Obama Staffing Update

Leon Panetta: C.I.A. Director.

What is interesting here is two things, he does not have previous intel experience, being Clintons Chief of staff for a time, and that he has Panetta op/ed forcefully stated his opposition to warrantless surveillance and torture.

Clearly, as a former CoS, he will know how to run a bureaucracy, and how to get the President's attention, which should be helpful, though I still find it an odd pick.

We also have some more appointments at the Department of Justice

• David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General;
• Elena Kagan, Solicitor General;
• Tom Perrelli, Associate Attorney General;
• Dawn Johnsen, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel.

No knowledge of them, though Glenn Greenwald is generally happy over the above appointments, and positively ecstatic over Dawn Johnsen.

Greenwald also reveals that Sen. Dianne Feinstein^* and Sen. Jay Rockefeller are upset because they Panetta is not an "intelligence professional", and because they feel that they were not consulted sufficiently.

^*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers.