The Next Attorney General

[groovedaddy]

If he is confirmed by the Senate as attorney general, Eric Holder, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for the job, will inherit a Justice Department that has been mired in scandal and that has seriously lost its way in critical areas. Under President Bush, the department has been used to defend the indefensible, like indefinite detention and torture of prisoners, and to undermine rather than protect Americans’ cherished rights. Mr. Holder could be an exemplary choice to face this daunting agenda, but he must answer serious questions before the Senate votes on his confirmation.

Mr. Holder, who would be the first African-American attorney general, has a particularly good record of public service for this job. He has been a United States attorney for the District of Columbia, a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s public integrity section and a deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton.

He has been outspoken on the most critical issue facing the department: restoring the rule of law. In a speech in June, he described the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies as “excessive and unlawful.” And he has called for closing the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

But senators should ask Mr. Holder to square those views with comments he made after the Sept. 11 attacks when he defended the Bush administration’s prisoner policies by declaring that “you can think of these people as combatants and we are in the middle of a war.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/opinion/03wed1.html?th&emc=th

[amdezurik]

1. and he will keep on ramping up the failed WoD

ruining more lives and driving the prison building industry even higher...

[Bluenorthwest]

2. I do not like Eric Holder

and I agree with the NYT on this. I could add a few things to their list. He really needs to be made to speak clearly, as he has been on both sides of many issues, and he has been very much on the wrong side of many important issues when the moment really mattered.

[classysassy]

3. A vast

improvement over the Bush stooges.

[groovedaddy]

4. True enough. But I sometimes think we were steered so far to the right

that we're willing to settle for a hell of a lot less than we would have 8 years ago.