Reid declare potential AG 'unconfirmable'

[EvilMonkey]

Think he is just pissed because he represented Bush in the election fracas with Gore, or would he have a real reason? Like not liking the way he recycles?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/12/...in3255578.shtml

 

Reid: "Ted Olson Will Not Be Confirmed By The Senate."

By Martin Kady II

 

Sep 12, 2007

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

(The Politico) Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has made a pre-emptive strike against one of President Bush's potential nominees for attorney general, vowing that the Senate will not confirm Ted Olson.

 

Olson is perhaps best known by the general public as the attorney who represented George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the Supreme Court case that decided the contested 2000 election, and that does not rest well with Democrats.

 

"Ted Olson will not be be confirmed by the Senate," Reid said after a Capitol news conference. "I intend to do everything I can to prevent him from being confirmed as the next attorney general."

 

Reid's comments were provided by his office to the Politico on Wednesday afternoon and first reported by Reuters.

 

If the Senate majority leader has declared a potential nominee as a nonstarter, Bush may have to look at the other potential nominees because Reid controls the Senate calendar.

 

This week Mike Allen of the Politico reported that other potential nominees include U.S. district chief judge Michael Mukasey of New York; Laurence H. Silberman, a senior circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; George J. Terwilliger, a former deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush; and Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general in this administration.

 

 

[Gregory Pratt]

We've heard testimony on him before. He's a crooked man and he's got sleazy history with the SCOTUS and Bush v. Gore. There was no reason to nominate him except

 

1. Nobody else, literally nobody else, would take it.

2. Screw with the Democrats.

 

It's both.

 

There's no reason to bring in such a sleazy man who will only divide the Congress and follow the President's orders without question or integrity. But this is an administration that loves its incest policy like it loves tax cuts, and so they have to promote from within always. Maybe I'm selling them short, though, and they'd love to hire respectable, gap-bridging employees but those evil democrats and liberals and center right Republicans just won't join because they're mean to the President because they're elitists and jerks.

[Texsox]

As with all Presidential nominiations, I believe the President should get his person, regardless of the political ideology of the candidate. Character, and a track record in the field are the relevent topics to me. I know I am living in a dream world, but I expect Bush to nominate someone who is conservative and he shouold get his person.

 

Having said that, there are some character concerns here.

[EvilMonkey]

So is he 'crooked and sleazy' BECAUSE he won in the Bush/Gore case, or is there something else you would ike to add? As for hiring gap-bridging employees, yeah right. All the guy, or girl, ahs to do is be qualified for the job. His political leanings should have no bearing, unless they cloud judgement. And simply kicking the snot out of Gore's lawyers doesn't make bad judgement.

 

Tex, I know you don't care much for blogs, but I know Pratt likes them. How about this one?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lanny-davis/...ge_b_62847.html

It is chock-full of GOOD things to say about him, including this dandy,

But Ted Olson's commitment to The Law -- and his institutional investment in the independence and integrity of the Department of Justice -- would permit him to reconcile loyalty to the president who appointed him and complete independence of the Department of Justice.

[Gregory Pratt]

Read about his involvement in the Arkansas Project. That's why he's sleazy. Not that you'd buy any of it. You made up your mind that Ted Olson deserves the spot long ago.

 

I disagree with Lanny Davis and I hate the Huffington Post. But where do you get the idea that I like blogs? I mean, I get my news from the AP online and from other sources that people link to (articles, RealClearPolitics which links to op-eds, etc. etc.) but I don't "like blogs." I find them useful sometimes. Good for supplementary opinion and knowledge. Great jumpoff points for research. I write in my blog, but I would never cite myself or any other non-news blog as an authority unless, say, Justice Scalia or something had a blog and even then I'd just say "it's their opinion." But I couldn't care less what Lanny Davis says about Olson. Olson is sleazy and every Democrat in Washington knows it.

Edited September 13, 2007 by Gregory Pratt

[Rex Kickass]

Ordinarily, I'd agree that the President should get the nominee of his perogative. However, Ted Olson is another admitted partisan. Given the atmosphere at Justice has become so political, hiring someone like Ted Olson would be basically saying that this atmosphere that turned DOJ into something awful over the last few years is still acceptable. Gonzales should have and could have been impeached, I think it's only right that the Senate actually start using some of its oversight powers to reign in a department gone awry. Denying this nomination is the first step in that direction.

