{"id":134,"date":"2013-05-30T13:53:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T13:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/30\/time-for-a-new-u-s-attorney-general"},"modified":"2013-05-30T13:53:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T13:53:00","slug":"time-for-a-new-u-s-attorney-general","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=134","title":{"rendered":"Time for a new U.S. attorney general"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Eric Holder\u2019s time is up at the Justice Department.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not that he\u2019s done a bad job, or that he\u2019s a bad lawyer, or that he\u2019s corrupt \u2013 that he\u2019s committed an actual crime.<\/p>\n<p>It is, however, time for him to go in the face of a growing controversy involving the procuring of phone record from reporters. <\/p>\n<p><a title=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/news\/302471-holder-on-the-ropes\" href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/news\/302471-holder-on-the-ropes\">http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/news\/302471-holder-on-the-ropes<\/a><\/p>\n<p>President Obama\u2019s got a tough call to make. He and the attorney general are good friends. Holder is a historic AG, the first African-American to hold that job. Holder, though, is facing a nearly impossible task of extricating himself from the controversy while clinging to his job. It will dog him for as long as he stands at his post.<\/p>\n<p>When that happens, all else gets pushed into the background.<\/p>\n<p>Holder\u2019s Justice Department in May 2012 got hold of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors after the news agency reported on the foiling of a botched terror attack. It was thought that the attack was meant to commemorate the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden by a Navy SEAL team in Pakistan. The Justice Department seems to think some classified information was used to report on the story, so it seized the phone records to look for evidence of a national security breach.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s understandable that DOJ would be concerned. But it has this little problem called the First Amendment to the Constitution which says quite clearly that the government cannot interfere with a free press. <\/p>\n<p>AP news executives have been quite alarmed at what they call an \u201cunprecedented\u201d search for phone logs. <\/p>\n<p>This has happened on Eric Holder\u2019s watch at the Justice Department.<\/p>\n<p>The media are outraged, as are politicians of both parties. They want answers. So far, the AG hasn\u2019t given them.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s time for him to leave. It\u2019s also time for the president to get involved actively in assembling a new leadership team at the Justice Department.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Holder\u2019s time is up at the Justice Department. It\u2019s not that he\u2019s done a bad job, or that he\u2019s a bad lawyer, or that he\u2019s corrupt \u2013 that he\u2019s committed an actual crime. It is, however, time for him to go in the face of a growing controversy involving the procuring of phone record &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=134\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Time for a new U.S. attorney general<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}