Sen. Chuck Grassley, angered by an opinion issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel finding President Barack Obama’s recent recess appointments legal, took aim at the opinion’s author, suggesting that she won’t be confirmed by the Senate again.

The opinion, authored by Assistant Attorney General Virginia A. Seitz earlier this month, found that Congress was in recess when Obama made four recess appointments despite Congressional Republicans’ efforts to gavel in pro forma sessions over the holiday break to prevent such appointments.

“I gave the President and Ms. Seitz the benefit of the doubt in voting to confirm her nomination,” Grassley said in a Senate floor speech Monday, according to Politico. “However, after reading this misguided and dangerous legal opinion, I’m sorry the Senate confirmed her. It’s likely to be the last confirmation she ever experiences.”

Those comments rankled some OLC attorneys from previous administrations, who said such blackball threats are dangerous.

“OLC lawyers should be free to render their honest opinion and not be threatened with adverse career consequences by either the White House or Congress,” Richard Painter, a White House ethics lawyer during the Bush administration, told Politico.

“The Senator’s name-calling is misplaced,” said Jack Goldsmith, who helmed the OLC during President George W. Bush’s administration.

President Bill Clinton’s chief OLC attorney Walter Dellinger said he was astonished by Grassley’s comments. “I can’t believe that Senator Grassley has actually read Seitz’s thoughtful and carefully reasoned opinion.  And he may not be aware that attorney’s in the administration of President George W. Bush reached the same conclusion that she reached,” Dellinger told Politico.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey thinks the arguments being made by those calling on Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan to recuse themselves from consideration of the health care challenge are “nonsense.”

In an editorial today in the Wall Street Journal, Mukasey, who helmed the Justice Department for two years under President George W. Bush, takes on critics who think the justices should be disqualified because of Thomas’ wife’s work for groups advocating for the law’s demise and  Kagan’s work as solicitor general when the health care challenges began.

Mukasey takes a strictly legal approach to the situation. The facts underlying the allegations of potential bias do not raise to the level of federal recusal standards, he concludes.

Mukasey wrote; “upon even a cursory examination of the facts it is clear that neither justice should step aside. The court we have should decide the case.”

He noted, however, that the calls for the justices to step aside are not legal at all, but rather a political – a symptom of the increasingly politicized atmosphere the justices face from the time that they sit before the Senate for confirmation.

“The selection of judges has become a high stakes exercise for agenda-driven politics, with nominees often selected with at least one eye focused on their expected tilt on the issues of the day,” Mukasey wrote. “[Later, w]hen contentious cases then come before them, the agenda-driven politics that helped seat the judges does not disappear, nor do the stakes diminish; they rise—along with incentives to disqualify judges.”

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and other Washington bigwigs will have to find alternative ways to be festive this year after Attorney General Eric Holder called off the Justice Department’s annual holiday party for budgetary reasons.

The Justice Department affair usually drew hundreds of Washington officials, from agency heads to Supreme Court jurists, reports the Washington Post’s In the Loop. The fete featured top-shelf drinks and fancy food – “we’re not talking munchies here,” the Post’s Al Kamen observed – as well as a chance for Washington’s powerful to rub elbows.

But Holder is not the only one mindful of the current tough economic situation. The FBI has also canceled its holiday party, and the Defense Department and other agencies are opting for scaled-down holiday celebrations this year.

Members of Congress are amplifying their calls to judicial and Justice Department officials demanding investigations of two Supreme Court justices’ alleged conflicts of interest in the health care reform case pending at the Court.

Since the Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of the federal health care reform law’s individual mandate as well as several other substantive and procedural issues related to the law, calls from members of Congress for Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan to sit out have grown louder.

Friday New York Democrat Rep. Louise Slaughter sent a letter, signed by 52 House members, to the U.S. Judicial Conference requesting a Justice Department investigation into Thomas’ initial failure to include on financial disclosures his wife’s income from organizations opposing the health care law. It’s the second time the lawmaker has asked the Conference to refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney General.

In January, Thomas amended the disclosure forms, calling the initial omission of his wife, Virginia Thomas’ income from the Heritage Foundation an oversight attributable to a “misunderstanding of the filing instructions.”

Meanwhile Senate Republicans are also pressing Attorney General Eric Holder over the health care case, seeking information on whether Kagan’s work as solicitor general creates a conflict of interest that precludes her involvement in the case.

According to Politico, Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, sent a letter to Holder saying the Justice Department has handled questions about Kagan in a “highly questionable manner” and demanding clarification on Kagan’s role.

“Your Department’s refusal to provide information to the Congress that could eliminate this apparent conflict of interest only undermines … confidence [in the administration of justice] further,” the letter stated.

Emails recently released from the Justice Department reveal that, in 2010, then-Solicitor General Kagan called Senate support for the health care bill “simply amazing.”

Spotted at the U.S. Supreme Court today: Donald Verrilli making his first oral argument before the justices as solicitor general. He argued for the government in the final argument of the week in the copyright case Golan v. Holder.

Katyal

Soon after Donald Verrilli was confirmed and sworn in as U.S. solicitor general, Neal Katyal – who had served as acting solicitor general since now Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan left the post last year – submitted his resignation, effective at the close of the Supreme Court term.

