How Eric Holder holds on

[DonViejo]

He’s been strong on voting rights, Obama trusts him -- and the DOJ’s media probes reflect administration policy

BY JOAN WALSH

Part of me has been rooting for Attorney General Eric Holder to keep his job. It’s the part of me that wishes Democrats were tougher, that they didn’t reflexively try to reason and negotiate with crackpot Republicans, and then just fold when the GOP, predictably, won’t budge. Holder modeled backbone for spineless Democrats the day he told Rep. Darrell Issa, the dodgy car-alarm magnate turned “oversight” bully, that his behavior as House Oversight Committee chair has been “unacceptable, and…shameful.”

Unfortunately, that same day we got more details about the Justice Department’s broad, aggressive targeting of the Associated Press in a national security leak probe. Then came the news that the department had obtained the personal and professional email and phone records of Fox News’s James Rosen, under the dubious and shocking claim that he might be a criminal “co-conspirator” in the leak of national security secrets. While Holder says he didn’t know about the AP dragnet because he recused himself from the leak investigation, since he was among the administration officials interviewed for it, NBC News revealed late Thursday that he personally signed off on the unprecedented (as far as we know) warrant for Rosen’s records.

That’s got everyone from the Huffington Post to right-wing screamers insisting Holder has to go, and they’re probably right. But if he doesn’t go, here are a few reasons why.

First of all, the president clearly supports his attorney general personally and politically – and is himself the driving force behind the administration’s unprecedented crackdown on national security leaks. If you want to know how Obama feels about the AP and Rosen controversies, compare his reactions to the three different “scandals” the GOP has been working overtime to conflate, and somehow turn into an impeachable offense: Benghazi, the IRS mess, and the AP-Rosen probes.

Full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/27/how_eric_holder_holds_on/

[Cha]

1. thanks for the article, DV.. I'm

with Holder.

[Sunlei]

2. repubs sure dropped the gunrunner thing when mexico requested the americans who smuggled guns in.

Mexico courts are very strict on gun runners, even bullets are a huge crime.

70% of the guns used in violence in mexico came from America.