Eric Holder Jr, US president-elect Barack Obama’s pick for attorney general, brings to his confirmation hearing next week a dream resume and a bull’s-eye target with his picture in the middle.
Holder will get a Republican grilling before the Judiciary Committee next Thursday. Critics challenge his role in former US president Bill Clinton’s pardons while the No. 2 Justice Department official, as well as his failure to recommend an independent investigation of fund raising by former vice president Al Gore.
To conservative Republicans, there’s an even bigger reason to challenge Holder: He’s the liberal face of nominees to come as Obama remakes the federal judiciary and possibly the Supreme Court.
Republicans can use the Holder hearing to prove their credibility as a minority party. The Republican message is: we have enough votes under Senate rules to stop a nomination with a filibuster, so send us centrists, not liberals.
Democrats have their own messages to send in the Holder hearings.
He’ll be the savior of a Justice Department wracked by Republican scandals. He’ll reverse the policies of President George W. Bush’s Justice Department — no more mistreatment of foreign detainees, no waterboarding, no political firings of US attorneys and no warrantless wiretaps of US citizens.
Republican aides, who are not authorized to be quoted by name, said some senators agree with former White House political director Karl Rove that the hearings will lay down a marker.
Rove said Republicans will give special scrutiny to the Holder nomination, especially because of his advisory role in Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich — whose wife was a major Democratic donor.
Rove, the former White House political director, said in a TV interview last month that the nomination is “going to be carefully examined, if for no other reason that people want to lay down markers that that kind of behavior is inappropriate.”
A Senate Republican aide involved in the hearings said in reference to future nominees: “Others will come before the Judiciary Committee and this is the first statement. If we allow ourselves to get rolled here, we’re not doing our jobs.”
The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because staff members aren’t authorized to be quoted by name.
Republicans haven’t said they’ll ultimately vote against the nominee and conservative Republican Orrin Hatch recently commented: “I like Eric Holder.”
Holder’s resume uniquely qualifies him to be attorney general. He was a Justice Department prosecutor of corrupt politicians, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, a judge in the nation’s capital and the deputy attorney general under Clinton. He’s now a partner in a major law firm.
But supporters are taking no chances.
Civil rights, anti-poverty and law-enforcement groups who support Holder are holding news conferences with Democratic senators and keeping up a steady stream of endorsement letters to the Judiciary Committee.
At this point, “there’s no evidence of a campaign to stop confirmation,” said Wade Henderson, president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
At a calligraphy class in Hanoi, Hoang Thi Thanh Huyen slides her brush across the page to form the letters and tonal marks of Vietnam’s unique modern script, in part a legacy of French colonial rule. The history of romanized Vietnamese, or Quoc Ngu, links the arrival of the first Christian missionaries, colonization by the French and the rise to power of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It is now reflected in the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers. A month after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited,
RSS