Benjamin Wittes

“The notion of law enforcement as professional, not political, began developing as an aspiration and an ethos even while, in practice, the FBI was the personal fiefdom of J. Edgar Hoover.”

“Although environmental groups sometimes raise issues in the confirmation process, environmental protection is not central to the fear-mongering of the liberal interest groups that oppose conservative judges. But the threat to basic environmental protections from conservative jurisprudence is broad-based and severe.”

“President Obama's decision not to go to Congress for help in establishing reasonable standards for the continued detention of Guantanamo detainees is a failure of leadership in the project of putting American law on a sound basis for a long-term confrontation with terrorism. It is bad for the country, for national security, and for civil liberties.”

“Government lawyers, like private ones, face the problem routinely of aiding in the defense and development of positions in whose correctness they don't believe.”

“The only way to tyrantproof the presidency is not to elect tyrants to the presidency.”

“In any long string of letters, one can find countless anomalies that will seem like convincing proofs of hidden meaning to the mind that wants to believe that the text is somehow special. Numerological tricks, for example, can demonstrate that William Shakespeare wrote the 'King James Bible.'”

“I defend non-criminal detention.”