The Nuclear Option

Over at the Daily Beast, Scott Horton reveals that Senate Republicans appear to be playing hardball on the issue of torture and Justice Department nominees (emphasis mine):

Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principal reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. 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.

Bottom line, if the Obama administration releases those John Yoo torture memos, Republicans will scuttle the nominations of the people who are most likely to prosecute the offenses these memos entail.

It very much is blackmail if that is the case, and Obama should immediately release the memos and bury the GOP if they try to block Dawn Johnsen and Harold Koh. I say pull the trigger and make the bastards pay. Scuttle the Republicans. If they block the rest of Obama's appointments, then they'll never shake the Party of No label.

If Obama caves on this one, then we've lost ourselves as a country.