By CONGRESSDAILY STAFF
The Senate Finance Committee will hold a confirmation hearing next Thursday for Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be HHS secretary, the panel announced Thursday.
Sebelius, a Democrat who was President Obama's second choice for the post after former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., withdrew from consideration, is expected to face little opposition.
On Tuesday, Sebelius also will appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in what is being billed as a courtesy hearing.
In other confirmation news, three top Justice Department division nominees won approval Thursday in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
On a single voice vote, the committee approved former Federal Trade Commissioner Christine Varney to head the antitrust division, San Francisco attorney Tony West to lead the civil division and Lanny Breuer, a special counsel to former President Bill Clinton, as head of the criminal division.
By CONGRESSDAILY STAFF
The Senate voted 61-31 Thursday to confirm Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan as solicitor general. She becomes the first woman to represent the United States before the Supreme Court.
Though Republican senators had raised questions about Kagan's social views and her responsiveness to questions posed at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, several senators noted that the vote came despite limited floor debate on Kagan.
Kagan, 48, has never argued a Supreme Court case, but she clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Other Justice Department nominees awaiting Senate confirmation are David Kris, the administration's choice for assistant attorney general for national security, and Dawn Johnsen for assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel. The Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to confirm Johnsen over unanimous GOP objections.
Johnsen will likely face opposition on the floor, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a Judiciary Committee member.
By KIRK VICTOR
As the Senate Judiciary Committee grills Attorney General nominee Eric Holder, it is telling to take a look at how then-Sen. Barack Obama approached his votes on Cabinet nominees four years ago.
Obama opposed Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's choice for the nation's top law enforcement job, even as he supported the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of State -- an endorsement that put him at odds with his Illinois colleague, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, as well as some liberal activists.
In an interview with National Journal in 2006, Obama set out his rationale for those two votes. He backed Rice even though she had supported what he had referred to as the "dumb war" in Iraq, because, Obama said, "It was my judgment that the president has broad discretion to choose his executive team." She was confirmed 85-13.
But he said he used a different set of criteria for his vote on Gonzales. "I took a different tack when it came to the attorney general because I think the attorney general's job actually is to be the people's lawyer -- to tell the president what the law is and what he can't do and, based on some of the memos related to torture that I have seen from Alberto Gonzales, it didn't appear that he could say no to the president," Obama said in the interview.
Despite Obama's opposition, Gonzales was confirmed, 60-36, to become the first Hispanic attorney general. He resigned in 2007 amid charges that he had politicized the Justice Department and unfairly fired nine U.S. attorneys.
Ironically, some of the same questions that Obama raised about Gonzales are being raised about Holder today by Republicans who question whether he will exercise independence and follow the law wherever it leads -- even if it means being at odds with his friend, the president. Republicans asked about his role as deputy attorney general in the Clinton Administration when the president pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich and commuted the sentences of 16 Puerto Rican militants who had been convicted on sedition and weapons charges. Why had he not challenged the president?
Holder acknowledged some missteps. "My decisions were not always perfect," he said. "I made mistakes.... But with the benefit of hindsight, I can see my errors clearly, and I can tell you how I have learned from them." He also tried to reassure the skeptics at the hearing, saying that the Justice Department represents "not any one president, not any political party, but the people of this great country."
No senator has voiced opposition to Holder's confirmation at this point. Given the Democrats' majority on the committee and barring any unforeseen developments, Holder is expected to win the panel's approval and go on to be confirmed as the nation's first African-American attorney general.
By AMY HARDER
Following in the wake of last week's Mumbai terrorist attacks, President-elect Barack Obama announced his national security team at a press conference this morning in Chicago. With unrest between India and Pakistan rising over the weekend, Obama addressed the situation briefly but declined to comment further when pressed by a reporter.
"This is one of those times that I reiterate that there is one president at a time," the president-elect said. "We will be engaged in delicate diplomacy in the next several days and weeks. It would be inappropriate for me to comment, but what I can so unequivocally is that both myself and the team that stands beside are absolutely committed eliminating the threat of terrorism."
That team includes several appointments that had been rumored for weeks -- Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of State, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Eric Holder as attorney general, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as Homeland Security Department secretary, Obama's campaign foreign policy adviser Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations and Gen. Jim Jones as national security adviser.
After announcing Clinton as his secretary of State, Obama was asked about "belittling" her international experience while on the campaign trial. "This is fun for the press to try to stir up whatever quotes were formed over the course of the campaign," Obama quipped in response. "If you look at statements that [Clinton] and I have made outside of the heat of the campaign, we share a view that America has to be safe and secure." He added that in making his decision, he never experienced a "light bulb moment"; rather, once their primary battle was over, he started thinking of ways they could work together.
Continue reading Obama Stresses Pragmatism Of Security Appointees.
