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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (70992)	4/9/2009 4:27:52 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Harold Koh and the shape of things to come By Paul Power Line Most of the criticism of Harold Koh's selection to be the State Department's legal advisor has focused on his "transnationalist" legal theories. I collected some of that criticism in the post below. However, a reader reminds me that the most prominent legal issue Koh was involved in as Dean of Yale Law School was opposition to military recruiting on campus. Dean Koh was a prominent supporter of the FAIR v. Rumsfeld litigation, as well as Yale's separate litigation. In that litigation "FAIR" challenged the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment, which conditioned the receipt of federal funding by universities on the provision of access to equal to that provided other employers. Koh signed a friend of the court brief on behalf of FAIR's challenge. A unanimious Supreme Court rejected that challenge. We wrote about this litigation many times. This post may provide a helpful summation. powerlineblog.com The bottom line is: in the name of his own leftist policy preferences, Koh thumbed his nose at Congress and took a position that inflcited harm on the U.S. military based on a legal position so weak that it failed to obtain the vote of a single Supreme Court Justtice (not Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg, or Sevens). It is not unreasonable to fear that, as legal advisor to the State Department, Koh would do the same. powerlineblog.com

To: Sully- who wrote (70992)	4/11/2009 11:32:09 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Koh vs. Obama Administration Ed Whelan The Corner The lead story in today’s Washington Post reports on internal debate in the Obama administration on whether to use military action against a Somali extremist group that has ties to al-Qaeda and that poses “a potential terrorist threat to U.S. interests.” This passage in particular caught my eye: <<< The new administration is still defining its rationale for undertaking sensitive operations in countries where the United States is not at war. Some in the Defense Department have been frustrated by what they see as a failure to act. Many other national security officials say an ill-considered strike would have negative diplomatic and political consequences far beyond the Horn of Africa. >>> Just wait to see what happens if Harold Koh is confirmed as State Department legal adviser. Koh has been an ardent opponent of presidential uses of military force without congressional authorization and occupies the far end of the spectrum in his opposition to presidential authority. He’s dogged in his views and won’t walk away from them as State Department legal adviser. Instead, he’ll bully those who disagree with him and claim that they’re advocating illegal policies that would make them war criminals. If DOD officials are frustrated now, things will get much worse with Koh. And if the prudential objections that “other national security officials” invoke against “an ill-considered strike” are genuine, those officials will have equal cause to be exasperated with Koh when he invokes his own legal views to thwart well-considered strikes. Koh will present similar problems for the Obama administration on responsible policies on detainees and national-security matters generally. All of this helps explain why (as I’m reliably told) some senior political appointees were worried by Obama’s nomination of Koh—and why they’d be relieved by the collapse of his nomination. corner.nationalreview.com