mroe federal government follies

[SmarterthanYou]

or why we, as a nation, are fucked because of our apathy.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/02/BAL71OCCE8.DTL&tsp=1

John Yoo, the UC Berkeley law professor who advised President George W. Bush on interrogation of terror suspects, can't be sued for allegedly authorizing a prisoner's harsh treatment even if it amounted to torture, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stopped short of endorsing Yoo's conduct as a lawyer in the Justice Department, where he wrote memos approving most of the practices allegedly used against plaintiff Jose Padilla in a Navy brig - sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation, and extremes of temperature, light and darkness.

Padilla also said his interrogators threatened to kill him, and he claimed Yoo had personally authorized his treatment.

At least some of Padilla's treatment may well constitute torture under current standards, the appeals court said. But when Yoo worked for the department in 2001-03, the three-judge panel said, courts had not yet decided that those practices were torture, or that so-called enemy combatants like Padilla had the same constitutional rights as other inmates.

And what should be an extremely unnerving part of the ruling.....

Since 1982, the Supreme Court has ruled that government officials can't be held legally responsible for violating individual rights unless those rights were clearly established at the time.

"We cannot say that any reasonable official in 2001-03 would have known that the specific interrogation techniques allegedly employed against Padilla, however appalling, necessarily amounted to torture," said Judge Raymond Fisher in the 3-0 ruling.

He said the high court didn't rule until 2004 that inmates held as enemy combatants were entitled to humane treatment, and the scope of their rights is still unclear.

half the reasoning for this decision can be laid at the feet of living constitutionalists. where rights and powers ebb and flow based on the current times and matters.

 

[Conservative]

Must you use vile language to express your self?