6 Highlights From John Yoo's Interview With Ginni Thomas

The always quotable John Yoo had interesting and funny things to say during a recent interview he gave to Virginia Lamp Thomas (wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, for whom Professor Yoo once clerked).

Professor John Choon Yoo, the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at Berkeley Law, is one of the nation’s most controversial legal academics. He acquired his fame — or infamy, depending on your point of view — for his authorship of the so-called “Torture Memos,” written when he served in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during George W. Bush’s presidential administration.

Despite his reputation in liberal circles as the embodiment of evil, Professor Yoo is thoughtful, charming, and funny in person. You can see this in his recent conversation with Virginia Lamp Thomas, the prominent conservative commentator who’s married to Justice Clarence Thomas (for whom John Yoo once clerked). Here’s how Professor Yoo himself described the interview:

What do you do when you have an interview with the boss’s wife?! I talk with Ginni Lamp Thomas​ of the Daily Caller about what it’s like for a conservative to live in Berkeley (how much rent do protesters pay to store my effigy), Obama’s attack on the separation of powers, and the rising dangers to our national security.

I watched the full interview and picked out some of Professor Yoo’s most quotable comments. Here he is on living in Berkeley:

It’s fun living in Berkeley! I like living with liberals…. Liberals are great at cooking food, making handcrafted items — I just don’t want them to be in charge of running anything. But in terms of daily life, it’s great to have gourmet meals made by liberals and fine handcrafted espressos made by liberals. It’s wonderful to live with them; I just don’t want them to be in charge of anything.

On being a scourge of the left:

There’s one protestor who has a gigantic paper-mache of my head and I was thinking, ‘Where do you keep that when it’s not being used for the protests? You must have this basement with this huge space that’s taken up by my head. Do you have to pay rent for that? How much do you have to pay every month just to store my head?’ To me it seems incredibly funny. Sometimes I worry that we conservatives have thin skins and let the protestors get to us. But I actually find them incredibly amusing and funny.

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On the Obama Administration and the rule of law:

The reason the Obama Administration is undermining the rule of law is because, think about it: we’re coming into a world where whether the law is applied to you or not is up to the president. It’s by fiat or waiver whether you have to obey the law or not. So take immigration or health care or education and welfare laws. These are all laws that the executive branch is not applying as they were written by Congress and signed by a president. Instead the president is saying, ‘Well, I’m going to apply these laws here and those laws there, and it’s because I feel like it — it’s not because I feel the same people should be treated in the same way.’

On what the Obama Administration and Superman have to do with each other:

I sometimes call the Obama presidency the “Bizarro World” presidency. So in Superman, there’s “Bizarro World,” where everything is the reverse of the way it is in the real world…. Obama’s view of the presidency is the reverse or mirror image of the Framers’ presidency. He wants the president to be weak abroad, he wants the country to pull back, and he wants the president to be the dominant power in domestic affairs.

On where Congress has ceded power to the presidency — and the role of the courts in separation-of-powers battles:

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The appointments power and the appropriations power are two great powers that the Senate could have used and they have ceded. Even just one small thing, remember recess appointments. President Obama stacked the National Labor Relations Board — he used to work on labor issues — that’s a very powerful agency. President Obama said the Senate was in recess when it was actually open for business, appointed who he liked without any Senate confirmation as required by the Constitution…. The senators in the Republican Party did not retaliate by saying, ‘Well, as long as those guys are in office, we aren’t going to confirm anybody to any office.’ Instead they sued President Obama — which is fine, but they should have [handled it] themselves. The courts sometimes give the people and Congress an easy out, to say ‘we’re doing something bout it,’ but without really doing something.

On his life after his controversial role in the Bush Administration:

For most people, the only thing I’ve done since then has be on the Jon Stewart Show — where I ‘cleaned up,’ and it’s a good thing he’s retiring because he doesn’t want a rematch! Actually he said I was the only conservative guest who has ever beaten him. All these students of mine sent me the clip where he said that I had actually beaten him on the show…. The younger generation in school now, that’s all they know about me: ‘Hey, I saw you on the Jon Stewart Show.’

But there’s much more to Professor Yoo than that. Check out the complete interview for his views on immigration, Iran, and other hot-button issues.

Legal Expert: Obama Is ‘Undermining The Rule Of Law’ [VIDEO] [Daily Caller]
Sunday Leaders: John Yoo [YouTube]
Intro – John Yoo Interview Reflections [The Daily Show with Jon Stewart]