In The News

From National Review Online’s Bench Memos:  http://bench.nationalreview.com/
By Ed Whelan

If (as I expect) there is a Supreme Court vacancy soon, one big question that will affect the political dynamic over the White House’s selection of a nominee is whether the Left will mount vigorous and effective opposition to the possible nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan.  It is a remarkable testament to the perceived political impotence of the Left that everyone seems to take for granted that the answer to that question is no.  

On SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein has a long and interesting post in which he forecasts that (1) Justice Stevens “very likely will retire” this spring; (2) Justice Ginsburg “definitely will not”; and (3) President Obama will nominate Elena Kagan to replace Stevens.

My own assessments differ primarily in nuance from Goldstein’s (and that may well be because he has better access to inside information than I do). As I’ve been saying since September of last year, I believe that Stevens’s hiring of only one clerk for next term is a clear signal that he intends to resign. One circumstance that I think could change Stevens’s plan would be if Ginsburg’s health were to lead her to resign.

The scene has become familiar in the U.S. Senate: A nominee for a federal judgeship lingers for months without a confirmation vote, held up by an anonymous objection, but, when the roll is eventually called, not a single senator votes against the nominee.

Long waits, followed by unanimous confirmation.

The Judicial Confirmation Network, which has been a significant conservative voice in recent Supreme Court confirmation battles, is expanding its mission and adding urgency to its name: from now on, you can call it the Judicial Crisis Network. It will take on state as well as federal judicial battles and the Department of Justice, and issues relating to limited government, a fair judiciary and the rule of law. It is keeping the same Web site.

WASHINGTON-Democrats gearing up for a possible Supreme Court vacancy are divided over whether President Barack Obama should appoint a prominent liberal voice while their party still commands a large Senate majority, or go with someone less likely to stoke Republican
opposition.

The court's longest-serving member, Justice John Paul Stevens, has suggested that he may retire at the current term's end in June, when he will be 90 years old

You may remember that more than two months ago, amid the controversy over the Obama administration's decision to grant full American constitutional rights to, and hold a civilian trial for, accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley asked Attorney General Eric Holder about Justice Department lawyers who before joining the Obama/Holder team had represented Guantanamo detainees or worked for groups representing them. Grassley pointed to one high-ranking Obama Justice official who formerly represented Osama bin Laden's driver and another who works on detainee issues despite previous advocacy for detainees.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) predicted Wednesday that Dawn Johnsen’s controversial nomination to head the Office of Legal Counsel won’t come up this year.

“I don’t know if it’ll be brought up,” Nelson told reporters Wednesday, noting that Johnsen’s nomination ran into snags last year.

Since a suicide bomber's attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound airplane on Christmas Day, we've heard a lot about the counterterrorism community's supposed "failure to connect the dots." As a result, directives have been issued calling for improved information sharing and analysis, and agencies were ordered to review their procedures.

Such bureaucratic self-evaluation and narrow focus on the "dots," however, misses a much larger, more central piece of the puzzle - that a legalistic culture, driven by litigious activists, has infected and impaired our war on terrorism.

Eric Holder’s Justice Department has exiled Christopher Coates to South Carolina.

Coates, you may recall, is a career attorney at Justice, the chief of the Civil Rights Division’s (CRD) Voting Section. More to the point, Coates recommended that the CRD file a lawsuit for voter intimidation against the New Black Panther party and several of its members, who were in paramilitary uniforms (one of them waving a nightstick) threatening elderly white voters at a polling station in Philadelphia during last year’s elections.

Seasoned observers understand that, in official Washington, the so-called "death of a thousand cuts" technique is the preferred means of stealthily undermining, and ultimately defeating, initiatives and institutions too strong to be taken on via a frontal assault. The Obama administration appears intent on applying this approach of inflicting myriad attacks on the essential ingredient of American exceptionalism - our sovereignty - in ways that seem individually innocuous but that will, over time, surely prove lethal to our Constitution and country.

Mr. Obama's recent Executive Order 12425 is a case in point. Issued with no fanfare on Dec. 17 in the run-up to the Christmas holidays, this document amends an earlier order promulgated by President Ronald Reagan in 1983. The Reagan directive granted the International Criminal Police Organization (popularly known as Interpol) limited immunity with respect to its operations inside the United States.