[EvilMonkey]

Read about his involvement in the Arkansas Project. That's why he's sleazy. Not that you'd buy any of it. You made up your mind that Ted Olson deserves the spot long ago.

 

I disagree with Lanny Davis and I hate the Huffington Post. But where do you get the idea that I like blogs? I mean, I get my news from the AP online and from other sources that people link to (articles, RealClearPolitics which links to op-eds, etc. etc.) but I don't "like blogs." I find them useful sometimes. Good for supplementary opinion and knowledge. Great jumpoff points for research. I write in my blog, but I would never cite myself or any other non-news blog as an authority unless, say, Justice Scalia or something had a blog and even then I'd just say "it's their opinion." But I couldn't care less what Lanny Davis says about Olson. Olson is sleazy and every Democrat in Washington knows it.

Actually, I haven't made up my mind. I really don't know much about him, except that Reid seems in a real hurry to not confirm him. I bet georgie could put up Perry Mason, and Reid would say he is unconfirmable before they even had meetings. That is the real joke, the real partisanship. It is a political appointment. He is NOT going to be some neutered person in there who has never had apolitcal leaning any way whatsoever. WHo would be acceptable to Reid and his minions? Maybe Janet Reno? I dunno, just askin.

[Texsox]

Just like Clinton near the end of his term needed at appease the GOP because he just wasn't cuttin' it, I think it would be good business for Bush to find someone with less of a partisan history.

 

My blog thoughts are, you can find a blog to say anything. 95% are crap, a few experts write some pretty good ones.

[southsider2k5]

This must be more of this "bipartisianship" we heard so much about during the Congressional elections.

[Balta1701]

This must be more of this "bipartisianship" we heard so much about during the Congressional elections.

So, which side is the one that should put away partisanship? The side nominating the middle finger to the congressional majority, or the side saying "no, we won't confirm your middle finger".

 

A few months ago, Chuck Schumer already offered up a list of names he'd consider to be "meeting the Dems half way". It's not like they're demanding the job be given to Hillary or anything like that.

"We're willing to bury the gauntlet as long as the White House meets us part of the way," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a Judiciary Committee member and the third-ranking Democrat in the party's Senate leadership.

 

"If the president nominates an attorney general who puts rule of law first and that attorney general will say 'Let's find out what went wrong, let's correct it and let's move on,' he will find a welcoming hand from the Congress," Schumer told reporters Monday.

 

But Schumer said probes, including the investigations of Gonzales' role in Bush administration policies such as the National Security Agency surveillance program, would "have to continue" even with the exit of Gonzales.

 

On Monday, Schumer was unwilling to offer names of his favored replacement for Gonzales.

 

"I'm not going to get into names today. I will be quietly suggesting some names to people in the White House. ... You don't want to create a division, you don't want a Democratic name out there at this point," he said.

 

But back in April, Schumer offered his own short list of nominees to replace Gonzales:

 

* Larry Thompson, former number two man of the Justice Department in President Bush's first term. Thompson, now general counsel of Pepsico, is an old friend of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and appeared as a witness for Thomas during his Senate confirmation hearings.

* James Comey, who served as deputy in the Justice Department after Thompson left.

* Retired federal trial judge Michael Mukasey

 

Just last week, Mukasey wrote a lengthy op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal in which he urged Congress to consider the creation of special national security courts to deal with accused terrorists such as Jose Padilla.

[Texsox]

So, which side is the one that should put away partisanship? The side nominating the middle finger to the congressional majority, or the side saying "no, we won't confirm your middle finger".

 

A few months ago, Chuck Schumer already offered up a list of names he'd consider to be "meeting the Dems half way". It's not like they're demanding the job be given to Hillary or anything like that.

 

Seems fair enough.

[EvilMonkey]

So, which side is the one that should put away partisanship? The side nominating the middle finger to the congressional majority, or the side saying "no, we won't confirm your middle finger".

