Kenneth Starr: Obama Legal Nominee Under Assault From Right Should Be Confirmed
I’ve just obtained a letter written by conservative legal icon Kenneth Starr strongly supporting a top Obama legal nominee who’s under attack from the right, with Starr hailing Obama’s pick as “the very essence of the American dream” and a man of “irreproachable integrity.”
Starr’s letter — which was addressed to Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar, both ranking members of the Foreign Relations Committee — makes his backing for Koh official for the first time. Starr was said to have backed Koh during a talk at Yale University, but that report was unconfirmed.
Starr’s backing for Harold Koh — Obama’s choice for legal adviser to the State Department, where he’d potentially undo controversial Bush-era legal policies — should permanently disable the conservative assault on him. Koh has been relentlessly attacked by Fox News, Glenn Beck, conservative bloggers and others for supposedly wanting to impose Sharia on American courts and subvert America to international law.
In a blow to Koh’s right-wing critics, who suggested that Koh’s loyalty to America is vaguely suspect, Starr writes that Koh is “the very essence of the American dream” who embraces “a vision of the goodness of America, and the ideals of a nation, ruled, abidingly, by law.”
Starr also wrote that Koh’s past statements — also under assault by the right — shouldn’t be disqualifying. “Harold Koh, in short, is not only a great lawyer, but truly great man of irreproachable integrity,” Starr wrote, adding that the President had the right to choose his attorney.
“Because of his great talents and his high character, Harold Koh should be confirmed,” Starr concluded.
You can read the full letter here.
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As yet, I can find no commentary from the usual suspects on this one. In response to the earlier hat tip on Koh from Olsen, Andy McCarthy at NRO wrote: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDYwNjIxOTA3ZDg5ZTk2MGIxZGI0YjlkODllYjhhODA=
I’d stopped reading this contribution when it was published as soon as I got to the “Obama was never vetted by the media” idiocy but I thought perhaps I ought to read it more carefully today.
Two ‘concerns’ predominate – internationalism and (in the case of Holder) prosecutions of Bush admin officials.
But the last bit talks up another aspect – using nomination battles as a means of illuminating perceived extremisms in a nominee and even gaining some level of promise that certain ideological boundaries won’t be exceeded. That’s fair enough. It’s what we hoped to do with Roberts and Alito even if those hopes failed miserably.
But this second recommendation for Koh is interesting to me as regards what it tells us about the assorted and disparate views within the conservative community/movement. For a number of obvious reasons, both Olsen and Starr don’t sit on my list of favorite humans and if they knew me, I wouldn’t be on theirs. But I’ll bet dollars plus donuts that if either of them had the choice of dinner and brandy with me or Glenn Beck, their choice wouldn’t be Beck.
I’ve got a google news alert up on this one. If anything arises others aren’t seeing, I’ll let you know.
Whelan (NRO) is still going after Koh as well as attempting to diminish Kmiek’s reecord. No mention here (or previously that I’ve seen) of either Olson or Starr from Whelan. http://bench.nationalreview.com/
And, of course, there’s always Redstate comment shttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2228997/posts?page=13
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