Advise and Consent

 Posted by  2012 Election, Nomination and Confirmation, Obama Administration, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Mar 072013
 

The recent filibusters of the Chuck Hagel (for Secretary of Defense) and John Brennan (for Director of Central Intelligence) have got me thinking about the Senate’s duty to “advise and consent” to the president’s nominees.  Obviously a senator has the power to vote against the confirmation of anyone for any reason.  But it seems to me that some reasons are clearly more legitimate than others, especially when we talk about cabinet nominations.  (Judicial nominations are more complicated because of the lifetime tenure of the posts and because, unlike cabinet posts, judges do not directly answer to an elected official.)

In particular, Senators should only ever vote against a nominee because they believe that the nominee is unfit to hold the post to which he or she has been nominated.

So let’s start with what’s expected of a cabinet secretary.  A cabinet secretary has three jobs:

  1. To advise the president.
  2. To administer his or her respective department.
  3. To perform certain other duties that are incumbent upon that particular secretary (e.g. the Secretary of State is expected to serve as a diplomat; the Attorney General is expected to perform certain legal duties; etc.)

As far as the first of those duties go, there isn’t really anything that the Senate can do.  Sure, the senate can “advise” the president that a particular nominee is unlikely to be a good adviser, but at the end of the day the president can, will, and should be able to take advice from whosoever the president wants to.  Voting against a nominee because they will provide bad advice is impractical, at best.

So that just leaves the other two.  If there is reason to believe that a nominee is incapable of administering a federal bureaucracy, then it is perfectly reasonable to vote against them.  If a senator believes that a nominee is not qualified to fill the other duties that will be expected of them, then it is perfectly reasonable to vote against them.  This, by the way, was why I personally opposed the nomination of John Bolton as Bush’s Secretary of State a few years ago.  His record as UN Ambassador was poor, and there was plenty of reason to doubt whether he was a skilled enough diplomat.

So what does that leave?  What are bad reasons to vote against a nominee?  Just to name a few that have been in the news lately: Continue reading »

Deconstructing Benghazi

 Posted by  2012 Election, Africa, Disasters and Tragedies, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Nomination and Confirmation, Obama Administration, Terrorism  No Responses »
Nov 282012
 

On September 11, 2012, a State Department outpost in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by a local Al Qaeda affiliate, killing four Americans including the Libyan ambassador.  At the time, there were protests erupting at American embassies around the Muslim world over a disgustingly insulting YouTube video about the Prophet Muhammad.  Initial media reports out of Benghazi were that the Americans were killed as a result of one of those protests getting out of hand.  But what the CIA knew at the time, and the media would discover within a couple weeks, was that the attack had actually been carried out by the Al Qaeda affiliate.  Again, it was initially thought that the Al Qaeda affiliate had used a protest outside the American facility as cover to attack; it was eventually determined that there wasn’t actually a protest that night.  The motives of the Al Qaeda affiliate are somewhat obscure; it was initially thought that they were acting in response to the assassination of a particular high-ranking leader within Al Qaeda, although more recently it has come to light that the attack was at least partly in response to the video.

Okay, so there are some important issues that we should be discussing about that attack.  Three come to mind, in particular:

  1. Motive.  Why was the American Ambassador attacked?  Was he targeted, in particular, or was the attack aimed at the facility itself?
  2. Prevention. Should we have known before hand about the attack?  Was there something that we could have done to prevent it?
  3. Security.  Why was the attack successful?  Could reasonable security measures have been taken to prevent the deaths of those four Americans?

Those questions are being asked by both the CIA and the State Department, and I hope that we can learn the appropriate lessons to prevent such an attack from happening again.

But there is a fourth question being asked, and is the most high-profile of all the questions being asked, which really puzzles me:

4. What did the American Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice know and when did she know it? Continue reading »

Reasonable Explanations

 Posted by  2012 Election, Abuse of Power, Crime, Nomination and Confirmation, Obama Administration, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Nov 152012
 

I’ve run across a lot of confusion about the Patraeus affair situation, revolving around the question of “why did he resign over an affair; is that really a big deal anymore?”

Well, off the top of my head, I can think of five reasonable explanations why he might have resigned over this scandal, none of which have anything to do with an “attempted cover up”: Continue reading »

Empathy and Prejudice (but sadly no zombies)

 Posted by  Legal Philosophy, Nomination and Confirmation, Racism  4 Responses »
Jul 132009
 

“In Ricci, Judge Sotomayor’s empathy for one group of firefighters turned out to be prejudice against another.” — Senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL, Ranking GOP Senator on the Judicial Committee

Let’s look at that statement closely.
Continue reading »

Things That Don’t Belong on Television

 Posted by  Judicial System, Nomination and Confirmation, The Media  1 Response »
Jul 132009
 

I’m not advocating legal action here; just making a subjective statement that these things are unhealthy for everyone involved (especially the American people).
Continue reading »

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