Mitt Romney may not be as much of a right wing ideologue as many of his opponents in the Republican primary, but he’s trying hard to pretend that he is. Look at who is on his team of legal advisers:
On Tuesday, Romney released a list of the 63 lawyers on his Justice Advisory Committee, designed to advise his presidential campaign on legal policy and in some cases provide legal counsel. Its most famous name: former Ronald Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, whose nomination was voted down by the Senate.
Yikes. That’s scary enough. It gets worse:
I guess Orly Taitz was busy.Prime among them is Steven Bradbury, one of 13 “prominent lawyers” singled out on the list by Romney’s campaign. Bradbury led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2005 to 2009 and signed three 2005 memos reassuring the CIA and the DOJ that techniques like waterboarding were legal even when combined with another harsh technique. Those reaffirmed the 2002 memos that were written primarily by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee, who was Bradbury’s predecessor in the office.
With all of the criticism I’ve made of Barack Obama for his litany of constitutional abuses, this is one area where there is still a clear difference between him and the Republicans — the people they would appoint to the Supreme Court. Though Obama himself has used the Constitution as virtual toilet paper for the past 2 1/2 years, his picks for the Supreme Court have turned out to be pretty good so far. Anyone a Republican president would appoint would certainly be infinitely worse when it comes to the Bill of Rights and equality issues.
