Republicans Spineless at DOJ Hearings

As Andy McCarthy explains, Obama need not have worried that Republicans would ask about the radical nature of Holder's DOJ, largely directed and influenced by the most ardent supporters of giving terrorists all the same rights as U.S. citizens - and in fact, arguing that the U.S. is a sponsor of torture.

Well, fear not. There is no such temerity. Judiciary Committee Republicans let the whole thing slide. There was not a single question at Wednesday’s hearing about stalking the CIA, nor a single question about Daskal and what she’s been doing since Holder brought her into the Justice Department. The attorney general’s palaver about “patriotism” went completely unchallenged: No questions about whether Holder thinks spying on the CIA is a proper role for lawyers whose only legitimate function is to litigate the legality of detention; no questions about whether Holder thinks lawyers exhibit patriotism when they violate court orders; no questions about what might have made the CIA believe Holder’s aides were not taking the stalking investigation seriously.

...The fact that we permit lawyers to volunteer their services to our wartime enemies doesn’t make the lawyers who do so patriots — any more than ambulance-chasers are patriots just because it’s legal to chase ambulances. When Eric Holder was an Obama campaign adviser, he didn’t just question the patriotism of Bush DOJ lawyers, he accused them of facilitating war crimes and insisted there needed to be a “reckoning” of their purported misdeeds. Those lawyers were working against the terrorists. But we’re not supposed to talk about lawyers who work for the terrorists.

Republicans are in a position to completely obliterate the Democrats this fall. But alas, they are still as spineless as ever.