Sam Stein asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the pace of federal appointments in the past year, and Gibbs said the President is unhappy about the slowness of the confirmations. More importantly, Stein has some Administration officials on background saying that Dawn Johnsen will be re-nominated for head of the Office of Legal Counsel, along with many of the other nominees returned from the Senate at the end of the year.

“We have put a number of people into government in the first year,” Gibbs said, in a response to a question by the Huffington Post. “But at the same time we have seen a pacing in dealing with nominations, both for the executive branch and judicial nominations that, I think, by almost any estimation would be deemed slow.”

As Gibbs briefed reporters, sources said that the White House will push to re-nominate seven of those judicial and political appointees who have been held up in the Senate, including Dawn Johnsen, the controversial nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel.

Two sources with knowledge of the situation told HuffPost that they expected the re-nominations to be announced soon. But administration officials emphasized that no decisions have been made as of yet. Senate Democratic aides, meanwhile, said they were in the dark about where those nominations stood. The president can not officially re-submit a nominee until the Senate reconvenes on January 20, unless he is pursuing a recess appointment.

The nominees expected to be returned to the Senate are:

Dawn Johnsen, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel
Christopher Schroeder, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy
Mary Smith, Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division
Craig Becker, National Labor Relations Board
Louis Butler, U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin
Edward Chen, U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of California
David Teeples, Army brigadier general

Many have assumed that Johnsen’s nomination, along with many of these others, was effectively dead. The question will be whether Obama not only returns these nominees to the Senate, but uses some political capital to push for their confirmation.

In addition to the confirmation battles for his appointees, Obama appeared to signal through Gibbs a serious push against Republican obstructionism in the Senate:

A re-nomination, of course, would change that perception and already the administration seems to be striking a much more aggressive tone when it comes to condemning the delaying tactics deployed by Senate Republicans — when it comes to nominees and actual legislation.

“I think the president’s overriding frustration has been… it is not simply that you see tactics purely to delay, purely to watch the clock wind around and around, but they don’t even appear to be philosophical,” Gibbs said on Wednesday. “When something gets filibustered and we take 30 hours to debate it and then the ultimate vote is 88 to 10, was the filibuster predicated on anything else than watching the clock wind around?… I think the president, I think the American people are frustrated by the lack of not getting anything done just to hear someone talk.”

If the President would use the bully pulpit to talk seriously about reforming the Senate, that would provide a real boost to those efforts and allow Obama to credibly talk as a reformer. This is more “gently crawling to the edge of the bully pulpit,” but the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, etc.

Over the past month, the health care debate has increasingly become a debate on the left over the relative merits of the bill. Most everyone has weighed in on this, often multiple times, with substantive critiques of the reform package and reasons for the urgency of its passage. But until now, the debates have had this odd, cloistered quality, with each side talking to their own specific audiences, and at times employing only parts of the arguments from the other side to make their rebuttals, rather than full engagement.

Until now.

In the service of having this full, substantive discussion in public, with equal participation, I have brokered a debate between Firedoglake’s Jon Walker and 538.com’s Nate Silver. Both have been signature advocates for their positions, with Walker leading the charge of those who object to the Senate bill, and Silver representative of those who support it.

Now they can both be heard, with an unmoderated, 45-minute back-and-forth exchange. This will happen, at least as it stands right now, next Monday, January 11.

We’re still working out the technical bugs, but the debate will take place here on Firedoglake, similar to the kind of video chats you would see on Bloggingheads TV. We may even bring this one to you live – more will be announced in the coming days.

Steve Benen has described the debate on the online left as long overdue. Having that debate in real time – with two of the most notable advocates for their respective positions – has also been long overdue. Ultimately, I think everyone will find it illuminating and entertaining.

So what’s some of the fallout from the multiple retirements in the US Senate?

• ND-Sen: Earl Pomeroy (D), the state’s only House member, will not try to move up and run for the Senate seat vacated by Byron Dorgan. The most speculation on the Democratic side has focused on former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp, as well as MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, who got a personal call from the minority leader of the state House asking him to consider a run. Schultz kicked off his broadcasting career in North Dakota.

It should also be noted that some progressive groups are begging Dorgan not to retire.

• CO-Gov: Among the many names cropping up to replace Bill Ritter as the Democratic nominee for Governor is Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The former Colorado Senator wouldn’t answer questions about the Governor’s race today. That opens up a whole host of possibilities for Interior Secretary (including, possibly, Byron Dorgan).

• Senate Committees: Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan both chair committees in the Senate, and their departure would lead other Democrats to move up. The Hill reports that Tim Johnson (D-SD) would take over the Senate Banking Committee, and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) would take over Indian Affairs. I find it a bit hard to believe that Johnson, who had a brain hemorrhage in 2006 and still suffers from ill effects, would be made the point person on a committee dealing with the continued fallout from the financial crisis. But the big-money boys would certainly love him there, as he would be a loyal vote for the banks and credit card companies.

• Treasury? As for Chris Dodd, Roll Call has speculated about a possible future role for him in the Obama Administration, including the Treasury Department:

Speculation has also begun about potential employment for Dodd in the Obama administration.

For instance, several Democratic Senate aides noted that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is an extremely unpopular figure in the Senate. Geithner has also taken the brunt of the criticism for the administration’s handling of the economy and, these sources speculated, if the country’s financial picture does not brighten before Election Day, he could be the first secretary to leave the administration.

Although Dodd would appear to be well-situated to take control of Treasury if the position were to open, it may not be smooth sailing for his nomination.

I don’t know how serious this is; nobody at the White House is making this speculation, only Senate aides.