PeeeeeeYoo

Last year, I debated John Yoo during a panel discussion at Princeton University. He is an amiable, soft-spoken adversary, whose sole response to one of my questions about torture was: "I enjoy reading Nat Hentoff on jazz."

  Nat Hentoff – Village Voice

I saw Jon Stewart interview John Yoo, and it was impossible to know what Yoo was actually saying. I'm not sure he knows what he's saying. According to Raw Story, ThinkProgress' Ian Millhise had this to say about Yoo.

More recently, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Court held that the President does not have the power to unilaterally set military policy (in those cases with respect to detention); he must comply with statutory limits on his power. Taken together, these and other cases unquestionably establish that Congress has the power to tell the President 'no,' and the President must listen."

"John Yoo is a moral vacuum, but he is also a constitutional law professor at one of the nation’s top law schools and a former Supreme Court clerk," the site added. "It is simply impossible that Yoo is not aware of Little, Hamdi and Hamdan, or that he does not understand what they say. So when John Yoo claims that the President is not bound by Congressional limits, he is not simply ignorant or misunderstanding the law. He is lying."

  Raw Story

The Raw Story article also quotes another Yoo debate with International Human Rights expert Doug Cassel:

Cassel: 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?

Yoo: No treaty.

Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.

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