Blocking Haynes a Good Move

EdWhalen reports that “According to a very knowledgeable non-Senate source, the news is much worse for Fourth Circuit nominee William Haynes: Senator McCain is committed to stopping Haynes’s confirmation, and Senator Graham, as a favor to Senator McCain, will keep the nomination from being reported out of committee. If this news is accurate, it would appear that there is no hope for Haynes’s nomination.”

Paul at Power Line anlyzes this in the following manner: “

As I have argued, Haynes, an outstanding public servant, is being made the scapegoat for questionable legal advice provided by the Justice Department with respect to the interrogation of detainees. Haynes used that advice to provide guidance to the military, as he should have. If Haynes had provided legal advice inconsistent with the position of the Justice Department, he would have demonstrated a lawlessness that might constitute grounds for blocking his confirmation.

If McCain wants to punish an administration official for playing a key role in the development of our policy on interrogating detainees, a better target would be Attorney General Gonzales. The “offending” legal advice was prepared for Gonzales who then was the president’s counsel. Unlike Haynes, Gonzales arguably was in a position to cause the Justice Department’s position to be rejected.

But going after Gonzales would have injured McCain’s attempt to cast himself as a friend of the White House. Blocking Haynes, McCain must assume, carries no cost. And perhaps it doesn’t. But a pattern of these sorts of cynical calculations might.”

I do not think that Mr. McCain’s calculation is a cynical or wrong. Mr. Haynes could have protested more when the subject was discussed in meetings or argued against the memo once he received it, but he did neither, just implementing it until caught.

Mr. Graham has always said that their was one nominee he could not support and I have known that this was Haynes because of his role in the torture scandal. Blocking him for not disputing the legal advice of the justice department is a good move because he supports breaking the law passed to ban torture and might still support arguments to do so and thus allow the President’s signing statement to prevail in any argument over torture rather than the statute. This is bad for the country and the military.

Haynes has had an otherwise stellar career, but this one blemish is serious enough to derail the nomination as it should be. It is a question of law and not ideology for them to hash out. We should not be promoting someone who supports the violation of law regardless of his prior service.