Among other good news yesterday was the appointment of Marty Lederman as assistant attorney general. Lederman will be joining Dawn Johnsen at the Office of Legal Counsel, which (ideally, but not in the Bush administration) functions as the "first line of defense" against executive overreach, because it advises the president on what he is legally allowed to do. Lederman, like Johnsen, has been a consistent critic of the Bush administration's torture policies. He's also a blogger to boot--no word on whether he plays basketball or plans to grow a fine mustache.
The Obama administration has also ordered military prosecutors to ask for a 120-day continuance on cases involving GTMO detainees. Peter Finn reports that the move "appears designed to provide the Obama administration time to refashion the prosecution system and potentially treat detainees as criminal defendants in federal court or to have them face war-crime charges in military courts-martial." The move is an important first step to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison. Still up in the air is how the Obama administration will handle cases in which the evidence against detainees is tainted by the use of torture.
-- A. Serwer
