One little item before we confirm the nomination of the Honorable John Roberts: the author of the memos that started this whole torture mess, Jay Bybee, Appellate Judge, Ninth Circuit, needs to be impeached.
This is the cat that wrote the memos that gave the earnest Alberto and others the fuel to start the fires of the torching of the Constitution.
While serving as Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, not only did the dubiously Honorable Jay Bybee deliberately ignore and misrepresent laws in breach of the ethics rules of the American Bar Association and in contravention of numerous international treaties, the UCMJ, Title 18 of the Federal Criminal Code, numerous state and local statutes and the Constitution of the United States, as well as all sane standards of civic behavior, but he set in motion a chain of incidents and actions that have placed the United States at the forefront of any listing of countries condoning and/or encouraging torture and inhuman treatment of our fellow human beings.
That he argued that torture is permissible, was in fact not torture, that "is" is not "is," and inasmuch as he wrote certain legal opinions on behalf of the CIA as well as the President of the United States defining acts of blatantly criminal torture as not torture, and advised the President that he holds extra-Constitutional powers and is not legally bound to international law, violated, and I mean violated, his oath as an officer of the court to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America.
He is directly and criminally responsible for Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the other secret hiding places where Americans or agents on our behalf are torturing and raping so-called prisoners of war.
For his scandalously partisan and immoral interpretations of international and Constitutional law, he was rewarded with the seat of Appellate Judge of the Ninth Circuit.
While it is convenient to forget, we must not forget, we must not brush under the rug this man's collusion in criminal actions by justifying, condoning and thereby encouraging the torture of human beings under the control of the armed forces as well as the paid mercenaries and civil servants of the United States.
This man needs to be brought to justice as a war criminal.
Impeach Judge Jay Bybee now.
