Legal Fictions: The Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year.

[ProSense]

Legal Fictions

The Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year.

Posted Friday, Dec. 28, 2007

This time last year, I offered up a top 10 list of the most appalling civil-liberties violations by the Bush administration in 2006. The grim truth is, not much has changed. The Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free. In that spirit, it seemed an opportune moment to commemorate the administration's worst legal justifications and arguments of the year. And so I humbly offer this new year's roundup: The Bush Administration's Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.

10. The NSA's eavesdropping was limited in scope.

Not at all. Recent revelations suggest the program was launched earlier than we'd been led to believe, scooped up more information than we were led to believe, and was not at all narrowly tailored, as we'd been led to believe. Surprised? Me neither.

9. Scooter Libby's sentence was commuted because it was excessive.

Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was found guilty of perjury and obstructing justice in connection with the outing of Valerie Plame. In July, before Libby had served out a day of his prison sentence, President Bush commuted his sentence, insisting the 30-month prison sentence was "excessive." In fact, under the federal sentencing guidelines, Libby's sentence was perfectly appropriate and consistent with positions advocated by Bush's own Justice Department earlier this year.

8. The vice president's office is not a part of the executive branch.

We also learned in July that over the repeated objections of the National Archives, Vice President Dick Cheney exempted his office from Executive Order 12958, designed to safeguard classified national security information. In declining such oversight in 2004, Cheney advanced the astounding legal proposition that the Office of the Vice President is not an "entity within the executive branch" and hence is not subject to presidential executive orders. When, in January 2007, the Information Security Oversight Office asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resolve the dispute, Cheney recommended the executive order be amended to abolish the Information Security Oversight Office altogether. In a new interview with Mike Isikoff at Newsweek, the director of the ISOO stated that his fight with Cheney's office was a "contributing" factor in his decision to quit after 34 years.

7. The Guantanamo Bay detainees enjoy more legal rights than any prisoners of war in history.<...>

6. Water-boarding may not be torture.<...>

5. Everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege.<...>

4. Nine U.S. attorneys were fired by nobody, but for good reason.<...>

3. Alberto Gonzales.<...>

I am forced to put the former attorney general into his own category only because were I to attempt to round up his best legal whoppers of the calendar year, it would overwhelm the rest of the list...

2. State secrets.<...>

1. The United States does not torture.

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[applegrove]

1. That is a great list. Important in this time of year that we are reminded

of all that has passed. Thank you.

[jcla]

2. "I do not recall..."

how much I enjoyed this list! GREAT WORK!

[ProSense]

3. Kick! n/t

[ProSense]

4. " Remember, these weren’t just silly talking points repeated on Fox News..."

From Carpetbagger Report:

Remember, these weren’t just silly talking points repeated on Fox News; these were official legal arguments presented in formal settings, all of which were either false, ridiculous, or both.

<...>

For all the talk about impeachment of the president, I can’t help but wonder if we might also consider another tack: disbarment of the Bush administration’s lawyers.