Matt Yglesias

33 Responses to “Comey Endorses Holder”

1. southpaw Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 10:34 pm

   The more I hear about Comey, the more I like him. I hope he can find a way to exert some influence in his party some day down the road.

2. guy in black face w/ jazz hands Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 10:34 pm

   Ms. Palmieri really brought you down a notch.

   Honestly.

3. myglesias Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 10:41 pm

   Wow, it feels kinda weird sitting around in my pajamas today after Jen shaved my b*lls last night.

   Oh well, guess I’ll go tow the company line so she doesn’t cut them all the way off.

4. Francisco The Man Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 10:46 pm

   Alright. Enough with the fucking Jennifer P/fake Yglesias jokes. They stopped being funny around lunchtime. Get your own blog if you want to do that shit all day.

5. Llyonnoc Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 11:00 pm

   It’s time for suck up to Holder watch. Comey is looking for a job in the new administration, or, looking for business referrals like Ashcroft received after he left Justice. If Comey doesn’t keep up his relationship with Justice, he has nothing to sell.

6. Dan Kervick Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 11:06 pm

   I’m torn on this Marc Rich matter. I don’t want Holder to go down for it, but the Rich pardon really sucked, and was genuinely corrupt, and so part of me really wants to see the public get a further education on who Marc Rich is and was. On the other hand, I doubt the Republicans have the political balls to start unraveling all the connections.

7. BG Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 11:25 pm

   Former right-wing Republican Congressman Asa Hutchinson also endorsed Holder. Hutchinson was one of the managers of the Clinton impeachment proceedings, so this is something.

   http://judiciary.senate.gov/resources/documents/upload/122208-AsaHutchinson.pdf

   Interestingly, Hutchinson is also defending Thomas Tamm, the domestic surveillance whisteblower. Maybe he’s another conservative who’s seen the “rule of law” light, like Fein, Kmiec, etc.,

8. Jason Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 pm

   Let’s hope the Republicans get really vocal about Marc Rich before they pick up the paper on 1/21.

9. Evil Twin Says:
   December 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 am

   Sorry Dan, here again I find that I completely disagree with your assessment. The Marc Rich pardon was “business as usual,” but it was certainly far less corrupt than (for example) the Iran/Contra pardons and the Nixon pardon. The fact that foreign governments desired the pardon and the fact that it came with such onerous strings that Mr. Rich has never felt the need to accept it demonstrate that, far from being “genuinely corrupt,” it was an ordinary use of the pardon power.

   No, it isn’t like Carter’s pardon of draft dodgers – an important step towards healing the nation – but it was always made out to be a big deal by Republicans who failed to convict the hated Clinton over his sex life. It was, and is, part and parcel with Whitewater, Travelgate, and the rest of the phony scandals that were all about an attempt to tear down the best President we’ve had in about 40 years (given that this starts with the odious Nixon and ends with the monstrous Bush, that’s not high praise).

   I will be interested to hear how this pardon was particularly corrupt – eight years hasn’t convinced me, but perhaps you have some revelation that will finally convince me that there was more there than I’ve seen.

10. Another Chris Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 3:06 am

    The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled confirmation hearings for Holder on January 15th, so we’ll see what comes up. I’m hoping for clarification on his post-Columbine statements on restricting internet content.

    It looks like Judiciary hasn’t come up with an updated membership roster yet. That’s a little troubling, with the new Congress getting sworn in on the 6th. I guess they’re waiting for the Minnesota recount and the three vacancies to resolve themselves. At this rate, they’ll have a new membership roster by Christmas. Of 2009.

11. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 5:15 am

    Dan is right, the Marc Rich thing sucked, but the Republicans will never pursue it because it leads directly back to their boys, since Marc Rich is one of the guys financing the various crooked operations that Sibel Edmonds can hang around the Republicans necks.

    But not ONLY the Republicans necks, mind you.

    Which is why Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be anywhere near an Obama administration.

12. tao9 Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 6:44 am

    AP/12-02-08:
    Asked whether terrorism suspects could be held forever, Holder responded: “It seems to me you can think of these people as combatants and we are in the middle of a war,” Holder said in a CNN interview in January 2002. “And it seems to me that you could probably say, looking at precedent, that you are going to detain these people until war is over, if that is ultimately what we wanted to do.”

    Just weeks later, Holder told CNN he didn’t believe al-Qaida suspects qualified as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
    ——————————————————

    War criminal!

13. J S Day Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 7:52 am

    Hey, Matt, Buddy!

    You don’t know me at all… I may have said something about six months ago. I just wanted to say thank you for being a snide little cynic (sometimes) when you write. The intellectual one liners are why I keep reading. I guess it says something about me that I find your writing the height of good humor.

    Incidentally, Third who? Who cares. Keep up the good work.

    J S Day

14. Dan K Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 8:08 am

    I will be interested to hear how this pardon was particularly corrupt – eight years hasn’t convinced me, but perhaps you have some revelation that will finally convince me that there was more there than I’ve seen.

