Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Regarding the recent unpleasantness

Mr. Trend over at Alterdestiny is calling for the impeachment of Torture Memos co-author Jay Bybee, currently a judge on the Ninth Circuit of the Federal Court of Appeals. Mr. Trend’s letter to his senator (Chuck Schumer) is an excellent template to follow should you be inclined to write to your senators in support of Bybee’s impeachment. I’m definitely adopting this paragraph and putting it in 36-point boldface type.
Mr. Bybee's appointment to the Federal Court system has put American citizens like myself at the risk of having our fates decided by his legal logic, a logic that has already defended the use of torture. This kind of behavior and these legal positions cannot and should not be allowed on any court bench, much less a Federal Court bench. It is for this reason that I am asking you, as one of the two Senators from the great state of New York, to please join the efforts to impeach Mr. Bybee, so that his legal reasoning can never affect the lives of American citizens in the way it has already affected the lives of those who were tortured in Guantanamo. Thank you.

1 comment:

Joyful Alternative said...

Unfortunately, Bybee is just the tip of the iceberg. After decades of Republican rule and Democratic wishy-washiness, the federal bench is stuffed with people like him.

Consider our chief justice, whose first published article decried the proposed admission of girls to his private all-boy boarding school.

And then there's the rest of the so-called justice system, regarding which I wish Jim Webb all the luck in the world.

And while I'm wishing, may Chief Justice Roberts find himself the only male on SCOTUS, surrounded by icky girls who distract him from his arduous work of drafting solitary dissents, and may Judge Bybee be extradited to one of countries considering his indictment. And let's hang in effigy whoever at Berkeley decided John Yoo would make a great law professor.