Just as new details emerged on Monday, August 24 of CIA interrogators' abuse of prisoners involving mock executions, threatening prisoners with power drills, and choking them to the point of passing out, Associate Law Professor Robert Delahunty quietly resumed teaching fall classes on constitutional law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. Delahunty along with co-author John Yoo at the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) laid the cornerstone legal memo that gave the green light to "go to the dark side" as Dick Cheney was urging. The 2004 CIA Inspector General report is heavily redacted but it's apparently so disturbing that it led Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on this very same day to appoint a prosecutor-the same one looking at the destruction of the CIA torture tapes-to review the abuses, setting the stage for a probe that could lead to criminal charges of CIA personnel.
There hasn't been much news lately about Minnesota's foremost proponent of torture, Robert Delahunty. He's infamous for co-authoring the notorious torture memo with John Yoo. Delahunty is probably enjoying his summer break from the University of St. Thomas Law School where is he a tenured professor. However, I came across this list from After Downing Street of the top 50 US War Criminals. They list Delahunty as #2.
1. John Yoo: Professor of Law at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, California, with house at 1241 Grizzly Peak Blvd., Berkeley, (but a lawyer with the Pennsylvania bar from which he should be disbarred and would be if enough people demanded it) counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, wrote this memo promoting presidential power to launch aggressive war, and claimed the power to decree that the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming, and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war, and to announce a new definition of torture limiting it to acts causing intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result. Yoo claimed in 2005 that a president has the right to enhance an interrogation by crushing the testicles of someone's child. Yoo has been confronted in his classroom: video, and defended by the Washington Post, and again confronted in the classroom.
Additional collaborators:
2. Robert J. Delahunty, Yoo colleague, should be disbarred in NY
3. Patrick F. Philbin, Yoo colleague, Deputy, should be disbarred in D.C. and MA
(Most excellent, someone else writing about MN's foremost proponent of torture ... - promoted by The Big E)
A move has been started by several progressive organizations called "DisBar the Dirty Dozen",
calling for the disbarment of the lawyers who wrote and authorized the torture memos, which authorized waterboarding and other torture techniques legally accountable for their actions.
They have reported 12 attorneys to the Washington, D.C. Bar and 4 state bar ethics panels.
Interesting enough, University of St. Thomas Law Professor Robert Delahunty, who co-authored the torture memo, "'Application of Treaties and Laws to Al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees", along with John Yoo, who is now a Professor of Law at University of California - Berkeley http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...
was not on the list of 12 attorneys, who were reported to their State Bar Ethics Panels.
Two questions: 1. Should Professor Delahunty be reported for ethics violations as the 12 other lawyers have been and 2. If he were reported, would the State Ethics Panel fully and fairly investigate the matter?
