Disciplinary Action for Lawyers Who Wrote Torture Memos

A draft report from the Department of Justice recommends disciplinary action for two of the three lawyers who wrote memos justifying the use of torture in interrogation.

Officials conducting the internal Justice Department inquiry into the lawyers who wrote those memos have recommended referring two of the three lawyers — John Yoo and Jay Bybee — to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action, according to a person familiar with the inquiry. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was not authorized to discuss the inquiry.

Jay Bybee is now a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and should be impeached. (I was just reading a dissent he wrote in the lawsuit against Rio Tinto, arguing there should be an absolute requirement of exhaustion of local remedies for all lawsuits filed in the US under the Alien Tort Claims... it could be seen as a human rights-unfriendly view, but I digress.)

Another (slightly more related) aside: why are so many journalists tiptoeing around the word "torture"? As in, "liberals who thought he was being too forgiving of practices they — and Obama — call torture." I guess the memos made it seem like a much grayer area than it is.