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Impressive New Team Taking Shape For DOJ
It's good to see that the grownups are back in charge at the Justice Department.
Even before the Senate has voted on Eric Holder's nomination to be Attorney General, the department is filling up with respected legal figures whose records suggest an intention to use DOJ as America's law firm, not the president's.
Neal Katyal, the Georgetown Law professor who successfully challenged the military trials in Guantanamo while representing Osama bin Laden's driver, will be deputy solicitor general. He'll join Elena Kagan, the dean of Harvard Law School, who has been nominated to be Solicitor General.
Meanwhile, Katyal's Georgetown colleague Marty Lederman -- known to the blogosphere from his writing at the legal blog Balkanization -- will return to the Office of Legal Counsel as deputy assistant Attorney General. With his record of opposition to warrantless wiretapping and torture, Lederman figures to represent quite a change -- for the better -- from another recent OLC lawyer, torture-memo author John Yoo.
Lederman will work with Dawn Johnsen, an Indiana University law professor and vocal critic of Bush terror policies, who's been nominated to head the OLC, as well as David Barron, who will serve as the principal deputy. Both Johnsen and Barron served at OLC during the Clinton administration.
Add to that the news that fired US Attorney David Iglesias will be prosecuting Guantanamo cases as a military prosecutor, and you get the impression that on issues of justice, many of the wrongs of the Bush years are in the process of being righted.
Josh
Zachary
Thank God.
It's actually over. I think it will take a few more days to fully sink in.
January 21, 2009 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kinda like that scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy kills the Wicked Witch of the West and the Guards say "You killed her. . .ALL HAIL DOROTHY!!!!"
January 21, 2009 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am so glad the retards are outta here! I attended the inaugration and just flew back home about 3 hrs. ago. I cannot begin to tell you what a great feeling it was to be there to see Barack Hussein Obama be sworn in as POTUS!!! What a great day to be American, and the whole world rejoiced!!
Finally, after 8 years the DOJ will be the DOJ!! WHOOOOPPPPPPPPIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
January 21, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not a minute too soon either
I know you guys have a great deal on your plates (and thank God for that!) but these sub-Secretary appointments are as revealing as the Cabinet choices
January 21, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
You need a good foundation before you can build.
January 21, 2009 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I came to work today at the Department, and the place had a fresh, lemony, just cleaned smell.
January 21, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Things have not changed much in my particular Department (not in DoJ). Although, by 1 PM yesterday, they had already removed the big picture of Bush and the Director. By the time i left for the evening, someone had hung up a small picture (i guess unofficial) of Obama.
Someone who had been around here for 2001 was amazed, since they had thought it took months for them to bring down the picture of Clinton.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, sucker.
I had a big smile on my face the entire day.
January 21, 2009 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
A Nation of Laws! No one is above the Law! Empty phrases? It is impossible to prosecute before a law is broken. It is when they are discovered they are broken the perpetrators are prosecuted. Laws have been broken. Will they be investigated and the perpetrators prosecuted? If not consider the new appointees to be complicit and to have afforded tacit approval. Enlist General Taguba again and permit him to investigate those above his rank and even the civilians involved. Those at the DOJ who remain know where the swkeletons are. If they don't co-operate, fire them and include them in the investigation for obstructing. This isn't a rant. This is a plea to find the truth and acknowledge torture is a war crime and bring forth the guilty!
January 21, 2009 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well said!
January 22, 2009 7:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
On an interesting note, last night Keith Olbermann read a quote from an Austrian lawyer
that basically said nations had the legal responsibility to investigate and pursue war crimes by their own nationals. However, that did not mean the Hague and other International Organizations could not pursue them first. The Austrian lawyer happened to be the head investigator/prosecuter for the Hague. Bush and company may not scate by so easily, or at least we can hope.
January 22, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't help but think that this beefing up and clear independence of the Justice Department will allow for the prosecution of the crimes of the Bush Administration.
If they are truly independent, Obama can say this is not my mandate, this is what the professionals at Justice are doing on behalf of the American People. They are just doing their jobs and it is not a vendetta against anyone just equal justice under the law that has been so lacking in the last eight years.
Here is hoping.
January 21, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen!
January 21, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lord, the good news is just raining down!
January 21, 2009 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
We will soon have a functioning DoJ again but the extreme need for it to function normally has passed. Now that the crooks are done and leaving town we get a new sheriff and a new judge...great. After the city has been burned down we can finally get back to normal.
