It used to be that reading the New York Times was not like reading HP Lovecraft.

Now, they make the man who is arguably the greatest horror writer of the 20th century (at least the first half) look like a piker, as in this New York Times magazine article. You should read it for yourself, but here are the high (low?) points in this article about former Bush administration official and major right wing legal scholar Jack Goldsmith, and his new book The Terror Presidency.:

• That the administration unecessarily took a broad “go it alone” view toward executive power.
• Legal decisions were not made at DoJ, but by the White House Council (Gonzalez), and the general counsel of the Defense Department.
• These policies, and the policy making process were so out of line that it honked off John Ashcroft.
• In response to a fairly straightforward legal opinion, Goldsmith’s assisistant said, “They’re going to be really mad. They’re not going to understand our decision. They’ve never been told no.”
• In response to this decision, David Addington, then Vice President Cheney’s legal adviser and now his chief of staff “You cannot question his decision“.
• Addington later confronted him and said, “If you rule that waythe blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands.” (Have I mentioned that these people are really paranoid nuts?)
• He felt compelled to resign immediately after issuing a more restrictive interrogation policy, “So he made a strategic decision: on the same day that he withdrew the opinion, he submitted his resignation, effectively forcing the administration to choose between accepting his decision and letting him leave quietly, or rejecting it and turning his resignation into a big news story.”
• Goldsmith recalls that Addington (and Addington does not fart without getting Cheney’s approval) saying, “We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court“. They really want another attack.
• That the badgering of Ashcroft in the hospital was so bad that his wife stuck her tongue at them. (Yes, I know that it sounds mild, but I doubt that she would use profanity if threatened with death)

These folks are completely divorced from reality.

Hat tip to Glenn Greenwald for finding this article.