Truth or Dare
BARACK OBAMA is trying to split the difference on torture. He wants to move forward—no messy dwelling on the Bush-Cheney era—except that he’ll look backward if forced. There will be no independent commission to hold top-ranking officials politically accountable. But, if Attorney General Eric Holder wants to prosecute the Bush lawyers who defended the legality of waterboarding—John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury—well, the president won’t stand in the way. What does Obama gain by this approach?
More Sotomayor
I’ve just returned from London to find that my piece on Sonia Sotomayor has provoked an energetic response in the blogosphere. Many people have mischaracterized my argument, and I can understand why. The headline--“The Case Against Sotomayor”--promised something much stronger than I intended to deliver. As soon as the piece was published, I regretted the headline, which I hadn’t seen in advance. The piece was not meant to be a definitive “case against” Judge Sotomayor’s candidacy.
Race to the Top
The Supreme Court this month is hearing two potentially landmark cases on race. The first challenges Congress's extension of the Voting Rights Act; the second, a controversial affirmative action program in New Haven. In both cases, the Court may force Barack Obama to do what he has the unique skills but not the political incentive to do at the moment: carve out a third way in the race debate, one that rejects the extremes of conservative color- blindness and liberal racialism.Ever since the civil rights era, anti-discrimination law has been frozen in time.
Race to the Top
The Supreme Court this month is hearing two potentially landmark cases on race. The first challenges Congress's extension of the Voting Rights Act; the second, a controversial affirmative action program in New Haven. In both cases, the Court may force Barack Obama to do what he has the unique skills but not the political incentive to do at the moment: carve out a third way in the race debate, one that rejects the extremes of conservative color-blindness and liberal racialism.Ever since the civil rights era, anti-discrimination law has been frozen in time.
The Case Against Sotomayor
This is the first in a series of reports by TNR legal affairs editor Jeffrey Rosen about the strengths and weaknesses of the leading candidates on Barack Obama’s Supreme Court shortlist. A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Sonia Sotomayor’s biography is so compelling that many view her as the presumptive front-runner for Obama's first Supreme Court appointment. She grew up in the South Bronx, the daughter of Puerto Rican parents. Her father, a manual laborer who never attended high school, died a year after she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of eight.
TARP Heels
The last few months have been a nightmare for American libertarians, with Congress and the president lining up to pass massive bailouts and stimulus packages--the Leviathan state of their darkest fantasies. But, having failed in the political arena, defenders of small government have begun to regroup and wage their insurgency in the courts.
Yoo Complete Me
No former Bush administration official has been more vilified as a torturing monster than John Yoo. And, for years, one of Yoo's most severe critics has been former Clinton Justice official Dawn Johnsen. Last April, Johnsen called Yoo a "rogue legal adviser," declaring that the "shockingly flawed content" of one of his notorious memos justifying torture--along with the "horrific acts it encouraged ...
Yoo Complete Me
No former Bush administration official has been more vilified as a torturing monster than John Yoo. And, for years, one of Yoo's most severe critics has been former Clinton Justice official Dawn Johnsen. Last April, Johnsen called Yoo a "rogue legal adviser," declaring that the "shockingly flawed content" of one of his notorious memos justifying torture--along with the "horrific acts it encouraged ...
The Oath, Done Right
Chief Justice Roberts fumbled the oath of office, apparently rattled by the fact that President Obama jumped in to repeat his name before Roberts had completed the first clause. This reminds us of the importance of pre-inaugural consultation between the Chief Justice and President-elect. In February 1933, days before Franklin D.
Man-Made Disaster
Michael Chertoff needs an office. When I interviewed the secretary of Homeland Security this summer, we met in a pair of temporary locations between which he shuttles--first in the decaying Nebraska Avenue Complex of the naval station at Ward Circle (a center for signal analysis during World War II) and later in an unmarked and unfurnished office in the nondescript headquarters of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the Ronald Reagan building, near the White House.
