Dawn Johnsen: My Nomination Was Blocked To Score ‘Political’ Points Against Obama On Terrorism
By Ian Millhiser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jun 9, 2011 at 6:15 pm
In a must-read article
http://www.slate.com/id/2296470 about the broken confirmations process in the Senate, Dave Weigel quotes former Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnsen explaining that conservative objections to her failed nomination had nothing to do with actual disagreements with her views:
“I’m not going to talk about any individual meetings with senators,” says, “but the impression that I got was it wasn’t about me, that it wasn’t personal. It was political. And there were some senators who were very open about that. It wasn’t a difference in substantive views. The things I was attacked for saying about torture, for example—Lindsey Graham and John McCain have talked about that the same way.” (Neither publicly supported her nomination.) “You definitely need to look at how all the terrorism issues and nominees who dealt with terrorism issues were treated. The attempt was to describe President Obama’s approach as not sufficiently tough on terrorism, and make that a political issue.“http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/06/09/240527/dawn-johnsen-my-nomination-was-blocked-to-score-political-points-against-obama-on-terrorism/