what a contemptible piece of shit arlen specter is. he's presided over eight years of a thug administration that has obliterated this country's moral standing thru its embrace of kidnapping, rape and torture -- not to mention that little piece of paper called the constitution of the united states that guarantees the citizens of this country certain rights. rights that arlen sat on his ass and watched be whittled away or flat out ignored by the bush criminal cabal.

fuck him.

Specter grandstanded last year over the NFL why would this be different.

Although his concerns are justified (cue "They all do it" arguments). Questions should be answered by Holder regarding Rich, that's only fair and is how Deomcracy works.

If the shoe was on the other foot Democrats would be hyperventilating about Holder.

Thank God we have principled senators like Specter who will speak truth to power, and refuse to be bullied by the democrats' herd mentality.

What is Specter trying to pull? He knows the difference between compentency and the partisan hacks (which his party has given us over the last eight years).

"never stops breaking new ground in the contest of political opportunism poseurish chest-thumping."

sure, grinning cat, questions should be asked. and Holder should feel a little heat. but there is no legit reason why that can't happen by, on, or around Jan 8.

the only reason to deprive Obama of an opportunity hit the ground running with at least a partially stocked cabinet (when there is plenty of time to both do a thorough vetting and still confirm many of the picks) is if one is opposed to Obama succeeding - like, say, a Republican hack might be. or, i suppose, if one is trying to slow down transition at Justice to prevent the unearthing of incriminating secrets.

Sorry, a rare bad call. The question of the Rich pardon came up the minute after Holder was named. It was the pardon-for-profit (massive donations to the Democratic Party) of an international megaswindler and national traitor whose most blatant crime, for which he was never charged, was the attempted brokering of an arms deal with Iran in 78-79 while Americans were being held hostage and the international community wanted nothing to do with the rogue state.

Holder was no mere functionary who shuffled along the paperwork; he arranged the Rich pardon in the face of strong protests from prosecutors in the Justice Department. On Holder's recommendation, Bill Clinton pardoned a man who fled the country upon indictment and so was never convicted of anything, an action most legal scholars who have viewed the case see as unprecedented and probably illegal. The Rich pardon left a stain on the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party that continues to this day.

If Obama and his people didn't know this before naming Holder, they should have. The Justice Department, more than any part of the disgraced Bush government, needs a thorough cleaning out by someone on the level of John Edwards or even Patrick Fitzgerald, not a dealmaking functionary who abets a major crime.

Everything said of Specter is of course true; he's demonstrated his capacity for weaselry nearly every time he's opened his mouth. So why do the Obama people give him and the Republicans this chance? At best, the Holder nomination is an example of Obama's determination to nominate middle-of-the-road, frequently Ivy League wonks instead of chop, change, clean up and throw out progressives, and that's putting the best face on it. At worst, it's rewarding a participant in a major national crime. This nomination should be pulled, and serve as a warning to the new Administration.

Some may remember that there was a delay similar to what Specter is calling for at the beginning of the Clinton Administration (due in that case largely to the fiasco of Clinton's first two AG selections). As a result, when the siege of Waco began, there was still a Bush holdover Acting AG; when the situation blew up, Janet Reno had been nominated but not yet confirmed, and she had to come in in the middle of it (which could have been a factor in its disastrous ending).

Arlen is looking over his shoulder at Pat Toomey.

Holder's already copped to the Rich pardon being a bad call.

My response to the hearings would be, "Yeah, I agree that was a rare bad call. What else do you got?"

I don't think that one item -- an arguably bad pardon -- is enough to sink someone's nomination for AG.

he arranged the Rich pardon in the face of strong protests from prosecutors in the Justice Department.

Bush's former Homeland Security advisor, Fran Townsend might disagree.

Frances Townsend, another senior Justice Department official at the time, told The Times that Holder took all of the right steps to vet the request, including calling her and others to get their input. "Eric was put in a difficult position by getting a phone call at the last minute, but handled it appropriately,"

I'm with ericfree. Saying "my fault, bad call" doesn't excuse Holder at all. It's a bad and maybe awful choice that makes me wonder who is pulling the strings. If the situation were reversed Democrat's heads would be spinning.

"Principled Senator"? I have met Arlen Spector. He is an awful lot of things that would probably get the message banned, but "principled" isn't one of them.

Well, Arlen needs to look beyond his primary to the election and Pennsylvania isn't going to like Rethuglican posturing. The issue is not whether Holder should be questioned, of course he should, but it can be done on deadline. And it is folly to mess with Leahy. He's one of the few Dems with balls.

the Rich Pardon and Eric Holder's role in it were the subject of a Senate Judiciary Committee Investigation and Hearings back in 2001 when Spector was Committee Chairman - surely he hasn't forgotten. Holder testified under oath in that investigation. Specter is doing nothing more than going over ground that has already been mined for its political usefulness against the Clintons. What new information could possibly come up that would be relevant?

Compare and contrast with the hands-off lack of investigations hearings testimony and oversight of the current investigation - it's showing Specter to be nothing but a political opportunist of the worst sort.

or even Patrick Fitzgerald

Let's be honest here. The reason Ashcroft named Fitzgerald to handle the Plame case was not that he was an agressive corruption fighter. It was because he was slow, plodding and extremely cautious. In a world where a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, Fitzgerald has left a never ending cloud over the vice presidency.

