Yoo’s answer: “No treaty,” and depending on the president’s belief at the time, no law.

It is similar legal opinions that have made John Yoo one of the most vilified lawyers in America. Yoo’s resumé from his tenure in the White House Office of Legal Counsel reads like a list of bullet points of the most widely criticized policies of Bush’s presidency. It was Yoo who provided the legal backbone to strip enemy combatants of Geneva Convention protections. It was Yoo who validated Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. It was Yoo who argued that the president was not subject to the War Crimes Act. And most notably, it was Yoo who authored a slew of memos deeming waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques legal.

For his actions, Yoo has been pilloried by the left as a sadistic tyrant who eviscerated the Constitution. The U.S. Justice Department has recommended his disbarment. He has been sued by the mother of U.S. detainee Jose Padilla, and officials in both Spain and Germany have brought war crimes charges against him.

Will Bunch Teaches John Yoo a Lesson About Appropriate Public Discourse

For these reasons, one might think Yoo’s prospects for future employment were dim. However, his past didn’t stop the Philadelphia Inquirer – Yoo’s hometown newspaper – from hiring the controversial lawyer to write a monthly column. Yoo’s writings, published under the headline “Closing Arguments,” are primarily about law. His most recent column argued against President Obama’s assertion that he will appoint a new Supreme Court justice who uses empathy in the courtroom.

Before serving in the Bush administration, Yoo served as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His vast legal scholarship focused on U.S. foreign relations, international law and the Constitution’s separation of powers. He also wrote two books on foreign affairs and the War on Terror. Yoo even had a short stint as journalist; he spent a summer interning at The Wall Street Journal between college and law school. But for Will Bunch, a writer for The Philadelphia Daily News, Yoo’s credentials don’t make the cut for columnist material.

In a scathing blog post, Bunch harshly criticized the decision to hire Yoo. “As an American citizen, I am still reeling from the knowledge that our government tortured people in my name,” Bunch said. “As a journalist, the fact that my byline and John Yoo’s are now rolling off the same printing press is adding insult to injury.”

As a journalist and an American citizen, I couldn’t disagree more. The Philadelphia Inquirer has voiced an editorial opinion against harsh interrogation techniques; the fact that it would hire a law scholar who holds the opposite viewpoint is a testament to its commitment to promoting a marketplace of ideas. Too often, newspapers abandon rigorous discourse on the opinion page for an echo chamber of rants. Harold Jackson, the opinion editor of the Inquirer, said the paper has been adding more conservative columnists to provide ideological balance. “It means we aren’t afraid to let people hear what the other side has to say,” Jackson said. “We think most of our readers aren’t afraid, either.”

I wish Jackson was correct, but unfortunately many Americans don’t want discourse that challenges their belief structure. They’d rather write Yoo off as a sadistic yahoo and argue for his removal from the Inquirer than actually hear the basis for his political philosophy.

Bunch argues that the inclusion of Yoo in the Inquirer’s editorial page is another example of what he calls “on one hand, on the other hand journalism,” a practice in which newspapers provide equal time and authority to ideas regardless of their merits. This observation makes the grossly inaccurate assumption that Bunch or the staff of the Inquirer are the only ones qualified to pass judgment on the complexity of Yoo’s legal memos – they aren’t. However, Yoo is eminently qualified to provide a conservative interpretation of executive power and international law.

To suggest that editors at the Philadelphia Inquirer should make a moral judgment to prohibit discussions about legal issues and accordingly exclude Yoo’s voice for the paper is absurd. And to drape what is clearly an attempt in political censorship under the guise of patriotism is not only disingenuous, but a complete bastardization of what a free press is intended to provide.

Let me make this crystal clear: I don’t agree with what John Yoo has to say, but I find his opinions nowhere near as detestable as those who seek to muzzle him because he doesn’t fulfill their standard of appropriate speech. To remove Yoo would sully the history of debate that has made newspapers such a vibrant and important part of American culture. As someone who believes in the promise of journalism, I simply cannot tolerate that.

This column was printed in the Oregon Daily Emerald on May 18.  Props to Patrick Finney for the illustration.

Related Post:  John Yoo is Not a Nice Guy, Especially When He’s Filling Your Coffin With Insects

According to Ziegler, he was initially going to demonstrate at the event, but then decided to cover it as a journalist.  USC officials had marked off a specific area behind a barricade for him to protest, and refused to let Ziegler in the event.  According to USC,  only press that had been approved by nominees was allowed.

In the full video, which is embedded below, Ziegler is being annoying and dramatic, but he is never confrontational with police, school officials or attendees.  In fact, he makes it abundantly clear that his intention is to cover the event as a journalist and to ask critical (and annoying) questions about whether or not Couric is worthy of  an award.

Ziegler points out, correctly, that there is a tremendous irony in a journalist at an award ceremony for journalistic excellence being banned from covering the event.  Though USC is a private university, it has a commitment to safeguarding dissent.  It’s clear from the footage that it wasn’t Ziegler’s actions, but his politics that got him removed.  In a lengthy blog post, Ziegler wrote

In effect, I was being punished, repressed, and physically harmed as a form of prior restraint because they anticipated that I might do something to disrupt the proceedings based on my prior writings and commentary on the event (in which I never claimed I would do anything more than exactly what I tried to; give away copies of my film as an educational exercise).

Though he’s a bit self righteous, he’s correct, and it’s shameful that USC’s journalism school had such a primitive response to the incident. Dean Ernest Wilson claimed in his statement that the Annenberg School of Communication has a “powerful and evident commitment to protecting and promoting freedom of expression and the rights of the press,” but what was truly evident is that USC isn’t interested in tolerating journalists who are a bit kooky, very critical and a threat to their mid-afternoon toast to Katie C.

Over at the Huff-Po, brainiac John Wellington Ennis wrote a blog post entitled, “Does the First Amendment Protect Someone From Being a Dumbass” in which he assailed Zielger’s character for not showing “respect and tact,” while peppering him with childish insult after insult.

Ziegler shot right back with a Huff Post blog entry of his own, contradicting Ennis’s claims one by one(or at least the one’s that didn’t already contradict each other.)

The bottom line is John Zielger is a guy with a pretty mediocre film about something that is indisputable:  The media did an abhorrent job providing coverage during the election.  He’s no genius and I disregard much of what he says, but he should be able to critically question the work of Katie Couric without ending up in handcuffs. The fact that he can’t exposes the fragility of unpopular speech in one of the places it should be valued most.