dawn johnsen

The Hill reports today that liberal groups are stepping up their pressure on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to call a vote on Dawn Johnsen, President Obama’s pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel.
As I reported earlier this week, Republicans have stalled Johnsen’s nomination with their ambivalence about supporting cloture and the leadership’s [...]

A “new form of obstructionism” by Republicans in the Senate is delaying confirmation of Obama’s nominees for federal judgeships, writes Doug Kendall, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, in Slate today.
With only three of 22 judicial nominees confirmed so far, it “seems clear that Senate Republicans are prepared to take the partisan war over the [...]

Opponents could take up to 30 hours of precious floor time debating her nomination while Congress debates key legislation on health care, climate change and the economy.

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, [...]

The Washington Post’s story today about liberals who are frustrated that the Obama administration isn’t pressing harder to win confirmation for liberal-leaning judges to the federal courts should also serve as a reminder that there are a whole lot of key Justice Department posts still not confirmed yet, either. Whether that’s because the White House [...]

The Senate today voted to confirm Thomas E. Perez to be Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. The nomination has been pending without action in the Senate for more than four months due to Republican opposition. The final vote today was 72 to 22.

Manu Raju talks to Senate Democrats about the Glenn Beck-driven, almost entirely hysterical campaign against “czars.” The fuel: a letter written by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) about “czars.” I’ve reprinted the letter below the jump, but the key bit is this:
I respectfully urge you to disclose as much information as you can about these policy [...]

The explosive inspectors general report released on Friday makes one thing increasingly clear: the Bush White House knew that it was probably breaking the law.
From the report itself, John Yoo’s Office of Legal Counsel memo — and the lightning-fast reporting of Spencer Ackerman, Marc Ambinder and others on Friday — we now know that President [...]

In language that may or not have been cleverly chosen, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the newest member of the Democratic party, told reporters moments ago that he remains opposed to Dawn Johnsen, the Obama administration’s pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel.
Can we take that to mean that he won’t vote for Johnsen? [...]

While it’s no surprise that President Clinton’s former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger and other traditionally Democratic high-caliber lawyers and scholars would speak out in favor of Dawn Johnsen, President Obama’s pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Johnsen is also winning high praise from some prominent Republican lawyers.
On a conference call this morning sponsored [...]