    Evil Twin,

    Rich was a global-scale racketeer and money launderer, running a global petroleum black market, working sometimes through a network of front companies, to violate various laws forbidding trade with certain foreign states like Iraq, Iran, North Korea and South Africa. He has been referred to as the “godfather” of the Russian oligarchs of the 90’s, whose reputation as gangsters and killers is well-known. Even where he was not doing things that were actually illegal, his practices were odious, predatory and slimy, and included lending money to weakened, desperate states and then taking a share in their commodities in payment. But much of his activity was illegal. He was a kind of mafia kingpin of oil. Rich was no minor hood, but one of the biggest fish the FBI had in their sights.

    Yes, he was very skilled at purchasing influence. He had some high friends in one particular foreign government because he apparently did some service to that government’s intelligence agencies, and shoveled a fraction of his fortune toward that country through a charitable foundation. His ex-wife also apparently made a friend of Hillary Clinton, and bought her support with campaign donations and money given to Clinton’s brother, Hugh Rodham.

    You have to be willfully naive not to see what happened here. It was like pardoning Al Capone or Pablo Escobar on the basis of intercession from a few high officials whose influence they had purchased.

15. Ken Riley Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 9:02 am

    The Bush pardon orgy on 1/20 will take all of the wind out of this sail.

16. Berken Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 9:11 am

    Rich was a global-scale racketeer and money launderer, running a global petroleum black market, working sometimes through a network of front companies, to violate various laws forbidding trade with certain foreign states like Iraq, Iran, North Korea and South Africa. . . . But much of his activity was illegal. He was a kind of mafia kingpin of oil. Rich was no minor hood, but one of the biggest fish the FBI had in their sights.

    So, he was Dick Cheney’s kind of American, huh? With those specs, he could have been one of the most influentional people in Washington the last decade or so.

    Amazingly, the FBI didn’t manage to get all this unbelievably vital and information on the front page of the folder Clinton or Holder read before the pardon? And didn’t get it to any of the media organizations who hated Clinton, who all portrayed this guy as just another rich hustler?

    As I recall, the people who had spent eight years hyping every trivial piece of gossip about Clinton into a world-shaking scandal were only upset about Mark Rich because they thought his wife sweet-talked Clinton into pardoning him with a little nookie and a small-change campaign donation. Nothing at all about the guy being a James Bond super-villain.

    Now, are you sure all this hype didn’t appear after the fact when a bunch of Clinton-haters decided the nookie charges were too trivial and silly for a scandal that could feed their hatred year after year until they could reach ultimate fulfillment by spitting on Clinton’s coffin and pissing in his grave?

    Really we’ve got a political coupe-de-etat by the vice-president and a junta of fanatical White House staffers to worry about. Also, corrupt Federal prosecutors prosecuting and jailing their political opponents, an administration that perjures itself daily, hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from the taxpayers, and a bloody war based on lies. Let’s get Holder into office so he can take down some criminals and re-establish the rule of law.

17. Dan Kervick Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 11:07 am

    Now, are you sure all this hype didn’t appear after the fact when a bunch of Clinton-haters decided the nookie charges were too trivial and silly for a scandal that could feed their hatred year after year until they could reach ultimate fulfillment by spitting on Clinton’s coffin and pissing in his grave?

    I’m sure. I think if you did even some elementary homework on who Marc Rich was, instead of just indulging more kneejerk Clintonite defensiveness, you would conclude the same thing.

18. TT Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    Leaving aside Rich’s extensive scumbaggery, why exactly is illegally selling commodities to the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini worse than illegally selling it anti-tank missiles and various other weapons?

19. Nell Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    @18: It isn’t worse. But it isn’t pardon-worthy, either.

20. Evil Twin Says:
    December 23rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    So not buying that Marc Rich was some kind of uber-criminal makes one a knee-jerk Clintonite? The problem, Dan, is that you have a bunch of “crimes” of which Rich wasn’t convicted presented in overheated language in a particularly unconvincing rant.

    Rich was a global-scale racketeer and money launderer, running a global petroleum black market, working sometimes through a network of front companies, to violate various laws forbidding trade with certain foreign states like Iraq, Iran, North Korea and South Africa

    Hey, you know who this sounds like? I mean sounds exactly like. Richard Bruce Cheney. You might have heard of him. He wasn’t pardoned because he wasn’t convicted. In fact, he never went to trial because no one ever bothered to bring a case against him. Do you know what did happen to him?

    Dan, what you are talking about is ordinary multi-nationalist scumbaggery – the kind that goes on every day. You might be incensed, but the American people apparently thought this behavior was worthy of a Vice-Presidential slot.

    Given that the government decided that the RICO statues abused by Giuliani in the prosecution of Rich were an overreach and have since renounced their use in such cases, the pardon stands on the merits.

    Whether you agree with that decision or not makes no difference. If murder statutes were rescinded it would make no sense to continue to hold people in prison for murder. It would be obscene to rescind such laws and I would certainly fight such a move, but I would understand why pardoning those who had committed murder was a logical outgrowth (luckily, I will never have to test that proposition).

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