Free Republic

Much has been written about Obama’s controversial appointments, not only to the federal bench, but to key cabinet positions, as well as to the unaccountable (and probably unconstitutional) “Czar” positions. Much of the criticism has dwelled on the Obama administration’s lack of vetting when filling these rolls—but that’s not the issue. To the contrary, the Obama team did investigate thoroughly and they choose precisely. When an administration repeatedly nominates hard-left individuals, it’s not a vetting error—it’s a pattern. We should not allow the media to portray these appointments as a series of errors; but rather, we need to realize that...

If President Obama has his way, Attorney General Eric Holder will soon be joined at the Justice Department by another terrorist rights advocate, Dawn Johnsen. Obama has nominated her to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Given her opposition to enhanced interrogation of terrorist suspects, she provides yet another example that the Obama administration still views Islamic terrorists as criminal defendants entitled to full constituional protections in civil trials, not as unlawful enemy combatants. As if we needed any more evidence! The New York Times, unsurprisingly, is upset about what its editorial today called ”an unreasonable delay” in...

Dawn Johnson, on the docket for the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Council, is another Obama nominee with the potential to change the shape of American politics. Johnson is currently a professor at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and has a long history in the Washington legal scene. She served as former President Clinton’s acting assistant attorney general and as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Her installation in Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel puts her in a decision making capacity for...

Time to dust off the old filibuster. Dawn Johnson, sister-in-law of David Hamilton (the jurist who said it was illegal to begin a legislative session with a prayer in Jesus' name, but perfectly OK to pray to Allah), has been nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. You may remember Ms. Johnson for the quotation in the title of this post, in which she compared pregnancy to slavery. Brillyunt!