New York Times: Politics 1, Rule of Law 0

[Mass]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/opinion/13tue3.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Politics 1, Rule of Law 0
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Published: April 12, 2010
The struggle between President Obama and Republicans on Capitol Hill has claimed a fresh victim — Dawn Johnsen. She was Mr. Obama’s choice to lead the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. Ms. Johnsen withdrew her nomination after more than a year. It was clear that the White House was not going to fight to save her from Republicans who were refusing to allow a vote on her confirmation.

Ms. Johnsen’s problem was not that she lacked strong qualifications to be the legal adviser to the executive branch, informing the White House about what the law requires and what it prohibits. She was the ideal candidate to re-establish the Office of Legal Counsel as a source of scrupulous legal analysis after its complicity in some of the worst excesses of the Bush years.

...

Despite Ms. Johnsen’s stellar credentials and the backing of Senator Richard Lugar, a Republican of Indiana, other Republicans tried to turn her commitment to the rule of law into a phony debate about her commitment to fighting terrorism. Her critics also complained that, early in her career, she worked for an abortion-rights advocacy group, though her views in that sphere are well within the mainstream.

The White House let Ms. Johnsen twist in the wind for more than a year and then chose to abandon her nomination rather than get into a battle over an appointment just before Mr. Obama makes his second nomination to the Supreme Court.

Ms. Johnsen’s withdrawal comes amid an effort by Liz Cheney, the former vice president’s daughter, and others on the far right to smear lawyers in the Obama Justice Department who previously did work for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. That campaign, and the ill treatment of Ms. Johnsen, send a chilling message to lawyers and others who might be willing to do government service: don’t stand on principle and certainly don’t speak out in public.

[polichick]

1. Couldn't she have been a recess appointment? nt

[flyarm]

2. read this and weep for our nation.......

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/...

Friday, Apr 9, 2010 15:10 EDT

The death of Dawn Johnsen's nomination

by Glenn Greenwald



snip;

The question how we restore our nation's honor takes on new urgency and promise as we approach the end of this administration. We must resist Bush administration efforts to hide evidence of its wrongdoing through demands for retroactive immunity, assertions of state privilege, and implausible claims that openness will empower terrorists. . . .

Here is a partial answer to my own question of how should we behave, directed especially to the next president and members of his or her administration but also to all of use who will be relieved by the change: We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation's past transgressions and reject Bush's corruption of our American ideals. Our constitutional democracy cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation's honor be restored without full disclosure.


What Johnsen insists must not be done reads like a manual of what Barack Obama ended up doing and continues to do -- from supporting retroactive immunity to terminate FISA litigations to endless assertions of "state secrecy" in order to block courts from adjudicating Bush crimes to suppressing torture photos on the ground that "opennees will empower terrorists" to the overarching Obama dictate that we "simply move on." Could she have described any more perfectly what Obama would end up doing when she wrote, in March, 2008, what the next President "must not do"?

I find it virtually impossible to imagine Dawn Johnsen opining that the President has the legal authority to order American citizens assassinated with no due process or to detain people indefinitely with no charges. I find it hard to believe that the Dawn Johnsen who wrote in 2008 that "we must regain our ability to feel outrage whenever our government acts lawlessly and devises bogus constitutional arguments for outlandishly expansive presidential power" would stand by quietly and watch the Obama administration adopt the core Bush/Cheney approach to civil liberties and Terrorism. I find it impossible to envision her sanctioning the ongoing refusal of the DOJ to withdraw the January, 2006 Bush/Cheney White Paper that justified illegal surveillance with obscenely broad theories of executive power. I don't know why her nomination was left to die, but I do know that her beliefs are quite antithetical to what this administration is doing.