Bybee

When the final list of “Chuck Schumer’s Biggest Sell-Outs” is released, this will have to rank near the top. At least when he does stuff like vote to make the compensation of hedge fund managers largely tax-exempt, he’s supporting powerful parochial interests. I don’t like it and he deserves criticism for it, but all senators do it. But it’s not like there’s a huge constituency in New York demanding that key architects of the Bush administration’s arbitrary torture regime serve out their lives as federal judges even though they belong in front of a federal judge post haste.

The other problem here, I think, is the bizarre norms that emerged (especially post-Bork), which seemed to be that even fairly minor personal scandals might be fair game but it was completely beyond the pale of civilized discourse to reject an appointment over such trivialities as their radical and unpopular substantive views. Bybee is soft-spoken and has sufficient formal credentials, so what’s his disgusting advocacy of illegal torture and arbitrary executive power as a powerful government lawyer between friends?