Thanks Bob, I needed that! good post.

Hi Bob. I left you a copy of my comment to Glenn over on my thread. By the time I actually got around to calling Leahy’s office today, I started off by thanking Leahy for opposing Lieberman yesterday and then acknowledged that since he already had endorsed Holder there was not much use in lobbying for Napolitano. I asked that he structure the confirmation hearing so that Holder’s role in the Chiquita case can be clarified.

If you get the chance it’s also worth listening to Glenn’s interview with Scott Horton. They get to Holder near the end. There’s good food for thought there, too. If Holder would agree in his confirmation hearing to set up the kind of independent investigation panel on torture that Horton is advocating, that would get me most of the way over to his side.

Thanks, Jim– I left a reply to your post over at your place.

I like your concluding sentence here, too.

Aloha,
Bob in HI

LHP maintains her ‘hold’ on Holder today (Thursday November 20, 2008 11:43 am) at the Mothership in a diary titled, Grassley “Gets” Why the Holder Nomination is Just a Dumb Idea.

“Mary” provides a detailed review of Glenn Greenwald’s critique of Holder in the comments that is also a must read for those interested in Holder’s presumed appointment.

Certainly the Rich pardon is one big deal, and the Chiquita affair also weighs importantly. How one reads Holder’s role in these two situations will be important to anyone trying to formulate an independent assessment of Holder’s likely performance as AG.

Bob in HI

Update III:
Following Mary’s detailed review of Greenwald’s preliminary statement on the Holder nomination cited in my diary, Greenwald had a long interview with Scott Horton on Salon Radio (transcript here), in which they had a brief but important exchange about the Holder nomination:

GG: Right, now let me ask you about one point you just alluded to, which is the fact that so much of the actual law-breaking emanates from the Justice Department, or is grounded in what happened inside the Justice Department. For that reason, I personally think that the most important cabinet position that President Obama will make is Attorney General, and there are some reports yesterday that seemed fairly conclusive that that person is going to be Eric Holder, the Deputy Attorney General for a couple of years under the Clinton administration.

When the president announced that he wanted to nominate Michael Mukasey you — based on your relationship with Mukasey, and your knowledge of him — had said that was actually a good pick considering the alternatives, and then kind of changed your mind about that as you saw what he was saying and wasn’t saying in the confirmation process. A sort of transformation, by the way, which I pretty much tracked exactly, based on my knowledge of Mukasey from my time litigating in New York. Have you had an opportunity to form some impressions, preliminarily, about what you think of the choice of Eric Holder?

SH: Well, I read your piece in Salon, that was just put up a couple of hours ago, and I like it. I mean, I’ve known Eric Holder for some time. Not personally, but followed his career. He’s a consummate professional. He’s also the legal match to no drama Obama. He’s a very, very low profile individual who believes that law enforcement is not something that should be done in the headlines of newspapers, and he has a very very strong focus on proper process. So, I don’t expect to see him as an attention-grabbing attorney general, which is good and appropriate.

And I think the other think I really like about Eric Holder is that notwithstanding this low profile orientation, he has principles and he adheres to them, and he was quite offended by things that the Bush administration did, including its torture doctrine adopted in the war on terror. And he spoke very forcefully against those things, even though I would say generally on the political landscape, Holder is as moderate a sort of right-center a Democrat as you could find. So, he strikes me as really a fine choice.

I still share LHP’s concerns, but I have hope that Holder’s reputation for integrity and dedication to principles will win the day for us, restoring the rule of law and a renewed commitment to blind justice.

Bob in HI