If You, Too, Have Never Heard of Jay Bybee

In the attached article from Slate.com, published on April 24, Frank Bowman argues that the Congress of the United States may not be able to impeach Judge Jay Bybee from his seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Mr. Bowman's article is rather well written and cogently argued, but my first question was: Who the Hell is Jay Bybee?

It turns out the Judge Bybee was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department for some years, and was, therefore, responsible for, if he did not actually write, some of the infamous "torture memos." A man who is in favor of torture should not, some argue, be in charge of the administration of justice. It would make a lot of people feel a whole lot better to punish someone for advocating torture.

However, Mr. Bowman makes a good case that you can only impeach a Federal judge for misconduct on the bench. So, unless Mr. Bybee is caught taking bribes, or starts assigning cases only to lawyers with whom he has an arrangement, he may spend the rest of his life hearing cases in San Francisco.

Actually, considering just how conservative Mr. Bybee must be, having been assigned to the famous 9th Circuit may be punishment enough. Just think how badly he's going to feel when he has to rule that gay married couples are entitled to the same tax deductions as their heterosexual counterparts.