But the President is the head of the executive branch, no? And the Justice Department, headed by the Attorney General is a part of the executive branch?
Is the President not the boss of the AG? If not, who is?
As soon as I read the latest story, I thought “Lemur866 had it exactly right in the previous thread.”
As mentioned upthread, Obama has also differentiated between people who thought they were following legal orders and those who gave the orders, and between politically motivated prosecutions and prosecutions sanctioned by the Justice Department.
The chain of command is there for a reason. A U.S. attorney or other Justice department functionary might be intimidated by the president into revealing information or taking action against his better judgment. Such a person would be less intimidated by his/her direct superior. This buffer ends with the Attorney General, who, as a member of the cabinet, is unlikely to be intimidated by anyone, and who, as a member of the DoJ, is obligated to advocate for them in such matters.
This is how all healthy workplace hierarchies function; a good boss expects his senior staff to argue with him.
Well, before the Bush administration, the question of whether to prosecute people who had custody of other people and tortured them on instructions from Administration officials was not at issue.
The Bush Administration: Setting new precedents in American law!! 
Well that’s cool…I guess the Bush Administration had to be good for SOMETHING!
-XT
Just to quickly answer this (hopefully avoiding a hijack): I tried to word my statement carefully to prevent the German-officer “We were just following orders!” defense – IF (a) you are being asked to do something you deem borderline, and (b) you seek out directions from your nation’s chief law enforcement official, and (c) you follow those directions in good faith to the letter, you do have a reasonable defense.
If those directions are themselves against the law, contrary to all civilized morality, etc., the fault in them lies with those who wrote them, not those who obeyed them.
(And I’d love to see someone do a detailed analysis of the relative limits on interrogation of a U.S. citizen accused of a petty crime, one accused of a major felony, a foreign national who is a prisoner of war, a foreign national alleged to have been a part of a terroristic conspiracy, etc. I’d like to think they’re all governed by the Fifth Amendment – but I have a hunch I’m wrong, at least as far as case law goes.)
I disagree: the president (and his advisors, not that that would ever happen) shouldn’t be making those specific calls. If there’s no daylight between Justice and the White House, I think ridiculous things would happen - like legal advisers inventing justifications for torture and prosecutors being hired and fired based on political loyalty and their willingness to go after political rivals. In theory.