Yoo Boob

John Yoo, professional torture apologist, , offers up absurdity on toast from the pages of the New York Times today.

How the Presidency Regained Its Balance - New York Times

The changes of the 1970’s occurred largely because we had no serious national security threats to United States soil, but plenty of paranoia in the wake of Richard Nixon’s use of national security agencies to spy on political opponents. Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution, which purports to cut off presidential uses of force abroad after 60 days. It passed the Budget and Impoundment Act to eliminate the modest presidential power to rein in wasteful spending. The Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act required the government to get a warrant from a special court to conduct wiretapping for national security reasons.

These statutes have produced little but dysfunction, from flouting of the war powers law, to ever-higher pork barrel spending, to the wall between intelligence and law enforcement that contributed to our failure to stop the 9/11 attacks.

If there has been a more absurd statement from a conservative recently, it does not come to mind. I seem to recall that such folks generally considered the Cold War to consititute a serious national security threat to U.S. soil.

Similarly idiotic rewriting of history abounds:

The judiciary, too, has been increasingly assertive over the last three decades. It has shown far less deference to the executive in this war than in past conflicts. This energetic judiciary is partly a response to Congress’s bulked-up power; the courts have had to step in to try to repair the problems created by vague laws that try to do too much, that state grandiose goals, while avoiding hard policy choices.

Hello, Yoofus? Remember Youngstown Steel in the 50's? Truman tried to nationalize steel production, and the Supremes yanked his choke collar? Remember the way civil rights happened in the 60's? Remember Roe v. Wade? And you are going to tell me that since that time, the Supremes have been more assertive?

As usual, Greeenwald is on the case. The real outrage is that the NYT consistently offers such absurdity its platform.

Update: Josh Marshall makes the same point as well.

So If an influential Republican penned an OpEd arguing that the moon is made of green cheese, the Jews sunk the Titanic, and Green M&Ms are an aphrodesiac, would they run that, too? Is there no filtering for absurdity or outrage?