Stewart: In the brief, everything that you came up with went in the direction of us being able to do more things, the president having more power. And it strikes me as odd, because the lawyers that I’ve traditionally dealt with try and give you arguments for and against, and it strikes me as, maybe not unique to the Bush administration, but all the arguments for them come as justifications for what they want to do…

Yoo: Well first thing, let me say there were just no legal precedents, or practices ever before. This question had never come up before…

Stewart: That’s not true.

Yoo: I couldn’t go and say, look here are the things that had been decided by courts before about this question…

Stewart: Wait, wait, wait, let me step in very quickly. We signed a treaty banning torture. So the question had come up, and we had answered it by saying, yeah we’re not going to do that.

Yoo: No, the question is what does the treaty mean. Right, so it wasn’t that…

Stewart: You’re saying that when we signed the treaty, it had not come up what it meant. We just signed it.

Yoo: Right, we had signed it and passed a statute.

…

Stewart: You’re suggesting that we had never addressed what torture was.

Yoo: No, we had not addressed what is interrogation…

Stewart: We prosecuted people for torture in war, yeah?

Yoo: I’m saying we had not faced the question of what interrogation methods do not constitute torture, but go beyond the regular law enforcement methods that we’ve used in the past.

Stewart: Well, how did we then conduct trials for people that had tortured Americans?

Yoo: Because all those cases were ones where what those other governments had done to our soldiers were well beyond the line of what anyone would think are torture…

Want something a little more to the point? Try this recent interview on NPR where Yoo refutes critical logic by ‘sharing concerns.’ A telling (and compressed) exerpt (emphasis added):

John Yoo: We need a powerful president because we have periods of emergency, crisis and even war where we need part of the government that can act quickly in response, that the powerful president isn’t necessary all the time. It’s someone who we need to come forward and address unforeseen events and circumstances.

Madeleine Brand: You argue in the book that the greatest presidents come forward during times of crisis to do that, to seize power when they can, and to expand the role of the executive.

Yoo: That’s right… They embraced their power. They used their powers vigorously to attack the challenges of their day and often – or sometimes in direct conflict with the Congress and the Supreme Court.

Brand: But when we were looking at what is commonly called the war on terrorism, it’s often seen as an unending war. And so, how do these powers get put back in the bottle if you have an unending war?

Yoo: I share your concerns. And the hard thing is how do we figure out when the war against al-Qaida… is going to be over… How do we know when the war is over? I think that’s a very fair and difficult question because it’s that point when the president’s powers will recede.

“FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni said in an interview Monday that the FBI technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when agents invoked nonexistent emergencies to collect records.”

“FBI officials told The Post that their own review has found that about half of the 4,400 toll records collected in emergency situations or with after-the-fact approvals were done in technical violation of the law.”

“Among those whose phone records were searched improperly were journalists for The Washington Post and the New York Times, according to interviews with government officials.”

So that would constitute criminality no?

Read the full article: “FBI broke law for years in phone record searches” -WaPo

Yes our concept of checks and balances, co-equal branches of government, and the rule of law were nice ideas, but when faced with the hard reality of guys with box cutters it was those in the choir of American exceptionalism (ironically many of the same voices who use American ideals as justification for all sorts of expansionist policies) who were among the first to advocate sacrificing liberty for a little security.

Now it appears the Obama administration is ready to pick up where these self-styled pragmatists left off. If you haven’t been tracking these issues read on and weigh in:

Wiretapping, FISA, and privacy: Obama vs. Courts, Obama Channels Cheney

Extraordinary rendition: Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool.

Obama on Surveillance of Citizens: Obama Goes to Bat for Secrecy.

Telecom Immunity: Obama Administration Supports Telco Spy Immunity , Obama loses state secrets argument setting up possible judicial showdown

While the modern Republican party is apparently looking for a way to escape the toxicity they so adroitly and perhaps permanently attached to their brand, voters would be wise to remember the precedents in Republican governance that led us to this point and be cautious of any re-invention that does not specifically address the historical positions of the party with regards to these particular events:

McCarthyism and the Red Scare, Watergate and Nixon’s use and understanding of executive power, the Vietnam-era anti-war movement, the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act of 1964, the Church Committee and intelligence operations conducted by the government upon its own people, the Iran Contra affair and Reagan’s use and understanding of executive power; and George W. Bush’s use and understanding of executive power and the so-called “Bush doctrine” in consideration of the “Downing Street Memos,” the pre-emptive war doctrine, international law and the Geneva conventions, extraordinary rendition, torture, suspension of habeas corpus, warrantless illegal spying, FISA and the granting of retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies who knowingly violated the law.

If we learned one thing from last week’s meeting of the well-heeled and the well-jowled, it would that it’s not always easy to tell the two apart. If we learned anything else, it would be that CEOs of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors love their private jets –possibly more than they love their businesses.

“It would be insane if this country stopped designing and building automobiles and trucks,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA). “It would also be insane if the top executives from the three automakers came here on private jets. I’m going to ask the three executives here to raise their hand if they flew here commercial. Let the record show no hands went up. Second, I’m going to ask you to raise your hand if you’re planning to sell your jet in place now and fly back commercial. Let the record show no hands went up. I don’t know how I go back to my constituents and say the auto industry has changed if they own private jets which are not only expensive to own but expensive to operate and expensive to fly here rather than to have flown commercial.”

“There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they’re going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses,” Rep. Gary Ackerman, (D-NY) told the CEOs.

“It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious…couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it.”

Watch full video of CEO testimony before the House here and the Senate here.