4/20: The Past Is Never Past

Pres. Obama's decision to release the controversial OLC interrogation memos continues to reverberate throughout the liberal blogosphere. While lefty bloggers are praising Obama for having "the political courage" to make the memos public, some are criticizing him for declaring that CIA agents who used these interrogation techniques won't be prosecuted. Michael O'Hare complains that Obama, in making this statement, "has made it national policy to ignore violations of international law...and stepped on everything we've believed since Nuremberg." Other liberal bloggers are defending Obama's decision, arguing that the George W. Bush lawyers who authorized these brutal techniques are more deserving of punishment than the CIA agents who performed them. Kevin Drum writes: "I hate the idea of spending time prosecuting the little guys while the big fish go free."

Whether or not they support Obama's decision to let the CIA interrogators off the hook, liberal bloggers agree that there should be consequences for the Bush lawyers who wrote the OLC memos. Several lefty bloggers are urging AG Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor who will investigate the actions of these lawyers, even though Obama is apparently opposed to this idea. Others are demanding that Congress impeach Jay Bybee, the former DoJ attorney who wrote one of the controversial memos and who now serves as a federal judge.

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Conservative bloggers (Malkin, Hinderaker, Huston, Liebau, Klein) are outraged that Obama had a friendly interaction with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas.
• Liberal bloggers (Marshall, Attaturk, Serwer, DougJ) are buzzing about a new CQ article alleging that Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) was caught on wiretap promising favors to a suspected Israeli agent. Several lefty bloggers (BooMan, O'Connor) are demanding that a progressive candidate challenge Harman in the 36th district's 2010 primary. Several conservative bloggers (Malkin, Morrissey) are also taking notice of the allegations about Harman.

OLC MEMOS: What Happened To The Nuremberg Principles?

Several liberal bloggers are arguing that Obama was wrong to rule out prosecuting CIA agents who may have tortured detainees:

• The Reality-Based Community's O'Hare: "Obama has made it national policy to ignore violations of international law, human decency, and stepped on everything we've believed since Nuremberg, promising no prosecutions of CIA torturers and hinting at no prosecutions of their enablers and commanders."
• Firedoglake's Kirk James Murphy: "Under international treaties the US has ratified, we are obligated to prosecute torture -- a war crime. When Obama announced Thursday that he would not prosecute line officers who were just following orders 'in good faith' to commit torture -- a war crime -- he ensured America will continue to violate international human rights law. He also kicked the Nuremberg Principles in the teeth."
• Daily Kos' Meteor Blades: "According to the BBC, the UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, says the United States must, under the U.N. Convention against Torture, prosecute those who engage in it. That apparently makes no difference to the Obama administration, which, in spite of all the welcome talk about the rule of law, has come to the astonishing conclusion that holding people accountable for criminal behavior or ordering others to commit criminal behavior is not about justice but rather retribution. It should be instructive to see how such a perspective plays out when it comes to this document. Surely, using the same logic, we can empty the federal prison system and deeply slash the federal court budget."
• Open Left's Paul Rosenberg: "[T]here were Nazi defendents who nonetheless tried to argue that they were 'only following orders,' which in fact came to be known as the 'Nuremberg Defense'. It was not accepted. But now, Obama thinks the Nazis were right, after all. Movement conservatives have always thought so, of course. But this is the first time that a Democratic President has agreed with them, in flagrant opposition to the rule of law. So, score one for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and all their wingnuts legions. Obama may not be Hitler, but he agrees completely with Hitler's underlings, and he thinks that the Nuremberg prosecutors, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill were all dead wrong."
• Open Left's Daniel De Groot: "CIA agents cannot be 'ordered' to do anything in the legal sense, since they are mere civilian employees of a federal agency. They can quit and should do so when instructed to do things contrary to the Laws of War and numerous international treaties. These aren't scared 18 year old kids being intimidated into following Lt Calley into atrocity, nor do they go through months of indoctrination into a culture of rigid discipline as is done in the military. They are independent moral agents, and should not get any kind of pass for this."
• digby: "[T]o those who say that if the CIA isn't excused over and over again for their proven excesses and failures they will stop doing their jobs, I can only reply that this means they should all be fired immediately. You cannot have a clandestine service that blackmails the American people into granting them immunity from the law. They are unpatriotic at best for even threatening such a thing and treasonous at worst if they actually carried it out. This kind of blackmail should not be tolerated."

