Dear Friend and Reader:
It is at last and with some reliefВ that we can report that the Senate Judiciary Committee voted yesterday to confirm President Obama’s appointee Eric Holder as Attorney General of the United States.В The confirmation of the new Attorney General is, in a nutshell, the approval to hire the principle lawyer and chief law enforcement officer for the United States.
Holder joins the ranks of US attorney generals which include Robert F. Kennedy, Ramsay Clark, Janet Reno, and more recently, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales. The new attorney general, as with all appointees who haveВ preceeded him, serves at the pleasure of the President, and can be removed by him at any time.
Obama announced that Holder would be his nominee for Attorney General on Dec. 1, 2008, В the day of the Venus-Jupiter conjunction.В He was formally nominated on Jan. 20, 2009 and approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 28. It is expected that the confirmation will be approved by the full Senate possibly as early as today, making Holder the first African-American to hold this post.
Mr. Holder has appeared before the Senate Judiciary four times for confirmation hearings — first for a seat on the DC Superior Court, then as the nominee for US attorney for the District of Columbia, followed by his selection as deputy attorney general and now as the choice for the top Justice Department job.
Once confirmed by the full Senate, the new Attorney General will lead the nation’s Department of JusticeВ В (DOJ). This will include the department’s antitrust, civilВ and civil rights divisions, criminal, environment and natural resources divisions, national security and tax divisions. His agency will oversee the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Of all the appointments made by Obama, Holder’s confirmation as Attorney General ranks as one of the more controversial amongst the topВ four cabinet appointments critical to the functioning of theВ federal government: Secretary of Defense,В Secretary of StateВ andВ Secretary of the Treasury.