 

A few months ago, Chuck Schumer already offered up a list of names he'd consider to be "meeting the Dems half way". It's not like they're demanding the job be given to Hillary or anything like that.

You see, that is the whole problem right there. chgickie should have no say in who the president nominates, as long as they have the qualifications needed for the position. Political views are not qualifications. When Shumer gets to be President (yeah, right) THEN he can pick who gets nominated. is there a law that says the AG should be someone in the middle? Like it or not, it is a political appointment.

[Gregory Pratt]

And the Congress has every right to strike him down, like it or not.

[southsider2k5]

So, which side is the one that should put away partisanship? The side nominating the middle finger to the congressional majority, or the side saying "no, we won't confirm your middle finger".

 

A few months ago, Chuck Schumer already offered up a list of names he'd consider to be "meeting the Dems half way". It's not like they're demanding the job be given to Hillary or anything like that.

 

So if Hillary wins the Presidency, God help us all, will she take Ted Stevens list of who she should nominate for a key position?

[Texsox]

So if Hillary wins the Presidency, God help us all, will she take Ted Stevens list of who she should nominate for a key position?

 

No, the list would be very different. That tells me he has already moved towards the right in his picks. Isn't that a good thing?

 

And if Congress was under GOP leadership the lists would be different.

 

I don't see a problem. Do you?

[EvilMonkey]

And the Congress has every right to strike him down, like it or not.

Well, i guess blocking nominees is about the only thing this congress CAN do, since they ahve accoplished nothing much else.

[Chet Lemon]

I do not see anything wrong w/ Olson or Clement, the interim AG.

[kapkomet]

Olson is not a good pick, for many reasons, IMO.

 

But I see that the point SS made about Ted Stevens got a nice little (usual) quip from Tex. And I thought all I said was hyperbolic nonsense.

 

[Rex Kickass]

So if Hillary wins the Presidency, God help us all, will she take Ted Stevens list of who she should nominate for a key position?

 

GOP nominates an AG that is knowingly offensive to the Dems.

Dems: This guy is not a pick we can live with.

GOP echochamber: Anyone George Bush would have picked would get railroaded.

Dems: Here are some people that worked with Republican administrations that we think would be a fine person to do the job.

GOP echochamber: How dare you suggest someone? That's the President's perogative.

 

My brain hurts.

[southsider2k5]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1189725889...=googlenews_wsj

 

Borking Mr. Olson

September 14, 2007; Page A12

Not content with having run Attorney General Alberto Gonzales out of town, the Democratic posse on Capitol Hill is already gunning for his replacement -- even before he's nominated. More preposterous still, they're disguising this pre-emptive borking as a plea for a "consensus" choice.

 

 

The breadth of this proposed condominium appears to be on the narrow side, however, running from Harry Reid to Pat Leahy, and perhaps stretching all the way to Chuck Schumer. Revealingly, this "consensus" doesn't seem to have room for Ted Olson, the former Solicitor General who is merely one of America's finest lawyers.

 

"Ted Olson will not be confirmed," declares Senate Majority Leader Reid. "He's a partisan, and the last thing we need as an Attorney General is a partisan." That standard could certainly stand some fleshing out. As "partisans" go, Mr. Olson doesn't come close to Bobby Kennedy, the brother of JFK; or Griffin Bell, close friend of Jimmy Carter (and a fine AG); or for that matter Janet Reno's Justice Department, which was run for years not by Ms. Reno but behind the scenes by close friend of Hillary Clinton and hyper-partisan Jamie Gorelick.

 

Is Mr. Reid saying that a Republican President can't nominate any Republican as Attorney General? Or does he mean that President Bush can only nominate a certain kind of Republican -- namely one who agrees with the Senate Democratic agenda, or short of that one who can be easily rolled?

 

That the latter is the real Democratic game was given away by none other than Mr. Leahy, whose own "partisanship" is so raw he can't disguise it. Number Two on Mr. Leahy's helpful "Checklist for Choosing the Next Attorney General" is this: "A proven track record of independence to ensure that he or she will act as an independent check on this Administration's expansive claims of virtually unlimited executive power."

