President Obama Nominates Solicitor General Elena Kagan To Supreme Court

As was rumored on Friday, President Obama will be nominating Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court, replacing retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Should she be confirmed, she would be the third woman on the Court, joining Justices Ginsberg and Sotomayor. In fact, she would be the third woman with strong New York ties, having grown up in New York City. Her education includes attending Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard Law (where she became dean 17 years after graduating law school).

Scotusblog is live blogging the nomination, and is a great resource to check for further background. Here's a quick look at her background.

Kagan would be the first non-judge to be nominated in 40 years, which means that her judicial philosophy has to be gleaned from her writings and by evaluating her in the course of the confirmation hearings and meetings beforehand. It's a more difficult task than merely attempting to review her rulings on judicial cases. However, since she's been previously confirmed by the US Senate, her nomination isn't expected to be particularly troublesome unless some unexpected situation comes to light.

Still, I think some people might feel disappointed that the President didn't choose someone from a wider geographical scope as the Court is very heavily reliant on Ivy League and Northeast-based justices. There's also some concern from the left that she may not be so reliably liberal because she's argued for preserving many of the executive powers that were explored and expanded under the Bush Administration.

President Obama To Announce Supreme Court Nominee Next Week?

Politico is reporting that President Obama is perhaps ready to announce his nominee to the US Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. They're reporting that Obama has chosen Solicitor General Elena Kagan, a former Harvard Law dean, to be his nominee.

Let the predictions and dirt digging commence?

The Obama Administration Continues Incompetence In Filling Positions

More than half of the 500 top policymaking positions remain unfilled by the Obama Administration. That includes quite a few at the Treasury Department, which has been dealing with one of the worst economic crisis in generations.

Of more than 500 senior policymaking positions requiring Senate confirmation, just 43 percent have been filled — a reflection of a White House that grew more cautious after several nominations blew up last spring, a Senate that is intensively investigating nominees and a legislative agenda that has consumed both.

While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.

He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.

“If you’re running G.M. without half your senior executives in place, are you worried? I’d say your stockholders would be going nuts,” said Terry Sullivan, a professor at the University of North Carolina and executive director of the White House Transition Project, a scholarly program that tracks appointments. “The notion of the American will — it’s not being thwarted, but it’s slow to come to fruition.”

There's special significance in the inspector general's slot, given that the Administration has "retired" or fired several inspector generals for finding problems that run contrary to Administration assertions; the firings were political in nature.

Moreover, the failure to fill these positions means that key programs lack the stewardship necessary to give programs a chance for success. It also greatly increases the chances for fraud, corruption, and mistakes.

Michelle Malkin gleefully notes the Times report, which completely shreds any notion that this Administration made the greatest transition in history. The Administration has yet to even nominate people for hundreds of positions and the fault rests with no one but the Administration and President Obama. His failure to find people who aren't tax cheats isn't comforting either, although he still utilizes people like Tom Daschle in advisory positions that are outside the nomination process.

It's part of the reason that Obama has proliferated the czar; he can't get people to fill the positions that require nominations, so he's attempting to engage in an end run around the process - to poor effect.

Obama To Nominate Regina Benjamin MD as Surgeon General

Reports indicate that President Obama will nominate Dr. Regina Benjamin as Surgeon General of the United States. His prior choice, Sanjay Gupta, withdrew from consideration.

Benjamin is best known for setting up a rural family practice on the Gulf Coast and has won several media accolades and was a MacArthur Fellow:

Benjamin is skilled, as well, in translating research on preventive health measures into accessible, community-based interventions to decrease the disease burdens of her diverse patient base, which includes immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, who comprise a third of Bayou La Batre’s population. A committed local physician, she also plays key roles statewide and nationally, helping others establish clinics in remote areas of the country and serving in leadership positions in such health-related organizations as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians. With a deep, firsthand knowledge of the pressing needs and health disparities afflicting rural, high-poverty communities, Benjamin is ensuring that the most vulnerable among us have access to high-quality care.

She was the first African-American woman on the American Medical Association's board of trustees when she was elected to the post in 1995.

Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor's Confirmation Underway

You can follow along with video coverage here.

Without Senator Joe Biden present, I expect the discourse to be somewhat improved. That said, these confirmations are more about having the Senators expound relentlessly so that they can hear their own voices, rather than get the nominee to opine on their judicial philosophy.

Watch the GOP attempt to get a clearer understanding of Sotomayor's position on Ricci, and why she reached the decision she did and which was lambasted by all nine members on the Court.

Today's hearings will lay the groundwork for her eventual confirmation (Democrats hold the numbers to make this happen regardless of GOP opposition).

UPDATE:
Scotusblog has running updates and is liveblogging. Also, here are some questions that a range of law professors and experts would like to see asked (though don't expect any substantive answers).

Another Obama Nominee With Tax Problems

You have got to be kidding me. Another one of President Obama's nominees has tax troubles?

What exactly has his crack staff of vetters been doing if this is the best they could come up with?

President Obama’s choice as chief of protocol for the State Department, a position that carries the status of an ambassadorship, did not file tax returns for 2005 and 2006, errors she corrected last November.

The nominee, Capricia Penavic Marshall, has placed blame for the problem on the Postal Service and on miscommunication between her husband and their accountant.

Ms. Marshall, who was the social secretary in the Clinton White House, notified the Obama administration about the late filings before she was nominated on May 14. She has since provided written answers to questions about the matter from Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, which will hold a hearing on the appointment next Wednesday. The post requires Senate confirmation.

She's blaming the Post Office? Nice. That's almost as good as saying the dog ate your homework, and carries as much weight with the IRS.

It appears that she got around to fixing her tax deficiencies in November, right about the time she was likely being considered for a position in the Obama Administration. Had she not been under consideration, I doubt that she would have set the IRS straight and corrected her tax troubles.

Nice.

Stay classy.

A Disturbing Trend Continues

Congress didn't bother to read the porkfest they passed. Now, Sen. Harry Reid is on the record as saying he doesn't intend to read any of the opinions written by Judge Sonia Sotomayor in preparation for the confirmation hearings that will be taking place during the summer.

Virtually every Senator who's asked about Sonia Sotomayor defaults to a riff about how they're withholding judgment until they have an opportunity to nest in leather-bound chairs read to her writings in scholarly solitude for hours and hours.

Not Harry, he's good to go.

"I understand that during her career, she's written hundreds and hundreds of opinions. I haven't read a single one of them, and if I'm fortunate before we end this, I won't have to read one of them,” the majority leader told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.

Aren't you glad we send these guys to Washington to look after the affairs of the nation?

Is he not the slightest bit interested in knowing whether Sotomayor might turn out to be something that the Democrats don't want to happen? Is he that sure what someone who will spend the rest of their life (or at least until they retire) is thinking about on the key issues of the day - and on her legal approach to handling cases going forward based on incomplete news reports and captions of various legal decisions?

I have no doubt that if it was a GOP nominee, he would be searching tooth and nail for any dicta that might be cause for concern and he and his staff would be burning the midnight oil looking for that gotcha moment for use in the hearings.

In any event, confirmation isn't a rubber stamping procedure, but one that is supposed to make sure that the candidate is qualified. Reid makes a mockery of that process.

Expect Few Fireworks For Sotomayor's Confirmation

I didn't expect there to be much in the way of fireworks since Judge Sonia Sotomayor's record is pretty lengthy and there aren't any glaring reasons to find her unacceptable for confirmation to the US Supreme Court. Apparently, the Senate GOP agrees.

While there's a cottage industry set up by support and opposition groups to every judicial nominee and some cute statistics have been thrown out for general consumption, the record is what it is.

Claiming that 60% of her authored opinions were reversed by the Supreme Court is misleading. There are two ways to read that - the Supreme Court overruled 60% (3 of 5) of those cases brought before with Sotomayor being the author of the opinion, or that less than 1% of her cases were overturned (3 out of 380 opinions) (which is how Obama will spin it).

The truth is actually somewhere in the middle since there were several written opinions at the District Court level that went on to be overturned and upheld by the US Supreme Court (Tasani comes to mind).

