Did you see the sun come out?

It was heavily overcast in Washington, DC, yesterday morning, but about the time of the swearing in, the sun literally started coming out. Mythic. The metaphorical sun continues to come out. This from Obsidian Wings, commenting on a Washington Post article:

Marty Lederman has been one of the most forthright and vocal opponents of the Bush administration's policies on torture and detention. I have never met him, but you can tell a fair amount by someone from his blog, and the knowledge that Marty Lederman will be taking over John Yoo's old job is one of the most heartening pieces of news I've had in a transition that has had more than its share of them.

One other point about this appointment: at various points during the Presidential campaigns, I recall people arguing that whatever Obama might say about Bush's expansions of executive power, if he became President he would probably find those powers pretty convenient, and would want to hold onto them. In that light, it's worth noting that Marty Lederman is the co-author of a set of two articles (1, 2) that considers, in exhaustive (!) detail, the main conceptual foundation of the argument that the President has the right to set aside laws passed by Congress when conducting a war, and (basically) finds it to be baseless. The other co-author, David Barron, has also been appointed to a position in the Obama administration's Office of Legal Counsel.

In other words: the people who have been appointed to two of the most senior positions in the OLC, which (basically) tells the Executive branch what is legal and what is not, have explicitly and publicly rejected some of the Bush administration's central arguments in support of its expansive view of executive power. It's hard for me to see how they could reverse themselves on that score with a straight face, or why Obama would have appointed them if he had the slightest intention of adopting the Bush administration's views on this topic.

Both of these developments leave me feeling pretty hopeful.

Me too.