Leaving aside the fact that the only place Bush war criminal John Yoo should be teaching is Ft. Leavenworth, it has particularly irked me (and others) that he’s teaching at UC-Berkeley.  Besides the fact that I attended Berkeley for my public policy degree, the fact that a war criminal was still receiving a state check quite bothered me.

Well, he’s taking a break from the state paycheck to move on up to Chapman Law School:

In Berkeley, city leaders branded him a war criminal and human rights activists put up a billboard to denounce him. But in suburban Orange County, Professor John Yoo — the primary architect of the Bush administration’s policy on harsh interrogation techniques that many consider torture — has found relatively calmer waters.

Yoo is a visiting professor at Chapman University School of Law in Orange, on leave from his tenured post at UC Berkeley to teach foreign relations law.(LAT 2/11/09)

Look, I’m all for academic freedom, but academic freedom has nothing to do with John Yoo’s crimes.  John Yoo is a man that found it acceptable to write legal opinions that provided a patina of legitimacy for waterboarding and other methods of torture. But, as Americans, there is no place for torture, and Yoo knew that.  Yoo knew and understood the spirit of the Geneva Convention, yet ignored it.

With all the talk of truth commissions concerning the Bush administration’s crimes, I am reminded of the truth commissions in South Africa.  Where an attorney stood up and admit what they did. Yet like those South African apartheid era officials, the Bush administration continues to point blame and excuse themselves.  Ever the victims, never the perpetrators.

I can only hope that John Yoo chooses to forever leave Berkeley, and is someday arrested and convicted of his crimes. Until then, I’ll just have to comfort myself knowing that he left one of the finest legal institutions, for, well, Clarence Thomas’ Cast-off U.