TheAgitator.com
One More Obama +1
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009Barack Obama has appointed Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman to be deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.
Lederman was a harsh, outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s executive power grabs, specifically its positions on torture, surveillance, and secrecy, and the absurd lengths to which the OLC went to justify those positions.
The beautiful part: Lederman will be occupying the very position formerly held by John Yoo.
I had low expectations of an Obama Presidency (even though I voted for him) but he’s really done some things that have surprised me. He’s far from perfect (he’s appointed some of the same old recycled hacks from the Clinton administration), but he’s done much, much better than I had expected.
Kudos to him. I’m actually starting to look forward to his next 99 days!
Words are only words, but it does sound like he’s committed to the rule of law and some government transparency. Of course Bush said he wanted limited foreign policy, and bi-partisanship, but he was also an obvious moron who everyone seemed to know would never really call the actual shots.
Looks good so far.
Lederman is a really great choice for OLC. He has been on the side of the angles w/r/t a lot of issues (especially torture) and he is brilliant. I know that the quality of work product from his office will be outstanding (even though I bet I disagree with the conclusions a lot of the time).
Frankly, it’s a lot more fun arguing with smart lawyers than dumb ones :-)
Now, that’s change I can believe in! If he keeps up this pace through his first hundred days, perhaps we can actually avoid the societal collapse that I’ve been expecting.
Call me jaded but I’d keep my finger on the “hack watch” button.
I’m starting to have some emotions that I’m not used to feeling towards a President. What do you call the opposite of cynicism and contempt?
@nobahdi: I would call those delusion, but I am a special case.
Wow you people are so easily swayed. Why not give it time to see results? Hiring people, issuing orders, and making statements are not real, tangible, measureable results. I know everyone feels better about it because King Bush never took these steps, but FEELINGS don’t solve problems. There needs to be a heavy dose of skepticism, and I can’t see why that would be hard to achieve considering everything government in this country at all levels has done to each and every one of us. Liberty isn’t in the plan, as proven by the results.
This happens every election cycle. People quickly forget how they just got lied to and bent over by the previous cycle’s candidates. The Road To Serfdom has been marched down every election cycle, at all levels of government, for many decades. Not once has there been a quantifiable step in the right direction – limited government, transparency, non-aggressive foreign policy, shrinking the empire. Year after year the results are the same.
I’m moderately pleased, but continue to be skeptical.
I’m not used to a politician even taking baby steps toward restraining executive power, so I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Why even state you are pleased at ANY level? Where is the rage and anger? Why the pliant and docile responses? Why even ACKNOWLEDGE that “this is good”? It’s like people have been beaten for so long, you’re happy with being beaten only 6 hours a day with a cane instead of 10 hours a day with a steel rod.
“It’s like people have been beaten for so long, you’re happy with being beaten only 6 hours a day with a cane instead of 10 hours a day with a steel rod.”
If those are the only two practical choices, I’ll take the cane.
People continue to point fingers at Bush. Why don’t you spend some money, buy The Cult of the Presidency, and learn a little of the history of the the unitary executive theory? While Bush used it, he and Yoo did not create the theory that the vesting clause of Article II granted ALL executive authority to the President. People like Wilson and Truman and Lincoln and FDR and Nixon and Johnson used it first.
Talk about secrecy, Truman signed into law an act that maintained concentration camps in the US. That law was continued into the 60s. Wilson had an army of 200,000 who spied on others. He pushed the prosecution of many people resulting in Americans being jailed for up to 20 years for attempting to tell others to exercise their rights in opposing the draft and our entry into WWI. It’s in the book.
Time will tell but MOST leftists adhere to the UET. Ms. Obama has already stated that they want volunteers and IF people don’t volunteer the government will make them. Yeah, she’s not the Pres BUT ever married person on here knows who controls things.
In the great words of a true patriot: “Give me liberty or give me death.”
“Talk about secrecy, Truman signed into law an act that maintained concentration camps in the US. That law was continued into the 60s. ”
Truman?
@fwb: Just for fun:
The entire quote attributable to Patrick Henry reads:
Of course, Patrick Henry also owned slaves, whom he felt were apparently deserving of neither liberty or death.
Unitary executive theory (I will say again, I hope for the last time) does not speak to how much power the President has. The theory merely holds that all executive power is vested in the President, therefore no executive agency can bring a cause of action against any other executive agency (No EPA v. Department of Energy, for example), and quasi-executive agencies (like the SEC) are unconstitutional. That’s also a non-delegation issue, but non-delegation died with the advent of the New Deal court. Unitary executive theory speaks to who wields the power, not how much power there is. Contrast a unitary executive with an executive headed by a triumvirate (as in ancient Rome and sometimes during Imperial Chinese rule).
The Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, 50 U.S.C.A. § 781 et seq. (also referred to as the McCarran Act, or the McCarran Internal Security Act) was passed by the Congress and President Truman VETOED the bill, decrying it as the greatest threat to liberty since the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798).
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=883&st=&st1=
Congress overrode the President’s veto. The Act was not repealed until 1971.
Are you talking about Japanese internment camps? Because those were all closed down right after the war, weren’t they?
The last Exclusion Order was rescinded in January of 1945, but there were still people in some of the camps until 1946.
Here’s another one that I, at least, find quite positive – the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan.