Absolute Hypocrisy

John Yoo was the lawyer who argued for extraordinary powers of the President under a theory of the "unitary executive". In effect, Yoo denied the Constitution's division of powers into three branches by saying:

In its most extreme form, unitary executive theory can mean that neither Congress nor the federal courts can tell the President what to do or how to do it, particularly regarding national security matters.

(from Wikipedia. Note: the Wikipedia article does not quote Yoo directly, but it does reference Yoo, so you have to dig to get the specific words used by Yoo, but the above is completely in line with Yoo's allegiance to the idea of a 'unitary executive'.)

This is the same ideological right wing nut who argued that Clinton, as president, exceeded the powers available. Here's Yoo speaking out of the other side of his mouth:

But in The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton, a book published in 2000 by the libertarian Cato Institute, John Yoo took an entirely different view of "The Imperial Presidency Abroad," as his contribution was titled.

Yoo wrote: "President Clinton has exercised the powers of the imperial presidency to the upmost ... [and] undermine[d] notions of democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law ... ."

It's a provocative claim, especially coming from Yoo. How does he claim that Clinton did so? By using his powers as commander in chief to place American troops under the command of British NATO generals. "War power questions to one side, President Clinton's military adventures raise a second legal and constitutional difficulty—their unprecedented reliance on multilateral cooperation," Yoo writes. "That position has serious constitutional and policy defects .... [T]he Constitution nowhere permits the president ... to delegate federal power completely outside of the national government."

(from an article by Brad DeLong in The Week Magazine)

Here is the stark contrast between the rabid anti-Clinton Yoo and the sycophantic pro-Bush Yoo:

Yoo's Bush-era writings support presidential powers so wide-ranging that the president can order the torture of captives regardless of what treaties the U.S. has signed or what laws the U.S. Congress has passed. Yet we are expected to accept that Yoo previously believed that the president's power as commander in chief is so puny and circumscribed that he cannot lawfully put American troops under the command of allies?

DeLong goes on to show how ignorant Yoo is of history by pointing out:

Dwight D. Eisenhower—not the commander in chief but merely the theater commander—in December 1944 placed the U.S. First Army under the command of British Field Marshal Montgomery. President Wilson put the army of Gen. Pershing under the command of French Field Marshal Foch. Commander in chief George Washington put American troops under the command of Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur and Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier. And let's not talk about the command authority over the Continental Army exercised by Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben at Valley Forge.

Yoo is the ignoramus which the Stanford University UC Berkeley Law Faculty has "adorned" itself with. This is the guy that they dare not get rid of because it would affront "academic freedom". Nutty!

Go read the whole of DeLong's article. It is very enlightening!