President-elect Barack Obama has nominated Eric Holder to be his (and our) Attorney General. Holder is remarkably well qualified for this job, having served as a judge, the chief federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia, and as Deputy Attorney General, the number two job in the DoJ, during the Clinton Administration.Some Republicans may try to make his appointment difficult, even though it seems impossible that they could block his confirmation. Here's a bit from Scott Helman's report for The Boston Globe, "Holder's hearings might be rocky," Dec. 29, 2008:
"Judiciary Committee staff members have pulled more than 150 boxes from their archives and have been poring over internal memos and transcripts from Holder's tenure at the Department of Justice.Republicans have also asked the Justice Department and the Clinton Presidential Library for documents relating to, among other things, Clinton's impeachment, former vice president Al Gore's fund-raising activities during the 1996 presidential campaign, the 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, and the pardon of financier Marc Rich.
And on Dec. 17, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Holder asking him to account for "apparent omissions" in his questionnaire, including work on gaming that Holder did in 2004 for Rod Blagojevich, the beleaguered Illinois governor."
(See also "Prosecutors for Obama," September 28, 2008.)
