Ted Olson, former Solicitor General under the Bush Administration, is considered the frontrunner to succeed Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General, according to the DC rumor mill.
Olson, as Assistant AG in the Reagan Administration, defended President Reagan during the Iran-Contra affair; during the 1990s, was part of the Arkansas Project aiming to bring down Bill Clinton’s presidency; and in 2000 represented W before the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore.
Assuming the rumors are true – what is W thinking?! Couldn’t he have chosen someone more obscure? Someone the Dems who control the Senate have fewer good reasons to hate? Harry Reid has already said, “Ted Olson will not be confirmed.”
You say this as if it’s a bad thing. What’s the problem with a lawyer defending a client who you don’t agree with? Or doing work for hire to gather information, especially when there was ample evidence of criminal wrongdoing? (How many indictments came out of Whitewater? ) Are you saying anyone that’s worked to let the public know about wrongdoing by public officials is unqualified or public office? If only that were so, NY would have vacancies in the Governor and AG post right now.
Sounds like another smear campaign, guilt by association at best. More likely just misinterpretation of impressive achievements. Next thing you know we’ll hear that he appeared on Fox News :eek:
Olson’s wife Barbara was on Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon on 9/11, so there’s some sympathy there. Not much, but it’s there. It’d be a cheap card to play, but it’ll be interesting to see if it’s played.
I say it as a set of things the Democrats, whose consent is necessary for confirmation, will find highly objectionable. Anyone Bush nominates for the post will be a Republican, and no doubt a very conservative Republican, but some are more acceptable to the other side than others.
My understanding is that there will be no more recess appointments because Senator Reid now calls the Senate into session just long enough to force the prez to send his nominees who need confirmation to the chamber. There is a quickie “pro forma” session every 10 days so that the recess appointment loophole is now closed.
Mr. Olson is a solidly credentialed Bushivik. This is to be expected by one (such as myself) who regards every move in this arena as a ploy to prevent even more disastrous revelations regarding the Dept. of “Justice”. That alone, regardless of Mr Olson’s actual integrity, would be enough to resist this nomination. Sometimes, appearance is as important as fact, and this is one of those times.
Are there no honest conservatives left, outside of Mr Fitzgerald? Is there no one that my ilk and I can trust, however much we disagree? Our DoJ has been turned into a partisan whorehouse. The only effective disinfectant is wholesale application of sunshine, we need someone who will turn over every rock and identify the species of slug thereinunder.
If the aforementioned Mr Fitz were to spend six weeks with full authority to investigate, and were then to announce that all needful attention had been paid, there is nothing further to see here, you lurky-loos…I might not be entirely satisfied, but largely.
But Mr Olson? How could such assurance be rendered by such an avowed partisan? Even if it were true, how could we be assured? This prospective nomination not only speaks volumes, it shrieks volumes. We are witness to an effort to stuff the worms back into the can, and hide the can.
As an unreasonable lefty, what do I want? Another unreasonable lefty, if not as AG, then as a seperately empowered investigator. If he comes back and says “I got nothin’”, excellent! We are assured, there is nothing more to see there, and we can Move On. Short of that, we have nothing to look forward to but lingering suspicions unattractively adorned by fact.
Another problem is that Gonzalez resigned over, mainly, the warrantless-wiretapping and attorney-firing controversies. The Dems will inevitably use the confirmation hearing to keep those matters in the public eye, if only by demanding the nominee promise to clean things up. To minimize the effect, Bush needs a nominee who has no conceivable connection to those scandals – which pretty much means someone who has never served in the DoJ during Bush’s tenure. Olson has.
What are the chances Bush is creating a circus deliberately – a circus whose center-ring acts will be, essentially, “old news,” aka warrantless wiretaps and US attorney dismissals, among others – in an effort to keep the ongoing “new news” of the collapse of Iraq off the front page?