Other lefty bloggers are pointing out that Obama technically doesn't have the authority to prevent Holder from appointing a special prosecutor:

• digby: "[T]he president does not actually have the power to decide who gets prosecuted in this country and neither does his chief of staff. We have an independent justice department that is supposed to operate outside of politics. Holder's job is to 'look back' and see if crimes were committed. Just because Bush's Attorneys General were all toadies doesn't mean that's the way it's supposed to be. A special prosecutor would solve this whole problem for Obama and Holder. The best way to get the hot potato off their desks is to give it to an independent, career prosecutor."
• Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "As a strictly legal matter, that is a decision for the Attorney General, independently, to make; it is Eric Holder who has the obligation to enforce the law, independent of anything Obama wants or says and regardless of what public opinion demands. [...] Demanding that political leaders be subjected to the rule of law -- and finding ways to force the appointment of a Special Prosecutor -- is what citizens ought to be doing."
• BooMan: "Regardless of what Obama wants, his Attorney General has the ultimate authority to make these decisions. And regardless of what Eric Holder does, there are still the Congressional oversight committees. And regardless what Congress does, there are still the civil courts. And regardless of what our Supreme Court decides, there are still International courts. After that, the historians get involved."

OLC MEMOS II: C'mon, Guys, We Have Bigger Fish To Fry

Other liberal bloggers are defending Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA interrogators who performed these controversial techniques:

• Mother Jones' Drum: "I hate the idea of spending time prosecuting the little guys while the big fish go free. If there's anyone we should be prosecuting, it's Bush, [Dick] Cheney, [ex-VP CoS] [David] Addington, Bybee, [ex-OLC atty John] Yoo, and [ex-CIA dir. George] Tenet. Until that happens, it's hard to justify prosecuting their underlings."
• TAPPED's Adam Serwer: "In the end, I just think it's far more important to go after the people who enabled these policies, who wrote incredible legal rationales for why certain kinds of torture weren't torture, or rather how they weren't torture because we were using them. It was the OLC's responsibility to say no, to say this wasn't legal, and to prevent it from happening. Instead they encouraged it. Ultimately, I just think they're far more culpable, and they're the ones any effort to prosecute should be focused on."

Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias has a different reason for opposing prosecution of CIA interrogators: "Accountability for torture is less important than building political consensus. [...T]here's a continuing sense of partisanship -- Democrats say torture is wrong, Republicans say torture is good, so the media talks about 'contorversial' 'interrogation tactics' and everyone knows that in the event of a new terrorist attack conservative politicians will run, aggressively, on an assertive pro-torture platform. That's a very grave problem. But that is the real problem that needs a solution. We need to find ways to politically delegitimize torture, to help build bridges to people who may disagree with us about tax rates or abortion or even the wisdom of bombing North Korea about the point that torture is wrong, shouldn't have been done in the past, and shouldn't be done in the future. And, importantly, about the point that torture actually shouldn't be done -- that you shouldn't be looking for loopholes in anti-torture rules and seeing legal prohibitions on torture as a big hassle."

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan also (tentatively) supports Obama's position: "My view is that those who pay the legal price should be, first and foremost, those who authorized this at the highest levels. My view is also that it is a travesty that the Abu Ghraib reservists were prosecuted, and yet far, far more culpable people are claiming it would be too divisive to prosecute them. My view is that no one is above the law, and that when a society based on law prosecutes the powerless and excuses the powerful, it is corroding its own soul. But my view is also that the president has acted wisely in this. As president in wartime, he knows how wounding it would be to engage in this kind of activity right now. But he has also ensured that a process of transparency continue. A full accounting of all of this -- by people from both parties with real power to investigate and report (a 9/11 style commission, in other words) would be a natural next step."

