freedetainees.org

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, masters of evil John Yoo and David Addington pop back up, like Jason or a platter of undercooked pork, to tell the U.S. Congress how much they’d really like to take that water and pour it over your blindfolded and Saran-wrapped face.

Happy Birthday, U.S.A.!

Now, I know people who know John Yoo – that’s right, suckas! Your editrix is exactly one degree of separation from the man who wrote the memo legalizing torture for BushCo by way of the unitary executive theory – and I’ve been told “not as stupid as he pretends to be” would be a reckless understatement. In fact, they say, though he’s incredibly unprepossessing and innocuous-seeming, he’s actually just as smart as you’d expect a top lawyer for the U.S. making torture law would be. But did you see his Congressional testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week? Could he have pretended to be any stupider? I swear, if you’d stuck a Coors in his hand and somehow made him handsome, he could have been any of the big dumb hunks of alcoholic electrician man I so like to date.

Here’s Rep. Keith Ellison (you remember: the dude with the Koran) questioning Yoo: “The memo was implemented at some point. Is that right?”

Here’s John Yoo: “Duuhhhhh.”

Let’s start over.

Here’s Chairman John Conyers: “Could the President order a suspect buried alive?”

Yoo: “Uh, Mr. Chairman, I don’t think I’ve ever given advice that the President could order someone buried alive.”

Golly gee, Mrs. Cleaver.

He also refused to understand the question of whether his torture memo had been implemented: “What do you mean by ‘implemented,’ sir?” It went on for the questioner’s allotted 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, David Addington – Cheney’s slavering id – was even worse; where Yoo valley-girled his way out of the questions, Addington sneered and sniggered at his interlocutors. My favorite, by far:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler: “Professor Yoo is quoted as saying that under certain circumstances, it would be proper and legal to torture a detainee’s child to get necessary information. Do you agree with that?”

Addington: “I don’t agree or disagree with it, Mr. Chairman. I don’t plan to address it. You’re seeking legal opinion and, as we told you in Exhibit 4, I’m not here to render legal advice to your committee. You do have attorneys of your own to give you legal advice.”

I know David Addington isn’t the devil because Albert Brooks said in Broadcast News that the devil would be reasonable, and genial, and that he wouldn’t be wearing a tail and horns.

But what of our high court? Well, clearly they’re not the devil either, though it’s not for lack of trying.

I get the garden-variety greed and corporatism. Wrong, yes, but it’s not something that would make you scratch your head in a fuddle. I get the partisanship of staying the Florida Supreme Court’s order to count the state’s votes. I get a whole host of the queer things those black-robed cats cook up. It was news that the Supreme Court voided D.C.’s gun laws? There was someone who thought they wouldn’t?

But one thing about the Supremes’ latest string of decisions is so utterly shocking – even to someone who watches them, like me, and who thought she was absolutely inured to the unerring despair they could visit upon the nation – I can’t even get it into my puny mortal noggin.

The Supreme Court cares about as much about a defendant’s inalienable right to a fair trial as it did about equal protection claims pre-Bush v. Gore. (Okay, to be fair, which I always am, they did rebuke the administration on habeas corpus.) So how is it that they’re now taking really seriously our inalienable right to confront our accuser in court – so seriously that if an accuser isn’t available, her police reports about alleged abuse are inadmissible? Oh, that doesn’t sound that bad? Get this: She isn’t available for the defendant to confront in court because before she could, THE DEFENDANT KILLED HER.

Does that sound like the Taliban to anyone else? Does that sound like those Sharia courts where, like Dave Chappelle and what he’d need as a prospective R. Kelly juror, in order to get a rape conviction you’d need video, two forms of age verification for the underage girl, and his grandmother in the frame giving an affirmative ID? Or otherwise the girl gets stoned?

John Yoo and David Addington aren’t the only things popping back up when you least expect them: I think my lunch did too.