Even if you consider that 3 of 5 cases were overturned, that actually is the norm given the Court's overall reversal rates. More often than not, the Supreme Court overrules cases brought up on appeal, and the reason that these cases are heard is that the justices believe that there's a possibility for reversal on appeal when they decide to hear the case based on the rule of four.

The 60% figure is a easily bandied about statistic that opponents use to make a far more complicated point stick, just as those claiming that less than 1% of her cases were reversed claim that she's in line with the Court's reasoning. Soundbites may make for great television shouting points, but they do little to inform the public about Sotomayor's legal reasoning and why she authored opinions as she did.

There are the real questions that have to be asked at confirmation. We don't know how she's going to on multiple areas of law, including on abortion, death penalty, and gay marriage (the current hot button topics), but we might get an idea based on questions about her judicial philosophy. We know that she's going to be a liberal justice; the question is just how liberal and there are signs pointing in both directions on that - some of her authored opinions are in line with the conservative members of the Court.

UPDATE:
Jules Crittenden considers the possibility that Sotomayor's judicial philosophy turns her into Souter with a salsa beat. It's an intriguing possibility, and it surely would drive the left nuts. I don't see much chance of that happening, but there are unknowables about how any nominee would respond to the issues presented. The best any President can do when nominating a jurist for the Supreme Court is that their philosophy remains consistent with their previous record. It isn't always the case.

UPDATE:
John at Powerline makes a similar case about the 60% reversal statistic.

Obama To Pick Sonia Sotomayor To Replace Souter

Sonia Sotomayor was widely considered a front runner for replacing retiring Justice David Souter. She's a New Yorker, and is on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

And now, she's going to be nominated to be on the US Supreme Court. Sotomayor fits the kind of approach that President Obama seeks - a liberal interpretation of the US Constitution where the Constitution is a living breathing document. The case against her is pretty persuasive, but there is nothing that the GOP can do to derail this nomination.

The only way this nomination gets derailed is if the Obama Administration didn't pick up on details that will embarrass and suggest that Sotomayor is an inappropriate candidate for the Supreme Court. That's not all that far fetched given the way that the Obama Administration has repeatedly botched nominations for a host of positions, repeatedly selecting tax cheats and those with ethical flaps.

Still, even a tax problem would not likely derail matters as the Democrats have control of the Senate, and Sotomayor is a qualified jurist albeit one that I would not agree with. As I've previously pointed out, Obama's replacement of Souter would not change the ideological makeup of the bench, as Sotomayor would replace a liberal justice in Souter. It would take a shakeup among the conservative members of the court to have a fundamental shift on the bench.

It will be interesting to see how the confirmation procedure progresses and whether any skeletons are revealed.

UPDATE:
Stop the ACLU has video of Sotomayor ruminating on the role of judges on the bench.



She's an activist judge, but this isn't going to derail her confirmation. It should, however, be a rallying call for the GOP to realize that they've got to come up with a way to start winning back seats lost in Congress so that they can thwart future nominations and block Obama's domestic policy agenda.

UPDATE:
She ruled against a high school student's right to free speech based on statements made off school grounds - claiming that it was acceptable for the school to limit speech based on proper respect for authority. That's a bad decision, and undermines the right to free speech.

Other decisions of interest include upholding warrantless searches for ferry users to thwart terrorism.

Her reasoning on a major intellectual property case involving the New York Times was reversed. In 1997, she ruled that newspaper publishers did not violated copyright law by transferring the work of freelance authors to electronic databases (972 F. Supp. 804 (1997)). The Second Circuit later reversed her decision, and the US Supreme Court upheld the Second Circuit in a 7-2 decision against Sotomayor's position (Stevens and Breyer dissenting). (Tasini vs. New York Times, 533 U.S. 483 (2001).) Ginsberg wrote the majority decision.

That particular case was argued by two of the top IP lawyers in the nation:
Laurence H. Tribe (Argued the cause for the petitioners) and Laurence E. Gold (Argued the cause for the respondents).


Additional cases can be found here.

UPDATE:
Ilya Somin isn't impressed with Sotomayor, primarily because she hasn't developed an area of law in the way that other potential nominees were at the forefront of law such as Diane Wood and Elena Kagan. She's got the qualifications, as she's been on the Second Circuit for a decade, but it's not up to the same level of jurisprudence as Roberts, Alito, or even Ginsberg.

UPDATE:
Much is being made of the fact that this would be a historic pick. Nonsense. Every pick is historic. That's the role of the Supreme Court. What exactly is Sotomayor bringing to the table in terms of jurisprudence? Some are claiming that she's the first Hispanic on the Court, but that's not exactly true. Benjamin Cardozo was Hispanic (but the key demographic/ethnic classification for him was that he was the first Jewish member on the Supreme Court). She wouldn't be the first woman on the Court, but would be the first Hispanic woman. Frankly, the demographics/ethnic games on the Bench are troubling - and should be troubling to anyone who wants to make sure that the best qualified jurists are on the high court.

Her merits should be decided based on how she's ruled, and not that she considers herself a Newyorrican (a mashup of New York and Puerto Rican). Of course, even President Obama voted against a qualified jurist when he cast his vote against Sam Alito. He just wants the right kind of jurist on the bench. That's his right as President. It doesn't mean that the GOP has to play nice. Aggressive questioning should be the name of the game, just as the Democrats did to President Bush's nominees.

UPDATE:
Don Surber notes a rumor that Sotomayor doesn't have backing of nine Democrats in the Senate, and that this is likely to result in a second name being proffered. Until I see more specific reporting on this, I would discount such rumor mongering.

Nanny Stater Nominated for CDC

President Obama has picked New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden to head up the Centers for Disease Control. He's a crusader, and not always using solid science in the process:

Dr. Frieden, a 48-year-old infectious disease specialist, has cut a high and sometimes contentious profile in his seven years as New York’s top health official under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. He led the crusade to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, pushed to make H.I.V. testing a routine part of medical exams, and defended a program that passes out more than 35 million condoms a year.

At the C.D.C., he will inherit a host of immediate and long-term problems, including a looming decision about whether and how to produce a swine flu vaccine. Health experts say the agency must resolve serious morale and organizational issues even as the administration struggles to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

“I think the administration selected Tom Frieden because he can take public health to a new place,” said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of Trust for America’s Health, a nonprofit public health advocacy organization. “He’s a transformational leader.”

Dr. Frieden is expected to take office next month. With his appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, New York City will have former commissioners in two of the nation’s most visible health positions; Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, who held the job in the 1990s, is nearing confirmation as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Frieden has long been expected to be Mr. Obama’s choice, and although he is widely admired in the public health community, some C.D.C. veterans began lobbying in recent weeks on behalf of the agency’s acting director, Dr. Richard E. Besser.

Frieden has been behind quite a few dubious nanny stater policies, and it also takes Frieden away from New York City even as it deals with another outbreak of suspected swine flu that has shuttered three New York City public schools.

Perhaps most damaging is the fact that Frieden caused a panic a few years ago when claiming that there was a supervirulent version of HIV that didn't respond to treatments. It turned out that he was wrong, but Frieden continues pushing the envelope. Frieden rammed through a ban on trans fat, which is based on dubious science and conclusions:

Of course, the piece-de-resistance of Frieden’s reign is his successful campaign to ban the use of trans fat -- an artificial food ingredient found mostly in margarine, pastries, and fried foods -- in all of the city’s restaurants. In the months leading up to the ban’s December 2006 approval by the city council, Frieden took every opportunity to brand trans fats as a “dangerous” and “unnecessary” part of the city’s food supply.

Unsurprisingly, the reality of the situation is a bit more complex. Some businesses -- especially smaller outfits -- have struggled to find a replacement that’s just as cheap as trans fat without sacrificing food quality. Case in point: O’Neil Whyte, a baker in Harlem, told The New York Times in December 2006 that “things without trans fat are harder to get and more expensive.”

