A “Filibuster Fable” from The Old Gray Lady

I came across this intriguing little story in the New York Times today concerning the nomination hearings for some Obama Administration appointees, including David F. Hamilton, Obama’s first selection for a federal appeals court seat, and Dawn Johnsen, nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.

What got my attention in particular was this item concerning (you guessed it) methods of Repug obstruction…

But so far, facing a solid Democratic majority in the Senate, they have been able to do little beyond briefly delaying confirmation. Now they are weighing whether to use the filibuster — a threat of extended debate, the tool many Republican senators regularly denounced when it was used by Democrats to block some Republican nominees. These are certainly different times.

I would like Times writer Neil A. Lewis to click here and take a really good look at the chart. He will learn that Republican filibusters (or the threat thereof) skyrocketed in the 110th Congress (hence the importance of achieving “the magical number of 60” in passing legislation, with that being the vote total that would bar a filibuster, a fact very well known by Senate Repugs including John Cornyn of Texas). So basically, the Repugs haven’t been “weighing” whether to use the filibuster or not; they’ve actually been using it!

And speaking of “Big Bad John” (please), he had the following to say about Johnsen, as the story tells us…

(Cornyn) said Ms. Johnsen lacked the “requisite seriousness” to head the Office of Legal Counsel.

A committee Democrat, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, said he was astonished by the attacks. After the “long, dark days of degradation” of the office, Mr. Whitehouse said, it is hypocritical of Republicans who were then silent to complain now about partisanship.

“Now suddenly they come forward with concerns,” he said. “Where were you when those incompetent, ideological opinions were being issued?”

I don’t know a lot about Whitehouse, but I like what I’ve seen on him concerning abuses in the Bushco Justice Department in particular.

And how funny is it to hear Cornyn talk about “requisite seriousness” when he has promised to wage “World War IIII” to keep Al Franken out of the Senate, as noted here?

Here’s why the Repugs are so upset with Johnsen (and I’d like to watch her kick the crap out of any Repug who calls her a “liberal ideologue” – I’ll bet she could do it)…

Ms. Johnsen, a law professor at Indiana University, was an unsparing critic of memorandums, written by lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, that said the president could largely ignore international treaties and Congress in fighting terrorists and that critics have portrayed as allowing torture in interrogation.

The broad reading of presidential authority was “outlandish,” and the constitutional arguments were “shockingly flawed,” Ms. Johnsen has written. While her language was harsh, the memos have largely been withdrawn, and among lawyers a consensus agreeing with her views has emerged.

And Johnsen also earned the scorn of right-wing bloviators for…

…a footnote in a brief she filed 20 years ago when she was a lawyer with the National Abortion Rights Action League. The footnote said forcing a woman to bear a child when she had no desire to do so was “disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude.”

Conservative blogs asserted that she had equated pregnancy with slavery, and the argument was taken up by Republicans at her confirmation hearing on Feb. 25. Mr. Specter suggested that she had said abortion rights should be protected by the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Ms. Johnsen replied that the footnote had made a suggestion of an analogy and that it had mentioned the amendment, but that she had never “believed the 13th Amendment had any role” in the abortion issue.

This post from HuffPo’s David Latt provides a more detailed analysis of Johnsen’s thorough criticisms; Senate Democrats would be well advised to do all they can to confirm her without any further delay.