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Are the Republicans lining up for their first Obama filibuster? Dawn Johnsen, the president's pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, was supposed to come up for a confirmation vote in the Senate today. Instead, as Scott Horton alerts us, the vote was put on hold. This comes after every Republican on the Senate judiciary committee voted against her, except for Arlen Specter, who abstained. The Office of Legal Counsel is the sensitive branch of DoJ that advises the president on what's legal and what's not--past home to John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and the infamous Bush torture memos. What's at issue in Dawn's nomination—disclosure: She is a former Slate contributor and a friend—is her opposition to that past record and her determination to change it. If the right is going to go after her as they have, then the Obama administration and the left will have to step up in her defense. The NYT ran an editorial supporting her last week; now that seems like the opening drum roll in what will be a longer campaign.
Meanwhile, similar opponents seem to be testing the waters on going after Harold Koh, nominated to be Hillary Clinton's chief legal adviser in the State Department. Disclosure on this one, too: I have a fellowship at Yale Law School this year, where Harold was the dean until he went to D.C. last week for this appointment. The opening salvo against Harold is an attack by former Bush speech writer Meghan Clyne in the New York Post that's full of wild-eyed distortion. Perhaps the silliest but also sensational claim—and thus the one that Clyne leads with—is that Harold thinks that "sharia law could apply to disputes in U.S. courts." This supposedly comes from what one lawyer thinks he heard Dean Koh say to the Yale Club of Greenwich in 2007. Honestly, this is the best they can come up with—one guy's account of Islamic takeover after drinks and golf? Let's get behind these lawyers, Obama and the left, and stop the trouble before it really starts.