Meet The Acting Attorney General WaPo

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/27/AR2007082701442.html?wpisrc=newsletter


A Conservative Insider More at Home in the Law Than in Policy

By Robert Barnes and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 28, 2007; A05



Solicitor General Paul D. Clement has the rock-solid conservative credentials to be President Bush's choice yesterday as acting attorney general but is more steeped in the world of law than policymaking. He has been mentioned more often as a future Supreme Court justice than as a member of a president's Cabinet...Compared with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Clement is a savvy Washington insider. He has spent nearly two decades learning his way around town, starting as a Supreme Court clerk and working his way through corporate law and Capitol Hill before finding a niche in the executive branch.

Clement "has a very strong sense of institutional arrangements and institutional integrity," said Kenneth W. Starr, a solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush who recruited him to an early job at Kirkland & Ellis....The solicitor general, who dresses for court appearances in a morning coat, is responsible for presenting the government's most important cases to the Supreme Court, and justices seem particularly engaged when Clement is before them....He is known for making articulate, carefully constructed arguments without notes and has drawn praise from liberals such as Justice John Paul Stevens as well as from Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative for whom he served as a clerk....Despite Clement's conservative background -- besides serving for Scalia, he has worked for former senator and attorney general John Ashcroft and was a Federalist Society member -- he has also endeared himself to some Democrats with his vigorous defense of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act.

THE WHOLE ARTICLE GUSHES TREACLE FROM SOME OF THE WORST PEOPLE IN DC--WITH "SUPPORTERS" LIKE THESE, CLEMENT DOESN'T DESERVE TO BE IN GOVERNMENT ANYWHERE.