We need someone like that, badly.

So shorter version: I could live with either Lederman or Mora and probably would support them far more than the Cass Sunstein clone Obama is likely to pick.

But if I have to go off the cuff and without digging, I’d say even Bruce Fein (who I disagree with on much) would make me happier at OLC, but someone like Alberto Mora, who exhorted (or maybe excoriated would be a better choice?) Yoo and Haynes to at least do a decent enough job to “protect your client” (a man who understands consequences) and who has dealt, in a hands on fashion, with the difficulties faced by the military during these times and who could still stand fight, then fight again, then again, and after losing battle after battle, STILL do this:

In exasperation, according to another participant, Mora said that whether the Pentagon enshrined it as official policy or not, the Geneva conventions were already written into both U.S. and international law. Any grave breach of them, at home or abroad, was classified as a war crime. To emphasize his position, he took out a copy of the text of U.S. Code 18.2441, the War Crimes Act, which forbids the violation of Common Article Three, and read from it. The point, Mora told me, was that “it’s a statute. It exists—we’re not free to disregard it. We’re bound by it. It’s been adopted by the Congress. And we’re not the only interpreters of it. Other nations could have U.S. officials arrested.”

The fact is that the best pick, though, is not likely to come from a survey of names in the news. It needs a really sound approach and no matter how sound, Congress should also institute a statutory frameword to establish standards and accountabliligy at OLC instead of just allowing the internal regs to create a chaosland

A “good pick” is only a tiny piece of the puzzle. Congress has to do its job and set the rules and make sure they can be implemented and that violations have consequences. Since neither thing is likely to happen, a good pick or a Congressional approach that would limit the ability to do things like set up torture gulags (after all, Schumer was a big torture advocate – so where does having Dems in control get us on that front?) and since my opinion and a quarter won’t even rate as a tip for a cuppa Starbucks, I guess it doesn’t matter. But I have a hard time biting my tongue – and since my family is from WV originally, and I’m related to both the Hatfields and the McCoys, and red hair abounds in my family to boot, I’m just going to have to ask for your understanding on that. ;)