Former Obama/Holder Target Explains Roberts

Back in July of 2009, I did a piece on UC Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo here. Professor Yoo served in the Bush II administration as legal counsel. He was also one of Barack Obama's and Eric Holder's earliest banana republic targets. They sought to prosecute Yoo for advising Bush and the military about enhanced interrogation in a manner unpleasing to the new emperor.

Long after the DOJ thugs went after Yoo, the courts found Yoo's advice to be protected by executive privilege and a specific constitutional provision. The irony is that Holder's political lawyers went after Yoo specifically about the private advice that Yoo gave Bush in which he correctly told the president that waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques were allowable according to then-existing law. Mind you, he did not advise Bush that these techniques should be used. He merely advised him that they could be used.

Upon the entry into office of El Rey Obama and Generalissimo Holder, the administration changed those rules, and the Congressional Democrats developed collective memory-loss about what they had earlier approved. Those facts did not deter the DOJ political shysters from attempting to prove that Yoo's advice was criminal. And here's the ultimate irony. When Congress, now safely in Democratic hands, requested the memos from Yoo to Bush explaining what Yoo had advised and when, they were turned over.

Holder and the Democratic Congress threatened Yoo with contempt if he did not turn over all the communications between himself and the president. Holder unequivocally stated that it would be unprecedented (there's that word again) if Yoo refused and/or Bush raised executive privilege. But they didn't refuse. The documents were turned over, which is a great deal more than we can say about Holder and Fast and Furious. Yet by virtue of his cooperation with Congress, Yoo was hounded by Holder's "human rights" shysters.

Without ever having raised the issue of executive privilege (or its variant, communications privilege), Yoo was totally exonerated by the courts. The holdings were clear. The personal advice given by Yoo to Bush may or may not have been covered by executive privilege, but that didn't matter. The courts clearly ruled that Yoo was protected because he was a lawyer advising his client, and also further held that Yoo's advice was absolutely correct based on the law as it existed when the advice was given.

It greatly distressed Eric Holder and his amateur lawyers to find out that they couldn't prosecute someone for giving advice that was based on the law as it was, not as the law was to become. It's a little thing forbidden by the Constitution called an ex post facto law. Only banana republics prosecute their enemies under laws passed subsequent to the new boys taking power.

That's your basic background on the difference between Professor Yoo and Shyster Holder. But since the good professor is a particular favorite legal authority of mine, I'm going to do something I rarely do. Since I'm still flummoxed by the strange opinion of Chief Justice Roberts in the Obamacare case, I'm going to let Professor Yoo, a far cooler head, express my opinion, only much better.

Here is Professor John Yoo's Wall Street Journal take on Chief Justice Roberts: Roberts and his Apologists.

PS: When I wrote the original article in 2009 I accidentally referred to Professor Yoo as "Woo" twice. We're unable to edit posts that old, so please ignore the errors.