Whatever the flaws of President Obama’s determination that continued U.S. intervention in Libya is legally authorized, analogies to the Bush administration’s justification of its torture policies are “dangerously misguided and threaten important lessons we could learn from both episodes,” writes University of Indiana law professor Dawn Johnsen in a column for Slate.
Johnsen (left), an ACS Board Member whose nomination to head the Office of Legal Counsel was filibustered, has openly criticized President Obama’s reported decision to take the legal advice of White House Counsel Robert Bauer and Department of State Legal Adviser Harold Koh, over the advice of the Office of Legal Counsel, which would typically have guided the president on this issue.
She adds in this column that she disagrees with the legal conclusion adopted by President Obama — that continued U.S. intervention in Libya without congressional approval does not violate the War Powers Resolution, because U.S. military activity does not constitute “hostilities” as the word is used in the statute.
But, she emphasizes, recent commentators who have equated the Obama administration’s approach to executive power with the Bush administration’s have gone too far, and failed to recognize stark differences in the quality and transparency of their legal analyses. She explains:
Simon (pictured) was originally nominated by President Obama almost a year ago in July 2010, and had been approved by the Judiciary Committee twice, but the Senate failed to hold a vote on his nomination, despite the declaration of a judicial emergency in Oregon.
President Barack Obama has nominated two highly qualified individuals to serve in key executive branch legal positions, and "policy disagreements with the president" are not cause for denying him his selections, 
Some eight months after ACS Board Member and constitutional law professor Dawn Johnsen withdrew her nomination in the face of Senate obstruction, President Barack Obama has 
Helping to kick off the 2010 ACS National Convention, Sen. Al Franken criticized Republican efforts to scuttle the Obama administration's nominations to the federal courts and numerous administration positions.