What’s more, a widely-touted justification for the ban -- fighting obesity -- is specious at best. Trans fat bears almost no relationship with rising obesity rates, and isn’t acutely dangerous like, say, arsenic or lead. Plus, trans fat’s natural substitutes aren’t any healthier, according to not only the National Academy of Sciences, but also the federal Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration. The American Heart Association has warned that the trans fat ban has the "potential for unintended and adverse consequences, such as restaurants returning to the use of oils high in saturated or animal-based fat if healthier oils are in short supply."

Of course, this completely fits the mold that President Obama hopes to accomplish through government.

Who Blocked This Nomination?

The Albany Times Union, picking up on the AP report by Dina Cappiello, claims that Republicans blocked the nomination of David Hayes to be Deputy Secretary of the Interior.

Republicans blocked President Barack Obama's pick for the No. 2 job at the Interior Department Wednesday in a dispute over oil and gas leases, but Democrats signaled they would soon make a second attempt to win confirmation.

The 57-39 vote was three short of the 60 needed to advance David Hayes past Republican objections, and made him the first of Obama's top-level nominees to be sidetracked on the Senate floor.

Hayes, an environmental lawyer picked by Obama to serve as deputy secretary of the Interior Department, held the same post during the last three years of the Clinton administration. He also led Obama's natural resources transition team, responsible for naming a new Interior Department head.

Republican opposition to Hayes' nomination was led by Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, who expressed anger over Secretary Ken Salazar's recent decision to revoke 77 oil and gas leases in his state. He was joined by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who raised questions about the administration's plans for oil and gas development and objected to recent reversals of several Bush-era rules on endangered species and mountaintop mining.

The problem is that the facts don't bear this out. Democrats failed to get the votes because three of its members were not present.

The final vote was 57-39, which means three members were not present and didn't vote. Those three members were Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, and Sen. John Kerry. All are Democrats. Had two of the three been present to cast their votes, Hayes's name would have gone up for a confirmation vote.

Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, also voted against the measure as a procedural point to enable him to bring Hayes' nomination before the floor at a later date.

That's four Democrats who did not vote for Hayes' nomination, and yet it is the minority party that are obstructionists?

The AP should be ashamed of itself for this baseless accusation and the Times Union should take down that headline because it is baseless and wrong. The measure was put up to a vote because it was expected that it wouldn't pass - and the Democrats were hoping to embarrass the Republicans.

UPDATE:
To be absolutely clear, the only reason that this measure didn't pass was because Sen. Harry Reid chose to move this nomination even though he lacked the votes. He either couldn't count, or expected that the failure to garner enough votes would be blamed on the GOP. Well, on that score, Reid won.

The facts, however, are what they are and they show that it was Democrats who failed to vote for Hayes. After all, Republicans John Kyl and Olympia Snowe voted for the measure. That makes Reid's math mistake all the more egregious - to say nothing of the misleading AP headlines.

The Storm Is Already Here

The New York Times headlines that storm clouds are gathering for Obama nominations.

Senate Republicans are struggling to adapt to an altered political world when it comes to candidates for federal courts and senior Justice Department posts.

No longer able simply to defend choices made by a fellow Republican, as they did under President George W. Bush, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have turned into vocal critics of many of President Obama’s legal nominees. They complain that several are committed liberal ideologues, much in the way Democrats complained that Mr. Bush’s choices were committed conservative ideologues.

But so far, facing a solid Democratic majority in the Senate, they have been able to do little beyond briefly delaying confirmation. Now they are weighing whether to use the filibuster — a threat of extended debate, the tool many Republican senators regularly denounced when it was used by Democrats to block some Republican nominees. These are certainly different times.

The current Republican focus is on a pair of nominees: Mr. Obama’s first selection for a federal appeals court seat, David F. Hamilton, and his choice to head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, Dawn Johnsen. (By coincidence, the two are in-laws.)

The New York Times is only noticing this now? How can anyone ignore the multiple nominees who had tax troubles and were forced to withdraw or the ones that were picked and are doing a bangup job (Great Job Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner!).

Of course there are storm clouds gathering. They've been gathering since the moment Obama's vaunted nomination vetting process went off the rails from Day 1. No word on when Obama will fill all the slots at Treasury either.

