GOP Senate Obstructionists Trying to Reverse 2008 Election

[one...two...tree 2,762]

by Joshua Holland, AlterNet

According to People for the American Way, dozens of Barack Obama's nominees -- many in key positions -- are still waiting to get started as Republicans threaten to filibuster their confirmation and the White House and senate leadership seem (inexplicably) cautious about using their 60-vote majority to ram them through. It's largely flown under the radar.

TPM:

In 1949, a change to Senate rules allowed members to filibuster executive branch nominees. Senators tend to believe (or at least to say) that, within bounds of decency, the White House deserves to be able to staff the executive branch as it chooses; and in the 60 years since then, the practice has been used sparingly.

Until Barack Obama came to town.

"Between 1949 and 2009 there were 24 nominees on which cloture was forced," Baker said. "In just the first 9 months of the Obama administration, there have been five such votes."

Despite a record of rather extreme appointments, there were 7 cloture votes during the 8 years of the Bush administration. Of the 29 times such votes have occurred in American history, 20 have been over Democratic nominees and 9 over Republicans. Not surprisingly, before Obama took office, over half of all cloture votes of executive branch appointees had occurred during the Clinton administration -- 13.

Bubba holds the record, but Obama is on pace to shatter it with cloture votes on 28 nominees, more than all other administrations since 1949 combined.

I would just point out how ridiculous this makes the whole wing-nut kerfuffle about Obama's "communist" and unaccountable "czars" -- the officials he is supposedly slipping in around the senate confirmation process. Not that it wasn't already ridiculous -- George W. Bush appointed more czars than Obama, and several of those Fox News and others have attacked as unconfirmed czars (8 out of 30) were actually customary positions filled by people who were in fact duly approved by Congress. But the hypocrisy of leveling the charge while dozens of Obama's appointees still await confirmation 9 months into his term in office is mind-jangling.

Finally, let me just add that People for the American Way is especially interested in one nominee whose block by Republicans has been particularly galling: Dawn Johnsen, Obama's pick to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Council. OLC advises the executive branch on the law, and during the Bush administration it was packed with right-wing ideologues with an expansive view of executive power (to say the least). It's where people like "torture memo" authors Jay Bybee and John Yoo basically told the White House it could do anything it wanted as long as they said it had something to do with terrorism.

Johnsen's eminently qualified -- she served as acting head of OLC during the Clinton years, she's been endorsed by former heads of the OLC under both Republican and Democratic administrations; her Republican senator, ####### Lugar, has endorsed her.

The problem for the GOP -- aside from their instinctive desire to play petty games with Obama's nominees -- is that she's really good. As The New York Times reported, her appointment to head the OLC after the Bybees and Yoos brought it so much well earned infamy represents the kind of change Obama promised but has so far failed to deliver in many other areas:

Ms. Johnsen, a law professor at

Indiana University

, was an unsparing critic of memorandums, written by lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, that said the president could largely ignore international treaties and Congress in fighting terrorists and that critics have portrayed as allowing torture in interrogation.

The broad reading of presidential authority was "outlandish," and the constitutional arguments were "shockingly flawed," Ms. Johnsen has written. While her language was harsh, the memos have largely been withdrawn, and among lawyers a consensus agreeing with her views has emerged.

Nonetheless, Republicans have denounced her comments.

If you'd like to see Dawn Johnsen's nomination get an up or down vote, sign PFAW's petition here.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Specter Reconsidering His Position on OLC Nominee Dawn Johnsen

Earlier this year when Arlen Specter was still a Republican, the Pennsylvania senator was among the harshest critics of Dawn Johnsen, the Indiana University law professor who is President Obama’s pick to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The OLC is the office that housed such Bush-era luminaries as John Yoo and Jay Bybee, and issued the infamous “torture memos” that defined torture so narrowly that even waterboarding — which had always been considered a form of torture before, even by the United States — now passed legal muster. Johnsen was one of many critics of that office’s legal opinions during the Bush presidency, earning her the lingering ire of many Republicans.

Among them was Specter, who, during her confirmation hearing in February, took the lead in painting her as a radical left-wing ideologue. In April, even after switching parties, he reaffirmed that he was still opposed to her nomination. As a result of the staunch opposition of Specter, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), and most Republicans, the Office of Legal Counsel has gone without a confirmed leader to advise the president on critical legal issues, such as the use of warrantless wiretapping and the treatment and trials of suspected terrorists and “war on terror” detainees.

But now, it looks like Specter may be changing his mind. Specter’s press secretary, Kate Kelly, emailed me Thursday with this:

Senator Specter has several concerns about Ms. Johnsen’s nomination, including her views on executive power and abortion. Senator Specter is solidly pro-choice, but he disagrees with her position equating limitations with involuntary servitude. Senator Specter had a second meeting with her to get clarification on her positions and he is still considering her nomination.

As I pointed out during Johnsen’s confirmation hearing, Specter grilled her on a footnote buried in a friend-of-the-court brief she’d co-authored with 10 other lawyers representing 77 different public interest organizations, 20 years ago in an abortion rights case when she was a lawyer for the National Abortion Rights Action League. The footnote said that laws curtailing the right to an abortion “are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the 13th Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires [a woman] to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest.”

“When I read in your writings that abortion bans are a violation of the 13th Amendment ban on slavery,” Specter chastised Johnsen at her confirmation hearing, “that seems to me candidly beyond the pale.”

Johnsen, flustered, responded that, as far as she could remember, she hadn’t actually equated outlawing abortion with slavery, but was just making an analogy. Anyway, the point, while creative, was pretty tangential to the core of the brief’s argument. It was, after all, relegated to footnote 23. But that clearly did not satisfy Specter, who remained firmly opposed to her nomination.

Until Thursday.

http://washingtonindependent.com/64885/spe...ee-dawn-johnsen

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Surely, the Republicans wouldn't block an up-or-down vote on Presidential nominees. They blasted the Democrats only a few years ago for trying to do just that. Republican leadership and the then Republican President have all gone on record demanding that nominees receive an up-or-down vote in the Senate. Do they need to be reminded of this demand they made so clearly?

[peejay 327]

...the White House and senate leadership seem (inexplicably) cautious about using their 60-vote majority to ram them through.

So...what's the beef? They don't need the Republicans. So what is there to complain about?

[Ban Hammer 14,665]

...the White House and senate leadership seem (inexplicably) cautious about using their 60-vote majority to ram them through.

So...what's the beef? They don't need the Republicans. So what is there to complain about?

the inability to blame someone else

[one...two...tree 2,762]

...the White House and senate leadership seem (inexplicably) cautious about using their 60-vote majority to ram them through.

So...what's the beef? They don't need the Republicans. So what is there to complain about?

the inability to blame someone else

More like the inability for you two to understand what a filibuster is. Feel free to Google it.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

...the White House and senate leadership seem (inexplicably) cautious about using their 60-vote majority to ram them through.

So...what's the beef? They don't need the Republicans. So what is there to complain about?

the inability to blame someone else

Or perhaps it is worthwhile to draw attention to the hypocrisy. Let's have a look at what the debate was in 2003::

"Filibustering nominations is a relatively new phenomenon even as to the nominees for the executive branch, and it has emerged in this Congress as a particular problem relative to judges," [senate Majority Leader] Frist said. "Without filibuster reform, a disciplined minority can cast an ever-lengthening shadow over the nomination process."

[Ban Hammer 14,665]

...the White House and senate leadership seem (inexplicably) cautious about using their 60-vote majority to ram them through.

So...what's the beef? They don't need the Republicans. So what is there to complain about?

the inability to blame someone else

More like the inability for you two to understand what a filibuster is. Feel free to Google it.

so what you're telling us is you'd like to retract your earlier statement about the dems ramming through this legislation?