The Democrat dilemma at Justice Department

After abusing President Bush and his staff about appointments in the Justice Department, the Democrats have put themselves in a box on how to cull out Republicans and replace them with Democrats. The Washington Post today gives their side of the story without noting the irony.

...

Ron Klain, who was chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, said that the preelection brainstorming sessions of Democrats who want to fix the Justice Department sound like "an escalating composition of woes," not unlike the health-related talk at his mother's mah-jongg games. "Oh, my knee; no, my back; no . . . " he moaned over audience laughter at a recent luncheon held by the American Constitution Society.

Topping the list of concerns is the Office of Legal Counsel, a once-obscure operation whose advice guides some of the government's most sensitive and controversial policies, from domestic wiretapping to the appropriateness of handing out public funding to religious groups.

Many of the OLC's memos on interrogation and warrantless eavesdropping remain secret, even though lawmakers have clamored for their release. Democrats say they expect to find fresh surprises when they open the legal vault.

Officials at interest groups, including the Center for American Progress and People for the American Way, have called on President-elect Barack Obama to devote significant attention to the legal office. Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, urged this week that the new administration withdraw all of the OLC opinions in the interrogation and detention area and replace them with "a single opinion that should be made public."

Walter E. Dellinger III, a Justice official during the Clinton administration, has encouraged the next president to recruit OLC veterans from both Democratic and Republican camps to review the national security opinions and recommend changes.

Obama will have to do a careful balancing act. At a conference in Washington this week, former department criminal division chief Robert S. Litt asked that the new administration avoid fighting old battles that could be perceived as vindictive, such as seeking to prosecute government officials involved in decisions about interrogation and the gathering of domestic intelligence. Human rights groups have called for such investigations, as has House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).

"It would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time calling people up to Congress or in front of grand juries," Litt said. "It would really spend a lot of the bipartisan capital Obama managed to build up."

...

Litt sounds more intelligent than many of the elected Democrats. Conyers is one of those guys who wants to criminalize political differences in how the war against the Islamic religious bigots should be fought. He is just the wrong person to be working on those issues. He is also of limited intelligence.

What I find really interesting is how you know they want to fire all the Republicans they can get away with and replace them with Democrats, but they have dug themselves into a hole htat makes that very difficult.

How many US Attorneys to they plan to fire? Will they fire Patrick Fitzpatrick in Chicago? That would be political dynamite if they did so.