Bob Bauer has a public record of defending Barack Obama’s relationship with ACORN. Bauer’s hiring appears to be a tactical maneuver to strategically defend the White House exactly one week after Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell raided ACORN’s national headquarters in New Orleans and seized paper records and computer hard drives that may lead to the White House.

The actual story, as Tony Romm points out, is that Bauer, in his service as the general counsel for the Obama-Biden campaign, criticized Republicans for the last-minute lawsuits against ACORN in swing states. As the story roiled–and it’s entirely possible the negative attention helped win Missouri for the McCain-Palin ticket–he asked the attorney general to investigate any involvement between the Bush Justice Department and the GOP’s campaign. Read the letter–he doesn’t really defend ACORN at all. King’s attack here is almost surprisingly irresponsible. Almost.

The White House’s top lawyer is returning to private practice and being replaced by a longtime adviser to Barack Obama.

White House counsel Greg Craig, who’s leaving in early January, has been the subject of questions about his future since late summer. Those questions centered on concerns that Obama’s promise to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison by January had gone awry under Craig’s leadership.

According to the AP, Craig will be replaced by Bob Bauer, former general counsel to Obama’s presidential campaign.

The best I can do with Amb. Karl Eikenberry’s leaked cables cautioning against an increase in U.S. troops in Afghanistan is report that some in the White House think Eikenberry himself leaked them. Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security finds that explanation implausible, and makes a good case. Laura Rozen tries to offer a more plausible scenario:

“The [White House] political operation is using him to push back [against the] Pentagon,” one Democratic foreign policy hand suggested.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Vice President Joseph Biden have publicly expressed skepticism about surging troops to Afghanistan, and reservations about what can be achieved working with Hamid Karzai.

I don’t know. And chances are I won’t.

Her amendment, which she first tried to attach to an appropriations bill without success, would also require their offices to submit periodic reports about their activities to congressional oversight committees. If they failed to comply, their departments could lose some federal dollars, she has previously suggested.

Collins makes an intellectually honest argument here — it’s all about government transparency. That doesn’t change the fact that something considered a normal part of presidential power one year ago has become a hot-button issue, basically because Glenn Beck said it should.

Cantwell ripped into the financial reforms put forth by Geithner and the Obama administration as “appalling” for including alleged loopholes and exemptions for large financial institutions in legislation overhauling the regulatory framework for the nation’s top firms.

“I’m not sure,” Cantwell said during an appearance on MSNBC this morning when asked by host Dylan Ratigan why Geithner still has a job.

And yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press:”

“What the Treasury secretary basically said was that, yes, banks should take more risks and we should continue the loopholes,” she said. “And that’s really appalling because right now, we know that lack of transparency has caused this problem with the U.S. economy, and Wall Street is continuing, one year later, with the same loopholes.”

It won’t be easy for the Obama administration to push through legislation if it can’t even convince its own party to support it.

We express our deepest regret and strong objection that the Islamic Republic of Iran has sentenced Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh to 15 years in prison. Mr. Tajbakhsh poses no threat to Iran or its national security. As an independent and internationally-respected scholar, Mr. Tajbakhsh has dedicated his life to fostering greater understanding between Iran and the international community. He embodies what is possible between our two countries. Our thoughts and prayers are with Kian’s family and loved ones on this difficult day.

Further, we are deeply concerned that Mr. Tajbakhsh may have been forced to stand trial in the revolutionary court without the benefit of his own legal counsel. The right to due process is universal and must be respected. The right to a fair and public hearing is embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the right to legal representation is also guaranteed in Iran’s own constitution, as well as in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party. We urge Iran to release Mr. Tajbakhsh as soon as possible.

The statement is all the more significant given the delicacy of ongoing negotiations in Vienna to remove low-enriched uranium from Iran.

Take the nomination of Dawn Johnsen, Obama’s pick to the head the Office of Legal Counsel, which provides critical legal advice to the president. The OLC, of course, is the same office that got into all sorts of trouble under the Bush administration, and several of its former lawyers are the subject of a much-awaited report from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which reportedly has concluded that the lawyers violated legal ethics in recommending President George W. Bush permit the abuse of detainees and other suspensions of constitutional rights in the so-called “war on terror.” That report, although reportedly drafted last year, is apparently still being reviewed by the very lawyers it apparently censures, and is likely being edited and potentially watered-down as a result.

