Loretta Lynch has been
sworn in as the United State's 83rd attorney general, and the first African-American woman to hold that position.
Vice President Joe Biden administered the oath of office to Lynch, as her father, brother and husband looked on in the attorney general's ornate conference room at the Justice Department.
"It's been quite a process,'' Lynch said, referring to a long-delayed Senate confirmation, which had prompted a wave of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans. […]
"It's about time,'' Biden said. "It's about time this woman is being sworn in.'' […]
"We are all just here for a time—whether in this building or even on this earth,'' Lynch said. "But the values we hold dear will live on long after we have left this stage. Our responsibility, while we are here, is to breathe life into them; to imbue them with the strength of our convictions and the weight of our efforts.
"I know this can be done,'' she said. "Because I am here to tell you, if a little girl from North Carolina who used to tell her grandfather in the fields to lift her up on the back of his mule, so she could see 'way up high, granddaddy,' can become the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America, then we can do anything."
It was an
arduous, ridiculous process, actually, but Lynch can't say that out loud. From her nomination in November until the final vote last week, Lynch waited longer than all of the previous seven nominees combined to be confirmed. The Republicans manufactured any number of excuses to keep this woman—who they repeatedly said was perfectly well-qualified—from making it to the floor. There was the fact that they hated her predecessor, Eric Holder, as if that had anything to do with it. There was the fact that she happens to agree with the president who nominated her on immigration, as if a president is going to nominate someone who disagrees with him on such a critical issue.
Then there was possibly the most despicable hostage-taking Mitch McConnell has yet tried. That was over the Republican insistence on shoe-horning completely irrelevant abortion language into the human trafficking bill and then refusing to give Lynch a vote until Democrats cried "uncle." That was the last straw even for some Republicans who are remarkably still capable of being embarrassed by their own antics. And by the fact that they were blocking the first African-American woman nominated to the post from serving for no reason other than pure spite.
Chances are, they'll do their utmost to make the next 18 months of Lynch's life as miserable as possible, because that's who they are. But she's made it this far. She can handle them.