Yoo’s View of Thomas -- Consider the Source

Re “Clarence Thomas Is in the Right Seat,” Commentary, Jan. 5: UC Berkeley law professor John C. Yoo’s spirited praise of United States Supreme Court Justice Thomas was certainly a wonder to behold.

It was every bit as admirable as Yoo’s most notable work in the Bush administration’s Department of Justice: his infamous memo advocating American abandonment of the Geneva Convention and permitting the indefinite detention and torture of suspected terrorists.

It was Yoo’s position on the treatment of terrorism suspects that led within a year to the appalling abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay that have outraged FBI agents and military lawyers alike, not to mention the rest of the world, which expects America to live up to the democratic ideals and rule of law we so loudly proclaim.

I fear Yoo is simply the right-handed version of those well-intentioned lefties of the 1920s and 1930s who were so blinded by their ideology that they refused to see the ugly realities the revolution created for the people it was meant to save.

Jim Ouellet

Los Angeles

*

I noticed your hit piece on Supreme Court Justice Thomas (Dec. 31) indicating that he has received far more in gifts over the last six years than any of the other Supreme Court justices. But if you deduct just two of those gifts (a rare Bible and a bust of Abraham Lincoln), he is very much in line with other justices (less than $1,400 per year in gifts received).

There were those who tried to destroy Thomas during his confirmation hearings, and now that he could be a candidate for chief justice, there is a new campaign to smear him, first with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s mean-spirited comments and now with this long and irrelevant article.

David Brisco

Newport Beach