Hat tip to Big Tent Democrat at Talkleft Monday evening:

Martin “Marty” S. Lederman Photo: Georgetown Law

Lederman Joining Obama Administration:

From Ben Smith (at Politico):

   A Georgetown source forwards over an email from that school’s administration, reporting that Professor Marty Lederman’s class will be canceled — because he’s joining the Obama administration.

   Lederman, another former Clinton Office of Legal Counsel lawyer, is perhaps the most prominent of several high-profile opponents of the Bush Administration’s executive power claims joining Obama, a mark that he intends not just to change but to aggressively reverse Bush’s moves on subjects like torture. . . . Lederman has been . . . an early and vocal critic of torture, and has suggested Bush Administration officials have committed specific crimes in that regard.

For those unfamiliar with him, Martin “Marty” S. Lederman until today was…

…an Associate Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches various courses in constitutional law, and seminars on separation of powers and executive branch lawyering. He regularly contributes to the weblogs SCOTUSblog and Balkinization, including on matters relating to Executive power, detention, interrogation, civil liberties, and torture. Lederman was an Attorney Advisor in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 1994 to 2002

Marty Lederman blogs with Jack Balkin, at Balkinization.

In a Balkanization post July 08, 2007, Lederman grouped all of his, Mark Graber’s, Stephen Griffin’s, Scott Horton’s, Sandy Levinson’s, David Luban’s, Brian Tamanaha’s, Jack Balkin’s and a few others posts “on the complex of issues raised by torture, interrogation, detention, war powers, Executive authority, the Department of Justice, and the Office of Legal Counsel” together under the heading The Anti-Torture Memos: Balkinization Posts on Torture, Interrogation, Detention, War Powers, Executive Authority, DOJ and OLC  

There are many, almost six hundred, posts in that Balkinization category, but a quick scan of the titles will give you a good indication of Marty’s feelings and leanings on the subjects of torture and applicable “rule of law”, and his very strong and vocal criticisms of torture by the Bush administration.

Lederman is joining Dawn Johnsen in the Office of Legal Counsel.

Jack Balkin has confirmed Ben Smith’s Politico article with a post at Balkinization this morning:

Some of you may have noticed that Marty Lederman has not been blogging recently at Balkinization. The reason is that he has been working on the Department of Justice Transition team. As of today, the commencement of the Obama Administration, he begins work as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel. There he will be joined by two of his former OLC colleagues, Dawn Johnsen, nominated to be head of the office; and David Barron, who will serve as the Principal Deputy (and as the Acting AAG while the Senate considers Dawn’s nomination).

And as Scribe commenting at Talkleft notes:

The job [Lederman] got is the same one held by Yoo when he wrote the Torture Memos (for Bybee’s signature) and who-knows-what other Constitutional abortions.

In other words, Obama just put one of Yoo’s harshest critics – and one who kept his criticism on purely intellectual-honesty type grounds – into Yoo’s old job, doubtless with the direction “clean things up”.

Here is Marty Lederman in a two and a half minute clip with Elisa Massimino and David Rivkin discussing guidelines for interrogation, and the Army field manual. Note Marty’s comments beginning at the two minute mark.

ACS (American Constitution Society) hosted a panel discussion on issues surrounding the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes whose existence was revealed in December 2007. The panel, convened on Friday, January 25, 2008, discussed a number of legal and policy questions. Full video of the event is available on the ACS web site: www.acslaw.org/node/6069

The Army Field Manual still codifies torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions as noted in this article at AlterNet.

Lederman, although far from what we’ve had the past few years with Yoo and Bybee’s justifications and Bush’s endorsements of torture as part of US Government policy, is still very far from what I’d like to see and leaves much work left to be done for anti-torture activists.

Now’s the time to crank up the pressure as high as we can get it. Click the Badge and sign the petition. Give them the numbers of people backing them that they need:

Bradley Schlozman has resigned, sneaking out last week, his exit unannounced. An exit like that is truly an embarrassment for such a high-profile Loyal Bushie. That is called leaving not with a bang, but with the proverbial whimper. Schlozman skulks away a pariah in the legal community, an abject failure,  having seen his grand voter suppression schemes blow up in his face, revealing to the entire world that he is nothing more than a gormless cheat. (Rather like the much ballyhooed and terribly overestimated Karl Rove.)

I take personal the truncation of the Department of Justice. The feckless Schlozman was the U.S. Attorney in my city, installed without a Senate confirmation after Todd Graves was wrongly fired. From that position, Schlozman abused his power to derail the political career of Katherine Shields, a prominent Kansas City Democrat. He replaced the ninth fired U.S. Attorney, Todd Graves, who was very much John Ashcroft’s man, and had a sense of right and wrong, and refused to tamper with elections. Schlozman had no such qualms of conscience. He came to us from the Voting Rights Division, where his purpose was to suppress the rights of groups that were likely to vote for Democrats. One of the most revolting schemes he cooked up was the caging strategy that was used to deny African American members of the armed services their Constitutional right to vote. He and fellow political operative Hans Von Spakovsky schemed to politicize the hiring process for career Justice Department officials and eviscerate the Voting Rights Division. They were successful in doing so, but at steep cost. Throughout the Justice Department, positions remain unfilled. People simply do not want to work for the Department in this politicized environment, feeling that any connection with the Gonzalez Department of Just Us would be a kiss of death to a career they want to see continue past January 2009.

Schlozman is merely the latest perjuring rat to desert the sinking ship that is the Gonzalez Just Us Department. He is the latest hack to leave, joining  Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson, Sarah Taylor, Paul McNulty, Michael Elston, and Bill Mercer…just off the top of my head.

Like the others, he will not be missed. This is just more good riddance to bad rubbish.