Yoo Who?

I'm reminded of Herb Caen's pithy observation, after Truman fired MacArthur: "MacArthur thought he could walk on water, but Truman pulled the water out from under him!"

So it has been with the Bush Administration, claiming unto itself every power and authority imaginable simply by virtue of the thoughtless Congressional vote, a week after the attacks of September 11, 2001, allowing him to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible.

It appears that, buried beneath all the rant and rhetoric about the Administration's "secret" surveillance programs (not to mention its hot pursuit of "traitorous leakers"), culminating in this week's Supreme Court decision, there may actually be a pony.

Consider today's New York Times piece describing the reaction of one who should know:

JOHN C. YOO, a principal architect of the Bush administration's legal response to the terrorist threat, sounded perplexed and a little bitter on Thursday afternoon. A few hours earlier, the Supreme Court had methodically dismantled the legal framework that he and a few other administration lawyers had built after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"What the court is doing is attempting to suppress creative thinking," said Professor Yoo . . .

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