US Attorney General Pick Confirmed by Senate Judiciary Committee

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.

His pick is the most directВ signal by the Obama Administration that the President intendsВ to re-establish respect for the rule of law. Given the history of the last eight years, this will be something new to the American experience.В Holder favors closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, (although he has said that the detainees are not technically entitled to Geneva convention protections). He is opposed to the Bush administration’s implementation of the Patriot Act, saying it is “bad ultimately for law enforcement and will cost us the support of the American people.” He has been critical of US torture policy and the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program, accusing the Bush administration of a “disrespect for the rule of law… [that is] not only wrong, it is destructive in our struggle against terrorism.”

We hope that Holder’s appointment is aВ break from the recent past, where theВ previous AdministrationВ under George W. Bush willfully dismissed the Constitution.В  It politicized and used the Department of Justice to carry out vendettas orchestrated by his chief political advisor Karl Rove; andВ used the DOJ to provide legal cover forВ the former Administration’s illegal use of torture on detainees in Guantanamo Bay prisonВ contrary to the rulesВ of conductВ for treatment of prisoners of warВ defined by the Geneva Convention.

The task before Eric Holder is obviously not a small one. He will be a chief engineer of the vehicles of justice that will re-define how our country will deal with suspected terrorists, which has ramificationsВ over how our country will be perceivedВ by the rest of the world. As a department head, he has major personnel problems to overcome, and his first andВ most importantВ charge –В the dismantling of Guantanamo Bay prison, is already challenged not only by the previousВ Administration’s past practices, but byВ what could be termed as its criminalВ incompetence as well.В В 

Eric Holder faces nothing less than the re-establishment of enforcing justice within a justice department hamstrung during the Bush Administration by politics of the worst kind: self-serving, vindictive, invasive of the privacy of citizens and above the law. As we write these very words we see Mr. Holder and all of us coming face to face with what was done to our republic under the guise of several names, not the least of which was a war on terror.

It is no wonder there was much politically orchestrated and motivated hesitation on Holder’s confirmation by senate Republicans, who no doubt see the writing on the wall about the last eight years under their party’s rule. Whether the new Attorney General can accomplish what the new President has asked him to do remains to be seen. When you’re in the position of having to re-earn the trust of a battered republic, the road before you will seem long indeed.

Yours & truly,

Fe Bongolan
San Francisco