Bush Admin’s Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007

The Bush administration’s dumbest legal arguments of the year. – By Dahlia Lithwick

The Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free. In that spirit, it seemed an opportune moment to commemorate the administration’s worst legal justifications and arguments of the year. And so I humbly offer this new year’s roundup: The Bush Administration’s Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.

{en:Dahlia Lithwick|Dahlia Lithwick’s} article provides a nice round up of some of the most bizarre ‘legal’ justifications for its behavior in 2007.

• The NSA’s eavesdropping was limited in scope
• Scooter Libby’s sentence was commuted because it was excessive
• The vice president’s office is not a part of the executive branch
• The Guantanamo Bay detainees enjoy more legal rights than any prisoners of war in history
• Water-boarding may not be torture
• Everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege
• Nine U.S. attorneys were fired by nobody, but for good reason
• Alberto Gonzales (Yes, he gets his own spot on the list for multiple reasons)
• State secrets
• The United States does not torture

The full story at over at Slate is well worth reading.