-U.S. News & World Report, February 18, 2010 by Alex Kingsbury
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2010/02/18/john-yoo-defends-torture-memo-blasts-bush-administration.html

The American people would have thought differently about our opinions if they had known about the al Qaeda plots that were disrupted and the people who were captured, information that could only have been gathered through interrogation.

-The New York Times, February 19, 2010 by Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/us/politics/20justice.html

Mr. Yoo denied that the White House or the Central Intelligence Agency, which had requested the legal opinion, had exerted any pressure on him in his legal findings. “I don’t think of them as being particularly aggressive,” Mr. Yoo said, adding, “I had never felt that anybody was pushing us in one direction or another.”

-NPR, February 23, 2010 Host Neal Conan
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124007547

We had to do that job in an area where the law was written in very vague terms. The statute contained no examples of what was prohibited, interrogation methods that were close to the line. And there were very few judicial precedents, almost none at the time.

The New York Times, February 13, 2010 by Daniel Weintraub
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/us/14sfpolitics.html?scp=1&sq=Berkeley&st=cse

Mr. Yoo attributes the demand to the unusual nature of the course, which allows students to exercise their legal creativity. “There is no right answer,” he said.

-Real Clear Politics, February 7, 2010 Host Fareed Zakaria
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/07/interview_with_john_yoo_on_the_treatment_of_detainees_100213.html

I think, actually, a lot of the confusion in the foreign policy community, in the United States and other countries, is that for the first time we’ve confronted this kind of enemy, and we’re actually trying to develop a regime of legal rules that actually apply to them.

-The New York Times, February 10, 2010 by Adam Liptak
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/us/11law.html

Allowing any sort of contributions to terrorist organizations “simply because the donor intends that they be used for ‘peaceful’ purposes directly conflicts with Congress’s determination that no quarantine can effectively isolate ‘good’ activities from the evil of terrorism.”

-The Oakland Tribune, February 11, 2010 by Elizabeth Pfeffer
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_14385653

Yoo’s response to accusations that he provided the Bush administration with justifications for using torture has been that he only set the limits of what would be crossing the line. That line, according to Yoo, can be interpreted differently by the president depending on national security.

-San Mateo Daily Journal, February 12, 2010 by Bill Silverfarb
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=124970

“I have no problem debating people who disagree with me. That’s how you determine what is right, ultimately,” Yoo told the Daily Journal.

-San Francisco Chronicle, January 16, 2010 by Carolyn Lochhead
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/16/MNA51BIQN7.DTL&type=printable

“The law doesn’t compel anyone to make any policy decision,” Yoo said. “The war in Iraq was legal. That doesn’t compel the choice to go to war.”

-NPR, All Things Considered, January 19, 2010 Host Madeleine Brand
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734173

“You look at who most scholars think are our greatest presidents, men like Washington, Lincoln and FDR. These are presidents who were no shrinking violets. They embraced their power. They used their powers vigorously to attack the challenges of their day often, or sometimes, in direct conflict with the Congress and the Supreme Court. ”

-KGO AM 810, January 20, 2010 Host Gil Gross
http://www.kgoam810.com/Article.asp?id=1667684&nId=15&spid=25697

“We were less than a year after 9/11 and the government had captured … people who really planned and executed the 9/11 attacks themselves and were responsible for planning other future Al Qaeda attacks. And the government, the CIA, came to the justice department and the White House and said, ‘What can we do that’s legal?'”

-The New York Times, January 21, 2010 by Walter Isaacson
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/books/review/Isaacson-t.html

As the United States entered a semipermanent state of national emergency, marked by multiple wars and boosts in defense spending, power naturally flowed to the presidency, Yoo writes. The cold war brought forth one of the framers’ great fears, a large standing army in peacetime.

-The Washington Post, January 10, 2010 by Jack Rakove
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/08/AR2010010801498.html

The great lesson of this past decade of misrule has been that our system works best when all three institutions are fully engaged. However much we celebrate the heroic presidents, Americans, as a people, have a stake in seeing the whole government achieve its potential. Yet what Yoo forces us to confront is the reality of all the striking advantages the executive enjoys. It is, in its way, an enticing portrait of presidential power—and a disturbing one.

-The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, January 11, 2010 Host Jon Stewart
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-january-11-2010/john-yoo-pt–1

“In the end, it is still good for us to have the President able to make those good decisions, even at the cost of sometimes having Presidents who make the bad ones. It’s worth it to our system to be able to have a Lincoln or an FDR, even if the price is to have someone like a Nixon…. I think that’s part of the price we have to have in our system in order to be able to respond quickly to terrible challenges to the country.”

-Forbes, January 15, 2010 by Peter Robinson
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/14/john-yoo-national-security-afghanistan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html

As Yoo argues in the masterful new book he has just published, Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush, the Founders intended the authority of the chief executive to remain flexible. “The president’s powers are meant to fluctuate,” Yoo explained, “expanding in emergencies then retracting in peacetime.”

-The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2010 by Arthur Herman
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703436504574641210437351786.html#printMode

Crisis and Command is a carefully argued historical survey of the evolution of presidential power, particularly the power to make war. The book reveals how the Bush war on terror, far from overstepping constitutional bounds, was rooted in a tradition that reaches back to George Washington himself.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 10, 2010 by John Yoo
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/81082822.html

Has the Obama administration retarded the integration of information by our intelligence agencies out of a touchiness for civil liberties? Some of the administration’s political appointees had attacked the Bush administration’s terrorist policies on exactly such grounds.

The New York Times, December 29, 2009 by Deborah Solomon
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/magazine/03fob-q4-t.html?scp=9&sq=Berkeley&st=nyt

“The idea is that the president’s power grows and changes based on circumstances, and that’s what the framers of the Constitution wanted. They wanted it to exist so the president could react to crises immediately.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 20, 2009 by John Yoo
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/79743207.html

When Obama decided to boost troop levels in Afghanistan, he did not go to Congress on bended knee…. If Obama succeeds in bringing the nation through Iraq and Afghanistan, and destroys al-Qaeda, he will have drawn on the same wellsprings of presidential power that sustained Washington, Lincoln, and FDR.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 22, 2009 by John Yoo
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20091122_Closing_Arguments__No_clear_benefit_to_holding_9_11_trial_in_New_York.html

It certainly doesn’t help those who are already protected by the Bill of Rights and can be tried in civilian courts. If anything, their rights are at risk, not just by a failure to convict terrorists who killed almost 3,000 people, but by the inevitable judicial compromises that must balance the requirements of a fair public trial with the demands of protecting wartime secrets. Those compromises will no longer be limited to the special context of military courts in wartime, but will become part of the law that governs all Americans.