Word: johnsen
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Even then, her renomination became a referendum on the past. At one point, Senator Orrin Hatch took the last minutes of his testimony against Johnsen to praise the authors of the Bush-era memos, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, calling them "two brilliant guys" and "very excellent people." Conversely, Democrats split their time between urging support for Johnsen and condemning the Bush lawyers who came before her. The vote to again send her nomination for a floor vote was on strict party lines. (See four myths about Supreme Court nominees...
...recess appointment, which some liberals urged, was out of the question, according to the White House official. Such an appointment sidestepping an up-or-down floor vote would have made Johnsen's goal to depoliticize the Office of Legal Counsel impossible "and would have led to partisan debates over its legal opinions regardless of their quality," the official says...
...Johnsen declined to comment to TIME beyond a statement released on April 9, in which she too blamed GOP intransigence. "I hope that the withdrawal of my nomination will allow this important office to be filled promptly," she wrote. (See who's who in Barack Obama's White House...
Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking GOP member, said he was pleased with Johnsen's withdrawal. He called her an "unacceptable choice" to fill the position, and wrote in a statement that "it is my sincere hope that the President will nominate someone who is prepared to vigorously defend the military's legitimate actions in the fight against terrorism...
Some liberals who hoped Johnsen would be Obama's tonic to the office under Bush are bitterly disappointed by her withdrawal, and some accuse the White House of not backing their own candidate. But Lee Casey, a Washington attorney who was an attorney adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel in 1992 and 1993, says her nomination may have been abandoned because of a bigger confirmation fight that is now taking shape: the one for Justice Stevens' seat. "My guess is that it became a question of where do we want to spend the political capital," he says...