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The Woman Who Could Nail Bush
Ruth Fremson, The New York Times / Redux
Forget nanny issues and unpaid taxes. The GOP is threatening an ugly fight over an Obama Justice Department appointee who wants to disclose more Bush-era torture memos.
Until recently, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, often considered the “brains” of the department, has been known mostly to legal experts. But for the past eight years, it was the epicenter of allegations of political manipulation and, worse, the source of infamous memoranda on torture. In tapping Eric Holder as attorney general, President Obama has promised to restore standards of professionalism to the department. For Republicans, this is tantamount to a declaration of partisan war.
The real reason for their vehement opposition is that Johnsen is committed to overturning the Bush administration’s policies on torture and warrantless surveillance that would clip the wings of the imperial presidency.
On March 19, the nomination of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to head the OLC was endorsed by the Judiciary Committee with every Republican voting against her and Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA) abstaining. The nomination was to have been brought to the Senate floor for a vote on Monday and then again on Wednesday, but it has been held back. Republican leaders, it appears, are playing with the notion of making Johnsen the target of their first filibuster.
The highly credentialed Johnsen is an improbable target, and OLC was long viewed as an obscure post. But Johnsen served as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion & Reproductive Rights Action League. Antiabortion groups have targeted Johnsen over the last three weeks with a massive telephone, email, and letter-writing campaign, demanding that senators oppose her nomination. Johnsen is labeled a “radical, pro-abortion activist,” although her views on the abortion issue line up very closely with the mainstream. While the noise surrounding the Johnsen nomination appears on the surface to be about the abortion issue—over which her position at OLC would have very little influence—discussions with Republican stalwarts reveal that their main concerns lie elsewhere.
The real reason for their vehement opposition is that Johnsen is committed to overturning the Bush administration’s policies on torture and warrantless surveillance, which would clip the wings of the imperial presidency. Even more menacingly (from their perspective), she is committed to shining a light on some of the darkest skeletons of the Bush years. Already, publication of OLC memoranda authorizing torture, approving warrantless surveillance, and pronouncing the First and Fourth Amendments a dead letter in connection with domestic military operations has rocked the public. More memos, potentially even more disturbing, I have learned, are about to be made public soon. Yet these are difficult issues on which to attack Johnsen, other than through vague suggestions that she is “weak on national security.” Hence the steady stream of accusations linked to her largely irrelevant views about abortion rights.
Will the Republicans attempt to filibuster the Johnsen nomination? The threat is sufficiently serious to have provoked the editors of the New York Times to editorialize in support of Johnsen on Thursday. Calling the operation of OLC in the Bush era “lawless,” the editors wrote, “Ms. Johnsen is superbly qualified and has fought for just the sort of change the office needs.”
The controversy surrounding Johnsen provides a flashpoint for President Obama’s nominees for administration legal posts. Unsurprisingly, they look an awful lot like Barack Obama—strong legal credentials, an academic bent, and liberal attitudes balanced by a strong commitment to political pragmatism.
Obama’s top picks start with a couple of well-known Washington names. Eric Holder, the nation’s first black attorney general, was a career Justice Department attorney who spent his formative years as a prosecutor in the department’s Public Integrity Section (much-criticized for abuse under Bush). He spent time as a U.S. attorney, a judge, and ran the Justice Department for a while as deputy attorney general in the Clinton years. Obama’s White House counsel, Greg Craig, is a Washington fixture at the powerhouse Williams & Connolly law firm. The former foreign-policy aide to Sen. Edward Kennedy and State Department official has handled high-profile cases from Clinton’s impeachment defense to representing the father of Elian Gonzales. In the way of Washington, he is also has ties to powerful Republicans, including Karl Rove and Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, whom he successfully represented in a sensitive FBI investigation into the leaking of classified data.
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OK, so this woman supports reproductive rights, which about eighty percent of American's support, and she opposes torture, which the United States has been against since it was created, but the Republicans are going to vote against her because of those issues. It just shows how out of touch the Republicans are with Americans and American values. Go ahead and fillibuster. Show everyone in America the fools that you are.
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I love how you fail to note that many other major positions (as in, operational positions) in the Justice Department are being filled by figures who have no credentials to anything other than copyright, being lawyers for the music and movie industries. And thus have no real understandings of national security. Of course, those weren't really Obama's appointments (they were Biden's).
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@wanting: All your points are well taken, but will the GOP leadership be smart enough to realize all this? Or will they blindly pander to the uber-right-wing and proceed with the filibuster? I know which way I'd bet.
Maybe the problem with disclosing these memos is that they would show Bush-Chaney-Rumsfeld as war criminals?
