John Yoo smokes crack — for Obama, or what?

The legal thugmeister behind the worst of BushCo's anti-civil liberties actions has written a howler of a NYT op-ed. In it, he claims that President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, wants to cut back on executive power.

Yes, you read that right.

The whole thing is classic Yoo. Among the whoppers?

The claim that Congress cannot retake any degree of control of a federal agency from the president.
In her law review article, Kagan also lauded Supreme Court holdings that Congress can prohibit presidents from firing subordinate officers, which effectively prevents the president from giving orders. This would place the executive agencies under the political thumb of the legislative branch. “I acknowledge that Congress generally may grant discretion to agency officials alone,” Ms. Kagan wrote, and “the president must respect the limits of this delegation.”

Under this approach, Congress could free the Justice Department, the Defense Department and any other agency created by Congress from presidential control. To be fair, Ms. Kagan thinks this would be a bad idea. ...

This is simply wrong. Article II of the Constitution vests in the president alone “the executive power” of the United States. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent from the court’s 1988 decision upholding the constitutionality of the Office of the Independent Counsel, “this does not mean some of the executive power, but all of the executive power.” (His argument was proved prescient in 1999 when Congress let the law authorizing the independent counsel lapse.)

From the time of George Washington, presidents have understood Article II to grant them the authority to hire and fire all subordinate officers of the United States, and hence command their activities, even though the Constitution mentions only the power to appoint, not to remove.
Yoo conflates several different issues of federal agency action here. On the officers' issue, SCOTUS eventually ruled the 1867 Tenure in Office act unconstitutional, and he knows that.

On oversight issues, though, Congress has, and always has, the power to oversee executive agencies, or even the president. Thomas Jefferson, even, dropped his claims to executive privilege when confronted by Congressional demands for papers.

But, that's just one sample. Read the whole thing.