Obama's cabinet picks for Monday.

From Thinkprogress:

Obama Picks Pete Souza As White House Photographer

Moreover:

Obama selects Leon Panetta to head CIA.
NBC News reports that former Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta will be named as President Obama’s nominee to be CIA Director. Panetta, a former congressman from California, “has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience,” writes the New York Times. Panetta would report to Dennis Blair, Obama’s nominee to be national intelligence director.
One of the factors that may have contributed to Panetta’s selection was Obama’s reported desire to pick intelligence officials who weren’t “associated with the Bush administration’s controversial interrogation policies.”

Office of Legal Counsel:

President-elect Barack Obama announced today that Dawn Johnsen will serve as the next Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Salon’s Glenn Greenwald calls the pick “Obama’s best yet, perhaps by far.” As evidence, Greenwald highlights an article in Slate that Johnsen authored last year, in which she excoriated John Yoo’s infamous torture memo:

I want to second Dahlia’s frustration with those who don’t see the newly released Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) torture memo as a big deal. Where is the outrage, the public outcry?! The shockingly flawed content of this memo, the deficient processes that led to its issuance, the horrific acts it encouraged, the fact that it was kept secret for years and that the Bush administration continues to withhold other memos like it — all demand our outrage.

Yes, we’ve seen much of it before. And yes, we are counting down the remaining months. But we must regain our ability to feel outrage whenever our government acts lawlessly and devises bogus constitutional arguments for outlandishly expansive presidential power. Otherwise, our own deep cynicism, about the possibility for a President and presidential lawyers to respect legal constraints, itself will threaten the rule of law — and not just for the remaining nine months of this administration, but for years and administrations to come.

Johnsen also criticized the Democratic Congress for legalizing Bush’s surveillance program. She also wrote passionately about restoring our “nation’s honor” by condemning “our nation’s past transgressions” and rejecting “Bush’s corruption of our American ideals.”

Elena Kagan as Solicitor General:

Kagan will be the first woman to serve permanently in this important post, which is tasked with conducting “all litigation on behalf of the United States in the Supreme Court, and to supervise the handling of litigation in the federal appellate courts. Kagan previously served in the White House during the Clinton administration, as Associate Counsel to the President, Deputy Assistant the the President for Domestic Policy, and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council. Kagan sent out an announcement to the Harvard Law School community:

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Tom Perrelli will be Associate Attorney General. "He was counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno during the Clinton administration. Like Mr. Ogden, he has worked on the Obama transition for the Justice Department over the last two months."

Update:

Obama appoints CAP’s Brad Kiley as Director of Office of Management and Administration.
This afternoon, the Obama transition team announced several new White House staff members, including our friend and former colleague Brad Kiley as the Director of the Office of Management and Administration. Brad is currently the Director of Operations for the transition team. He served as Vice President of Finance and Operations at the Center for American Progress, and before that, as deputy assistant to the president for management and administration in the Clinton White House. With his new position, Brad is the highest ranking LGBT appointment in the White House.