Holder In The Crosshairs

Let's put it into context or, as some would say, "consider the source."

Bernie Sanders might have said of Attorney General Eric Holder

Whenever you feel that you have lost your effectiveness or may be losing your effectiveness to the detriment of the job that you do, you have to evaluate that and make a decision. And I think we're at the time now where decisions have to be made.

We would be disappointed in the Vermont Senator who, as an Independent, may be the most genuine Democrat in the upper chamber.  But it was West Virginia Democrat (not the only Democrat there, but close), conservative Joe Manchin, who is expressing concern about the Attorney General, most recently  caught up in revelations about the NSA collecting phone records and Internet data.  Manchin adds
  
I’m wanting to do everything I can to fight the war on terror.  There will not be another day in my life, my children or grandchildren’s life they won’t have to be vigilant against terrorists wanting to do us harm. But do you give up everything as an American?

There are other reasons to wish Holder would take a hike or shuffle off to Buffalo, beginning with the failure of the Justice Department to bring criminal charges against any of the banksters who came close to bringing down the world economy.   On March 6, the AG testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee

I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute — if we do bring a criminal charge — it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.   I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.

That brought a rebuke from both a de facto and de jure Democratic Senator, Elizabeth Warren, who noted "Attorney General Holder’s testimony that the biggest banks are too-big-to-jail shows once again that it is past time to end too-big-to-fail."   Following this week's NSA revelation(s), Lauren Brown Jarvis, appearing on Current TV's The Young Turks, remarked "it doesn't matter if he stays or he goes."  Host, attorney, and graduate of the best high school in the United States, Cenk Uygur- noting the GOP's interest in bringing down the President- concurred, stating "well, I don't want Obama to go, but it is Obama, isn't it?"  Holder is, Uygur has suggested, this Administration's Colin Powell, who was perhaps the least supportive in Bush's circle of the Iraq War, but was sent out to make the case for a bad policy.

As Uygur recognizes, Eric Holder is following the path laid out for him by his boss and there is no indication of any space between the President and his Attorney General.   There is little chance that the acquisition of phone and Internet records will do much if any political harm to Barack Obama, with most professional Democrats, protective of the President whom Republicans want to destroy, loathe to question their party leader.  Republicans, for their part, have been aiming to destroy this presidency since it began, but finally have found an Administration program, spying on the American people, they can support.

Eric Holder may come or go, but Barack Obama will still be with us, and so will the policies which dramatically differ from what he supported as a candidate.




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