By Patrick Appel
Jack Balkin:
This report is the beginning of a necessary process of bringing to light repeated abuses condoned or encouraged at the very highest levels of government. I doubt that any of the top officials who encouraged or approved these practices will ever be criminally prosecuted, in part because of the immunity granted by the infamous Military Commissions Act of 2006 and in part because the Office of Legal Counsel was repeatedly employed to justify the Administration’s detention and interrogation practices in the equally infamous Torture Memos. People relying on OLC advice will likely have strong defenses under the criminal law, even though the OLC’s advice giving capacities were corrupted during the Bush Administration precisely to allow the Administration to do whatever it wanted in this area.
The Dish 