TPM = Goldsmith: David Addington (Cheney Lawyer/Chief of Staff) Is a Frothing Lunatic

[L. Coyote]

Goldsmith: Cheney Lawyer Is Frothing Lunatic
By Spencer Ackerman - September 4, 2007, 10:26 AM
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004060.php

If there's a villain in Jack Goldsmith's account of his time in the Justice Department, it's David Addington, Dick Cheney's legal alter ego. Addington, who became the vice president's chief of staff after Scooter Libby resigned following his indictment, served as Cheney's eyes and ears in the legal battles within the administration over warrantless surveillance, coercive interrogations and indefinite detentions. His style of argument, as recounted by Goldsmith, isn't exactly a subtle one.

hen Goldsmith tried to question another presidential decision, Addington expressed his views even more pointedly. “If you rule that way,” Addington exclaimed in disgust, Goldsmith recalls, “the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands.”

Jane Mayer's profile of Addington introduced him as a zealot for unchecked presidential power during wartime. .....

[Supersedeas]

1. quite a contract from the Weeping President who demands the rule of law

[L. Coyote]

2. WA Post: What Addington Wrought

What Addington Wrought
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html


At the center of the Bush White House's most extreme overreaches -- its assertions of unfettered executive power in wartime, its backing of brutal treatment of detainees, its bulldozing of legal limits on government eavesdropping -- lies one man.

And it's not Vice President Cheney -- at least not directly. It's David S. Addington, Cheney's longtime legal counsel and, ever since I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's indictment and resignation, his chief of staff.

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Goldsmith apparently was sympathetic to many of Addington's goals. But not the means. Because the means were illegal. And ultimately self-defeating.

Rosen writes: "Instead of reaching out to Congress and the courts for support, which would have strengthened its legal hand, the administration asserted what Goldsmith considers an unnecessarily broad, 'go-it-alone' view of executive power. As Goldsmith sees it, this strategy has backfired.

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