Chief of Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnsen and State Department Legal Counsel nominee Harold Koh

Republicans are so determined to continue to cover up the Bush administration’s illegal and immoral torture of suspected terrorists that they are threatening to “go nuclear” over Obama nominations if more torture memos are released.

A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward…

Few informed independent observers find much to credit in the objections

The release of the memos that the Senate Republicans want to suppress was cleared by Attorney General Eric Holder and White House counsel Greg Craig, and then was stopped when “all hell broke loose” inside the Obama administration, according to an article by Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff. Newsweek attributes internal opposition to disclosure of the Bush-era torture memos to White House counterterrorism adviser and former CIA official John O. Brennan, who has raised arguments that exposure of the memoranda would run afoul of policies protecting the secrecy of agency techniques and has also argued that the memos would embarrass nations like Morocco, Jordan, Pakistan, Tunisia and Egypt, which have cooperated closely with the CIA in its extraordinary renditions program.

Few informed independent observers, however, find much to credit in the Brennan objections because the techniques are now well-known, as is the role of the cooperating foreign intelligence services—any references to which would in any event likely be redacted before the memoranda are released. Moreover, the argument that the confidence of those engaged in torture—serious criminal conduct under international and domestic law—should be kept because they would be “embarrassed” if it were to come out borders on comic.

Johnsen, an Indiana University law professor, is a former American Civil Liberties Union and National Abortion & Reprouctive Rights Action League lawyer. Is any further explanation needed about why the right wing would object to her nomination? Koh has been the subject of a shouted campaign by Mormon FOX News pundit Glenn Beck and others, who have convoluted Koh’s adherence to international law into a charge that he would enforce sharia (Muslim law, which makes no distinction between religious and secular laws). Both Johnsen and Koh are thought to support release of the Bush torture memos.