NYTimes just posted an editorial calling for the impeachment of Jay Bybee, federal judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
This is mainstream now, folks: Has the NYTimes ever supported impeachment before?
Editorial
The Torturers’ Manifesto
Published: April 18, 2009
To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity....
More after the jump...
Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.
In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary....
Ouch.
NYTimes isn't the only one. The Boston Globe is all over this too, if not calling out Bybee by name:
Globe editorial
The Boston Globe
How America turned to torture
April 19, 2009
AMERICANS have a right to know what their government does in their name. Over the objections of some intelligence professionals and former members of the Bush administration, President Obama ordered the release Thursday of lightly redacted Justice Department memos from 2002 and 2005 authorizing the CIA to use brutal interrogation techniques on high-value Al Qaeda suspects. In doing so, he struck a balance between national security interests and the principle of accountability.
Obama was right to release the memos, which provide legal cover for at least one technique that is plainly a form of torture - waterboarding. A tougher call is whether he was also right to assure CIA interrogators who relied on Justice Department advice that they will not face federal prosecution. Torture violates US law and the Geneva Conventions. Human-rights advocates rightly ask why a person who actually waterboarded a suspected terrorist should not be charged with a crime....
Besides, final responsibility for torture lies with those who authorized it; they deserve no chance to push the blame toward interrogators on the ground. For that reason, Congress should be investigating the Bush administration's use of techniques that fit the definition of torture.
Leading papers are chiming in.
If you haven't already, please sign dday's petition to impeach Bybee.
And join in supporting a the first step towards impeachment: a Congressional resolution of inquiry.
One more bit from the NYTimes:
That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.
These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him...
From the NYTimes' lips to God's ears. :)