One meta-point about the OLC memos. Wouldn’t it have been clarifying if the Washington Post could have written about Bush’s legal theories this bluntly while he was in office?

I suppose I can construct an argument whereby the Post could use the term "errors" now and not before because Steve Bradbury conceded that the Yoo-era memos were dubious. But it wouldn’t be a strong one: just because Bradbury rejected the memos doesn’t mean, prima facie, that Yoo’s reasoning is worse than Bradbury’s. (Stay with me here.) All I mean to say is that there’s no consistent journalistic reason to adjudicate a legal dispute — when one side is so clearly wrong — after the malefactors have left power. One might call that a cop-out.