An Online Petition: Impeach Jay Bybee

Late last week--specifically, on Thurday April 16, 2009--President Obama ordered the release of four memos written during the Bush administration by employees of the Office of Legal Counsel. These memos, in obvious violation of US statute and treaty obligation, instructed members of the CIA that if they committed acts of torture against people held in military camps, they would be obeying the law. (For more information on these memos and the legal obligations of the US, I recommend starting with this Glenn Greenwald piece and then just following links.)

One of the primary authors of these memos was Jay Bybee. He is now a Federal judge. Every morning, Americans are having important legal matters decided by someone who "authorized" extreme sleep deprivation--the favorite torture technique of Stalin--and waterboarding--a favorite torture technique of the Khmer Rouge and the Gestapo, an act actually formally described as a crime against humanity during the post-World War II trials of the Japanese military.

ThinkProgress, one of the better political action groups, has put together a temperate but forceful petition to request the House Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment proceedings against Bybee.

I do not know when this petition will be closed; there is no indication on the web site. I think we can assume that it will close within the week. Please take the time to sign it.

A fake artifact from my true youth

PNH linked to this post on A Marginal Revolution giving Chomsky summarizing a famous passage from Augustine's The City of God.

Rather than go through four layers of quotation, here's the original:

Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor."

And here's the promised artifact: