GOP May Offer Fireworks, But Sheldon Whitehouse Will Lead the Senate Fight To Confirm Dawn Johnsen

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Christine Bowman

When the U.S. Senate reconvenes after its Spring recess Monday, will partisan sparks fly, filibusters be mounted, and confirmation fights rage over President Obama's remaining appointments that have yet to get their up-or-down confirmation vote on the Senate floor? Maybe, in the case of the President's nominee to head the Office of Legal Council in the Department of Justice, Dawn E. Johnsen.

On a conference call Friday with BuzzFlash and other Internet-based reporters, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island indicated that, if it comes to that, the Democrats are ready. "If the Republicans really do decide they're going to filibuster this nomination, I think they're leading with their chins and that gives us the chance to go on the offense," he said.

Senator Whitehouse described Johnsen as "spectacularly qualified for this position" and said, in terms of the possible political fight, he is "optimistic and positive about what a good day this could be" when senators outsisde the Judiciary Committee get their chance to weigh in on her qualifications. Johnsen served in the office previously, including as acting chief. She is currently a law professor at Indiana University.

During the Bush Administration, Johnsen was a leading critic of the OLC memos that rationalized and gave the green light to the CIA to engage in waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques, or torture. Having just seen the OLC torture memos that were released this week, Senator Whitehouse marveled at "how badly written and researched they were" by Bush's appointees. He further commended Johnsen for her role in confronting the "very bizarre anomaly" of the "imperial presidency" which the OLC opinions had helped to create.

Anti-abortion conservatives have been critical of Johnsen's past work with the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), but Johnsen "knows how to check her advocacy at the door, and she has done so," Senator Whitehouse said. Nan Aron, coordinator of the conference call and representative of the Alliance for Justice that is fighting for Johnsen's confirmation, called such ideological criticism "a distraction" that is based only on "a footnote in a brief twenty years ago."

Walter Dellinger, former Solicitor General, Assistant Attorney General, and Johnsen's one-time OLC boss told reporters he "can't imagine a filibuster will come up." Johnsen is "extraordinarily repected by her colleagues," he confirmed, and with five years service in the OLC under her belt, he sees little in the way of unknowns to impede her confirmation. Dellinger said Johnsen has shown a "determined integrity to get it right" and apply the law. "She has more experience in the office than anyone who would have come in to head it,"he acknowledged.

In Johnsen's favor politically is the fact that many of those who might wish to block her based on conservative ideology have, in the past, been among the Senate's most vociferous defendants of the principle that presidential nominees deserve an "up-or-down" Senate vote and should not be subjected to a filibuster. As Whitehouse points out, Republican Senator Tom Coburn (OK) has said unequivocally that "no presidential nomination should ever be filibustered." Dellinger rattled off a long list of like-minded "up-or-down" vote advocates among the GOP such as Senators McConnell, Alexander, Cornyn, Hatch, Sessions and Specter. For them to do an about face would be, to say the very least, politically embarrassing and difficult to justify on the Senate floor or to their constituents.

The nomination wars may be unfortunate in that the President has sought to foster bipartisanship, but if war there be, at least this one looks to favor the Democrats.

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Related:

Dawn Johnsen Has GOP Hard Liners Quaking in Their Boots. Is She the Wyatt Earp Who Could Bring Justice to Bush Era Outlaws? (Christine Bowman/BuzzFlash, 4/2/09)

The Woman Who Could Nail Bush (Scott Horton/The Daily Beast)

http://www.afj.org/dawnjohnsen.pdf

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

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