I'd still like to know what led Fitzgerald to wiretap Blago, but short of those tapes, Blago would have probably continued to get away with his crime spree. And I think it's clear that Blago was more concerned with impeachment orperhaps the next US Attorney, but he certainly didn't have a lot of fear about Fitzgerald.

The question of the Rich pardon came up the minute after Holder was named. It was the pardon-for-profit (massive donations to the Democratic Party) of an international megaswindler and national traitor whose most blatant crime, for which he was never charged, was the attempted brokering of an arms deal with Iran in 78-79 while Americans were being held hostage and the international community wanted nothing to do with the rogue state.

I see that the other part of the Rich pardon has already been written out of history: Senior officials in Israel directly requested it and negotiated it with the Clinton administration.

I don't mean this to be some kind of Israel-bashing, but when one of your major allies specifically requests a pardon for someone and makes multiple contacts to keep up the pressure, you'd be hard-pressed to find a president who wouldn't take that seriously, especially a president who (like Clinton) was trying to get that ally to sign a major Middle East peace agreement.

I think the most telling part of Sen. Leahy's letter to Sen. Specter is the first paragraph, in which he reminds Sen. Specter that he helped arrange his winter vacation senatorial junket abroad.

First, it's slightly embarrassing to have a junket like this highlighted in public. Second, while I wouldn't call it a threat exactly, it seems to me that Sen. Leahy is making it clear that his cooperation in getting done things that Sen. Specter wants done isn't to be taken for granted.

Half a good point, Mnemosyne: "Senior officials in Israel directly requested it and negotiated it with the Clinton administration." Don't think it's been written out, though; when you're writing off the top of your head halfway through your first cup of coffee, things sometimes go missing. IMO, it's not a reason to excuse the pardon but an additional reason to to condemn it. This country runs too much of its national policy through Tel Aviv.

And half an agreement with Danp: Fitzgerald stands out mostly in comparison with that other well-known special prosecutor, Ken Starr. (My favorite Blago joke of two days ago had the Rod in court, mumbling "I don't recall," after which Fitzgerald indicts his Chief of Staff.) The point is that the office of AG needs an activist with the sort of reputation Eliot Spitzer used to have, not a company man like Holder. And since I don't seem to be able to come up with anybody who's not grotesquely tainted, I'd really welcome other nominations. My preference would be Molly Ivins, but there's a problem there too....

The real point, though, is that this is an historic opportunity to break cleanly from the Clinton-McAuliffe-DLC years that proved such a disaster for the country and the Democratic Party. So far we've got Emanuel, H. Clinton and Holder in top positions, not exactly the fresh start we need. But, I keep saying, we'll see. In the meantime, count on the other side to use everything they can come up with. We don't need to hand them valid issues.

Oh man Specter almost makes you think that Chris Matthews would be agood replacement for him.Aaaarg!

My theory is that Arlin doesn't want to be raising questions at a time that Bush is doing his final round of shady pardoning. Don't remind the DOJ that their actions to go along with it might be seen in a poor light two weeks down the road. Let everyone go to sleep until after Bush is finished with his dirty work.

ericfree - I would second the ghost of Molly Ivins.

Further proof that there are no "good" Republicans.

According to Holder, it was the support of the Israeli government that pushed his view of the Rich pardon to neutral or slightly favorable.

I suspect Specter wants to make Holder's confirmation a bit difficult and messy for partisan purposes, but if Holder is prepared to pull the Israeli card in his defense, Specter won't want to go there.

Don't think it's been written out, though; when you're writing off the top of your head halfway through your first cup of coffee, things sometimes go missing. IMO, it's not a reason to excuse the pardon but an additional reason to to condemn it. This country runs too much of its national policy through Tel Aviv.

Like it or not, that's the reality of our politics. You can hold it against everyone who's ever worked for the federal government, but you'll have a hard time staffing an administration if you demand that no one who's knowledgeable about foreign affairs or legal issues have had any contact with Israel whatsoever.

There's no evidence that Holder himself pushed for the pardon -- he was the guy who put the memos together giving the arguments for and against. So holding it against him seems like purity testing of the worst kind.

Mnemosyne: exactly. As I understand it, his job was to make a case for the pardon and one against. While i'd like to see a devil's advocate position on pardons and commutations, it's not like Rich killed people, or dealt narcotics. He did some quasi-shady financial manipulations that while illegal, are hardly uncommon today, save in their novelty and scope.

and let's not forget, while we're talking about Rich, that he was originally indicted by Guiliani while he was out of the country, he didn't skip bail, he just never came home. The Bush I Justice Department announce in 1989 that using RICO in cases like Rich's was innapropriate and that they would now be handled civilly, as they had been before Rudy went criminal. The civil suits by the government remain intact. All this pardon did was remove criminal liability for a case in which the US government stopped using criminal charges 11 years before.

Leahy should just schedule the hearings while Specter is on his trip since Specter wants to be such a putz.

And that colloquialism "the hold" Senators are able to place? Toss that piece of anachronism. It is the 21st century now.

Mnemosyne: Horseshit. Doesn't mean that's the way things should be, only the way they've been. Israel owes everything to us; at this point, we don't owe them a damn thing. Holder should answer for why he bought into it. Disappointed there've been no AG nominees. I say, not for the first time, Howard Dean. Not a lawyer, but a cleanup guy, terribly passed over by Obama&Co. so far.