Obama selects first black Attorney General

Americans will have their first black Attorney General according to unconfirmed reports which say Barack Obama has offered the position to Bronx-raised lawyer Eric Holder. Widely respected by Republicans and Democrats alike, Holder served as Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton during which time the major blot on his copybook was a pardon of tax cheat and Iran-sympathising commodities trader Marc Rich, according to the Huffington Post.

"Holder is not ethically qualified to serve as Attorney General," Peter Flaherty, the president of America's National Law and Policy Centre, told the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch. "His track record is not one of independence or objectivity." And Michael Tomasky is concerned about what skeletons might be found in Holder's closet during the "insane" vetting process. "But if Holder it be," says Tomasky, "he will need Herculean fortitude to clean out the sewage that has polluted the Justice Department in the Bush years." CNN reports that other senior attorneys in Washington are delighted with the news.

Holder may be a long-time Democrat but he is another relatively bipartisan choice for Obama's cabinet. The President-elect's desire to have such diverse aides may not be such a wonderful idea says Gail Hamburg also on the Huffington Post. "Democrats and Republicans are like the citizens of Lilliput and Blefuscu in Gulliver's Travels," she says. "We have doctrinal differences about the proper way to crack eggs." Obama might as well just come out with his democratic guns blazing, Hamburg suggests: "A bipartisan cabinet is a knucklehead idea."

FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 19, 2008