Bush the Leviathan

A Justice Department memo declassified today makes some really shocking claims about the President as Commander-in-Chief. According to John Yoo, Justice Department lawyer/paper-pusher, the position of Commander-in-Chief is only answerable to military structure. The Commander-in-Chief cannot be bound by civil laws or treaties in the exercise of said office. Therefore, any decision the Commander-in-Chief makes with regard to the treatment of enemy combatants is, by the nature of the position, completely legal and beyond the scope of check by Congress or the courts.

Now that is something you don't hear every day. The Commander-in-Chief is the Leviathan.

For more of Mr. Yoo's legal opinions, here is a brief exchange between him and Doug Cassel, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame:

Cassel: If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress, that is what you wrote in your August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

Now isn't that something? A true dictatorship of relativism.

Mason Slidell