Arlen Specter is trying to put the brakes on Eric Holder’s nomination to be Attorney General. According to Specter, Holder’s involvement in the Marc Rich pardon warrants close scrutiny:
But Specter is already applying the brakes, indicating that Republicans are going to make a big deal out of Holder at the hearing. Specter said he sees no way in which the Holder hearings could happen before Jan. 26. Specter said he still needs to see thousands of pages of background documents and Holder’s FBI background check.
“There are questions that need to be addressed,” Specter said in a Senate floor speech.
Specter, a former prosecutor himself, said he was troubled that Holder did not stand up to President Clinton on the pardon of Rich, who was a fugitive living abroad at the time of the pardon.
“To run counter to the views of the [law enforcement] professionals is a red flag,” Specter said. “We’re looking at a very, very serious matter.”
That pardon was not Clinton’s finest hour, or Holder’s either, I’m sure. It will be interesting to see if Specter carries through with his threat. This is they guy who made a habit of making noises about standing up against Bush’s destruction of the Constitution, only to back down or worse every time. Take the FISA situation, for instance. He started out by calling Bush’s actions illegal; he ended up legalizing them.
When Alberto Gonzales was nominated for Attorney General, Specter bought in to his transparent lies about his involvement in the Bush legal department’s torture legalization strategy. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that he claimed to buy into those transparent lies.
It was Specter who was responsible for slipping the language into the revised “Patriot” Act that allowed Bush to try to name interim U.S. Attorneys without confirmation hearings, despite his denials. That act led directly to the U.S. Attorney scandal of a few year back.
The Marc Rich pardon was small beer compared to all of this. So one must wonder, after eight years of spineless subservience to a lawless Administration, has Specter suddenly grown a backbone? Does he really believe an ill considered pardon is worse than torture? More to the point, will the Democrats let him get away with it? They couldn’t stop a torturer from becoming Attorney General. Are they going to let a torture enabler stop, or even appreciably delay Holder’s confirmation?
That, of course, is the more fundamental question here. The Democrats are not going to have 60 seats. In any event, make no mistake, they cannot count on Joe Lieberman. The Republicans had a slender majority the last time they controlled the Senate. Can you think of a single instance where the threat of a filibuster prevented them from wreaking their havoc on the nation? Maybe there was something, but it had to have been incredibly minor. This idea that you need 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate is only operative when Democrats are in control, and only because they won’t play hard ball with the Republicans. Maybe that will change now, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
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