Will Bunch:Because Yoo's working arrangement with the Inquirer was never formally announced, even people who work here at 400 North Broad Street, the home of the Daily News and Inquirer,weren't immediately aware (myself included) that Yoo was now a regular columnist, joining an increasingly rightward-tilting lineup that also includes the likes ex-Sen. Rick Santorum (at $1,750 a pop), Michael Smerconish, a moderate Republican who is also a forceful advocate for torture, Kevin Ferris and others. Indeed, the buzz about Yoo only started growing louder this weekend, after the man who put his John Hancock on the practice of waterboarding now attacked President Barack Obama for seeking "empathy" in a Supreme Court justice (at least Yoo is consistent in his lack of empathy).
Bunch wrote editorial page editor Harold Jackson with a few simple questions, "What exactly was Yoo's arrangement with the Inquirer, how much is he paid, and how much weight -- if any -- did the editors give to the notion they were awarding a regular column who's been accused of unethical lawyering by some, and war crimes by others? How does Yoo's hiring jibe with the Inquirer's editorial stance against the interrogation practices of the Bush administration?"
Jackson's response was basically, "None of your beeswax."
John Yoo has written freelance commentaries for The Inquirer since 2005, however he entered into a contract to write a monthly column in late 2008. I won't discuss the compensation of anyone who writes for us. Of course, we know more about Mr. Yoo's actions in the Justice Department now than we did at the time we contracted him. But we did not blindly enter into our agreement. He's a Philadelphian, and very knowledgeable about the legal subjects he discusses in his commentaries. Our readers have been able to get directly from Mr. Yoo his thoughts on a number of subjects concerning law and the courts, including measures taken by the White House post-9/11. That has promoted further discourse, which is the objective of newspaper commentary.
I suppose you could say that "the objective of newspaper commentary" is to promote "further discourse," but that only makes sense when there's a difference of opinion. What Yoo and Santorum and the rest are publishing is bullshit. There's no difference of opinion on whether or not torture is legal -- Yoo's memos are bullshit. Like they say, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but no one gets their own set of facts. What this does is debase the discourse, by giving the bullshit artists equal weight as the people relying on facts. Never mind that Yoo stands a good chance of being disbarred, he's a bigtime legal expert for the Philadelphia Inquirer now.
There are a lot of things we could use newspaper commentary to promote the discourse of -- how about Holocaust denial or whether NASA faked the moon landing? If you're going to pay people to lie on the op-ed page, why not those liars as well? There's some nazi out there who could really use the cash, I'm sure. And I'm also sure they'd be just as good at writing legal and historical fiction as John Yoo.
