{"id":192217,"date":"2009-04-27T17:32:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-27T22:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/27\/bybee-broke-the-law-because-he-wanted-to-be-a-judge\/"},"modified":"2009-04-27T17:32:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-27T22:32:00","slug":"bybee-broke-the-law-because-he-wanted-to-be-a-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/27\/bybee-broke-the-law-because-he-wanted-to-be-a-judge\/","title":{"rendered":"Bybee Broke the Law Because He Wanted to be a Judge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friends of one of the torture memo authors have been waging a campaign to rehabilitate him<\/a> by explaining his motives, which is, unfortunately, at the end of the article:<\/p>\n

“The whole idea that the Constitution is based on a kind of wariness of mankind’s tendency to grab power, that is an idea I got from Jay,” McAffee said. “So the whole idea of uninhibited executive power, from him, does seem passing strange.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Bybee’s friends said he never sought the job at the Office of Legal Counsel<\/span>. The reason he went back to Washington, Guynn said, was to interview with then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales for a slot that would be opening on the 9th Circuit when a judge retired. The opening was not yet there, however, so Gonzales asked, “Would you be willing to take a position at the OLC first?<\/span>” Guynn said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being unable to answer for what followed is “very frustrating,” said Guynn, who spoke to Bybee before agreeing to be interviewed. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gee, he was a movement conservative who thought he deserved a Federal judgeship, so he authorized torture, even though he knew that it was wrong.<\/p>\n

That does not make his circumstances better<\/span>, it makes them even more<\/span> indefensible.<\/p>\n

He did it because he was a career Apparatchik<\/a>, not out of any conviction or perceived need.<\/p>\n

Bonus video:
<\/embed><\/a><\/object>
John Podesta calls for Bybee’s impeachment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friends of one of the torture memo authors have been waging a campaign to rehabilitate him by explaining his motives, which is, unfortunately, at the end of the article: “The whole idea that the Constitution is based on a kind of wariness of mankind’s tendency to grab power, that is an idea I got from …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[972,978,1168],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice","category-politics","category-torture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}