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
b:
I am planning to write more about the movement of the people these coming days. And thanks for the birthday greetings. I’m taking this weekend hour by hour, which is Sunday the 1st. Its been pretty amazing thus far.
Details to come.
Fe,
Well, first things first. . . a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
And competence is good, real good. I’ll take it. I can remember for several years back how Eric goaded us to WAKE UP and do something en masse about all the evil; mostly in the government. Well, we finally did and now we will be hard to stop. Talk about a pissed off populace! It will take many years, as only astro buffs know, but painful Pluto will weed out the evil and history books (if they are still around) will note the people still had the power in America.
Cheers……
b:
I so desperately wanted to believe in heroes before November 4th, but now, I think I will be equally happy with competence.
I think the real heroes of this story from here on out have got to be us. We’re not only the ones we’ve been waiting for, we should be asking ourselves: Where the fuck have we BEEN?
I am sipping my martini, which means I will be a distance away from the laptop, which is my new motto–laptops are martini-free zones. But thanks for your love and support always. I am about to fly into my solar return!!!
Happy travels…catch you later tonight.
Thanks Fe. . .I love your articles. Even though I know it opens one up to huge disappointments, my belief in heros has been restored. I mean, why else would Jupiter conjoin Neptune (which trines my Venus)? It’s because of guys like Eric Holder and Barack Obama. They just don’t seem (to us on the outside) to be daunted by the impossibility of their tasks. Like all we need is some great background music and what a fantastic movie this will make! If it was gonna be easy it wouldn’t be a very good flick would it?