John Yoo for Worst Human of Millennium

Conor Friederdorf of the Atlantic is reporting today that John Yoo, former definition manufacturer for the Bush administration, says the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that he spent years defending from public and legal criticism are, in fact, possibly illegal.

From the CNN interview that Friederdorf quotes:

"[I]f these things happened as they are described in the report, as you describe them, those were not authorized by the Justice Department. They were not supposed to be done and those people who did those are at risk legally because they were acting outside their orders."

Hey John, fuck you.

It's bad enough that we had people running our government that were so blinded by their patriotism and nationalist zeal that they were willing to let their moral obligations slip aside. At the very least, a member of the previous administration might elicit some sympathy for the war crimes (for which they were never charged) by saying they weren't sure what they were doing was wrong.

But Yoo knew, and he found a way to mold some facade of legality around it all. To me, that seems worse than mere ignorance or lack of moral understanding.

Just as a reminder, here is a YouTube video of John Yoo defending the concept of crushing the testicles of an innocent child:

Happy Tuesday.

Rand On Maher

Rand Paul sounding awfully libertarian again (from Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher):

You're Not the Only One

Joshua Steimle has nice takedown of net neutrality up on Forbes.com:

"I don’t like how much power the telecoms have. But the reason they’re big and powerful isn’t because there is a lack of government regulation, but because of it. Government regulations are written by large corporate interests which collude with officials in government. The image of government being full of people on a mission to protect the little guy from predatory corporate behemoths is an illusion fostered by politicians and corporate interests alike. Many, if not most, government regulations are the product of crony capitalism designed to prevent small entrepreneurs from becoming real threats to large corporations."