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Thanks to the religious-themed lawyer blog Logos for the pointer to a great Chicago Tribune by Steve Chapman entitled The Late, Great States - Where Have All the Federalists Gone?, article reprinted at Slate. Sean Fosmire summarizes:

Chapman suggests that the reason that current conservatives seem to have forgotten about federalism is that Republicans are in power now. When the Democrats held the Presidency and a majority position in Congress, conservatives argued in favor of decentralized authority in order to reduce the effective power of the national government and keep power in the hands of the states, where they could exercise far more influence. Now that they hold the reins of power, they are not so eager to make the same arguments.

"Once Republicans saw all the great things they could do with centralized power in Washington, they forgot why they ever found it worrisome in the first place."

...

Consistent federalism would support both opposition to a Federal constitutional amendment on gay marriage and opposition to Roe v. Wade. Most liberals (for the former, against the latter) and most conservatives (vice versa) are fair-weather federalists.

When Cheney talks about how proud he is of Halliburton, I would have cut to somebody describing the Halliburton accounting fraud--the failure to disclose material changes in accounting practices that moved a big chunk of profits forward in time to the current year--that Cheney presided over, and linked that to Bush's Harken Energy trading and to Halliburton's billing practices in Iraq. I would have had a section on Cheney's claims that persons nobody can find told him of a direct threat to Air Force One on the morning of September 11.

When Bush talked about how the have-mores were his 'base', I would have set out some numbers about the effects of his... tax shift... on the people then in the room. When Moore showed the picture of the Supreme Court, I would have read out the portion of the decision--'Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities'--in which the Justices reveal how ashamed they are of the possibility that Bush v. Gore might ever be used as a precedent. I would have juxtaposed the investigation of PeaceFresno and of something like the 'extraordinary rendition' of Maher Arar to the kid gloves used to handle the bin Laden relatives after 911: why not keep them until September 16, and send the FBI and CIA through to ask them all to 'tell us everything you can about your uncle'?

Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer. ... The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

There's no 'challenging the bona fides of a political opponent' exception to the law in question. While Plame's alleged role may have some political traction, it's legally irrelevant. Government officials are not allowed to disclose the identity of covert intelligence agents, whether they feel they have a good reason or not.

Beyond the simple incompetence of these memos, however, is their misunderstanding of the duties of Justice Department lawyers. The Justice Department does not represent the President. It represents the nation. The Justice Department, and particularly the OLC, is not supposed to tell the President how he can get away with whatever he wants to get away with. Rather, its job is to explain to the President how to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed, as the U.S. Constitution puts it. These memos fail that test. Indeed, they go out of their way to make questionable claims about the scope of the President's power, arguing at one point that far from having a duty to faithfully execute the laws, the President is not bound by them at all. These memos do not read as if the authors were acting as counsel for the nation. They read as if someone in the White House told them to write a memo that stretched the law as much as possible in order to conclude that the President can do whatever he wants.

These memos make bad legal arguments. But quite apart from their incompetence, they are also bad lawyering; they misunderstand the ethical role of the government lawyer.

These ambitious people may well have thought that doing the Administration's bidding would propel them into judicial office. In the case of Jay Bybee, who now sits on the 9th Circuit Court of appeals, the strategy worked. But that was before the Abu Ghraib scandals and the release of the OLC and Defense Department torture memos. Bush Administation lawyers who can be found to have participated in any way with these decisions are probably radioactive. Their judicial prospects are pretty much destroyed.

One of the most interesting examples is Alberto Gonzales, the President's counsel. People have long assumed that Gonzales, who would have been the first Latino nominee, was at the top of the list for any future Supreme Court appointment. But Gonzales' participation in memos attempting to escape the obligations of American and international law means that the Bush Administration would face a very lengthy confirmation battle if it tried to nominate him. Even if Bush wins a second term, the torture memo will give Democrats (and many Republicans) ample reason to oppose him.

There is a bit of poetic justice in this result. The torture memos, I firmly believe, show the corrupting influence of power, and the desire to advance one's political career by casting aside professional pride and telling one's superiors that they can do whatever they like, no matter how base or unjust it may be. In the Bush Administration, ambition and syncophancy have trimphed over professionalism, sound judgement and moral seriousness. The corruptions of power have brought us to a sorry spectacle in which intelligent lawyers, many with impeccable credentials, have argued vigorously for an Imperial Presidency that is above the law and for the right to abuse and torture fellow human beings. This failure of moral imagination and professional scruple makes the participants unfit for judicial office, and no one should hesitate in saying so. Put another way, if the torture memos have made these very bright and talented lawyers radioactive, it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.