Abortion, Homosexuals, Evolution, Terrorists, Taxes, Socialism, Communism.....
Sound familiar? Those and a few others (and a few catch-phrases) are the buzz words of the Republican party.
The truly qualified are more terrifying then any terrorist to the Republican party (as it is now). One of the biggest issues with the Bush administration, is that you don't have to dig deep... and you don't have to look far to find the things that you need to put people in jail.
If Obama does allow this coarse of action, it could destroy the Republican party. If what they dig up about Bush is bad enough, the GOP will be further humiliated and will be silenced for some time. Will they go quietly? Hardly! Never underestimate the power of human denial.... people could witness Bush murdering someone in front of them and still he's their "Beloved Leader".
Or, it simply could spark a partisan war that will keep Obama from accomplishing anything on his agenda. If I were the President, I'd make darn sure I had so much evidence as such a good legal team that they'd come with "wings". (As in... from on high)
In response to polako1,
I believe it most certainly would...which in itself is a dangerous thing for the nation as a whole. Mr. Bush and his administration have done massive amounts of damage to our nation already. President Obama would only make his job of rebuilding our international political capital more difficult by airing the worst of our dirty laundry.
That said, Mr. Obama should also be lauded for returning our nation to one where the best and the brightest are given positions of influence in our government. This woman however worked with the ACLU...that in itself makes her a decisive pick. They have been the whipping boy of conservative punditry for years and it should be no surprise when Republicans make this one of their key points of opposition.
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Ahem!
So what. The real torture is reading this left wingnut pathetic fingerpointing knowing that the radical agenda of their own savior is quickly being realized by a right center populace and whose numbers are quickly dropping as honest Americans realize the duplicit tactics and "same ole campaign rhetoric" being repeated over and over and over and......................... Wake up. Who cares about Bush anymore. This is all on the chump in chief and pelosi's legislature. There's been more lies and corruption in the past 60 days than in the entire Bush regime. I wouldn't wager on results on 2010.
Put her in. The Republicans wont survive filibustering everything that comes their way. The public will be outraged. We put the Democrats in because we don't like Republicans.
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JetJagger...
Some things are just too damn difficult for you Republicans to understand. And I thought you Republicans never listened to anyone, especially Europeans. Now EU President Mirek Topolanek [a Czech!!!] makes sense to you simply because he criticizes Obama???
If I had your mind I would set myself on fire. How do you people live with yourselves?
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There's an old riddle about how Republicans are stupid lying scum. Did you ever hear that one JetJagger? How old are you exaclty? What do you do for a living? Are you a professor of economics? Because you don't sound smart. I bet you hate smart people. I bet you hate all kinds of people. I bet you think this country is going down the toilet. But you are wrong. Hope you die.
JetJagger I so want there to be a civil war too! God I wish I could kill you right now. You're just so dumb and long winded. I bet you don't think Democrats have guns either but we do! God don't you wish we could just duel like the good old days? Back when women couldn't vote and blacks knew their place!
Freedom is harsh dude. Get over the loss. Democrats control the country now. You are not needed.
Rant*rant*rant!? If you say that much on a 'comment' you'd better write like a journalist for anyone to read it. I know one thing: She is qualified and if they're in a 'nothing to hide' party...put her in; because nothing will come out if there is nothing. Remember math? I think this is just an argument to hide something, that is the math anyways:)Oh...and a rant that long is just projection.
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Sometimes I wonder why I choose to even pay attention to these comment sections...
Thanks for the correction I don't care. And Gimmeabushmills is right. We seem to have gotten a bit off topic. What I meant to say is I don't care what you think because it's irrelevant.
What I meant to say is that I'm ignoring what you said, because I am the ignorant one.
JetJagger: "You liberals don't have to like God"
Whoa, stop right there. I was going to ignore your post, which is not the list of facts you seem to think it is. You don't even have your insults right. Are you comparing Obama to John Lennon? Or did you mean Vladimir Lenin, about whom you seem to know very little?
But you start telling people that based on politics, you know about their relationship with God, you go way, way too far. That kind of arrogance has been driving people away from the church in droves. If you think you're somehow doing God's work when you come on here and call people names, you really haven't a clue.
Nor do you seem to have any grasp of history. You actually compare the number of US deaths in hand-to-hand combat with the number in modern warfare? Are you insane, naive, or just so biased that you can't even think.
You don't own the military either. My husband spent 25 years as a Navy fighter pilot, including wartime. He was a lifelong Republican until the recent administration. He did wake up and smell the coffee.
Thank you.
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