Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Republicans might delay the nomination of David Ogden as the next deputy attorney general, The BLT reports.

“I am very disappointed…[Ogden] is being held up and filibustered by Senate Republicans,â€� Leahy said at a Judiciary committee meeting yesterday.

Courtesy Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)

Republican leaders downplayed from the possibility of a filibuster.

“You’re asking me questions beyond the scope of my authority or knowledge,” said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) told The BLT after the Judiciary meeting yesterday.

The chairman’s aides later told The BLT that Senate Democrats have enough votes to override a filibuster, but said the Republicans may use other methods to delay Ogden’s appointment.

Some Republicans have opposed Ogden because he is a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, which has some pornographers among its clients, The BLT said.

Ogden, along with Associate Attorney General nominee Thomas Perrelli; Solicitor General nominee Elena Kagan; and David Kris, Assistant Attorney General nominee for the National Security Division, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with large majorities. A Senate confirmation vote on the nominees is expected next week.

The Obama administration has abandoned a politically charged 2005 voting rights lawsuit against Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan that was ginned up during the Brad Schlozman era in the Civil Rights Division. The Missouri lawsuit was one of seven filed by the Department of Justice during the Bush years alleging states weren’t doing enough to purge ineligble voters from the voting rolls — a perennial Republican complaint — sparking criticism that the law was being applied in a partisan manner.

A federal judge in Kansas City had ruled that Missouri officials had made a good faith effort to comply with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as “motor voter”  because it allows people to register to vote when they apply for drivers licenses. But the 8^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2008 that lack of local compliance of the act could mean that the state did not legally manage its official voter rolls.

After the case returned to the district court, a motion to reopen discovery was denied. Read Mark Morris of the Kansas City Star about the DOJ’s move to end the lawsuit. Carnahan, a Democrat, is now running for the U.S. Senate in 2010. She is the daughter of former Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, famous for beating then-Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft in 2000, even though he’d died in a plane crash before the Senate election. (His death occurred too close to the election to remove his name fromteh ballot). Carnahan’s wife, Jeanne, was appointed to fill his seat. Ashcroft then served as U.S. Attorney General under President George W. Bush.

 

Courtesy Robin Carnahan

The House Judiciary Committee has struck a deal with Karl Rove and Harriet Miers for testimony about the U.S. Attorney firings. The former Bush White House officials will give depositions to the panel, and may be called for public testimony at a later date.  The committee may also be allowed to question former deputy White House counsel William Kelley. Keith Perrine at Congressional Quarterly writes:

The deal appears to defuse a major clash between Congress and Bush over the scope of executive privilege that has also enmeshed President Obama. On balance, it is a win for the committee, which will get a lot of what it has sought throughout a nearly two-year battle.

Rove will also answer questions about the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat whose prosecution may have been politically motivated. And the panel will gain access to Bush White House documents it had been denied relating to the firings.

Attorney General Eric Holder met with Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf on Monday. But they apparently didn’t discuss her top agenda item: Resolving U.S. government demands that Swiss financial giant UBS disclose the names of 52,000 wealthy Americans hiding an alleged $14.8 billion in secret Swiss bank accounts.

Holder, who represented UBS in a racial discrimination case while at Covington & Burling, has recused himself from the high-profile matter. Instead, says Reuters:

Holder thanked Widmer-Schlumpf for Switzerland’s offer for help with closing the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects, including possibly accepting detainees held at the facility. They also discussed cooperation on fighting organized crime, terrorism and terrorist financing, the department said.

Acting Deputy Attorney General David Margolis led the substantive UBS talks with Widmer-Schlumpf, Reuters said.

In the waning days of the Bush administration, Office of Legal Counsel chief Steven G. Bradbury wrote  a “memorandum for the files” disavowing the strained legal reasoning behind some of the Bush White House’s most controversial war-on-terror policies. Curiously missing from this roll call of infamous opinions: Bradbury’s own still-secret memos from 2005 giving the Central Intelligence Agency cover on torture and violations of the Geneva Conventions.

The Obama administration released Bradbury’s Jan. 15, 2009 “memorandum for the files” on Monday alongside other previously secret OLC memos that had been used to justify warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition and (although it never was ordered) the use of the U.S. military to conduct raids on domestic targets.

Bradbury used words like “doubtful,” “incorrect,” and “not consistent with the current views of OLC” to describe the recently de-classified memos written mostly by the zealous John Yoo, now a law professor at Berkeley, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

“The opinions  addressed  herein were written in the wake of the atrocities of 9/11, when policy makers, fearing that additional catastrophic terrorist attacks were imminent, strived to employ all lawful means to protect the Nation,” the memo says. In a footnote, Bradbury adds he didn’t mean to ”suggest in any way that the attorneys involved in the preparation of the opinions in question did not satisfy all applicable standards of professional responsibility.”

 Bradbury writes that Yoo’s “sweeping assertions” that Congress had no say in the detention, interrogation and treatment of enemy combatants was “not sustainable.” The memo concedes: “Article I, Section 8 of the Congress grants significant war powers to Congress.”

Acting Assistant Attorney General Dan Levin withdrew Yoo’s infamous “torture memo” in 2004, as Bradbury notes in his memorandum for the files. Levin – one of the principled conservative  heroes who fought for the rule of law against Vice President Dick Cheney’s bullying counsel David Addington — had wanted to head up OLC. But the White House gave the job instead to the pliable Bradbury, as Jane Mayer describes in her book, The Dark Side. Bradbury then produced several legal memos in 2005 that gutted Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) anti-torture legislation.

Bradbury didn’t disavow his own still secret memos justifying torture. Weirdly, he instead quoted his written response during his 2005 confirmation process saying a federal ban on torture is constitutional. Bradbury succeeded Jack Goldsmith as head of OLC. Goldsmith, of course, was another principled conservative who tried to fight for the rule of law, only to get painfully rolled by Addington and his posse.