A Man Who Justified Torture Is Worried About Trum

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A Man Who Justified Torture Is Worried About Trump
What does that tell you?

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(Now, HuffPost has updated to note that Jason Miller says Frank Gaffney is not on the transition team. I believe the transition team's message calendar looks like the inside of Russell Crowe's shack in A Beautiful Mind.)

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BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
NOV 16, 2016

You have to wonder just how far from its best self the United States has wandered when one of the nation's leading war criminals is nervous about the incoming administration.

From Foreign Policy:

"He thinks all kinds of crazy things about prosecutions," said John Yoo, a Berkeley law professor who, while serving at DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel in 2002 and 2003, helped write legal justifications for aggressive interrogation methods that critics call torture.

Those memos have since been rescinded. "I don't think he has a very good sense of how our law enforcement system works," Yoo told Foreign Policy.

The proponent for theoretical prepubescent ball crushing thinks El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago is an ignoramus and a threat to the rule of law. Let that roll around in your head for a while. Get up from the floor only when you feel it's safe for you to stand.

For myself, every day that I wake up and discover that the name of some notorious atrocity serial killer hasn't been floated for Surgeon General, I feel temporarily relieved. Then, I open the other eye.

The latest from Camp Runamuck in Manhattan seems to indicate that Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the president-elect, is now the straw boss of the larval regime.

It has been reported by various people that Kushner has purged from the inner circle anyone who was in any way friendly to Chris Christie who, as U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, sent Kushner's pappy to the federal sneezer for a spell, partly because Kushner's pere had gotten back at his brother-in-law by setting the poor sap up with a pricey woman of the town.

In short, the transition team of a president-elect who already has demonstrated a jones for reckless revenge is now being run by a guy who has made a life's work of reckless revenge against anyone who helped send his father up the river for an act of…reckless revenge.

This is no longer a political operation. It's a Sergio Leone film.

As a result of the purge, Mike Rogers is out, and Frank Gaffney is in, and Frank Gaffney is notable for the fact that he is so bullgoose loony that he was refused a gig at CPAC, the annual extremist hootenanny. HuffPost was kind enough to catalog Frank Gaffney 's greatest hits:

In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Gaffney suggested that then-President Saddam Hussein had been involved in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, committed by Timothy McVeigh.

When President Barack Obama nominated Elena Kagan to serve on the Supreme Court in 2010, Gaffney accused her of being soft on Sharia during her time as dean of Harvard Law School.

His group financed an ad that asked, "If Kagan tolerates promoting the injustice of Sharia law on the campus of Harvard, what kind of injustice will she tolerate in America during a lifetime on the Supreme Court?"

In 2009, Gaffney questioned whether Obama was America's first Muslim president or simply playing one. "The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich," Gaffney wrote.

In 2010, Gaffney accused Obama of dismantling American missile defense capability in an act of U.S. submission to Islam. He cited a "new" Missile Defense Agency logo as evidence, suggesting that the logo appeared to be a combination of Obama's campaign symbol and the Islamic crescent and star.

He later corrected that post, acknowledging that the logo was neither new nor produced under Obama's direction. (Below see the older logo on the left, which the Missile Defense Agency still uses as well, and the newer logo on the right.)

(Now, HuffPost has updated to note that Jason Miller says Frank Gaffney is not on the transition team. I believe the transition team's message calendar looks like the inside of Russell Crowe's shack in A Beautiful Mind.)

That said, what I wish everyone covering this unfolding fiasco would do is chill for a couple of days with the "X is under consideration for Y" stories. I've have seen four names floated in three days for Attorney General.

Needless to say, all of them were appalling. (Kris Kobach simply cannot be allowed to assume the powers of that office. If the Senate Democrats are looking for a hill to die on, a Kobach nomination would be a good one.)

But, at this point, the president-elect is just as likely to appoint Omarosa as he is anyone else. (As Himself tweeted on Tuesday night, he's the only one who knows who the "finalists" are.

Finalists? The swimsuit competition between Giuliani, Carson, and Bolton must have been a sight to see.) Relax, folks. The actual parade of horribles will come in due time.

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