as well as their background and opinions on relevant legal matters. Some of these recent hires are on record supporting release of GITMO prisoners regardless of concerns about the terrorists returning to the battlefield.

Ideas matter, word view matters, especially for attorneys at the DOJ who are supposed to be helping defend this country. I’m actually to the right of Liz Cheney on this one, and think these folks need to be exposed and fired – they, or others with a similar background, have no business being employed by the taxpayers.

I wonder if the Obama administration would be so open minded as to hire folks from ACLJ or attorneys who have a pro-life Christian world view?

To smear DOJ employees as jihad sympathizers is disgusting. If Liz Cheney has evidence she’d like to share with the country, I’d invite her to put it out there. Absent that, this is a baseless smear.

Disgusting.

“The legal profession’s depiction of these lawyers as heroic servants not of the enemy but of the Constitution is unmitigated nonsense: You can’t be performing a vital constitutional function when the function is not required by the Constitution. They can repeat the lie a million times, but that won’t make it a fact. These lawyers made a conscious decision to contribute their services, usually gratis, to enemy combatants with whom the American people are at war.”

Rest of McCarthy’s column:
http://article.nationalreview.com/42…rew-c-mccarthy

These attorneys were voluntarily helping the enemy of this country. They should not be employed by the taxpayers and work in the DOJ.
Every one should be fired immediately.

For a general understanding of my thoughts, I have posted at length, Keep America Safe Ad and Critics Both Miss the Mark. This issue is of particular interest to me because my college roommate, former Bush Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Cully Stimson, stepped into this briar’s patch about three years ago.

It is simply not accurate to state that the ad doesn’t ask the viewer to make the implicit leap that those who have represented the jihadists share those jihadist beliefs. It clearly does – the implication at the beginning of the ad, wherein Holder speaks of progressives of shared beliefs is specifically designed to invoke that subliminal thought and not all that subliminally, I might add. And, then labeling them, i.e. the specific attorneys involved as the “Al qaeda seven” is designed clearly to reinforce this implication.

This implication, despite some viewers desire to want “it to be so,” is, without anything more, mere speculation. Such speculation needlessly derides those that have served in this capacity, without any possibility that that they share the views of the jihadists they may represent.

Do I know this for a fact? Yes. I know for a fact that a very good friend of mine, who is Jewish and a partner with a very large Washington D.C. law firm, represented a muslim jihadist in the not too distant past, as his principal counsel. He is not one of the “Al qaeda seven” referenced in the ad, but by analogy, to somehow argue that my friend shared the jihadist’s contempt for Israel and the Jewish people is beyond silly.

The problem with the ad is that it invites this criticism needlessly. The problem with the criticism is that it avoids the real issue. The issue is ‘ethics.’

The issue about the identity of the attorneys, their prior work and their current work is that we, the American public (the DOJ’s client), are entitled to know these matters, as a matter of ‘ethics.’ Past representation in matters against the DOJ and then work for the DOJ require a determination concerning the presence or absence of ‘conflicts of interest.’ Again, in NO WAY am I asserting that there are any conflicts of interest, but the reason for the disclosure is to assure the client, the American public, of this point. (And, in all likelihood, there is no ethics/conflict issue at all and we can all move on.)

This issue is what the ad should have emphasized, but instead obscured, and this issue is what the criticsim of the ad conveniently avoids.

Not just those actively working to free the detainees but any lawyer employed by these firms should be disqualified from DOJ work on these cases. That would include Holder himself, of course, since his firm provided free aid to captured Terrorists.

As for those who defend these attorneys “changing sides”, how would you like to be charged with a crime, have a court appointed attorney, come into court a year later and see your former attorney or his partner sitting at the table with the prosecution? It is absolutely indefensible for anyone involved with defending these people to be within a mile of the DOJ handling their cases.

What happened to all the promises of transparecy?? Educated Americans make decisions based on information, but their pre-conceived, stereotypical, FEELINGS. Liz Cheney is simply raising the question of transparency, that was FIRST RAISED by Obama in the election. Why all the secrecy in a free country? The backgrounds and ideologies of UNELECTED federal employees charged is critical to how they will proceed fulfilling the duties of their office. The smell of this secrecy is telling. The smell of secrecy permeated the unquestioning media regarding the associations of Obama with Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Frank Marshall, Van Jones, and the list goes on. Where is the transparency that was preached and promoted in the campaign?