Yoo lashes out at Obama nominee [View All]

[Kadie]

Yoo lashes out at Obama nominee
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, February 22, 2010


(02-22) 16:52 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo, fighting a suit by a prisoner who accuses him of approving unlawful detention and torture, is taking aim at his detractors, including President Obama's nominee to head the office where Yoo once worked.

In papers filed Friday with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Yoo's attorney dismissed the UC Berkeley law professor's critics as uninformed academics or Democrats with political axes to grind.

One of his targets was Dawn Johnsen, an Indiana University law professor nominated by Obama in January 2009 to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president on legal issues.

Republicans and a few Democrats in the Senate have held up her confirmation because of her work for an abortion-rights group and her criticism of the office's approval of interrogation methods under President George W. Bush.

Johnsen, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under President Bill Clinton, has written that Yoo's memos approving waterboarding and other painful interrogation practices violated legal standards and the office's tradition of impartial advice.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/22/BAPH1C5G70.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0gJjj9jz5