Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Holding Up Holder

There's more reason for the U.S. Senate to hold up the nomination of Eric Holder as U.S. Attorney General. The Sun-Times reports today that Holder forgot to mention $300,000 in legal work he did for Gov. Rod Blagoyevich four years ago in a questionnaire he submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Holder signed his questionnaire responses five days after Blagoyevich's well-publicized arrest last week. He'll amend his answers after being asked by the Sun-Times' reporter about its omission. Meanwhile, our own Sen. Dick Lugar is unconcerned about questions surrounding Holder's nomination. According to NRO's Jim Geraghty, Lugar and Ohio Sen. George Voinovich refused to sign a letter from Republican senators seeking more time from Chairman Pat Leahy to review Holder's nomination.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the reason Lugar and Bayh are extremely popular in Indiana despite being from different parties, is because they tend to steer away from jumping on the partisan bandwagon when things like this happen, they're both pretty moderate and compliment each other well.

As for Holder, maybe he legitimately didn't think to put that down, $300,000 is beans for an attorney of his expertise, and it was 4 years ago.

And what do attorneys do?

They represent people accused by the state of committing a crime.

So I really don't see what the big deal is other than the typical "guilt by association" Republican shenanigans.

Gary R. Welsh said...

It was only work on a casino license involving the mob town of Rosemont, and a business deal involving convicted political fixer Tony Rezko and a business partner, Christopher Kelly, who just pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges. The professional staff was warning off the awarding of a license to some bad people, while the governor was pushing like hell to give it to them. Holder came in to attempt to help the governor make something that really smelled not appear to smell as bad. It showed very poor judgment on his part, not to mention the whole Marc Rich pardon fiasco. Not the sort of guy you want running the Justice Department.

Anonymous said...

Did you just say you're looking for ethics in an attorney?

I'd rather have Holder than Gonzales, at least Holder hasn't signed off on torture and civil rights violations.

Gary R. Welsh said...

The Chicago Police Department used torture, specifically electrical shock treatment, to interrogate people in their custody over a period of about 25 years. Barack Obama was a community leader, state senator and U.S. senator throughout that entire period. He never complained to Mayor Daley to make his police department stop doing that. The Bush administration has brought criminal charges against the principal interrogator who used these torture techniques with the approval of the Daley administration. It never ceases to amaze me how you liberals are so concerned about the civil rights of foreign, enemy combatants but have nothing to say about the civil rights violations committed by your big city mayors like Daley of our own citizens.

Anonymous said...

They're called Prisoners of War, unless you would like to admit that the War On Terror is a propaganda term, and not a war.

Anyway, I highly doubt that this went on for "25 years", if at all..that kind of thing is basically unheard of unless it's the police working under a Republican administration, beating minorities and gay people, that happens all the time.

You may recall years back, that youth prison in Alabama where the guards were raping teenage prisoners, the male ones sometimes got a broomstick.

The only reason that stopped is cause of the ACLU bringing it into the light of day.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Oh yeah, check it out for yourself:

http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/chicagotorture/timeline.shtml