Esquire, May 13, by John H. Richardson
http://www.esquire.com/features/john-yoo-0608
“Torture violates the very premise of the legal system itself, that there is something irreducible and inviolable about every person,” says Yoo’s fellow Berkeley law professor Robert H. Cole. “You can’t write a memo about it the way you would write about snowmobiling in Yosemite.”
Esquire, May 13, by John H. Richardson
http://www.esquire.com/features/john-yoo-0608
But those harsh interrogation techniques migrated straight to Iraq. What about that? “That was definitely not permitted under the decision-making level I was at,” Yoo says. “It was clearly not. The Geneva Conventions fully applied in Iraq…. In World War II, we interned people, tens of thousands of citizens. We tried citizens who were enemy spies under military commissions which had no procedures at all…. We dropped a nuclear weapon on Japan. Waterboarding we think is torture, but it happened to three people. The scale of magnitude is different.”
San Francisco Daily Journal, May 12, by Lawrence Hurley
http://www.dailyjournal.com
Congressional action couldn’t do any harm, Talley suggested. “Shining a light on the practice will act as a deterrent,” he said. Why prosecutors didn’t act sooner in pursuing Milberg Weiss is another key question. “That’s where we want to be spending a lot of our time,” Talley said. “Why wasn’t the Justice Department able to uncover this evidence for such a long period of time?”
National Law Journal, May 12, by Elisabeth Semel
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202421171423
“Politicians like Schwarzenegger have grabbed hold of Baze, proclaimed that it has ended challenges to lethal injection and hope to ride it through a wave of soon-to-be-scheduled executions. Whether they are successful depends on whether lower courts heed, or ignore, the complexities of the court’s seven opinions.”
San Francisco Daily Journal, May 8, by Linda Rapattoni
http://www.dailyjournal.com
“Whatever the bar calls it, $50 over five years is a significant increase, and the bar hasn’t shown any need for it,” he said. “As usual, the bar seems driven primarily by a desire to squeeze more money from its members.”
San Francisco Daily Journal, May 8, by Craig Anderson
http://www.dailyjournal.com
“That’s not what Congress intended to be covered,” said Jason Schultz…. “The patent office is overwhelmed, and it’s hurting innovation. We would benefit so much more not having examiners waste so much time on things that are suspect at best.”
Washington Post, May 7, by Robert Barnes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/06/AR2008050602747_pf.html
“Justice Roberts’ opinion made it clear that one of his ambitions was to make it extremely difficult to obtain stays” for inmates challenging similar systems, said Elisabeth Semel.
San Francisco Daily Journal, May 6, by Laura Ernde
http://www.dailyjournal.com
“[The justices] are showing a level of engagement and interest that I haven’t seen since CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act] was enacted in the 1970s,” said Richard M. Frank…. “Thirty-eight years after the statute took effect, it’s still raising a lot of important and hotly debated issues.”
The Daily Californian, May 6, by Robert MacCoun
http://www.dailycal.org/article/101605/letters_to_the_editor
Mayor Bates’ letter to the federal government may have been right on the merits, and worth writing for that reason, but I would be quite surprised if it helped to influence federal policy toward medical marijuana dispensaries. A letter from Berkeley in favor of medical marijuana simply plays to this administration’s stereotyped “culture wars” framing of the issue.
The Globe and Mail, May 2, by André Picard
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080502.wdrug02/BNStory/National/home
Dr. MacCoun said that Mr. Clement’s critique of Insite “Do safe injection sites contribute to lowering drug use and fighting addiction?” misses the point of harm reduction. He said the project is designed to minimize the harm IV drugs users do to themselves and others, something a law-and-order approach cannot achieve.
The Globe and Mail Editorial, May 5
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080505.weinsite05/BNStory/specialComment/home?cid=al_gam_mostemail
“Taking the facts as presented, a well-executed piece of policy research on a promising innovation was discontinued for unstated but blatant political reasons.”