It is hard for an administration to get a confirmation if it does not make nominations. Take federal judges for instance, for most of the past two years there have been around a hundred vacancies on the Circuit and District courts; Mr. Obama has rarely had nominees for more than half of them. This is simply federal administrative incompetence, and it takes a heavy toll in the hallways and dockets of justice.

Is this all the advice OLC gave the President? Did OLC authorize further activities? Did Obama’s description of why bombing Libya was in the national interest before March 19 match what appears in this memo, written after the fact?

Josh Gerstein provides Lindsey Graham a soap box to complain that his efforts to craft a grand compromise with the Administration on Gitmo stalled in May.

I’ll leave it to the ethics wonks to decide whether Bauer can do the job — on ethics — well or not. But I am worried about what this says about the Administration’s focus on two other critically important functions. You see, when Bauer took over for Greg Craig, he was hailed as the kind of guy who could solve two problems Craig had failed to: judicial confirmations and closing Gitmo.

I’m actually more hopeful that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan disagrees with the Obama Administration on some of the key issues related to “war on terror” than I was before. But if we’re supposed to be thrilled about Kagan because she’ll persuade Justice Kennedy or even the more conservative Justices to her views … I just don’t see that.

The real story is that – for the first time I can think of – the Obama Administration has actually taken a tough approach to negotiation.

I think Bob Bauer’s op-ed about Scooter Libby’s sentence had a few strong points, except that he was way too naive about how the Plame outing worked.