RTFA: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/administratio…

While the newly released memo focuses on “asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators,” it contains a footnote referencing another Administration memo that caught our eye:

… our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations. See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Robert J. Delahunty, Special Counsel, Re: Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at 25 (Oct 23, 2001). (emphasis added)

This earlier memo has not been publicly released, though Senator Leahy and Rep. Conyers have asked to see it.

Well shit, good thing they have the war on drugs & the war on terror to shred the constitution for the rest of time.

RTFA: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic…

“If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network,” Yoo wrote. “In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.”

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a “national and international version of the right to self-defense,” Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations — that it must “shock the conscience” — that the Bush administration advocated for years.

Ultimately, after millennia of consideration, the human practice of law and legal progress has concluded: that there are no laws. Who saw that one coming?

I find myself exclaiming, “wow,” with increasing regularity, probably due to the fact that it’s such an interesting time to be alive.

RTFA: http://www.nbc11.com/news/15404295/detail.html

OAKLAND, Calif. — You know you’re in a different kind of college when a teaching assistant sets five marijuana plants down in the middle of a lab and no one blinks a bloodshot eye.

Welcome to Oaksterdam University, a new trade school where “higher education” takes on a whole new meaning.

The school prepares people for jobs in California’s thriving medical marijuana industry.

wow!