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The Phillies don't need Yoo

(Photo by San Francisco Weekly)

Remember when the Phillies were drawing 13,000 people to the concrete dog bowl of the Vet and begging anyone to come out and watch them play? It wasn't that long ago. But when you sell out every game for a season and a half, you could be a little choosier. Here's one fan that the hometown team doesn't need: Torture-meister and former Inquirer op-ed columnist John Yoo.

The people at San Francisco Weekly thought it would be, you know, funny, to ask the waterboarding enabler whether the Philadelphia native and graduate of Episcopal Academy if he would be rooting his native Phillies or for the Giants, since he's now, remarkably, still a law professor at Berkeley.

I'm a die-hard Phillies fan, grew up in Philadelphia.  I've lived through decades of terrible Phillies teams.  I am looking forward to the Phillies and Giants meeting in the playoffs.

The SF Weekly people didn't let up, also asking him if it wasn't, heh heh, torture to root for the Giants, who have not won a World Series since moving to the Bay Area in 1958:

Whatever Giants' fan think they are enduring, it is nothing compared to Phillies' fans and their decades of losing teams.

Of course, if you want to continue with that analogy, what Phillies' fans have gone through is nothing compared to simulated drowning, stress positions and other tactics authorized by Yoo in his notorious "torture memos" for the Bush administration. The good news is that while the Phillies can't formally sever their ties with Yoo, the Inquirer can -- and did -- over the summer, with little fanfare, not long after previously ownership group led by Brian Tierney lost their auction bid to keep control of the paper.

If there were justice in America, Yoo would have plenty of time to keep up with his beloved Phightins -- from his jail cell.

If there were justice in America.