Yoo said it!

Ahh the pristine legal mind of John Yoo, law professor at my alma mater and torture memo writer extraordinaire. On tap today from him is a password-protected op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

Opening line: "Once again, the Bush administration has shot itself in the foot."

Good news. Some fair analysis to follow, no doubt.

Second line: "If the Justice Department had just removed individual U.S. attorneys one by one, just for a change, no controversy would have erupted."

Basically, his point is that the Bush team isn't shady enough.

But the most important quote from the piece--that everybody should carry away with them to better understand the mindset of this administration--is this one: "But presidents need to have their own people in place in order to promote a consistent, national agenda. While U.S. attorneys can gather better information on, and react more swiftly to, local conditions, the Constitution still gives the president the responsibility to govern the activities of all U.S. officials."

It's funny how, when they think nobody's reading closely, conservative thinkers will slip up and say that judges should be promoting an agenda. It's funny, because there's nothing really wrong with what he wrote except for the fact that Bush's agenda is really terrible. Also, that it seems--for almost cliched reasons--that unitary-executive practitioners excercise their limitless authority just because they have limitless authority and their defenders don't ever seem to bother to ask whether that authority is being used in the best interest of the country. Not that I think John Yoo ever disagrees with the president... except about his insufficient shadiness.

Later there's a fun, unhinged rant about Patrick Fitzgerald, who it seems is an example of unanchored political appointees run amok. Yoo's unitary-executive legal theories are in wide disrepute and have facilitated torture and corruption at the highest level of government. So it's no surprise that, as punishment, he bears the Sysiphean burden of carrying an American Enterprise Institute sinecure by a chain around his neck.