More on Luttig

Kevin Drum opines:

Luttig, a super-conservative judge and a devout believer that the adminstration needed extraordinary powers to fight terrorism, suddenly discovered that he had been suckered. When this administration says something is critical to the war on terror, what it really means is that it's politically convenient. If something else is politically convenient tomorrow, they'll flip 180 degrees without batting an eye.

For some reason, Luttig found this unacceptable. And so he's gone.

I don't get this at all. Is there any reason, beyond sheer speculation, to believe that Luttig's disagreement with the Bush administration actually caused him to resign? How could it? The Bush administration has absolutely no authority or pull over Luttig. From Luttig's perspective, the Bush administration will be history by the beginning of 2009, but at age 51, he could have been a federal judge for another 30+ years. I don't see any reason that a sitting federal judge would feel the need to resign after disagreeing with a presidential administration.