But even as President Obama says he wants to look forward, not back, he’s not exactly pushing very hard to get a new director for that Office of Legal Counsel confirmed so she can lead his legal department on its forward march. The nomination of Johnsen, a highly-respected law professor who was second-in-command at OLC under President Clinton, was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with full Democratic support in March. She has yet to get a full Senate vote — though back in May, Attorney General Eric Holder called her confirmation “probably my top priority.”

Republicans have made clear that they’ll fight the Johnsen nomination and slow the voting process down, even though it seems clear Democrats have enough votes to confirm her. GOP lawmakers have painted Johnsen as a radical for publicly challenging some of the advice given by the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush years. And during her confirmation hearings, some Republicans seized on the fact that Johnsen was a lawyer for the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) early in her career, and 20 years ago was one of ten co-authors on a brief in which there was a footnote that some Republicans found objectionable.

With the health care debate ongoing and the president staking much of the success of his first term on its outcome, the Obama administration may not have much interest in pushing the Johnsen nomination just now, since Republicans will likely insist on cloture — and the 30 hours of debate that comes with it — which would detract from the president’s current mission.

As a result, according to the White House and Senate staffers, a vote on the Johnsen nomination isn’t even on the calendar yet.

“I have no plans to leave whatsoever,” Craig told David Ingram at the National Law Journal. Describing his relationship with President Obama as “excellent,” Craig dismissed the recent reports, which included one from The Washington Post and ProPublica in late September that three administration officials said that Craig would be leaving his job soon.

Even if he has no interest in leaving, Craig clearly has some opponents within the administration, since they’ve been leaking the idea to the press for months now. In early August, The Wall Street Journal reported that administration officials were “holding discussions” that could result in Craig’s departure.

Still, as is often the case, that’s not necessarily the end of the story. Carol Rosenberg at The Miami Herald reports that the defense department’s military commissions could still try Al Rabiah for war crimes, as it planned to do during the Bush administration. The Pentagon claimed Al Rabiah ran a supply depot for al Qaeda fighters during the Battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Al Rabiah’s lawyers argued in federal court that it was a case of mistaken identity; the man who’d actually supplied al Qaeda was killed by American air strikes.

Although Judge Kollar-Kotelly didn’t rule definitively on whether Al Rabiah was the man U.S. forces had intended to capture, she did rule unequivocally against the Justice Department, finding that the U.S. government has no right to keep Al Rabiah, imprisoned at Guantanamo since 2002, any longer. As she put it in her opinion: “If there exists a basis for Al Rabiah’s indefinite detention, it most certainly has not been presented to this Court.”

That won’t necessarily stop the military from charging him with war crimes, however. A military commissions spokesman told The Miami Herald that there’s still an active case pending against Al Rabiah at the commission. It’s been suspended until November, awaiting White House review.

Franken, who opened by acknowledging that unlike most of his colleagues in the Senate, he’s not a lawyer, but according to his research “most Americans aren’t lawyers” either, said he’d also done research on the Patriot Act and in particular, the “roving wiretap” provision that allows the FBI to get a warrant to wiretap a an unnamed target and his or her various and changing cell phones, computers and other communication devices.

Noting that he received a copy of the Constitution when he was sworn in as a senator, he proceeded to read it to Kris, emphasizing this part:  “no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

“That’s pretty explicit language,” noted Franken, asking Kris how the “roving wiretap” provision of the Patriot Act can meet that requirement if it doesn’t require the government to name its target.

Kris looked flustered and mumbled that “this is surreal,” apparently referring to having to respond to Franken’s question. “I would defer to the other branch of government,” he said, referring to the courts, prompting Franken to interject: “I know what that is.”

Kris explained that the courts have held that the law’s requirements that the person be described, though not named, is sufficient to meet the demands of the Constitution. That did not appear to completely satisfy Franken’s concerns.

Today’s Judiciary Committee hearing has so far proceeded much the way yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing did, with Democrats (except the Justice Department witness) expressing skepticism that the current law adequately protects Americans’ civil liberties and Republicans emphasizing the need to have all possible tools for law enforcement available because another major terrorist attack could occur at any time.

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