The prophetic hypocrisy involving John Yoo and Paul Rand.

By prophesy, of course, I meant my blog post yesterday:

"Under the Bush Administration, John Yoo, in his capacity at the DOJ, authored the legal memo that provided clearance to use torture against enemy combatants.  Laws and constitutions are subject to loose interpretations by those who wish to do whatever they want to do.  That is why Holder's explanation did not pass muster -- he literally said that the White House could use drones against Americans if it could find the legal reasoning to do so."

By hypocrisy, I mean today's public comment by John Yoo:

"I admire libertarians but I think Rand Paul's filibuster in many ways is very much what libertarians do, they make these very symbolic gestures, standing for some extreme position."

Yoo's comment sounds like a de minimis derogation, suggesting that Rand Paul's talking filibuster was nothing more than pedestrian.  That seems odd, because not many senators have ever talked over half a day, in the history of the United States.

But how can it be that Yoo mocks those who wish to have a public hearing on the limits of war?!?  Give me a break.  As Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf noted this morning before Yoo's comment:

"His [Rand Paul's] success means that it will be harder for any future president to argue that he or she can kill Americans not engaged in combat. Once I would've thought that unthinkable anyway. Then I watched the Bush Administration institute torture and embrace John Yoo's theories. Now I'll take every specific executive-branch statement of what the law doesn't permit that I can get."

Yoo's response feels like a veiled defense of himself and his role in the torture memos.