Re: Give me a Break

Not sure how I missed this, but John Cornyn asked Eric Holder Noah Feldman’s ticking time bomb question at yesterday’s hearing: 

Cornyn: I just want to propose a hypothetical for you, lets say that as Attorney General you find out there are terrorists who have access to chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and that you have a detainee who is in possession of information that if disclose would prevent those weapons from being detonated in the United States and thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of innocent people being killed. You would still refuse to condone aggressive interrogation techniques like waterboarding which, under my hypothetical, would save tens of thousands of lives?

Holder replies that waterboarding is not the only interrogation technique. Hilarity ensues:

Cornyn: Assume that it was.

HOLDER: I think your hypothetical assumes a premise that I’m not willing to concede.

CORNYN: I know you don’t like my hypothetical.

HOLDER: No, the hypothetical’s fine; the premise that underlies it I’m not willing to accept, and that is that waterboarding is the only way that I could get that information from those people.

CORNYN: Assume that it was.

HOLDER: Given the knowledge that I have about other techniques and what I’ve heard from retired admirals and generals and FBI agents, there are other ways in a timely fashion that you can get information out of people that is accurate and will produce useable intelligence. And so it’s hard for me to accept or to answer your hypothetical without accepting your premise. And in fact, I don’t think I can do that.

Words do not do this exchange justice. You simply must watch it for yourself:

Highlight of the video: everyone in the chamber laughs after Cornyn asks, for a second time, that Holder except his hypothetical that waterboarding is the only interrogation technique that could save lives in a ticking time bomb scenario. 

They’re not laughing with you Senator. They’re laughing at you.

Give me a Break

The New York Times asked 5 legal academics to pose questions they wish they could ask Eric Holder at his confirmation hearing. 

This is the best distinguished Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman could come up with:

What may American military and law enforcement do to extract information from terrorists, especially in a “ticking time-bomb” case?

Come! On! Really?! Isn’t it common wisdom at this point that the scenario imagined by the ticking time bomb thought experiment virtually never occurs in real life? It would be laughable that something so wildly implausible keeps getting dredged up by America’s purported “top minds” were it not the fact that it has been used to justify acts of evil at Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo, and at other U.S. military prisons. 

Seems Feldman got a little too excited about the 4-hour series premier of 24 and was jerking off to Jack while writing his question. 

                                                                      

Contraband Copter!

So, how long do you think it will be before this appears on MSNBC’s Lock Up? The Daily Mail reports:

A toy helicopter is believed to have been used in an attempt to smuggle drugs into a prison.

Guards at Elmley Prison in Sheerness, Kent, spotted the remote control miniature aircraft flying over the walls of the jail and heading for the accommodation blocks one night after it was picked up by CCTV cameras.

It had a small load beneath the fuselage, thought to contain drugs.

The toy or its cargo was not found.

Yoo too Young?

Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman on John Yoo:

While John Yoo did most of the staff work for Bybee, Yoo was barely 35 years old—and his memos showed it. They not only took extreme positions; they were legally incompetent, failing to consider many of the most obvious counterarguments.

Gee, I guess the law is very different than math, where your intellect is said to peak in your twenties…

Orin Kerr is incredulous.