There are extreme generalities in what you are arguing that just simply aren't true:

I don't know the facts about who Holder defended beyond what I have read here, but I do believe there is an ethical difference between choosing to become a lawyer the bulk of whose time is spent defending corporations, and choosing to become, say, a public defender (who make up a large portion of those "defending" the prisoners in Guantanamo).

Many of the lawyers who represent Guantanamo detainees are lawyers who work for corporate law firms, who have taken those cases on a pro bono basis. Many of the "War on Terror" litigations have involved enormous resources to prosecute and I guarantee you that every lawyer at the ACLU, the CCR and other places will tell you that the willingness of partners at large corporate law firms to take these cases has been crucial in enabling them to be pursued.

Public defenders, in my experience, defend out of a deeply felt belief that, although most of their clients may in fact be guilty of their accused crime, their treatment by the state and the likely degree of punishment is deeply unjust. Corporate lawyers I've known present no such moral justifications for their jobs, and usually do it just as part of a self-interested career.

This is way too generalized to be meaningful. Some public defenders are as idealistic as you claim, but others hate their jobs but took stay there because it is all they could get, or because they see it as a stepping stone for doing something else, or because they don't want to work long hours. There's plenty of self-interest among every strain of lawyer, including public defenders.

Moreover, while Holder has been a partner in a large law firm, he has spent much of his career as a government lawyer. He's about to take an enormous pay cut -- going from DC law firm partner to AG -- and undoubtedly made far less than he could have in the private sector all those years when he was a DC Circuit Judge, a U.S. Attorney, and Justice Department official. Lawyers like him who work for the government do so at great financial sacrifice. That doesn't mean it's magnanimous -- lots of people trade money for power -- but it's nowhere near as clean and simplistic as you suggest.

Finally, it doesn't matter what the motive is. Lots of criminal defense lawyers represent accused criminals for money or other self-interested reasons. But it's still a vital service they're performing, and it's just wrong to suggest that the sins of a client can be attributed to the lawyer.

While I join you in lauding the comments Holder made in June, those comments just can't negate the bad things I'm seeing about Holder.

I find the Chiquita work to be much more troubling than you. While I agree that "Attempts to criticize a lawyer for representing unsavory or even evil clients are inherently illegitimate and wrong -- period.", I can't get all the way to "Holder is no more tainted by his defense of Chiquita than lawyers who defend accused terrorists at Guantanamo are tainted by that."

If Holder had been defending individual Chiquita management members in murder trials and assuring that they were accorded their rights, it would be much closer to the roles played by attorneys representing Guantanamo detainees. Instead, it's my understanding that Holder has used his position as a former high level DOJ official essentially to broker a deal that got the entire corporation off the hook by paying fines rather than facing charges for direct payments to death squads that murdered union leaders who were trying to organize Chiquita employees. This wasn't assuring that Chiquita's rights were protected. This looks more to me like allowing Chiquita to murder with impunity and taking advantage of Washington insider access to achieve it. That is precisely the toxic type of absence of consequences for the "ruling class" that has fueled much of the righteous anger from you and many of your commenters here.

This feels eerily similar to the Mukasey nomination all over again. While Mukasey had some qualities that made him appear desirable, his acquiescence to Bush had my radar up. I feared that was the case when he was announced and he then made it perfectly clear in his confirmation hearing when he refused to answer whether waterboarding is torture.

Obama can do better. bmaz has made a strong case for Janet Napolitano and I find her to be a much better candidate.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/57cnaa

He also made the comment today (without a link) that Holder was divisive among rank and file DOJ employees during his first stint there. Given the devastation this department has suffered, it needs a leader who will get the entire department moving in one direction from the start. I don't think Holder can get there.

I'm calling Pat Leahy's office today and asking him to approach Obama and ask for a better nominee for AG. Since Leahy has already praised Holder's nomination, that is likely a fool's errand, but at the very least, if we show some resistance to Holder now, maybe Leahy will structure the confirmation hearings to stake out operating principles that will tamp down the concerns many of us have.

what Paul Dirks said before me.

I tend to agree with pieceofcake that no one should be judged by what they said immediately after 9/11. It was a twisted time when a lot of otherwise intelligent people weren't thinking straight. That doesn't mean I trust Holder to reverse anything. Obama is a moderate conservative and the chances are that Holder will do what Obama wants, which is mitigation rather than denunciation and wholesale decommissioning of Bush policies. I'm not even sure Obama will actually close Gitmo or that Holder will push him to do it. Everything now is "wait and see" so I'll w and s with everyone else.

that Holder had been AG when both the Waco conflagration and the Randy Weaver assassinations had occurred. Over a decade later, nobody in government has been held accountable for these crimes.

Of course, it may be considered Okie Dokie in some circles to have a government arbitrarily smoking out and murdering anyone deemed a threat by anonymous and hidden operatives inside the government. In which case, carry on. I guess we trade one barbarism (Bush style) for another (Clinton style).