Here and There

More on credible white guys

January 21st, 2006 Here and There Posted in serious |

As a follow up to yesterday’s hurry-up-and-post post, I thought I’d look a little deeper into the biographies of the two men I cited as being highly credible experts on matters of executive propriety and impeachment.

Part 1, Bruce Fein
I admit, I wasn’t able to dig into his past as much as I would wish. But…

Fein graduated from Harvard Law School with honors in 1972. On C-Span yesterday, he mentioned coming into the government during the Nixon administration, in Archibald Cox’s Justice Department, though I’m not sure in what capacity he served there.

I’m a little unsure of the timeline after that. He had some sort of federal judicial clerkship for someone. Then he went to the Department of Justice where he became assistant director of the Office of Legal Policy, legal adviser to the assistant attorney general for antitrust, and the associate deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan’s first AG, William French Smith.

In 1981, he helped prep Sandra Day O’Connor for her confirmation hearings.

Around 1982, Fein was appointed general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, followed by an appointment as research director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran.

Today, he is an adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a resident scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a lecturer at the Brookings Institute, and an adjunct professor at George Washington University. He also serves as general counsel for the Center for Law and Accountability.

Fein writes a weekly column for The Washington Times devoted to legal and international affairs.

Busy man.

He supported the Roberts nomination, and has been rather forthcoming about Alito.

This from an interview with NPR’s Nina Totenburg:

“Those who think Sam Alito is a duplicate of Sandra Day O’Connor or trying to suggest or insinuate that the Court’s philosophical balance will not be altered by Alito simply are being exceptionally disingenuous. I think they fear that if Alito is perceived as some kind of Bork in its impact on the Supreme Court, then the result might be Bork-like. The difference is, Republicans have 55 votes in the Senate now. At the time of Bork, they were a minority.”

It’s unclear whether Fein supports Alito’s confirmation. He’s definitely not keen on Bush’s warrentless wiretapping.