Torture Memo Guy Alberto Gonzales To Waterboard Students As Law School Dean
Hey, remember that Alberto Gonzales guy? Not the baseball player, the guy who was Skippy Bush's White House Counsel and then later the Attorney General -- had kind of a habit of firing U.S. Attorneys that weren't friendly enough to the Bush Administration, and of course he was kind of big on torture, because it would save America from terrorism? Well, he's about to get what he deserves: not a jail term, silly, he's been named the new Dean of the Law School at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee! So the guy who helped give George W. Bush a legal rationale for torturing detainees is going to be in charge of preparing America's next generation of lawyers. Kind of makes you feel good about the future, doesn't it?
The law school at Belmont is something of a startup, having just opened in 2011, and Gonzales has been the school's chairman since then; he has taught courses in constitutional law, separation of powers, national security law and First Amendment law. He's looking forward to the chance to help build a brand new institution, and to prove that the Geneva Convention does not apply to law school students, as they are not prisoners of war.
In his speech accepting the new position Wednesday, Gonzales said,
“I look forward to being a part of this ... but most of all I look forward to continuing to interact with the students as we all work together collectively to make Belmont the greatest law school that it can be.”
He then added that it's important for a law school dean to "have as many options as possible" to deal with terrorism, and that his goal was to anticipate where the Supreme Court would "draw the balance between the protection of civil liberties and protecting the national security, and in some cases we guessed wrong." Even so, he defended the use of stress positions and sleep deprivation in class exams, noting that they often resulted in vital information for the law school's security, and that most law school students wouldn't notice the difference from their regular study routine anyway.
Asked what his plans were for the future of the law school, particularly faculty hiring decisions, Gonzales replied 120 times that he didn't know.
[ Nashville Tennessean / Slate / Esquire ]
Follow Doktor Zoom on Twitter. He didn't write any torture memos; he only signed them.
"Motorboard?" It that anything like "motor boating?"
I ask for a friend.
When Shrub (thank you, Molly Ivins!) was governor of Texas, and Gonzales the Attorney General, he told Gov. Bush there was no reason to stay the execution of a condemned man who's attorney had fallen asleep several times during his trial. Gonzales assured Gov. Bush the prisoner had received a fair trial.