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• Wednesday, January 7, 2009 10:35 AM

  Specter and shallow meet; Specter compares Holder to Gonzales

  Specter Attacks Choice for Attorney General

  NYT, By ERIC LICHTBLAU, Published: January 6, 2009 (see sig)

  WASHINGTON — A leading Republican senator issued a broad attack on Tuesday on President-elect Barack Obama’s pick as attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., questioning his political independence.

  The senator, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said Mr. Holder’s support of the White House’s stance on three contentious issues when he was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration suggested that he was too willing to do the president’s bidding.

  […]

  Mr. Specter, first elected to the Senate in 1980, has been an influential voice on judiciary and law enforcement matters for years. His aggressive questioning in 1991 of Anita Hill, a law professor who accused the Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, helped clear the way for Mr. Thomas’s confirmation. Mr. Specter’s loss of confidence in Alberto R. Gonzales as President Bush’s attorney general helped spur Mr. Gonzales’s resignation in 2007.

  Before Tuesday, Mr. Specter had been mildly critical of Mr. Holder’s role in President Bill Clinton’s pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich. He said Tuesday that he would wait until the hearing next week to decide how he would vote, but in the Senate speech he let loose on Mr. Holder, comparing him with Mr. Gonzales in his ability to maintain independence from the president.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/politics/07holder.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

  —Retired Military Patriot Read Retired Military Patriot's other letters
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