Posted on 01/05/2009 10:01:41 AM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama filled top Justice Department posts on Monday with four former Clinton administration lawyers, including naming the Harvard Law School dean to argue the government's position in U.S. Supreme Court cases.
Obama selected Elena Kagan, who served in the Clinton White House in the 1990s, to argue before the nation's highest court. She would be the first female solicitor general, a Justice Department official said.
Kagan, who became the Harvard dean in 2003, worked with Obama when both were on the University of Chicago Law School faculty in the 1990s.
The 48-year-old Kagan has been mentioned as a possible choice by Obama for any future Supreme Court vacancies.
Kagan would help craft the administration's position in the pending Supreme Court case on whether an al Qaeda suspect can be indefinitely imprisoned in the United States without charges. The administration brief is due by February 20.
While Obama has strongly opposed President George W. Bush's war-on-terrorism policies and has vowed to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, he and his aides have yet to say what position they will take in the case.
Obama also named Washington lawyer David Ogden as deputy attorney general; Tom Perrelli, who Obama knew when they both attended Harvard Law School, as associate attorney general, and Dawn Johnson as assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.
Ogden, Perrelli and Johnson all served in various senior Justice Department jobs during Bill Clinton's presidency, and have been top members of Obama's transition team at the Justice Department.
"These individuals bring the integrity, depth of experience and tenacity that the Department of Justice demands in these uncertain times," Obama said in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Hopey Changemass
SSDD.
So this is what CHANGE looks like.
No new ideas.
The fencepost turtle has no associations (outside of Ayers and Wright) and can name no people of his own.
Barry’s a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toon, Inc.
He’s just tapping the Clinton Brain Trust .. Just look at all the great ideas that sprang forth from a bunch of Third Way Progre$$ives.. Their fruits will continue to be on display long after the GOP slips beneath the waves of turmoil ahead, another ‘victim’.
WAIT! HE’S NOT GOING TO CONSULT WITH HIS ADVISORS AND FIRE SOME OF THEM IS HE?
THE DEMOCRAPS WERE HORRIFIED AT SUCH ‘CRIMINAL’ BEHAVIOR WHEN W DID IT!!!!!
I opined during Operation Chaos that Obama may have been a Straw Man.
bambi doesn't know anybody with the experience for any of these positions. He's never done anything through which he would have met qualified people. He has no inner circle that would be acceptable.
He has to look to former dim operatives and unless hewants to go back to Carter all these folks will be clintonites.
Integrity! Wonder if they filled out their 63 page questionairre just like Bill Richardson?
Apparently it lacks the following three questions:
Are you a crook?
Have you used your prior Government positions for Pay to Play?
Can you be caught at either?
So, in the name of change, can we look forward to the Second Incarnation of Lani Guinier. Her legal philosophy seemed screwball enough to appeal to the One.
The only thing obama meant by “change” was, a change from George Bush...otherwise, he is clinton II.
I know you didn't expect anything else. The Democratic Party is about a mile wide and a quarter of an inch deep. And just like the good old plantation days, there are a few, very few, house workers and a whole lot of stupid field rats. In other words, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
With all the Clinton re treads in this administration, if the Supremes ever get a pair and pull NObama for not being natural-born, then the Clintons have everything all set up.
It could be worse. He could be tapping more Carter-era people.
It appears that Obama’s notion of “change” involves hiring all the people that Hillary knew could get the job done, but for Bill’s zipper. So she’s still in charge!!!
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