I thought the FEC might shut down without the block appointments: after all two members don’t constitute a quorom.

Or do they? Remember the Office of Legal Counsel? It turns out they were asked a quorum question a couple years ago on the NLRB. Here was their opinion:

If a quorum of the committee delegates voting power to a 3 person panel and then 1 person of that panel is absent, then the remaining 2 people of the panel can do all the business of the committee. I think I remember this correctly.

Can the FEC in its waning moments with its membership intact do a similar stunt?

You heard it here first….

The utter arrogance of the Bush Justice Department, whose philosophy seems to be “we will decide what is legal or illegal, precedent be damned” drives me to the brink of despair. But even more troubling is the “roll over and play dead” response by the Democrats, who allow these tainted nominees like Mukasey and Filip to be confirmed anyway.

This past August, I attended a constituency meeting of my Congressman, Rush Holt, desiring to share my strong feeling that GWB’s use of signing statements to avoid compliance with laws he doesn’t like amount to violation of his oath of office. Bruce Fein has elegantly argued this very position, and I mistakenly thought Congressman Holt might share this view. I was flabbergasted when it became evident he didn’t really want to talk about this, and he sought to deal with it by saying “we’re holding hearings”. For all of their hearings, it seems no one gets held accountable for anything, and Bush gets exactly what he wants, time and time again.

I have little faith that GWB will have a real accountability moment as long as he is in office. I continue to hope that once he and Cheney are private citizens, maybe someone will pursue them for the rampant lawlessness that has been their legacy, but I’m not holding my breath.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

the threat is not that we would get another Alito or Roberts, they are fairly mild and not at all bomb-throwers.

No, the real threat is currently sitting in the ante-room, DC Appeals, and I suspect Professor Turley knows who I am referring to, but I am practicing a prudent silence.

Hint: Lochner.

And I’m not buying it.

Professor Turley, I hope you will be ready to answer your country’s call and become an Associate Justice when we get another vacancy to fill.

DW of the flying fingers.

We all remember and love (Okay, at least some of us are old enough to know who he was) Wiley Rutledge, of golden laurels in that celestial hall where the lovers of the reside in scholarly bliss.

As to the mistreatment of men by governments, he said in the famous Yamashita case:

“It is not too early, it is never too early, for the nation steadfastly to follow its great constitutional traditions, none older or more universally protective against unbridled power than due process of law in the trial and punishment of men, that is of all men, whether citizens, aliens, alien enemies or enemy belligerants.

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself…”

Another freedom-hating liberal, no doubt, to the Deputy AG.

I keep wondering if anyone on the Hill actually remembers any of the law they learned when they were getting their JD’s?

So yet another of the long grey line of FS foot-soldiers is career-tracked to the purple. And the only ones who could stand to block the greased skids are now standing aside.

Reid is quoted in the Times today. A floor speech on Friday and he said that the Bush era will be remembered as a singular and dark time for the country.

It wouldn’t have been so dark if he and his leadership would have done their job.

Professor Turley keeps sounding like Cato the Censor and his “Cartago delenda est”, in maniacally repeating the disconnect between the Democrats and their base.

Roger that.