Holder Confirmed

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"The Senate voted overwhelmingly Monday evening to confirm Eric H. Holder Jr. to be the new attorney general of the United States. The vote was 75 to 21, with all the votes against the nomination coming from Republicans."

About time, too. I don't really understand the point of delaying a nomination that is obviously going to pass, especially not when the Justice Department has a lot on its plate:

"Lawyers inside and outside the department say he will face crushing time constraints. Chief among them is a pledge by President Obama to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. Mr. Holder and a department task force must find a solution to the question of what to do with the remaining prisoners there and any apprehended in the future. (...)

Mr. Holder will also have to make several quick decisions because of court-imposed deadlines. And he will have to do so with many of the senior positions in the department not yet filled.
The department has to decide by next month whether it will reverse course from the Bush administration, which had repeatedly invoked the so-called state secrets doctrine to shut down legal challenges to several lawsuits dealing with national security. Officials also face a February deadline on whether to extend habeas corpus rights to detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

"I can't imagine a more challenging time to come in as attorney general," said Walter Dellinger, a legal scholar who was an acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration. "The number of legal issues left behind to be resolved is really staggering.""

At least he finally got through, despite Sen. Cornyn's desire to make him pledge not to prosecute people before he had all the facts in. Now he can finally get down to business. And there are hopeful signs about what he'll do:

""This will be a sea change of what went on before," said an Obama administration lawyer, noting that the principal authority over detention policies will move from the Defense Department under the Bush administration to the Justice Department.

Under Mr. Obama’s recent executive order, the Justice Department will be required to review the files of the 245 detainees at Guantánamo and draw up a proposal on their fate that will fulfill the pledge to close the facility.

"The idea that it has to be closed within a year will drive the timing of many things," said the Obama administration lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Mr. Holder had not yet taken office."

From that lawyer's lips to God's ears.

Comments

[Peter]

Good. Now what about Hilda Solis?

[Gary Farber]

Solis:

he confirmation process for Labor Secretary nominee Hilda Solis is expected to move ahead this week after a delay prompted by Republicans who wanted time to review her responses to written questions.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is set to vote on Solis' nomination as early as Wednesday, and a full Senate vote is expected soon after, said Anthony Coley, a spokesman for committee Chairman Edward Kennedy

Kennedy has been working with Republicans on the panel and "he's pleased her nomination is moving forward," Coley said.

[d'd'd'dave]

// Mr. Holder and a department task force must find a solution to the question of what to do with the remaining prisoners there and any apprehended in the future. (...)//

I don't see why this is difficult. I've been assured that most of the detainees are innocent.

[KCinDC]

Dave, "most" is not "all" (and I'd say the actual claim is "many"), and even for the innocent ones, what is your easy answer to what to do with them? But presumably you're just hear to be disruptive (because you're bored?) and not actually trying to make a constructive comment.

[d'd'd'dave]

KC
There have been well over 50 posts in this blog alone about torture and rendition. The keenest legal and ethical minds in the world (and Gary too) have met here for several years to work out what the right thing to do is. Now all they have to do is implement it. How hard can it be?

I can't believe all those keen minds were just griping without having a solution of their own.

[Gary Farber]

"I can't believe all those keen minds were just griping without having a solution of their own."

Difficult as it may be to understand, people who kibitz here don't have to come up with legal and bureaucratic procedures, let alone try to sort out the records of the Bush administration, let alone have to negotiate with other countries. All that takes some time.

I'm reasonably confident that Dawn Johnsen, Marty Lederman, and David Barron will do a good job.

[Johnny Pez]

I don't really understand the point of delaying a nomination that is obviously going to pass

The point is to be a douchnozzle. We are talking about Cornyn, after all.

[CharleyCarp]

I don't think it's hard at all, dave.

[Nell]

@d'd'dave: It's not that hard, as CharleyCarp and other commenters here have noted. All but a handful of the prisoners at Guantanamo are innocent of any conneciton to terrorist activity, and should and can be released.

The Beltway/journalism conventional wisdom that it's going to be excruciatingly difficult comes from the political reality that right wingers like you are going to screech about how we're releasing terrorists who're going to "return to the battlefield" and kill us in our beds.

This is being facilitated by political opponents of the administration in the Pentagon, with the release of bogus reports like the one put out two weeks ago, and by a barrage of right-wing op eds. (Pentagon propagandist Geoff Morrell, among others, needs to be relieved of his job in the very near future.)

There are a handful of cases, almost certainly fewer than ten, that pose any kind of dilemma because of the likelihood of an actual connection to terrorist activity combined with the previous administration's having tainted much of the possible evidence by torture. The existence and small size of this group has been acknowledged by main posters and the overwhelming proportion of ObWi commenters all along the political spectrum, though there is significant disagreement about what the administration should do about that.

[Slartibartfast]

Obviously, dave's point is that the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater, just because that would make for interesting visuals.