For those of us who have been concerned that Obama is going too easy on Bush regarding an investigation of his war crimes and other illegal activities while in office, take heart! It seems Obama is methodically placing a large number of Bush's most dedicated and ferocious critics and lawyers into prominent positions of power.
In fact, signaling the ominous nature that these new officials may hold for Bush is belied by the fact that the top three jobs at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel - OLC, have been filled by David Barron, Dawn Johnson, and Martin Lederman. All three of the top members at the OLC have been close friends since the 1990s when they worked together for former-President Clinton. The Office of Legal Counsel has significant powers as it has been termed in the media as 'the president's law firm'.
The OLC is charged with the drafting of the Attorney General's legal opinions and communicates legal views and oral counseling requested by the Counsel to the President. In layman's terms the OLC oversee all legal activities that transpire between the President and the Attorney General by providing documented and oral opinions, acting in essence as an miniature version of the Supreme Court.
The bad news for Bush is that all three of the members of the OLC have made public pronouncements that Bush's legal reasoning behind his policy to interrogate suspected terrorists was constructed upon erroneously formed legal rational and each of the members of the OLC share very restrictive views on the scope of executive branch powers, which will also certainly act as an suppressant to Bush's 'unitary executive perspective.
In addition, Obama has also staffed the Justice Department with other well known critics of former-President Bush's executive policies. Among these critics are Neal Kaytal who defeated the Bush administration in a Supreme Court case involving Guantanamo Bay detainee legal rights; David Kris who is well know for his vocal opposition to warrantless wiretapping; and David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was fired by Bush for not engaging in politically motivated rather than legally based prosecutions; will serve as a terrorist prosecuting attorney.
The three new members of the OLC jointly agreed in an Indiana Law Journal article that condemned and compared the actions of Bush appointed attorneys to the same type of activities that legal counsel for mob members often engage in.
Barron and Lederman have written in the Harvard Law Review that Bush's exercise of executive power that he believed gave him a legal right to engage in an unprovoked war of choice against Iraq as well as Bush's justification for creating the war on terror went far beyond the actual powers of the president. The two authors described Bush's claims that the president has the power to make and wage war as "a radical attempt to remake the constitutional law of war powers.”
Barron and Lederman counter Bush's ability to wage war by making it clear that they believe Congress alone has the constitutional right to declare war.
Johnson has stated that the Bush administration has engaged in illegal conduct and Lederman follows up on Johnson's opinion by writing that it appears that a “conspiracy to violate the Torture Act” occurred during the term of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other subordinate members of the Bush administration.
So Bush and other former members of his administration face an uncertain future in which their activities during their terms in office may face the legal scrutiny of critics with well established credentials and opinions regarding the Bush administrations conduct while in office.
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