The problems are only going to mount for the Obama Administration as the GOP finally finds its voice and hits upon tactics that can slow down the Administration's push to impose its will over all aspects of the economy and the legal system with its judicial nominees. Given how the Democrats refused to give due deference to qualified jurists who had a conservative position, the GOP will respond in kind. Nominees will be bottled up and judicial positions will go unfilled, just as they had done during the Bush Administration, except that the Democrats will be able to allow President Obama to provide recess appointees, skirting the GOP efforts.

The GOP's losing hand is due to self-inflicted inability to provide a fiscally responsible position and years of corruption caught up. The Democrats are already there on the corruption front, but are fully in control of the wheels of government. It will take years to fix the mess that the Democrats are piling up.

Another Treasury Pick Withdraws From Consideration

Treasury Secretary must be one lonely man at the Treasury Department considering that President Obama has still to nominate, and the Senate confirm, the picks needed to fully staff the Department during this economic crisis.

Yet another Treasury Department pick has chosen to withdraw, which means that a Bush Administration appointee will remain on the job for a while longer:

Frank Brosens, a hedge fund manager who was Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s choice to run the office overseeing the $700 billion bank bailout program, withdrew his name from consideration.

Brosens, a founding partner of Taconic Capital Advisors LLC in New York, confirmed in an e-mail he is no longer in the running for the job, which requires Senate confirmation. The position is currently held by Neel Kashkari, a holdover from the Bush administration.

Geithner has had a difficult time filling vacancies and remains President Barack Obama’s only confirmed appointment at the department as the administration grapples with the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. At a congressional hearing yesterday, the Treasury chief said that hiring isn’t easy.

“We’re finding a lot of people willing to come serve their country at this moment of challenge, and I think that’s very encouraging,” Geithner told the House Financial Services Committee. “We’re going to need some more people, though, and we’re working very hard to bring in enough talent to help us get through this.”

If they're finding so many people willing to serve, how come so few positions have been filled? That's the question of the day.

Is it the vetting process that is still dysfunctional? Is it the people that are being chosen? Why did Brosens opt out of the process? Is it because he's too closely tied to the hedge funds and the investment business that populists in Congress have directed their ire at?

For all the talk about how Obama's administration is getting up to speed and is dedicated to improving the economic conditions, his actions are less than sterling in this regard.

UPDATE:
Don Surber points out that another candidate for the Treasury has opted to work for the Treasury as a counselor, instead of an Undersecretary of the Treasury, avoiding the confirmation process altogether. Lee Sachs had been working on the bailouts, but now Congress wont get to see what's behind door number 3.

Fantastic! Another Obama Treasury Pick Withdraws

Democratic sources say that H. Rodgin Cohen, a partner in the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration.

It's the third withdrawal of a top Treasury Department staff pick in less than a week.
I reported last week that Cohen was likely to be officially nominated for the Deputy Treasury Secretary position.

Cohen has been a counsel to just about every major player on Wall Street, which perhaps complicated his nomination.

Now, the nomination is off.

Treasury needs people who know what they're doing, which means that many of the same people responsible for this mess are going to be nominated (or at least in the pool of people considered for nomination). If you start restricting the pool to those who don't have contacts with Wall Street, you're going to end up with people who are completely inexperienced or unfamiliar with the players and what can or should be done to fix the issues facing Wall Street and the national and international economies.

It speaks volumes that the Administration can't find qualified people for nomination - there are hundreds of positions still to be filled and they can't even find names to consider for confirmation.

We also find out that yet another Treasury official pick was forced to withdraw from consideration because of tax troubles:

And the candidate for Undersecretary for International Affairs, Caroline Atkinson, was told she had to withdraw after a "tax problem" was revealed early in the vetting process, according to officials.

This is an Administration that can't even fill out its own coveted Administration positions because they can't find anyone who doesn't have tax troubles or isn't somehow connected to the existing mess in some fashion. That shows an ongoing lack of judgment in character and fitness of those it hopes to elevate to these positions, but it also shows that Obama himself lacks the judgment and character to lead.