[Please welcome Liza Goitein, director of the Liberty and National Security Project at the Brennan Center for Justice.]
What I want to discuss today is the nominations of Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and Harold Hongju Koh to serve as Legal Advisor to the State Department. As you all know, conservatives have come out swinging against these nominations. The nominees themselves are so well-qualified, so clearly within the progressive political mainstream, and the attacks against them so frenzied, one is left scratching one’s head and wondering: what on earth is going on here?