Daily Kos' mcjoan agrees with Sullivan that there should be an independent investigation: "[A]t the very least, there must be investigations. Whether through the special prosecutor that the ACLU has called for, or Senator [Pat] Leahy's proposal for a commission of inquiry, America has to know how this happened, gruesome step by gruesome step. There is no other way to prevent it from happening again."

Needless to say, liberal bloggers were not pleased when WH CoS Rahm Emanuel declared that the Obama admin. "opposes any effort to prosecute those in the Justice Department who drafted legal memos authorizing harsh interrogations at secret CIA prisons."

BYBEE: Impeach The S.O.B.!

Liberal bloggers are joining the New York Times editorial page in calling on Congress to impeach Bybee, the former OLC attorney who wrote one of the controversial memos and who now serves as a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:

• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "The question shouldn't be whether to impeach Jay Bybee, but rather, how quickly the impeachment hearings can begin. [...] Unlike memo authors like John Yoo and Steven Bradbury, Jay Bybee currently enjoys a lifetime appointment on a federal appeals court. The nomination was an insult, and his confirmation was absurd."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "The idea of the author of one of these memos sitting on the federal bench makes a farce of the whole legal system. One doubts the votes would be there to remove Bybee in the Senate, but even if that's the case I wouldn't mind seeing Senators go on record on this issue."

Other liberal bloggers are urging the CA Dem Party to pass a resolution demanding that Congress impeach Bybee:

• dday: "California members of the [House Judiciary Cmte] include Zoe Lofgren, Maxine Waters, Howard Berman, Brad Sherman, Adam Schiff and Linda Sanchez. The last five, at least, have part or all of LA County in their districts, and could be told RIGHT NOW that their local party has resolved unanimously to impeach Bybee. Should the entire state party agree, all the California members, including the Speaker of the House, and the two Senators (both of whom voted against confirming Bybee) can be told the same. And resolutions like this could spring up all over the country, increasing pressure from the bottom up for the Congress to act."
• digby: "[L]et me just emphasize that this is not an obscure, tilting at windmill exercise. The fact is that the Speaker of the House is from California and as dday points out below, there are numerous members of the house Judiciary Committee from California, Los Angeles in particular. Bybee is on the 9th circuit Court, which covers California. This is something where the state delegation should have plenty of juice if we can exert grassroots pressure for them to take action."
• MyDD's Lucas O'Connor: "While resolutions such as this have no inherent power, they can be extremely effective as tools to prod our elected officials to action -- and action here is necessary."

Meanwhile, dday was pleased to learn that Sen. Claire McCaskill is open to impeaching Bybee, while digby notes that Yale Law prof. Bruce Ackerman was urging Congress to impeach Bybee back in January.

OBAMA: Pallin' Around With Chavez

Conservative bloggers are outraged that Obama had a friendly interaction with Chavez at the Summit of the Americas. Righty bloggers are particularly incensed about the photograph of Obama and Chavez shaking hands, which was heavily promoted by Matt Drudge:

• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "Sickening."
• Townhall's Jonathan Garthwaite: "Obama/Chavez: BFFs."
• Michelle Malkin: "At least he didn't bow. [...] I can't stand to look at our president's dumb grin as he warmly greets Venezuela's thug-in-chief: Gag. And another handholding pic here: Ew. Did anyone smell sulfur during the photo op?"
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "I thought Barack Obama couldn't sink lower than he did in his apology tour of Europe. I was wrong. Now it's Latin America, where Obama is attending the Summit of the Americas. While he doesn't seem to have actually bowed to anyone in Trinidad, he has adopted a submissive posture at every opportunity, telling Latin America's leaders that he 'has a lot to learn.' I'm afraid that's truer than Obama knows. One can only speculate as to what was running through Hugo Chavez's mind when Obama humiliated himself by posing for this photo. [...] Does Obama really not understand that hostile foreign leaders are making a fool of him and of the country he purports to lead? Apparently not. I don't think Barack Obama is a stupid man, but he is in so far over his head that every time he ventures onto the international stage he not only embarrasses himself -- and us -- he damages, if ever so slightly, our national security."
• RedState's Warner Todd Huston: "Barack Obama has just taken the next step towards a complete disregard for America's foreign policy by back slapping self-professed enemy to the 'great Satan,' tin pot dictator and oppressor, Hugo Chavez. As Obama grins and associates with such low-end characters, treating them as worthy members of the international community, he drags down both the United States and any country that strives to treat its people with the dignity they deserve as human beings."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "[Chavez] is a man who is a close ally of Iran and Syria. He called President Obama's predecessor 'the devil.' In 2006, he said that 'The United States empire is on its way down and it will be finished in the near future, inshallah,' [Arab for 'God be willing']. And yet, President Obama is ready and willing to exchange cordial smiles and friendly handshakes with the avowed enemy of the country he leads. How can this be? [...] It's easy to befriend any enemy in the world if you're willing to accept their ugly, irrational and distorted assessment of what this country is all about."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Funding FARC, imprisoning dissidents, staging wargames with Russia, and of course consolidating dictatorial power -- none of it's enough to ruin a photo op for The One."

NRO's Jim Geraghty: "As we see Obama accepting Chavez's anti-American book with a smile, as we see him traveling around the world and apologizing incessantly, as we see him starting a trade war with Mexico, as we see his Department of Homeland Security demonizing conservatives, as we see him bowing to the Saudi king, as we see him taking a meat cleaver to the defense budget, as we see him doubling already-enormous deficits...we find, he is who we thought he was."

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers (Benen, Lemos, Chris in Paris) are criticizing their conservative counterparts for making a big fuss about Obama's greeting with Chavez.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Sorry, Ross, But The Parallel Doesn't Work

One of Andrew Sullivan's readers rejects Ross Douthat's comparison of last week's "tea party" protests to the anti-Iraq war protests of '02-'03:

"I'm an Army vet and a Navy family member and prior to the invasion of Iraq I was one of the ragged, resentful, and naive out on the streets demonstrating against the inevitable invasion. Except I am neither ragged, resentful, nor naive. I was exceptionally well informed and took to the streets out of a crisis of conscience. The folks I stood vigil with and marched with were, for the most part, some of the most thoughtful and gentle people I've ever dealt with. Like me, most of the people I met out there were brand new to the world of protest.

We didn't have a friendly media outlet promoting our every move. The media was hostile and interpolated us in a way that was unrecognizable. There was no anti-war blogosphere to speak of, even people like Josh Marshall over at TPM had bought into the rush to war (I forgive him). Move-On was active but nothing close to the force it would grow into. We were alone.

When I protested the war I was made out to be the scum of the earth. What must it be like to show up for a protest, denounce your Country, bad mouth the President, threaten armed revolt, and have your very own media outlet brand you a patriot."

LEST WE FORGET: Supreme Court Justices Keep Citing Cases Roberts And Alito Are Too Young To Remember

From The Onion:

"WASHINGTON -- Although three years have passed since both men joined the court, Chief Justice John Roberts, 54, and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, 59, said they still feel foolish whenever more senior justices refer to cases decided 'way before' they joined the court. 'One time -- one time -- I asked what World-Wide Volkswagen v. Woodson was, and Stevens goes off on this tear about me still being in diapers when Earl Warren was inventing Miranda rights,' Alito said of the 88-year-old justice appointed by President Gerald Ford. 'God, sorry I didn't get my law degree before World War I, geez.' According to court clerks, the two younger justices occasionally get so frustrated with the constant teasing that they take a bus to go spend time with their friends in the 9th Circuit."