The National Law Journal’s Tony Mauro reports that Katyal’s decision to leave the SG’s office was expected, and that he will now become a hot commodity to private firms looking to snap him up.

“He is going to be a very hot commodity,” Thomas Goldstein of Goldstein, Howe & Russell and SCOTUSblog told Mauro.

Before being appointed to the office by President Obama, Katyal was best known for arguing and winning the 2006 case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on behalf of Guantanamo detainees.

He’s not going.

Attorney General Eric Holder, in a speech earlier this week, made it clear that he intends to continue at the helm of the Justice Department, calling it his “dream job.”

“Like you, I love this department. And, like you, I am proud – not only to serve it, but also to champion its work,” said Holder, speaking to about 150 Justice employees in the department’s Great Hall, according to the Washington Post.

Holder outlined the priorities of the department going forward, which include focusing on fighting terrorism, violent crime and financial fraud.

The remarks came weeks after Holder held a news conference – then abruptly ended it – after the Obama administration broke with Holder and decided to hold military tribunals for the accused Sept. 11 conspirators rather than civilian trials in federal court. But Holder stood by his position.

“Let me be very clear about this,” he said. “We will continue to rely on our most powerful and most proven tool in bringing terrorists to justice: our federal court system.”

After the law firm King & Spalding decided to withdraw from representing House Republicans’ defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, lead attorney and former Solicitor General Paul Clement resigned from the firm in protest – and quickly vowed to continue the defense of the law with the boutique firm Bancroft PLLC.

The move came in a shocking turn of events this morning, which started with the announcement from King & Spalding that it would seek to withdraw as counsel in charge of defending the law, which denies federal benefits to gay married couples.  The firm’s chairman, Robert Hays Jr., said the decision was due to the firm’s “inadequate” vetting of its involvement in the litigation, according to the National Law Journal’s BLT blog. Gay rights groups have recently criticized the firm for taking up the defense of the law after the Obama administration announced earlier this year that it would no long defend the statute against challenges in federal court.

Clement protested by resigning from the firm, which he joined back in 2008 after leaving the solicitor general’s office. In his letter of resignation, posted by the blog How Appealing, Clement said he decided to leave the firm immediately “not because of strongly held views about this statute.”

“Instead, I resign out of the firmly-held belief that a representation should not be abandoned because the client’s position is extremely unpopular in certain quarters,” Clement wrote. “Defending unpopular positions is what lawyers do. The adversary system of justice depends on it, especially in cases where the passions run high.”

Soon after, Bankroft released a statement announcing Clement as the firm’s newest partner. The announcement, which touts Clement’s background as a veteran Supreme Court advocate, mentions neither his work at King & Spalding nor his representation in the DOMA case.

Clement

After hiring former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, House Republicans officially entered the ongoing legal battle yesterday with a motion to intervene in a New York-based challenge to the law.

As you may recall, in February Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration would no longer defend the law in federal court, spurring House Speaker John Boehner to announce that the House would defend the law. Since no Democratic members of the House have joined the effort, it is more accurate to say House Republicans are defending the law, points out SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston. The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group convened by Boehner voted to allow the House to move forward with the law’s legal defense.

Boehner

In addition to yesterday’s legal filing, Boehner also sent a letter to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi informing her of his intent to seek reimbursement from the Department of Justice for the costs of defending the law.

“Obviously, DOJ’s decision results in DOJ no longer needing the funds it would have otherwise expended defending the constitutionality of DOMA,” the letter states.  “It is my intent that those funds be diverted to the House for reimbursement of any costs incurred by and associated with the House, and not DOJ, defending DOMA.”

Boehner said he has “directed House Counsel and House Administration Committee to assure that sufficient resources and associated expertise, including outside counsel, are available for appropriately defending the federal statute that the Attorney General refuses to defend.”

Even before she was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan was largely shielded from discussions about the health care law and how to defend it, according to the National Law Journal’s Tony Mauro.

Based on internal emails obtained by conservative news site CNSNews.com through a Freedom of Information Act request, the glimpse into the inner workings of Kagan’s solicitor general’s office gives the strongest indication yet that Kagan plans to remain on the bench when the constitutional challenge to the health care law reaches the Supreme Court.

According to the emails, during Kagan’s tenure, now Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal was the point person in discussions about the health care law, which is now being challenged as violative of the Commerce Clause.

According to the documents, on March 21, 2010 – about two weeks before Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement, and nearly two months before Kagan was nominated to fill his seat – Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli sent an email inviting Justice Department lawyers to a meeting to discuss defense of the health care law.

Katyal forwarded the email to Kagan, adding: “I think you should go, no? I will, regardless, but feel like this is litigation of singular importance.”

Kagan’s reply: “What’s your phone number?”

From that point on, Mauro reports, Katyal was the lead person from the SG’s office on the issue of the health care law and its defense.

In May 2010, after Kagan’s nomination, Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman emailed Katyal asking about  Kagan’s involvement on the health care issue.

“No, she has never been involved in any of it,” Katyal replied. “I’ve run it for the office, and have never discussed the issues with her one bit.”

Katyal forwarded that note to Kagan, who replied to all, “This needs to be coordinated. Tracy, you should not say anything about this before talking to me.”