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Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Law - "Dusk for Dawn Johnsen: Why Obama Backed Down on a Nominee"
That is the heading to a Time story today by Theo Emery. Some quotes:
And a recess appointment, which some liberals urged, was out of the question, according to the White House official. Such an appointment sidestepping an up-or-down floor vote would have made Johnsen's goal to depoliticize the Office of Legal Counsel impossible "and would have led to partisan debates over its legal opinions regardless of their quality," the White House official says. * * *Some liberals who hoped Johnsen would be Obama's tonic to the office under Bush are bitterly disappointed by her withdrawal, and some accuse the White House of not backing their own candidate. But Lee Casey, a Washington attorney who was an attorney adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel in 1992 and 1993, says that her nomination may have been abandoned because of a bigger confirmation fight that is now taking shape: the one for Justice Stevens' seat. "My guess is that it became a question of where do we want to spend the political capital," he says, "and the fact is political capital is always in short supply, no matter who the President is."
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 14, 2010 09:57 AM
Posted to General Law Related