But the editors have their thongs in knots because Harry Reid has an issue with Ted Olson and his God-awful toupee becoming attorney general.
Let's just that given 2000 and moreso the circumstances under which "Gonzo" Gonzales was encouraged to retire from the position, Olson is the worst possible choice; not bad, worst.
Today, the Journal's in-house nuts thinks a preznit should be free to appoint any political, partisan hack he wants, that there's no need or reason to appoint a competent manager, as it were.
I say: just wait til the Dem is elected that wait for the inevitable flip-flop. Because the modern conservatives are people of principle.
And wit; the headline is just so witty....
Borking Mr. OlsonLink.
September 14, 2007
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.
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