According to the Wall Street Journal Barack Obama has nominated another former Clinton administration official who has written extensively against the Bush administration as ”rogue,” “lawless,” “outrage,” in its policy to arrest and hold terrorists.

Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen has been nominated to run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which interprets the law for the entire executive branch. OLC’s main duties are to defend the Presidency against the inevitable encroachment of the judiciary and Congress on Constitutional authority, executive privilege, war powers, and so forth.

Unfortunately for the executive branch Ms. Johnsen is against the powers of that branch and its ability to remain more central in a war on terror.

The Journal says Ms. Johnsen has:

… written that “an essential source of constraint is often underappreciated and underestimated: legal advisors within the executive branch.” And in touting her qualifications, the Obama transition cited her recent law review articles “What’s a President to Do?: Interpreting the Constitution in the Wake of the Bush Administration’s Abuses”; and “Faithfully Executing the Laws: Internal Legal Constraints on Executive Power.”

In other words, Mr. Obama has nominated as his main executive branch lawyer someone who believes in diminishing the powers of the executive branch. This is akin to naming a conscientious objector as the head of the armed forces, or hiring your wife’s divorce lawyer to handle your side of the settlement too.

Johnsen claims that the OLC “misinterpreted relevant constitutional authorities, particularly when seeking to justify actions otherwise prohibited by law.” She pays special attention to John Yoo’s August 2002 OLC memorandum that set down the legal limits for interrogation, which she calls “the Torture Opinion.”

Ms. Johnsen accuses Mr. Yoo of “seeking maximum flexibility — that is, the ability to use the most extreme methods possible without risking criminal liability — in interrogations of suspected al Qaeda operatives.”

Leon Panetta at the CIA and Dawn Johnsen “interpreting” the powers of the President while make the US unsafe from terrorists. Ms. Johnsen’s legal premises would diminish the powers of the President to stop future terrorist attacks and find safe havens of current terrorist training camps.

Bill Clinton’s Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick’s infamous 1995 memo instructed FBI agents and federal prosecutors to go “beyond what the law requires” in limiting their collaboration against al Qaeda. Gorelick established the “wall” so agencies tasked with preventing terrorist attacks through intelligence could not share information. 9/11 demonstrates how well that policy worked out or not.

Mr. Obama may live to regret his appointment of Dawn Johnsen while other US citizens die as a result. Indeed!