More Reaction to Yoo's Defense of Warrantless Wiretapping

I wrote my initial observations yesterday. Here are more reactions to John Yoo's Wall Street Journal editorial defending the authorization of the warrantless wiretapping program.

AnonymousLiberal:

Not surprisingly, Yoo begins the op-ed with a collosal straw man. He points out how important it is to intercept al Qaeda communications and writes: "Evidently, none of the inspectors general of the five leading national security agencies would approve." Of course, the issue is not whether intercepting communications is a good idea, but whether the program violated the law. Yoo was not a policy maker. He was a lawyer. His job was to state what the law was, not what it should be.

[...]

Yoo is not even trying to make honest arguments here. He would be laughed out of court if he ever made any of these claims before an actual judge. But for some reason he continues to be given valuable op-ed space (and a professorship at Berkeley!) to make these completely disingenuous and unsupportable claims.

Socratic Gadfly:

Ignorance = need for lawlessness, says Yoo...Yep, that’s John Yoo’s latest argument —since we didn’t know what al Qaeda would do after 9/11 we had to break the law to find out!

Dissent:

Saying that FDR did the same thing or that every administration has ignored a law is like my kid telling me not to discipline them for cheating on a test because Johnny cheated, too. Nor did the government in Hamilton’s time have the technological capabilities that it has today.

But while civil libertarians and liberals seem to love to hate Yoo and point the finger at him, the spotlight needs to remain on the men who handpicked him, used him for their own purposes, and who ignored the rule of law.

and Scott Horton was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night with fill-in host David Schuster to discuss Yoo's latest defense:

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Michael Steele's Revisionist History

I am sure that many of you have heard about the fighting that has been going on between the RNC Chair Michael Steele and the conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh. In case you are late to this story here is an intentionally brief summary:

- Rush Limbaugh made the comment that he hopes President Obama will fail.
- Limbaugh is criticized for saying this but stands by his comments saying that if Obama succeeding means going against the principles that he believes, then of course he hopes Obama fails and he would think that many Republicans want Obama to fail as well.
- RNC Chairman Michael Steele goes on CNN, says that he is the head of the Republican Party and that Limbaugh is an entertainer. He also says that Limbaugh can be "incendiary" and "ugly". Here is the video of this exchange:




After this exchange, Limbaugh retaliated saying that Steele is not the head of the Republican Party. Steele then apologized to Limbaugh by saying:

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh...I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. …There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

Now, there is some revisionist history taking place as Michael Steele is claiming that he never attacked Limbaugh in the first place. He claims that he said that there were other "people out there" who may think that Limbaugh is incendiary and ugly, but that he never meant that to be his viewpoint. Watch:




In case you want to hear the exact language from Steele's CNN appearance that directly contradicts his most recent claims that he "never attacked" Limbaugh, just go watch it again for yourself. I also enjoy how Steele and others within the Republican Party are now saying that it is the Democrats and the left who are distracting America by bringing attention to all of this. Steele mentions in his final clip that the left are implementing some kind of plan that they have wanted to enact for a while...to distract Americans from the real issues by bringing up this controversy. Sure, that's it.

It's not only Steele either. Check out this exchange between MSNBC's David Schuster and former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher. Fleisher comes out on the offensive with his talking point about Obama acting "childish" and Schuster tries to show Fleisher just how hypocritical this claim is. It takes effort to not go insane when these items get flipped on the head on such a consistent basis and as part of a strategy to falsely revise history: