THIS IS SCARY

According to the WaPo, "Administration Wanted Loyalist As Justice Dept. Legal Adviser," Cheney and Addington wanted Prof. "Torture" Yoo to head the Dept. of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel. Before that, Yoo had proved his usefulness by writing memos that supported the extremist view of unbridled Executive power. To his credit, then-Attorney General Ashcroft refused to have Yoo in that position and we ended up with Jack Goldsmith instead. Goldsmith revoked some of Yoo's memos and wrote a book about the extremists in the Executive branch.

UPDATE: I don't want to make Ashcroft seem like he does respect the rule of law. In fact, he's willing to lie to Congress under oath. From Ryan at Think Progress:

During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee today, former Attorney General John Ashcroft falsely claimed that waterboarding has “consistently” been defined as “not torture” and refused to agree that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques — including waterboarding — on captured U.S. soldiers is “unacceptable” or “criminal.”

REP. MAXINE WATERS: Do you think that if these techniques were used on American soldiers that they would be totally unacceptable and even criminal? […]
ASHCROFT: My job, as Attorney General, was to try and elicit from the experts and the best people in the Department definitions that comported with the statues enacted by the Congress and the Constitution of the United States. And those statutes have consistently been interpreted so as to say, by the definitions that, waterboarding, as described in the CIA’s request, is not torture.

In fact, waterboarding “has been prosecuted in U.S. courts since the late 1800s and was regarded by every U.S. administration before this one as torture.”