Ashcroft would not comment directly on the 2002 departmental memo that laid out a rationale in which the president was not necessarily bound by anti-torture laws or treaties because of his authority as commander in chief to protect national security.

and

The attorney general said the policy memo on this issue would not be made available to the committee, however. And Ashcroft said that while he respected the constitutional right of Congress to ask questions, "there are certain things that, in the interest of the executive branch operating effectively, that I think it is inappropriate for the attorney general to say."

I knew you could.

Yes, that's a very informative article - and matches, pretty much word for word, the reports I heard on NPR and the NBC Evening News. But it includes something I haven't heard elsewhere yet:

Mary Ellen O'Connell, a professor of international law at Ohio State University who has seen the draft paper, called its arguments unconvincing.

"In every case it finds defenses, narrower readings of that statute, or justifications that allow torture in a wide variety of circumstances," she said. "The legal analysis is weak."

So who, now, constitutes the Coalition of Weasels?