We found out that Senator "magic bullet" Specter has some ‘serious’ concerns about AG nominee Eric Holder because he "didn’t stand up to President Clinton" (not President-elect Obama, mind you) when it came to the controversial pardon of Marc Rich. And in this "very serious matter", we can look forward to this:
Specter did not say he was leaning one way or another on the Holder nomination, but clearly the Judiciary Committee Republicans are going to have a field day with the Rich pardon.
OK, so Specter’s issue is not that it was Holder’s idea to push for the pardon, or that he actually did push for the pardon – or that he may have a conflict of interest when it comes to "taking a stand against President-elect Obama". And just to get it out of the way right up front, Specter voted with just about every Senate republican to confirm Alberto Gonzales and John Ashcroft and Michael Mukasey - and voted to send each of these names out of the Senate Judiciary Committee for a full Senate confirmation vote. With respect to Gonzales (someone who was as closely linked to the President who nominated him than anyone since the Kennedy’s) and his role in finding a way for the Bush administration to torture detainees or send them to other countries to be tortured, that was perfectly ok for Specter:
SEN. ARLEN SPECTER:...He has been held responsible for things he didn't do. The questions focused on a memorandum from the Department of Justice, which has the responsibility for establishing and interpreting the law.
And that memo had since been repudiated, and Judge Gonzales himself disagreed with it. He said that the broad expanse of executive power in that memo was something which he thought was wrong; said that the president had as much authority on interrogating detainees as he did on battlefield decisions.
---snip---
Well, he relied upon the Department of Justice to interpret the law. And when there were discussions [about torture] about specific types of questions, he said, "Well, I was there and they were discussed." But he did not sanction any of them specifically. It was not his role.
---snip---
When it comes to being counsel for the president, that's very different from being attorney general. And Judge Gonzales was emphatic in his opening statement, and said as attorney general he owes a duty to all of the American people, and not to the president, which was his responsibility as White House counsel.
Not to be outdone, Specter and Senate republicans were perfectly fine with Gonzales’ replacement tacitly approving of waterboarding when it was done to others but calling it torture if it was done to him. That explanation was good enough for republican Senator and torture enabler Lindsay Graham as well.
Of course, there was the abuse of power and misrepresentations by John Ashcroft as well as not being forthcoming in turning over information to the Judiciary Committee and insensitivity to race issues – just for starters.
Now, let’s remember how all of this was just A-OK for republican Senators, and that Mukasey’s background (prior to his approval of torture in his confirmation hearings) was what gave so many Senators comfort that he would be acceptable. But apparently, the fact that Holder was appointed to the Federal Bench by Reagan, was a US Attorney, Deputy Attorney General and prosecuted a number of high profile Democrats (not to mention his "story", which apparently was something that Specter liked about Gonzales) suddenly doesn’t matter.
Impeccable credentials don’t matter if you are a Democrat, but major concerns can be swept away if you are republican under the well-known "IOKIYAR" premise....
We shouldn’t be surprised, since Zoe Baird had an inexcusable nanny tax problem that resulted in under $3,000 in fines, and Kimba Wood had an undocumented immigrant as a nanny (of course, this was fine when it is Chertoff or if Gonzales’ grandparents may have been here illegally under the IOKIYAR premise).
If Specter and his republican Senate colleagues are going to be this petty and try to hold up an incredibly qualified nominee after being so amenable to the worst horrors that this country has perpetrated in decades in defending their own party’s nominees, then maybe an Attorney General John Edwards, Patrick Fitzgerald or some other fiercely partisan Democrat with an axe to grind should be floated as an Attorney General – someone that has no problem investigating crimes and corruption wherever and whenever it may exist (or have existed).
Maybe then Specter and Graham and the other obstructionist hypocritical republican Senators will shut the hell up once and for all.
But then again, I doubt it, as hypocrisy and obstructionism is all they really know.