John Yoo Hired as Monthly Columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer
John Yoo, under fire for writing legal memos approving harsh interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, will now try his hand at writing on a regular basis for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Yoo was hired as a monthly Inquirer columnist late last year, the Philadelphia Daily News reports. The Inquirer’s editorial page editor, Harold Jackson, told the Daily News about the qualities that make Yoo a good columnist: “He’s a Philadelphian, and very knowledgeable about the legal subjects he discusses in his commentaries. Our readers have been able to get directly from Mr. Yoo his thoughts on a number of subjects concerning law and the courts, including measures taken by the White House post-9/11. That has promoted further discourse, which is the objective of newspaper commentary.”
Yoo is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He wrote the memos while working at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, a fact omitted in the bio that runs with his columns, the Philadelphia Weekly reports. Jackson says Inquirer readers are familiar with Yoo’s background—and many of them aren’t happy.
“We get a lot of e-mails—a lot of people have threatened to cancel their subscriptions,” Jackson told Philadelphia Weekly.
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has also covered the controversy over Yoo’s new gig.
