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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Law - "IU professor Dawn Johnsen's nomination to legal post sent back to White House"

ILB readers first learned the news in this December 24th ILB entry. And there have been a number of ILB entries before and since.

Yesterday, Dec. 29th, Andy Graham of the Bloomington Herald-Times has this story ($$). Some quotes:

Dawn Johnsen’s nomination to head the Office of Legal Counsel in the Barack Obama administration is now back in the hands of the White House.

The Indiana University School of Law professor was one of six Obama nominees who hadn’t received a vote by the time the Senate recessed last week.

Senate rules require that nominees not voted upon by the end of a session must get unanimous consent to have their nominations carry over to the next session, or their names are sent back to the White House for possible renomination.

Johnsen was initially nominated last January, and was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee along party lines in March, but never received a vote by the full Senate. If the administration chooses to resubmit her nomination, the whole confirmation process begins again. She would again have to clear the judiciary committee, which could choose whether or not to conduct another confirmation hearing, but would have to conduct another vote regarding her nomination. * * *

John Hamilton, Johnsen’s husband and former Monroe County Community School Corp. board member, was shepherding nieces and nephews around the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. this afternoon and said he couldn’t speculate on what the administration’s decision might be regarding renominating his wife, but chose to remain hopeful. “We’re enjoying our vacation, looking forward to health care being done, and looking forward to the conformation process continuing,” he said via cell phone.

Johnsen and her family have moved to Washington and she has commuted between there and Bloomington in recent months.

Today's (Dec. 30th) Indianapolis Star now has a story, albeit quoting the Bloomington paper.

Newsweek's Tim Fernholz had an informative entry yesterday, on Johnsen and the Senate confirmation process generally, on the Newsweek blog, The Gaggle. Some quotes:

If you have some passing familiarity with the way things work in Washington these days, you've heard complaints—from bloggers, columnists, and even President Obama—about how increasing use of the filibuster, and the gridlock it causes in the Senate, is a real impediment to making public policy. The upper chamber's antidemocratic trend undermines the basic workings of government in other ways, though: the slow pace of approving the president's nominees to the executive branch because individual senators can put "holds" on nominees, forcing votes that often turn into filibusters. When a president's nominees aren't confirmed in a legislative session, they are typically allowed by unanimous consent to continue as nominees into the next. This year, a handful Republicans objected to three nominees, including Dawn Johnsen.

Johnsen is a University of Indiana law professor nominated to be the head of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, an obscure but important organ that determines whether or not the president's decisions are legal. During the Bush administration, the OLC produced a number of memos justifying torture and other expansions of executive power. Johnsen penned critiques of these expansions, and Obama nominated her to set the executive branch back on the straight and narrow.

Republicans immediately threatened a filibuster because Johnsen seemed inclined to address the last administration's dirty laundry, including policies that led to torture, extraordinary rendition, and human-rights violations at Guantánamo Bay. Several Democrats, including Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, were concerned about Johnsen because she had previously worked for NARAL, the abortion-rights organization.

Nonetheless, the administration had 57 votes in favor of confirming Johnsen to her post. A minority of senators prevented it from happening—for an entire year. She's not the only one; many nominees have been held up, including Martha Johnson, the proposed head of the General Services Administration, which handles vital government management operations. She's being held up because Missouri Sen. Kit Bond wants a new federal building in Kansas City. Some 226 of 500 appointed positions remain held up in the Senate; that's some 275 officials who aren't at work for taxpayers.

However, only six of the "held-up" nominations, including Johnsen's (as ILB readers are aware), were not "rolled-over" by the Senate for consideration next year, but instead bounced back to the White House.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 30, 2009 08:40 AM
Posted to General Law Related