While it’s not clear how serious Senate Republicans are about filibustering Dawn Johnsen’s nomination as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel at DOJ, civil rights groups aren’t waiting to find out.
Marge Baker, executive vice president of People for the American Way says, “We’re going to do whatever we can to mobilize our members to make sure they’re in contact with their representatives.”
She says they’ll be armed with two stories: that, contra Sen. John Cornyn, Johnsen is eminently qualified to head the OLC, having served as deputy assistant attorney general from 1993 to 1996, and having actually run the show at OLC as acting assistant attorney general in 1997 and 1998 (while Republicans held up Clinton’s OLC-chief designate Beth Nolan); and that GOP calls for a filibuster are hypocritical given the Republicans’ usual contention that the president should have broad leeway to choose his advisers and cabinet officials, and their opposition to the filibuster for judicial nominees.
More on the hypocrisy charge in a bit. But Baker put an exclamation point on that last point. “It’s not ok to filibuster a lifetime appointment but it is ok to filibuster a temporary one?” She asked rhetorically. “It should be backward.”
