Yoo’s criticism of President Clinton somewhat mirror those of many of us who criticized President Bush for signing McCain-Feingold when he thought it unconstitutonal.

If President Clinton thought War Powers applied then he should have abided by it. I think Mr. Yoo believes that Mr. Clinton was well within his rights as President to act as he did – Mr. Yoo just wishes Mr. Clinton would have expressed similar thoughts.

If this makes me an enabler, so be it.

Covert hypocrisy is what Yoo preaches: applying a different standard to like things, criticizing one while praising the other, but pretending to the same standard.

Overt hypocrisy, by contrast, treats like things differently, but does so accompanied by the frank admission that one is not applying the same standard. For example, a person could say (and I’m not defending this!), “yes, both Christianity and Islam have led to much bloodshed, but I am only going to criticize Islam because I think it is a false religion.” Or a person could say (and I’m not defending this, either!), “yes, both women and blacks have been discriminated against in the job market, but I’m not a woman, so I’m not going to worry about gender-discrimination.”

Personally, because I value consistency, I rarely find double standards compelling, difficult to avoid though they may be. But I find overt hypocrisy far less troubling, perhaps even noble in its way, because at least it makes plain the hypocrite’s axiology of moral values, thereby allowing us to judge those values for ourselves. The covert hypocrite, by contrast, tries to take the moral high ground by claiming to defend a general moral principle (i.e., a principle that applies with equal force in all like cases), even though he is actually using that moral principle as nothing more than a rhetorical tool to promote his partisan agenda — thereby denying us the ability to judge the soundness of the his axiology (Christianity over Islam; blacks over women) for ourselves.

Dead on, DH.

It matters not if Yoo was for, against, or ignorant of what we argue is the morally right (or legally right, or politically preferable) stance, during the Clinton years.

What matters more is that he was morally wrong (and legally wrong, and politically idiotic, and pragmatically foolish, and etc. etc.) when it counted, when the stress hit, when he had a chance to make a difference instead of just complaining.

I blame him not for his hypocrisy, but for his failure. His failure to be a good lawyer. His failure to be diligent, honest, and self-critical. His failure to be a no-man, instead of a yes-man. That he defends himself today is not wrong. He can and should; maybe others, if not Yoo, will learn something from it.

But let it not be said that his hypocrisy, or lack thereof, is any defense to his ineptitude and moral failings.

Shame on him, and shame on those who enabled him.

And I’ll nominate Stephenson’s Snow Crash as a fantastic book, though the skewering he got in TNR’s review of his latest stuff suggests that his move into history is ill-advised!