This most excellent change in the DoJ is going to have to make up for the neglect of their office to do their jobs for the past 8yrs. Injustice is a strong motivator for justice and hopefully accountability will have consequences now. We've waited for such a long time for these crooks to be rounded up and prosecuted because they've been protected by the very ones who should have been prosecuting them.
Yes we can...no 'we' can't or it would already have been done...but we elected you so that 'you' can. Yes we can ...do our part...now do yours...so far so good...so good.
January 21, 2009 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pinch me!
I thought Obama was a centrist governing a center-right nation and he was going to renege on all his campaign promises.
The long nightmare is over.
January 21, 2009 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama's appointments to DOJ are certainly more reaassuring than his appointment of Tom Daschle to HHS and the coronation of Tom Kaine to head up the DNC.
By putting Daschle into HHS the chances of universal health care that is not dominated by the insurance companies are nil.
By dumping Howard Dean in favor of Kaine, the fifty-state strategy that served Obama and all the Democrats so well in the last two elections is relegated to the dumpster.
Daschle is by nature so weak that the insurance companies won't even have to buy him off, he's a born sell-out artist in the same sense that scorpions are born to sting.
Tom Kaine is an anti-abortion redneck who will alienate the most progressive, vocal and active wing of the Democratic party by moving the party back to the failed policies of the DLC.
In case you haven't noticed, by taking on-board professional greedheads like Rubin and Geithner, and Neanderthals like Daschle and Kaine while ruthlessly dumping Howard Dean, Obama has sent the grassroots who put him into office a great big fuck you.
So far as I'm concerned, the honeymoon is over.
January 21, 2009 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
As an early Deaniac and single-payer proponent for 20 years, I feel your pain. And you forgot to mention Vilsack, who is REALLY going to fuck up the world as Ag Secty.
But the Hamdan lawyer for Deputy SG? I seriouly had to choke back sobs.
There is so, so, SO much badly broken that needs fixing immediately, and the first pain is going to come from triage.
I'm still holding out hope that Rubin and Geithner are rope-a-dopes or sops to the repugs and Wall Street. They'll find their greedy hands pretty well tied for six months or a year until they decide to spend more time with their families.
January 21, 2009 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I had always heard Howard Dean only agreed to serve one term and did not want to continue.
As for Daschle, his plan is better than the one Obama campaigned on. Obama was always upfront about what kind of health care plan he supported. I only hope it has a strong public plan people can buy into as promised because I think this will lead a path toward a more universal system. There is no way Congress or the American people would support single payer. Even though Republicans have been on a losing streak much of the country remains convinced that single payer health care is socialism.
January 21, 2009 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Howard Dean belongs in the cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Giving that post to an unqualified wimp like Tom Daschle is an insult to Dr. Dean and to the entire country.
I simply do not believe that the country will never accept a single-payer plan. First of all, Americans need to have single-payer explained to them with side-by-side comparisons of all the alternatives. It is the job of politicians and cabinet secretaries to lead by teaching, by educating the electorate as to what the available options are.
As things stand now, all the public really knows -- or think they know -- is the negative and fallacious garbage spewed by the insurance companies in the form of Harry and Louise commercials.
Sure, the 30 percent of morons who still support that bastard Bush will never come around, but why should an ignorant minority be allowed to determine national policy?
January 21, 2009 11:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nightmare at DOJ not over yet.
January 20, 2009, By Paula Reed Ward, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, along with other sitting federal prosecutors and U.S. marshals, has been asked to stay on in her position in Pennsylvania's Western Distrcit temporarily.
The Obama transition management team sent an e-mail Wednesday asking that those officials "temporarily remain in their positions until further notified," said Margaret Philbin, a spokeswoman for the office.
Ms. Buchanan, who was appointed as the U.S. attorney in September 2001, will heed that request. She has said in the past that she would be open to serving in the Obama administration. Otherwise, Ms. Buchanan has not further revealed any future plans."
Ok - I know that there is some transition time required - but I was really hoping that Mary Beth Whackjob - would get her walking papers yesterday.
January 21, 2009 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
The DOJ needs to begin an immediate investigation of Alberto Gonzales for perjury. Mr. Gonzales lied to congress while he was the attorney general. There is no get out of jail card for that.
The time has come to retake America and if this adminitration is to have any credibility at all, it must investigate past criminal activity. Period.
January 21, 2009 9:03 PM | Reply | Permalink