So we're supposed to think that the Utah Bar is going to revoke Bybee's license for writing a torture manual in a conspiracy with fellow Mormons Rumsfeld, Jessen, Mitchell and Flanigan? If he'd had sex with one of them they probably would, but torture and murder don't seem to be serious offenses in their thought.

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This would be the same "Justice" department that the neo-con-artists have been stacking with right wing nut cases for years - no surprise that they won't prosecute.

Neither will I be surprised if Obama gets blamed...

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On self-regulation, the lawyers' salvation, which they have been enjoying in this country for more than a century:

“Study after study has shown that the current rules for professional conduct are not enforced. Misconduct is rarely perceived. If perceived, it is not reported. If reported, it is not investigated. If investigated, violations are not found. If found, they are excused. If they are not excused, penalties are light. And if significant penalties are imposed, the lawyer soon returns to practice, in that state or another. Lawyers constantly condemn the failure of the criminal justice system to deter crime for precisely these reasons – because of its alleged indifference, procedural niceties, or excessive lenience. Indeed, we know that the efficacy of social control varies even more strongly with the likelihood of punishment than it does with the severity of the sanction. Yet on both counts, especially the former, the professional disciplinary system falls far below the wholly inadequate standards of the criminal law. Lawyers can hardly present their travesty of a penal system as an effective deterrent.”

(“Why Does the ABA Promulgate Ethical Rules?” by Richard L. Abel, Connell Professor of Law, University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, from 59 Texas Law Review 639, 1981)

And from William Duane of Philadelphia, writing in 1804:

“A privileged order or class, to whom the administration of justice is given as a support, first employ their art and influence to gain legislation; they then so manage legislation as never to injure themselves; and they so manage justice as to engross the general property to themselves through the medium of litigation; and the misfortune is, that to be able to effect this point, it is attended by loss of time, by delay, expense, ill blood, bad habits, lessons of fraud and temptation to villainy, crimes, punishments, loss of estate, character and soul, public burden, and even loss of national character.”

And now, possibly, the loss of the nation.

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and unable to fight back. The guilty ones are in charge and cover each other; the innocent have no organization (an association of people who did nothing wrong? Why?), no money (not in those amounts needed to hire the guilty to defend them) and suffer from the illusion that being innocent is protection enough, and that prosecutors are seeking truth and justice, not a big win.

Ian

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It seems you could say that all crimes are lapses of judgment, so all criminals are innocent? Unlock the prisons!

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Regarding the above referenced issue, I write as a Nam Vet, a former White House appointee in both the Carter and Reagan Administrations, and as an independent federal civil litigation practitioner for the past three decades, to underscore that history has shown that Democracies such as ours are precarious institutions. Therefore, constant vigilance must be maintained to preserve our Constitution from undue government encroachment by the use of legal sophistry of lawyers and judges intentionally acting to circumvent the limitations on the powers granted the government by “the people” in the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

For this reason we must make certain that as a Nation faced with the threat of terrorism, we do not transform ourselves into legal tyrannies by permitting the legal profession to utilize cronyism to immunize government employees and judges from accountability for negligent, or criminal acts outside of their scope of authority, judicial capacity, or jurisdiction. As Thomas Jefferson stated more than 200 years ago, "[t]he germ of destruction of our nation is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body - working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall render powerless the checks of one branch over the other and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."

In this context, we must always recall the sorry behavior of German judges and lawyers use of cronyism during Nazi era which did play an important part in allowing Hitler to power, because, “[l]egal scholars are still perplexed to explain how a highly developed and sophisticated legal system – German law and jurisprudence under the Weimar Republic – became so readily corrupted and how legal actors – German judges and other judicial officials, lawyers, and law professors – could so easily become willing accomplices in this process. The sad fact is that legal sophistication did not inoculate German law and German legal actors from actively participating in the perverse changes being made to the German legal system during the Nazi era, including the legal exclusion of German Jews from the concept of “citizen,” and the Nuremberg Race Laws, which gradually transformed the non-citizen Jew into a subhuman not worthy of life. By the time the gas vans came and the human slaughter factories were built in Auschwitz and the other death camps, the murder of the six million Jews and other persecuted minorities was done completely within the framework of German law.” Yad Vshem The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes Remembrance Authority, 2004.

Consequently, the evidence confirms the use of cronyism to surreally assert immunity for past and present acts tortious and criminal acts in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 241, 242, 1204, and 1523, by government attorneys and judges to cover-up and deny me access to an impartial jury trial under RICO for the criminal obstruction of my statutory rights as a father and retaliation by issuing and enforcing a void order to deprive me of my right of employment as in retaliation for my being an independent sole practitioner seeking to enforce my Son’s and my federal statutory rights (see, http://www.liamsdad.org/others/isidoro.shtml).

Thus, in reality the issue of immunity for “torture,” is a subpart of the larger issue of the on gong criminal conspiracy of present and former attorneys in DOJ and judges in the Judicial Branch to intentionally violate Congress’ delegations under the Rules Enabling Act and the Judicial Conference Act to deny access to an impartial court for the citizens the hold government employees accountable for malfeasance.

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Oh No! Double secret probation. That will convince the next lawyer from being an enabler in breaking the law. Good thing the lawyers didn't smoke pot, or they would have been in real trouble.

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The lawyers who concocted the made-to-order legal excuses for torture should be prosecuted along with Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and anyone else involved in the conspiracy.

This is no more complicated than any prosecution for conspiracy to commit a crime and/or commission of a crime.Everyone involved must be investigated and prosecuted as an ordinary citizen would be for committing an "ordinary" crime.

If Obama's Justice Department doesn't fire every tinpot lawyer hired by Bush's Atty Generals from so-called "universities" like Liberty, the right-wing zealot factory, then Obama and Holder will be condoning the crime of torture.

If they condone it, they own it.

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