I am linking you here to a terrific blog post on a report of an incident that occurred last week at Knox College where John Ashcroft was speaking. During the questioning period after his speech (which was interrupted numerous times) a young woman (daughter of a friend of a friend) asked Ashcroft a terrific question on one of the verdicts from the Tokyo War Crimes tribunal. The Tokyo War Crimes tribunal, you might recall, had several trials in which numerous Japanese officers were convicted for actions taken during World War II. It turns out that one conviction was, in fact, for waterboarding American soldiers. When Ashcroft was asked whether that conviction was wrong (given that the US has used waterboarding), he told the questioner basically to bug off. I loved reading this both for the chutzpah demonstrated by the questioner–given my earlier post on Ask for It and gender, it was great to see the persistence of this young woman–and because it also raises the ongoing question of the impact of ad hoc tribunals and how we deal (or avoid dealing) with the law created by them.