Eric Holder Says: It’s Too Bad We Don’t Have a Better Attorney General!

Barack Obama is the bystander president; nothing that happens in his administration has anything to do with him. Michael Ramirez illustrates the point:

Eric Holder is the perfect attorney general for the Obama administration. As his Department of Justice sinks deeper and deeper into scandal, he retains a remarkable objectivity. Nothing that happens in the department that he ostensibly runs is, apparently, his doing. His NBC interview with Pete Williams is a classic. Asked about the controversies over DOJ’s subpoena of the Associated Press and the search warrant it executed for James Rosen’s emails, Holder replied:

I’m a little concerned that things have gotten a little out of whack … I think we can do a better job than we have. We can reform those regulations, reform those guidelines to better reflect that balance.

So things have “gotten a little out of whack” on Holder’s watch. Is that because of instructions he gave his subordinates? Because he approved applications for search warrants that he shouldn’t have? Holder’s passive voice takes no responsibility. And how about those “regulations” and “guidelines” that need to be reformed? Those are regulations and guidelines of the Department of Justice. Which Holder allegedly runs. He could “reform” them with a stroke of the pen. Having been AG for going on five years now, he has failed to do so. Nor did the thought of reforming those regulations and guidelines ever, apparently, occur to him until the AP and Rosen scandals came to light. And, by the way, we have no reason to think that these two instances are the only ones. In all likelihood, there are many other subpoenas and search warrants about which we know nothing, but which will provoke outrage when they eventually come to light.

As for using the term “co-conspirator” in describing Rosen’s role in a leak investigation, Holder explained that the phrasing was necessary in order to get a search warrant.

“I don’t like that, because it means that me as a government official, and who has great respect for the press, is in essence saying that the reporter who is doing his or her job, and doing that very important job, is somehow branded a criminal,” he said. “And I’m just not comfortable with that. And we’re going to change it.”

But wait! Holder approved the application for the Rosen search warrant. If he “doesn’t like” branding Rosen a co-conspirator in a violation of the Espionage Act, why did he approve the affidavit? And if “we’re going to change it,” why hasn’t Holder changed it already? Why did he approve the Rosen affidavit in the first place? He is the AG, he can “change it” if he wants to.

Holder said in the interview Wednesday that the Obama administration “will come up with ways in which notification can be given to the media … and possibly involve on a more consistent basis judges as third-party arbiters.”

He was referring here to giving notice to the AP that his department had subpoenaed a broad swath of phone records relating to AP reporters. But DOJ could have notified AP of the subpoena, it simply chose not to. Holder’s suggestion that we need to come up with “new ways in which notification can be given to the media” is risible. What he means is, we need a new law that says we are compelled to give notice to the media organization. Stop me or I will subpoena again!

It is possible that Eric Holder is a complete moron. It is also possible that he is just pretending to be one. Either way, he is an awful attorney general.

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