Now that President Obama has gone ahead and released the torture memos — with miminal redaction, too — it will be interesting to watch the Republican reaction. Especially in the Senate, where Republicans had threatened to stonewall several of Obama’s nominees for key legal positions.

Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principle (sic) reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward.

That was Scott Horton reporting on April 5. Now that Obama has refused to be cowed by Republicans talking the talk, presumably the Senate Republicans will feel compelled to walk the walk.