The White House has narrowed the possible successors to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to a field of five and President Bush could choose and announce the nominee in the next week, according to an official involved in the selection process.
The finalists are Michael Mukasey, Theodore B. (Ted) Olson, Laurence H. Silberman, George J. Terwilliger and Larry D. Thompson.
The official said people involved in the selection process expect the nominee to come from that list unless Bush forces a late swerve. The announcement is possible within days.
By coincidence, three of the five - Mukasey, Olson and Thompson — are on Rudy Giuliani's Justice Advisory Committee.
White House counsel Fred Fielding has been consulting Democrats on Capitol Hill in an effort to smooth the way for the nominee's confirmation. The 81st attorney general will face a huge task in trying to reestablish morale, efficiency and credibility in a department that has been crippled by the controversies engulfing Gonzales.
But Republicans say an exciting pick could help reenergize Bush's administration and remind people he wants to be productive in his final year.
Two leading contenders for the job, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, are no longer under consideration. Officials concluded that another oft-mentioned possibility, Verizon Executive Vice President and General Counsel Bill Barr, who was attorney general under President George H.W. Bush from 1991 to 1993, was not interested.
Here are the five finalists:
—Michael Mukasey was suggested by Democrats as well as Republicans during the search process. He was Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York until he rejoined the New York City law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP as a partner in September 2006. Earlier, he was Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division of the Southern District of New York, where he was chief of the Official Corruption Unit. He spent 18 years on the bench, six of them as chief judge. Known as "Judge Mukasey," he is a member of Rudy Giuliani's Justice Advisory Committee.
—Theodore B. (Ted) Olson, known as one of the nation's premier Supreme Court lawyers, was solicitor general under President Bush from June 2001 to July 2004. Under President Ronald Reagan, Olson was Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel from 1981 to 1984. He rankles Democrats because he successfully represented George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the Supreme Court for Bush v. Gore cases that decided the 2000 presidential election. Olson is now a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Washington office. He is a member of the President's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, created at the suggestion of the 9/11 commission. Olson is chairman of Rudy Giuliani's Justice Advisory Committee.
—Laurence H. Silberman, a senior circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985 and took senior status in 2000. He was co-chairman (with former Senator Charles S. Robb) of the WMD commission created by President Bush in 2004. Silberman has a varied career that includes being a partner in law firms in Honolulu and Washington, D.C., and a banker in San Francisco. He was a U.S. Army private for a year beginning in 1957, was an appellate-division attorney at the National Labor Relations Board, was solicitor of Labor from1969-1970, undersecretary of Labor from 1970-1973, deputy attorney general from 1974-1975 and Ambassador to Yugoslavia from1975-1977. He is now the Distinguished Visitor from the Judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.
—George J. Terwilliger, a partner at White & Case in Washington, was Deputy Attorney General, the second-ranking official at Justice, under President George H.W. Bush, from 1991-93. He served briefly as Acting Attorney General of the United States. He was United States Attorney in Vermont from 1986 to 1991, a connection that could help him with Sen. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). Terwilliger was senior counsel to Gov. George W. Bush's presidential campaign on the Florida recount cases.
—Larry D. Thompson, who is PepsiCo's Senior Vice President, Government Affairs, General Counsel and Secretary, would be the nation's first African-American attorney general. He was Deputy Attorney General to John Ashcroft from May 2001 to August 2003, and remains popular in the Justice Department. He has noted in speeches that he was the first African-American to serve as United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, a position he held from 1982 to 1986. Thompson is a member of Rudy Giuliani's Justice Advisory Committee. He was a possibility to succeed Ashcroft (the slot went to Gonzales), and has been mentioned as a potential Supreme Court nominee.
http://dyn.politico.com/playbook/
14 comments:
None of the above SPB
This is for Mr. Kitty
I think Scooter Libby will be our next Attorney General. Why you ask?
Illnois Govenor hires convicted felons and they get alot of money. The Gerblil might look at that and think he knows a convicted felon who needs a job. Libby will only need to miss time while he reports to his patrole officer.
I find it interesting that many of them are associated with Rudy somehow. My bet is on Olson because he seems he would be able to keep the Gerbil out of hotter water better than the others.
From another thread. I dug around the international news to see what their reaction was to Hollywood bin Laden. Most of them regurgitate what the American news already put out but include "purported to be bin Laden" or other similar wording in their reports. Anyway, these Brits think they figured out who helped with the script.
Your right again Mr. Kitty as always with those 9 lives you have.
I knew that wasn't Osama's body and yes it is that of the young man from California. He must be laughing his butt off.
Don't miss the comedy hijinks in Australia.
Good searching, kittybowtie.
I will post the article for Monday.
Cheers!
LOL, kittybowtie. At least that Bin Laden had gray streaks in his beard. ;-)
The cat is still obsessed about reading anything but the American MSM news about Osama. Here is another one.
The American news people were making idiots of themselves saying Osama was "vain" and dyed his beard. That means they are using their own ideas to measure someone else from another country. There's a word for that, ethnocentrism.
I vaguely remember something about the only good time to cut one's beard but I cannot remember it.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Qtub were very real, and their thing was to tell people to convert to Islam before attacking them. For the idiot woman on FOX News who called Osama "impotent" and said there were no warnings of attacks, she would be mistaken on the second part. For the first part, I am ashamed to say I think I would laugh my butt off if someone put a fatwa out on her for calling Osama "impotent."
Now, whether or not we think the tape is real or a set up to make the Democrats look stupid, there are enough folks out there who follow the dark side of Islam who might be inspired by it to carry out mayhem. Those are the problem people.
Mr. Kitty, your 8:38 post shows they got Osama in Australia, case solved! LOL, we are all safe now.
Chicago Native:
Don't you mean, mission accomplished? LMAO!
Yes, you are right kicked some %$# and mission accomplished. The war on terror......sucess, Osama caught in Australia, which one looks more like Osama.....the new video....or the one caught in Australia?
I forgot to mention "kick ass." Who can forget that?
Wasn't that Daddy Bush who got in trouble for telling a longshoreman the day after a debate that they "kicked a little ass" in the debate?
We know Mondale is getting kind of old in Minnesota somewhere but whatever happened to Geraldine Ferraro?
Kittybowtie:
The Gerbil is leading by example: his Daddy. Proper etiquette has been out the window since the Clown stole the election twice. Many of the past President dead are rolling over their graves on this President. This country is getting a dose of reality TV. from the Gerbil. We have been entertained and not educated from an illiterate President. The world is full of educated derelicts as Calvin Coolidge said and the Gerbil is a prime example.
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