Posted by
Bert Chapman on Thursday, March 05, 2009 5:16:59 PM
President Obama has nominated Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Dept's Office of Legal Counsel.
This office is responsible for providing legal advice to the Justice Dept. and the President. Johnsen is a dangerous choice and all conservatives should contact their Senators to urge them to vote against her.
Johnsen advocates unrestricted access to abortion in her writings and public legal advocacy. If confirmed, she would use her powers to turn this important and allegedly nonpartisan office into a government funded and authorized propaganda wing for abortionist advocacy organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League. Johnson's writings and temperament would see OLC devote a significant portion of its taxpayer funded resources to further expanding and codifying "abortion rights" into federal law and to legally targeting individuals and groups holding pro-life abortion positions. Recent attempts by some abortionist advocates to use Racketeering in Corrupt Organizations (RICO) laws intended for organized crime bosses against pro-life individuals and organizations may occur on a federal level if doctrinaire abortionist apparatchiks such as Johnsen have their way.
Johnsen's nomination should also be opposed due to her dangerously naive beliefs on the nature of the Islamist terrorist threat. She stupidly believes that conventional legal tactics are all that is necessary to confront and defeat an agile and fanatically devoted coalition of forces which are contemptuous of western Judeo-Christian derived legal jurisprudence. She fails to understand that harsh actions, including warrantless wireless surveillance and even torture, are necessary to prevent Islamist terrorists from launching assaults against civilian and military U.S. targets. The policies Johnsen advocates would dismantle the success we've had in preventing subsequent 9/11 terrorist attacks within the U.S. and would actually increase the possibility of terrorist attacks within national boundaries.
She has also launched libelous personal attacks against former Justice Dept. official John Yoo, a noted constitutional scholar, who wrote many of the Bush Administration's legal justifications for its anti-terrorist campaigns. I heartily recommend Yoo's book The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11 published in 2005 by the University of Chicago Press. Apparently, Johnsen can't deal with the reality that Yoo is a superior scholar to her and has a more intelligent and moral understanding of the Islamist terrorist threat.
We should work to defeat Johnsen's nomination. She is an embarrassment to the legal profession and, as a Hoosier, I find it appalling that someone with values and beliefs antithetical to the values this country needs in trying times will be providing legal advice to the Justice Dept. and the President on so many critically important issues.