dawn 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 [...]

Declaring that Dawn Johnsen “is so against an unborn child’s right-to-live that she has labeled mothers-to-be ‘fetal containers’,” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) sent a letter to President Obama today urging him to withdraw her nomination to head the Office of Legal Counsel.
“Nominating Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel is an insult to [...]

On Monday night, the Senate confirmed three nominees to lead key divisions at the Justice Department: Lanny Breuer to lead the Criminal Division; Christine Varney to lead the Antitrust Division, and Tony West to lead the Civil Division. All were confirmed with overwhelming support.
Although the Senate has now confirmed eight of President Obama’s Justice Department [...]

Senate Republicans are pressuring President Obama into not releasing the controversial torture memos we’ve all been waiting for (and which the administration again refused to release last week) by threatening to block confirmation of two key Obama Justice Department nominees, Scott Horton reports in The Daily Beast today.
The appointments of Dawn Johnsen, nominated to head [...]

The Senate today, as expected, unanimously confirmed David Kris as assistant attorney general in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice. Kris is the fifth Obama nominee confirmed for a post at Justice so far.
In addition to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Senate has confirmed Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, Associate Attorney General [...]

Dawn Johnsen could face a difficult confirmation battle to head the Office of Legal Counsel, if Republicans like Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania are intent on painting the Indiana University law professor as a radical left-wing ideologue.
Specter’s staff has obviously been digging into the right-wing media, because at her confirmation hearing today, the senator brought [...]

CIA Director-designate Leon Panetta clarified his statement yesterday that there may be a class of terrorism detainee who can’t be tried in court, nor transferred to another country nor released. Or, at least he reiterated it.
Some detainees are so dangerous, he said, that “they may not be able to be tried for that reason, [and] [...]

I think the Obama administration is not likely to cede that authority back to the Congress.
– Dick Cheney, Dec. 15, 2008
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them.
– Barack Obama, Jan. 20, 2009
I was talking with a reporter friend last night about President Barack Obama’s executive orders on [...]

Steve Aftergood at Secrecy News reports on a weird episode: Attorney General Michael Mukasey reacted pretty strongly to a bill sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) that would compel congressional notification of opinions by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that conclude the executive branch isn’t bound by certain laws. Obviously, the rationale for [...]

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel today released another slew of previously-classified legal memos, setting forth the department’s justifications for everything from the legality of the use of military commissions to try suspected terrorists to the authority of the president to use force against Iraq to the status of Taliban forces under the Geneva [...]