BYRON YORK: A Setback For the Drive To Punish Bush-Era “War Criminals.”

One cherished goal of legal activists on the left is to punish the “war criminals” who helped shape terrorist interrogation policies during the Bush administration. Some of those activists now work in the Obama Justice Department and have been hoping the Department would find two Bush-era lawyers in particular, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, guilty of professional misconduct — a move that would likely result in both men facing disbarment proceedings.

The activists are sure to be disappointed in a new report by Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, who say a still-unreleased report from the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility “clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the ‘torture’ memos of professional-misconduct allegations.”

The Newsweek story is here. Meanwhile, I wonder what vulnerabilities Obama Administration lawyers face over TARP and bailout-related actions, and whether that had anything to do with the treatment of this issue. . . .