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March 22, 2010
Yossi Klein Halevi: Was Obama's confrontation with Israel premeditated?
JWisdom.comWhy Hollywood and Timelessness don't flash-back, flash-forward or mesh with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (7 minutes)
Kevin Baxter: Boxer has a will to win, and to worship
March 19, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: The Divine is in the details
JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel
March 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Israel's New Enemy: America?
JWisdom.com Love me not? with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes)
Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum
March 17, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Orwell, Santayana, and Me
Jonathan Tobin: How Many Lives Is Biden's Pride Worth?
March 16, 2010
Steven Emerson: Combating Lawfare
JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes)
Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel
March 15, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Father's obligations toward minor children
JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Judith Graham: Get the whole picture before a CT
March 12, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: You CAN have Heaven on Earth
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: The march of the Red-Green brigades
March 11, 2010
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Turn leftovers into tasty New England hash
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S.
March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub
March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk

Jewish World Review March 30, 2009 / 5 Nissan 5769

It's not unusual to be fooled by anyone (especially a president)

By Kathryn Lopez


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | If you still think that President Barack Obama is about hope and change and moms and apple pie and nothing objectionable or radical, consider his nominee for head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen.


Her record sets off many alarms, with the most distressing sirens arising from her views on abortion. Regardless of what the New York Times might write, (they called her position on abortion "hardly unusual" in a recent glowing endorsement,) I'd like to think that you'd have to attend a wacky women's studies lecture in order to find people who equate pregnancy with slavery.


Johnsen is the former legal director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America, in the hopes of fooling people). While there, in a case involving a Missouri law that limited the use of taxpayer money and state resources for abortion, Johnsen called restrictions on abortion


"involuntary servitude," arguing that, with them "the state has conscripted (an expectant mother's) body for its own ends." This leads to, she wrote, "forced pregnancy," which is a violation of the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery. Pregnancy, she declared, "requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state's asserted interest" in the unborn child. She argued that a mother "is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not her own."


That's not unusual?


At the very least it's highly partisan, which presents a big problem. The little-known but highly influential task of heading the OLC requires being an "administration's lawyer's lawyer." As former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explained the job, in a recent piece for National Review on Johnsen, "It authoritatively interprets the law for the attorney general and, in doing so, drives administration legal policy." It's the most unideological post there is in a presidential administration. Which is why Johnsen should be the last person filling it. Besides her radically anti-life past, there's also her record with the Clinton administration (where she served in — surprise— the Office of Legal Counsel,), a resume that suggests she's anything but the breath of fresh air that President Obama has promised.


McCarthy, in his case against Johnsen, recounted her OLC record, one that the New York Times, for one, chose to overlook. McCarthy exposed the "particularly rich" hypocrisy of Johnsen's recent condemnations of the Bush administration's use of executive authority, showing how she ardently defended Clinton's will to power when his administration did such things as "(invent) extraordinary rendition, (detain) Cuban refugees without trial at Guantanamo Bay, (conduct) warrantless national-security searches, and (attack) a foreign country without congressional authorization." But after Bush took similar measures to protect the country, Johnsen cried foul.


It's getting to be a tired refrain, but it's abundantly clear that a Republican nominee with Johnsen's past would be roundly thrashed by the pundits and the public (probably unfairly and slanderously so, if recent history is any indication). Instead, led by the lefty cheerleaders at the gray lady, we're engaged in a bout of knee-jerk Bush-bashing, while important questions such as who Johnson is and what she's said and done go unexamined. If Obama aims to de-politicize the Justice Department, as he claims, by selecting Johnsen he has picked an ideologue who would absolutely do just the opposite.


(On Johnsen's priority list: Making sure that candidates for Bush-era DOJ positions who were passed over for leaning left get "special consideration" in the Obama administration.)


Johnsen's nomination has been moved out of the Senate Judicial Committee on a party-line vote and awaits a full-Senate test. She'll need 60 votes to get confirmed.


Remembering the circus foisted upon so many George W. Bush nominees, it's hard to believe that Republicans and moderate Democrats will let her sail through to the OLC.


Or so I have the audacity to hope.


The un-radicalism of the Obama administration is an untruth. And Johnsen's nomination plays a significant role in exposing the "moderate Obama" myth that many Americans have bought into — most recently the Catholic University of Notre Dame, which is providing the president cover for his anti-life initiatives by letting him speak at its commencement this May.


It shouldn't be unusual to expect honesty about Johnsen, or to expect the Senate to take a close look at her. But we should consider President Obama's increasingly radical moves very unusual indeed.

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