Okay, so maybe I'm just being paranoid...
Appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative jurist and a short-list Bush administration candidate for the Supreme Court, announced today that he is resigning from the bench to serve as senior vice president and general counsel of The Boeing Co.
(snip)
...[H]e had a significant falling-out with the Bush Justice Department earlier this year when he protested, in a follow-up opinion, what he suggested was the administration's inappropriate manipulation of the legal system in order to avoid a further Supreme Court test of the president's wartime authority.
His public thrashing of the Justice Department was known to have been deeply upsetting to political appointees in the department.
(I just love that last paragraph.)
Death and voluntary resignation/retirement are pretty much the only ways to get rid of an appeals judge in the absence of gross misconduct, so is it possible that this was arranged, either with or without Luttig's knowledge, to get him out of the way? I'll bet money that whoever replaces Luttig will be a lot more amenable to the idea of absolute executive power.
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