Sunday, January 31, 2010

Blinded by Ideology? Bureaucrats Come Through

From Powerline, in a discussion of the review of the legal work of John Yoo and Jay Bybee:
. But it is still an outrage that a lawyer who writes a memorandum arguing a legal position with which a subsequent administration disagrees can be threatened with disbarment.
As a bureaucrat, I sympathize with the position--no one likes to have the rules changed on them after the fact.  But what is missed is the fact that disbarment was raised by lawyers in the Bush Justice Department (admittedly the career types, not Bush appointees) and the Obama Justice Department softened the review significantly (again, admittedly the softening was done by a career man).  See this Post article:
A draft report prepared at the end of the Bush years recommended that Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge in Nevada, be referred to state disciplinary authorities for sanctions that could have included the revocation of their licenses to practice.[Article goes on to explain the subsequent softening.  The Post article is an expansion of the AP piece, which didn't explicitly say when the draft report was prepared.]
So, the bottom line is Powerline's outrage is misplaced. 

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