"Eric Holder's Legacy: Duplicity, Incompetence, Obliviousness"

Attorney
General Eric Holder is resigning, reportedly as soon as his
successor is named and confirmed. It can’t happen soon enough,

I argue at Time.

Despite some positive actions — refusing to enforce
the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that is plainly
discriminatory, and calling for long-overdue sentencing reform, for
instance – Holder’s tenure has been marked by a disturbing mix of
duplicity, incompetence, and obliviousness.

Which is another way of saying that he was a thoroughly typical
attorney general, a cabinet position that has long been held by
individuals whose first loyalty is to the president that appointed
them rather than to the Constitution they swear to defend….

Arguably more disturbing was Holder’s central role in signing
off on the secret
monitoring of Fox News’ James Rosen and other journalists
and his staunch defense of National Security Agency surveillance
programs (even when federal
oversight boards decreed them unconstitutional and
ineffective). It took a 13-hour filibuster by Sen. Rand Paul
(R-Ky.) to get Holder to
acknowledge in plain language that there were in fact
limits to the president’s
secret kill list (the existence of which is itself deeply
disturbing).

That Holder has moderated on some of these issues — just a
couple of weeks ago, Holder voiced
support for NSA reforms that would “provide the public
greater confidence in our programs and the checks and balances in
the system” — only drives home just how situational his ethics and
actions always have been as attorney general.

Read the whole thing.

Holder was up to his eyeballs in various scandals (such as Fast
and Furious) and he was always willing to play coy and stupid when
the moment served. In his defense, the position of attorney general
is to be the president’s bag man, to carry out and then defend all
the horrible things an administration can do.

But will anyone miss him more than we miss Alberto Gonzales or
John Ashcroft or Janet Reno? Obviously not, unless his successor is
even worse. Which is always possible.