Jim Cramer scheduled to be guest on Thursday's "The Daily Show"

[Imran Siddiqui]

Stewart most definitely backfired, though, because he made Yoo seem intelligent, thoughtful, and charming and smarter than Stewart... when you know he expected a Cramer-like beatdown.

[Drake Tungsten]

It's his own fault for thinking that beating up on Crossfire and Jim Cramer made him capable of taking down an intelligent guest. This is what happens when you believe your own press...

[Asher]

He should've seen this guy was asian. Didn't he go to a public school? Those dudes are insanely smart.

[Darius871]

But they also go on to note the bull**** Yoo spouted that went unchallenged.

Which bull**** in particular? Frankly Yoo was right that this legal issue's near absence of binding precedent allows any bull**** to be unfalsifiable opinion, which is why Stewart was doomed from the get-go...

[Asher]

I haven't seen the interview, but if they focused on the legality of the issue it would've been a non-starter. Appealing to a sense of human decency and morality would be the right thing to do -- it'd certainly score him points with the generally intelligent Daily Show followers even if the NASCAR fans don't get it.

[Boris Godunov]

Which bull**** in particular? Frankly Yoo was right that this legal issue's near absence of binding precedent allows any bull**** to be unfalsifiable opinion, which is why Stewart was doomed from the get-go...

It's in the link.

Stewart allowed Yoo to claim that Abu Zubayda was the "number 3 in al-Qaeda," a claim which is factually untrue. Yoo claimed that his memos allowed the government to "go up to the line" of what was torture, but in practice with Zubayda and others the line was crossed repeatedly. The experiences of the detainees who were shackled, in stress positions, had their head thrown into walls, and were doused with cold water were far different than the sanitized, clinical descriptions in the memos. He never asked Yoo whether he thought Zubayda being stuffed in a box to the point that his gunshot wounds reopened was "well beyond the line." Stewart allowed Yoo to claim the U.S. had never really considered what is and isn't torture, despite the fact that the U.S. statute against torture was very clearly violated by Yoo's recommendations and that waterboarding had been prosecuted as a crime as recently as 1983.

Stewart never confronted Yoo on the question of how the torture regime, reverse engineered from training meant to help soldiers resist torture, could possibly not be torture. Stewart never even contested the idea that torture was effective, despite the high-profile declaration of FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan that he personally extracted all of the useful information from Zubayda prior to his being tortured. When Stewart asked Yoo whether the president could electrify someone's testicles, Yoo knew how to answer the question -- having previously implied that it would be okay for the president to order a child's testicles crushed because, "it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that." This time he shook his head. No, no, never something so barbaric.

[Darius871]

Stewart allowed Yoo to claim that Abu Zubayda was the "number 3 in al-Qaeda," a claim which is factually untrue. Yoo claimed that his memos allowed the government to "go up to the line" of what was torture, but in practice with Zubayda and others the line was crossed repeatedly. The experiences of the detainees who were shackled, in stress positions, had their head thrown into walls, and were doused with cold water were far different than the sanitized, clinical descriptions in the memos. He never asked Yoo whether he thought Zubayda being stuffed in a box to the point that his gunshot wounds reopened was "well beyond the line." Stewart allowed Yoo to claim the U.S. had never really considered what is and isn't torture, despite the fact that the U.S. statute against torture was very clearly violated by Yoo's recommendations and that waterboarding had been prosecuted as a crime as recently as 1983.

Stewart never confronted Yoo on the question of how the torture regime, reverse engineered from training meant to help soldiers resist torture, could possibly not be torture. Stewart never even contested the idea that torture was effective, despite the high-profile declaration of FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan that he personally extracted all of the useful information from Zubayda prior to his being tortured. When Stewart asked Yoo whether the president could electrify someone's testicles, Yoo knew how to answer the question -- having previously implied that it would be okay for the president to order a child's testicles crushed because, "it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that." This time he shook his head. No, no, never something so barbaric.

It's in the link.

Bah, I don't care enough to research just what percentage of this is also bull****. For present purposes though, its blatant conflating of the immoral/ineffective and the illegal is emblematic of why this entire debate is a joke to me.

The one and only small kernel of legal relevance in those two paragraphs is guilty of the same disingenuous distortion and omission it accuses Yoo of engaging in, since the James Parker indictment was limited to violations of a citizen's federal constitutional rights by a state law enforcement officer and thus is not binding upon interpretation of a treaty's ratification and statutory implementation over a decade later as they apply to enemy combatants, nor upon the question of the extent to which either circumscribes a President's inherent Commander-in-Chief authority in a time of war.

But let's not let petty nuances like these distract us from this compelling legal analysis:

[Asher]

Were they having a strictly legal argument?

Seems to me they were on a talk show and no court of law?

[Darius871]

He was obviously there in his capacity as a constitutional lawyer, to defend the legal advice to his "client" that made him controversial.

Cartman's critique, as much as I may happen to agree with it, is only relevant to policymakers.

[Asher]

He was obviously there in his capacity as a constitutional lawyer, to defend the legal advice to his "client" that made him controversial.

I haven't seen it but it seems to me he was there as a guest to represent a contrary viewpoint, not as a lawyer strictly speaking in terms of law.

[Darius871]

I only watched the interview over dinner and didn't read the transcript so I might have missed a snippet or two of meandering into moral or policy realms, but my overall impression was that he very carefully framed his comments like those of a positivist legal analyst who (at least outwardly) stays agnostic about the wisdom of what his client chooses to do with his advice.

Frankly it felt no different from a lawyer telling a drug dealer what his Fourth Amendment rights are during a traffic stop without outwardly condoning drug dealing.

[Asher]

I only watched the interview over dinner and didn't read the transcript so I might have missed a snippet or two of meandering into moral or policy realms, but my overall impression was that he very carefully framed his comments to be those of a positivist legal analyst staying agnostic about the wisdom of what his client chose to do with his advice.

That's probably because he understands his "clients" were douches.

[Darius871]

That's probably because he understands his "clients" were douches.

That, or he honestly believed what they did with his advice was right and is now too ashamed (or too concerned about the future of his career) to admit it. In either case, the fact that he so skillfully divorced moral intuition from positive law is precisely why Stewart couldn't even comprehend where Yoo was going, let alone back him into a corner.

Come to think of it, it was like watching a smart version of Ben.

[Drake Tungsten]

a smart version of Ben

[Darius871]

I don't know who that is, but he's better-looking than Ben could possibly be.