DOJ Review Finds No Misconduct by Memo Authors (New York Times ). The egregious misconduct of Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two DOJ attorneys under Bush, who essentially green-lighted the Bush administration’s torture practices by some legal sleight-of-hand, should have lost them their licenses, as an earlier DOJ review had established. But it has been overruled by a new finding by a senior DOJ lawyer that it was merely ‘bad judgment’. As you know, Obama has already proclaimed that CIA interrogators who relied on the memo to guide their interrogation practices will not be prosecuted, save for ongoing criminal investigations into a handful of cases in which prisoners died during interrogation.

President Obama campaigned on a pledge to abolish waterboarding but left it open whether there would be consequences to the Bush torturers. I would love to get an insider’s views on the wheeling and dealing that must have happened in the back rooms of Washington to make this one go away. In my opinion, ceding the moral high ground on this one ought not to be an acceptable price paid in the interest of bipartisanship! Senator Patrick Leahy is not amused, however, and plans to conduct hearings on the matter next week.