Yoo for war crimes.
The proposal came out of the city’s “Peace and Justice Commission.”
Yeah, dude…Berkeley has a Peace and Justice Commission! Of course, many will laugh at the idea that wacky Berkeley is passing measures on such things…that they have this commission…or that they voted many years ago to declare the city a “nuclear-free zone.”
But, doesn’t kinda make you smile…particularly since it won’t make Yoo smile?!
I mean, there seems to be zero chance that Yoo, or Dr. Frankencheney’s version of Igor—David Addington, will ever be brought to account for what they did. At least, not if we leave it up to the Feds, to the leadership of the Dems or to the media.
If we are going to see some truth, some justice…some, dare I say, peace…it is going to come from people getting organized and making a stink. Like Berkeley.
The city, that is…not the University. Because the school and Dean of the Law School, Christopher Edley, have been loathe to criticize or admonish the legal gymnast tumbling around on their campus.
It has been a source of much head-scratching that Yoo not only teaches law(!), but that he’s been plying his trade at UC Berkeley.
Dude…Yoo at UCB?
That’s why the original measure was going also demand that the school create opt-out options from students so they would never have to take a course with a man who not only used his poison pen to create semantic loopholes for tortures that didn’t cause organ failure, but also worked up some fun memos that altered basic principles of the Constitution and promoted the Unitary Executive—the idea that the President doesn’t have to separate any powers during a time of war, he gets to keeps ‘em all.
The parts of the measure that would affect the Law School didn’t make it past the final vote. Alas.
Yoo’s position at UCB is safe, even if his reputation isn’t. But, not to worry…he is getting outta dodge for a little while…going to Chapman University in the O.C. as a visiting professor.
Yeah. He’s been asked to serve as a visiting professor. In the O.C.
I guess that’s kinda like the O.S.S. spiriting away Nazi S.S. officers to South America at the end of WWII.
Whatever, dude!!
9 Comments
Thanks for this, JP.
I’m betting that any justice on this front will come internationally, not from within the US justice (such as it is) system.
Yeah, like Kissinger…let’s hope Yoo and Co. have their travel options limited by prosecutions in other countries. Small consolation. But it’s something, right?
I would like to see Yoo and several others in jail. They trashed our country.
Woot!
This decision is a little more clear cut than when Berkeley tried to remove the Marines recruiting center.
It’d be great to see a number of cities do this…kinda like the dozens and dozens of cities that voted to opt out of the Patriot Act.
yoo deserves less ..
I’m a Cal Alum, and I have regrettably refused to contribute to UC Berkeley as long as Yoo is there. This is the price they must pay for making the ORIGINAL choice to hire him, and then Fast-tracking his tenure. Someone cut corners to give this guy tenure-protection.
Yoo never taught the requisite number of years at Berkeley before being given tenure. In fact, the University has let him take on positions, first at the WH, and later teaching as visiting faculty that would never be tolerated for any other faculty member. In the decade and a half he’s been “at Berkeley” he’s perhaps been actually teaching there four years…less when you count “assigned time” for chairing some special non-teaching groups.
Now he’s off to Chapman. Berkeley really needs to think about whether Yoo is giving them what they are paying him for…in terms of actual teaching, or in terms of “esteem”. Of course this is the University now famous for giving Administrators “golden parachutes” , and then rehiring them six months later, while still paying them the severence pay.
Great commentary! Yoo’s position is not really all that surprising. Eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex. Long ago, Barton Bernstein of Stanford lengthened that warning to “military-industrial-academic complex.” Military contracts have done a very good job of seducing our major universities; this includes Stanford, which discovered that Don Rumsfeld is a “distinguished scholar.” If Yoo was hurried into tenure, no doubt it was because Christopher Edley–the wonderfully compliant dean of Berkeley’s law school–thought it was good politics. So if Yoo has been recommended for legal sanctions, why not Edley, too, as a “co-conspirator”?