 

This idea of an "independent" Attorney General would have been laughable to the Founders, who rejected a bifurcated executive branch. Mr. Olson understands that very well, having served not only as Solicitor General, who argues cases before the Supreme Court, but also as head of the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan Administration. Both shops are known as the most professional in Justice, and OLC issues advisory opinions about the legality of executive branch actions. Facing a Congress intent on weakening the Presidency and limiting his war powers, Mr. Olson is precisely the kind of legal advisor Mr. Bush needs in his last 17 months.

 

Democrats also gave Mr. Olson a hard time when he was nominated as Solicitor General in 2001, in part as payback because he had argued Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court. But Mr. Olson went on to serve three years as SG in an honorable and entirely nonpartisan fashion. He sometimes argued cases, such as on campaign finance and racial preferences, that he personally disagreed with.

 

Arguing client cases before the High Court is what Mr. Olson does in private practice. Does Mr. Leahy believe that Laurence Tribe should not have represented Al Gore in that case? As Mr. Tribe put it at the time, Mr. Olson's "briefs and arguments have treated the applicable law and the underlying facts honestly and forthrightly, not disingenuously or deceptively."

 

If Mr. Olson is nominated, you can also expect Democrats to reprise the so-called "Arkansas Project" involving reporting by the American Spectator magazine on Bill and Hillary Clinton. The magazine received a few hundred thousand dollars from the Scaife Foundation to do investigative journalism while Mr. Olson was on the board of the American Spectator Foundation. Mr. Olson says he knew little about the Scaife funding, though of course he and everyone else knew about the journalism.

 

Ultimately the Spectator board voted to shut down the project, and in any case committing journalism is not a crime. The Arkansas Project was never accused of breaking any laws, although the Clinton Justice Department did investigate the magazine over the campaign, which strikes us as a much creepier sort of partisanship than exercising one's First Amendment rights.

 

Mr. Olson later represented David Hale, one of the witnesses for the prosecution in the Whitewater trial, but having clients is what lawyers do. He's also represented this newspaper, as well as Newsday reporter Timothy Phelps when he was pressed to reveal his sources on the Anita Hill story. But don't expect Mr. Leahy to give him any credit on that score.

 

What's really going on here is an attempt to intimidate Mr. Bush into nominating a candidate Democrats favor. This makes it all the more disappointing that Republican Senators have failed to speak up for Mr. Olson, with some joining the "consensus" chorus. We hope it isn't because one or more of them are angling for the Attorney General job. Voters didn't elect them to act as an echo of the Democrats, and they're likely to stay in the minority for a long time -- and deserve to -- if they won't stand up for the prerogatives of a President from their own party.

 

Mr. Bush needs an AG he's comfortable with, and we can support nearly every name on the list of potential nominees that has been bandied about in the press this week. But facing a hostile Congress, Mr. Bush also needs to show Democrats that he isn't as lame as they want him to be. If he thinks Mr. Olson is the best man for the job, he shouldn't reject him merely because Harry Reid orders him to. Come to think it, that's a very good reason for choosing him

[Texsox]

Voters didn't elect them to act as an echo of the Democrats, and they're likely to stay in the minority for a long time -- and deserve to -- if they won't stand up for the prerogatives of a President from their own party.

I agree with the above.

I trust our system in this case and expect both sides to thrash this out. I expect the GOP to represent their interests and the Dems to do the same. This balancing act has worked well for us for over 200 years.

[NorthSideSox72]

Bush has nominated Michael Mukasey for the AG position. Mukasey, a former federal judge, has been involved in some terror trials. And get this - he is seen as a concensus candidate, who many Dems are already talking up as a strong choice.

 

Just when you think you have a guy figured out...

 

[Texsox]

It would be nice to spare us a very public squabble. With so many good people on both sides of the aisle, I am surprised we can't do this more often.

[southsider2k5]

Ah the oldest trick in the book...

 

How about we go with this really awful option? No? Well how about this option that isn't quite as bad?

 

Anyway, I wonder what the reason to not listen to this guy will be?

[kapkomet]

Ah the oldest trick in the book...

 

How about we go with this really awful option? No? Well how about this option that isn't quite as bad?

 

Anyway, I wonder what the reason to not listen to this guy will be?

Yea, the old Harriet Myers trick. What a freaking debacle.