Laurie Anderson’s terrific performance of “Only an expert (can deal with the problem)” on The Late Show Wednesday night provokes thought on our current reliance on precisely the wrong experts to deal with the problems we face.

Acting Office of Legal Counsel head David Barron is returning to spend more time with his law students at Harvard, to be replaced by Jonathan Cedarbaum. Unlike several of the legal jobs that have turned over under this Administration, this one doesn’t appear to be tied to a fight over counter-terrorism policy.

Although the occasional cipher has been thrust into the highest levels of the Washington political scene in the past (see, for example, Dan Quayle) it seems that the process of driving substance out of the picture has accelerated since John McCain’s inexplicable choice of Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Now that President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court has been revealed to be Elena Kagan, whose primary accomplishment to date has been to leave no record, instead of the clearly superior and substantial candidate Diane Wood, it seems that substance is in retreat in a way never seen before.

We’ve long known that in February 2005, then-acting head of OLC Daniel Levin contacted DOD General Counsel to remind him that the March 14, 2003 Yoo memo on torture had been withdrawn. But I, for one, had never seen a copy of that letter. It turns out the government included it with their Appeals brief in the David Passaro case (see pages 99-100).

It was not Ben Nelson who killed the nomination of Dawn Johnsen, nor was it Arlen Specter or Senate Republicans. No, the sole reason Dawn Johnsen is not leading the OLC is that Barack Obama and his coterie of advisors did not want Dawn Johnsen leading the OLC.

When people accused Barack Obama of appeasing America’s enemies, I had no idea they were talking about Republicans.

There was never any question but that the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to be head of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel would be withdrawn. Now we have confirmation of that fact.

Bradbury and OMS’s assurances don’t correspond with the evidence from JPRA internal documents, which describe the use of waterboarding as leaving students “psychologically defeated” and impaired in the ability to develop “psychological hardiness.” Furthermore, as a Truthout article last month notes, the discontinuance of waterboarding was not due to mere failure at resistance to the technique. They were finding measures of physiological harm.

Both Rove and Yoo claim that waterboarding U.S. military personnel was “regular” and caused no “physical harm,” “no after effects.”

Now-public JPRA memos show neither statement is true.

Rosalind linked to this LAT article describing Clarence Thomas’ pro-abuse views. “According to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a prisoner who was slammed to a concrete floor and punched and kicked by a guard after asking for a grievance form — but suffered neither serious nor permanent harm — has no claim that his constitutional rights were violated.”