The United States Senate has confirmed Eric Holder, President Obama’s nominee for attorney general, by a vote of 75-21, making him the first African-American to hold the office.
His Republican opponents in the Senate said they felt Holder is hostile to the rights of gun owners and questioned his support of President Bush’s terror war.
Reportedly, among the no votes were Senators Barrasso, Brownback, Burr, Coburn, Cochran, Cornyn, Crapo, Ensign, Kaybee, Hutchison, Inhofe, Johanns, McConnell, Risch, Shelby, Thune and Wicker.
During the confirmation hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) scolded Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) after several Republicans demanded Holder pledge he would not prosecute US interrogators who followed the Bush administration’s orders to torture prisoners.
“No one should be seeking to trade a vote for such a pledge,” said the Vermont Democrat.
“When Cornyn rose to announce his vote against Holder, he did not make such a demand,” reports the AP. “However, he accused the nominee of changing his once-supportive position – on the need to detain terrorism suspects without all the rights of the Geneva Convention – to one of harshly criticizing Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies.”
During the hearing, Holder stated directly, “Waterboarding is torture.”
Now that he has been confirmed, it is within his authority to reverse President Bush’s order granting his former advisers blanket immunity against testimony before Congress. Three of President Bush’s close advisers — Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton — are facing congressional contempt citations.
“The confirmation of Eric Holder as our new Attorney General is a momentous day for the rule of law,” said Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI). “During his confirmation hearings, Eric Holder clearly and unequivocally stated that no one, including the president, is above the law. Those were welcome words after eight years of Bush Administration policies that undermined our Constitution and damaged the integrity of the Department of Justice.”
Will prayers help?
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Now We Will Find Out…
We can’t expect a Committee of Public Safety and liberal use of guillotines.
But could we perhaps reasonably expect hard-nosed prosecutions of a dozen or so key officials who sanctioned torture, as well as a few of the knuckle-draggers who actually tortured prisoners to death? The ACLU has plenty of potentially helpful prosecutorial lead data on file from FOIA requests on the torture program.
And then, besides prosecutions of the obvious Ponzi schemers like Bernie Madoff, could we not expect another dozen or so prosecutions of some of the most arrogant and fraudulent Masters of the Financial Universe–especially a few of those who have essentially stolen federal bailout money by diverting it to generous bonuses for high-level managers of the failing firms?
As for sentencing, guillotines are no longer in vogue, but it appears that in another year or so an appropriate facility at Guantanamo will have ample available space, as well as plenty of slightly used but thoroughly laundered orange jump suits. The new white collar inmates from the Bush Administration and Wall Street should of course be treated humanely. But it really won’t be necessary to give them any mosquito repellant or sunscreen, will it? That would just be spoiling them.
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by Eric Umansky, ProPublica – February 2, 2009 5:25 pm EST
but I am on wait and see mode, he does serve at the pleasure of the President, and Obama is not impressing me right now…..