Legal Commentary

Reid Won?t Support Disciplining Bybee

By Jonathan H. Adler

Via How Appealing comes this article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal reporting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid believes Congress should defer to AAG David Margolis resolution of the OPR inquiry into the ?torture memos.?

The Nevada Democrat was ?disturbed? by the memos that gave a green light to CIA interrogators to employ waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects that a range of authorities have declared to be torture, according to a statement. . . .

But Reid, who had supported Bybee for a job at the Justice Department in 2001 and had backed his nomination to become a federal appeals court judge several years later, is standing by an internal review released last week that said the memos by Bybee and colleague John Yoo did not amount to professional misconduct.

?Career officials at the Department of Justice made considered judgments about the content of the memos and the discipline Bybee and Yoo should face, and Senator Reid believes it is appropriate to defer to their final decisions,? spokesman Jon Summers said in an e-mail.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on February 28, 2010 (boomark / email).