If John Yoo disapproves, she must be good.

John Yoo is worried about "faithful application" and "the correct reading" of the Constitution.

And Wile E. Coyote just caught the Roadrunner.

One of the official new talking points, per some fascist think tank with a deceptively benign name asshat former clerk of Scalia's, is that this nomination shows the danger to the Republic of Obama's "lawless empathy standard." He went on and on about it and if he used that phrase once, he used it a thousand times. So we'll be hearing a lot about "lawless empathy standard" and "feelings" over the next month. Its yet another turn of phrase that the Republicans have fantasized themselves into believing is a game changer.

But yeah, Yoo doesn't care much for or about feelings. As long as you stay on this side of inducing death or organ failure, its all good.

Damn, there goes another perfectly good irony meter. I guess I need a special Republican-shielded model.

And Yoo should be disbarred, if not imprisoned.

I just can't get past that headline: "Empathy Trumps Over Excellence". I guess ideology trumps over coherence, too.

Can I advocate the castration of Yoo as a means of getting Alberto VO5 Gonzales to talk?

There was a handy link with his email address, so I wrote him a short note:

Mr. Yoo

It would make perfect sense for the author of the infamous "Torture Memos" to completely misunderstand the meaning of the word "Empathy". Empathy is not the same as sympathy, nor is it a bias or making a decision on "feelings". The fact that you are opposed to this nomination makes me more confident that I can trust this president's judgement. I hope you will someday feel at minimum some regret, if not sympathy, for the people who were tortured because of your lack of empathy or understanding of the law and the constitution.

May God have mercy on your soul.

Hmmm. Here's a woman who kicked and stomped her way through Princeton (! the most sexist Ivy?), Yale Law School as editor of law review (!), and on to the bench.

I'm betting she eats everyone's lunch at the confirmation hearings. And then kicks everyone in the balls and writes insults on their foreheads.

Metaphorically, of course.

My favorite Yoo'ism from his article?

"Republican senators will have to conduct thorough questioning in the confirmation hearings to make sure that she will not be a results-oriented voter, voting her emotions and politics rather than the law."

Yoo himself is well familiar with this "emotions and the law" issue, having decided it is okay to disregard the law and allow torture IF you have the emotion of being absolutely terrorized by terrorism (or perhaps just terrorized by Cheney?).

Look....we dropped Napalm and Agent Orange all over Vietnam right on top of civilians.

Is waterboarding worse than that?

We don't torture...that's our motto.

Yet it seems that we settle most problems with violence.

Violence against civilians and the innocent.

As long as it's not happening to us...that's the language of Empire.

Of course Yoo is against the nominee.
He shills for those who aspire to Empire.

I'm just going to love watching the Republicans squirm over this nomination. How can one not enjoy their continuing descent into impotent rage and bewilderment?

Let me see... "outcomes rather than the law". Oh, that would be like the Gore vs. Bush decision, right?

Eff Yoo.

Yoo? hasn't he been disbarred yet? for writing torture memos that helped the Bush administration cause untold suffering and death in Iraq and elsewhere.

His notoriety should make him keep his mouth shut but no, he follows in Cheney's footsteps as usual.

Oh please!

Please please please, Republicans!

Make John Yoo the point man on your anti-Sotomayor campaign.

Every judge makes her or his decisions based on their politics and temperament.

But white males, being the default group, are allowed to pretend that they are immune from those considerations, are allowed to pretend they--alone!--can decide based on the law, exclusively.

The greatest privilege enjoyed by the privileged it the privilige of pretending they aren't privileged...

For someone who was busy torturing the law so that harm could be done to politically incorrect individuals he is talking pretty loudly.

He should be ashamed.

a judge has to vote according "to the rule of law", a judge should not be an "activist" judge.. these are all code words right-wingers use to express how they want a judge to vote.. a judge always follows "the rule of law" if they vote how right-wingers want them to vote, and they are always "activist" judges if they vote in ways right-wingers don't like.. I don't know who these backward-thinking bozos think they are kidding...

one would think that after the last election results the GOP would get the message that the voters of this country REJECTED THEIR B.S... and that the more they insult the nominee and spread falsehoods about her, the more they will get hurt.. but well, they seem to still be in denial anyway, about why they lost the election, about the damage idiots like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney are doing to their party, etc...

Republicans will make lots of noises and drag out the nomination process so they can take advantage of the occasion to fleece their usual constituencies (religious fanatics, gun fanatics, etc..) That's ALL they will get out of this nomination (and maybe these GOP constituencies (is anybody still sending money to the GOP?) will finally realize that continuing to pour money down that rathole isn't exactly paying dividends for them.....;)

and this guy Yoo, who issued a legal opinion saying it's ok for the U.S. to TORTURE, has the guts to say anything at all here??? PLEASE... that man should hang his head in shame...

[slowly placing hand to brow].....W.T.F.

Here is my amicus brief:

"rosseforp" Yoo should be disbarred immediately for crimes against morality and for the sake of the Republic and its people.

Your double speak is not accepted here...

Then again, I am starting to think Obama baited these morons with the word "empathy" by expecting them to go off the deep end about legislative judges etc....

Few judges have it

But they do have *a little room off the courtroom that locks from the outside, and a bailiff with a gun to make sure that your contemptuous ass goes in with a minimum of fuss...

This is one reason why so few judges feel the need for it.

*My father to a judge who annoyed him: "Your Honor, one hundred dollars does not begin to measure my contempt for this court."

He got to see the room.

What a pompous jerk. Hope they're measure a jail cell for him.

Q: "If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?"

John Yoo: "No treaty."

Q: "Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo..."

John Yoo: "I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."

Fawk Yoo, Yoo fawken fawk.

Conservatives should defend the Supreme Court as a place where cases are decided by a faithful application of the Constitution

This from the man who created the rationale that it's ok for the US Government to torture, despite the fact that courts are ruling against his absurd "interpretation" of the Constitution at every turn.

Conservatives are absolute hypocrites:
Conservative Judicial Empathy? You Betcha!

As a voter she should cast her vote however she wants, we do have a private ballot after all. But it would be nice if as a jurist she does a good job interpreting the constitution. "Faithful application of the constitution" is a ridiculous phrase because interpreting the constitution is the SC's job and any interpretation they reach is de facto constitutional. They don't just make decisions based on nothing but intuition (maybe bush v gore :(), they do try to follow precedent set by prior SC decisions.

It's too bad John Yoo doesn't even know the proper terminology for justices but it's no surprise, he is a bit of an idiot.

The torture guy (with absolutely zero credibility) seriously needs to STFU before someone notices him and hauls him off to The Hague

Who cares what the war criminal thinks. He should be praying for forgiveness for the deaths on his head.