Universities fire employees for moral turpitude, don't they?

I know it's an old-fashioned way of putting things, and it's vague, and I would be among the first out the door for my dirty mouth, but still and all....

Emptywheel brings us the news (read it all here):

After significant efforts, Senator Whitehouse has finally gotten the Administration to declassify the fourth of the four outrageous opinions John Yoo wrote to justify the warrantless wiretap program (the other three Pixie Dust provisions basically allow the President to write his own laws). This one pertains to the exclusivity provision of FISA, which states clearly that FISA was the "exclusive means by which electronic surveillance ... and the interception of domestic wire, oral and electronic communications may be conducted."

Here's what that purported genius, John Yoo, did with FISA's exclusivity provision:

Unless Congress made a clear statement in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that it sought to restrict presidential authority to conduct warrantless searches in the national security area -- which it has not -- then the statute must be construed to avoid [such] a reading.

The University of California, through its law school, continues to employ Mr. Yoo.

I cannot imagine enabling the Bush administration as a morally neutral action.
--the BB

Questions about the strength of the Duma

Atrios notes that the Secretary of State has made certain recent utterances without any evident awareness of irony.

MOSCOW -
The Russian government under Vladimir Putin has amassed so much central authority that the power-grab may undermine Moscow's commitment to democracy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.

"In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development," Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.

"I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma," said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament.

(Associated Press via Forbes)

Let's run that by one more time: "In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development."

SSJOAS = Sweet Suffering Jesus on a Stick