IT IS A MARK OF JUST HOW WEAK AN EXECUTIVE THE UR IS...:

The Attorney General's Friendly Fire: The GOP has been out for Eric Holder's head for weeks over his handling of the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial. But lately, some Democrats worry the White House may be Holder's most dangerous enemy. (Philip Shenon, 2/15/10, Daily Beast)

[N]ow, it seems, Holder has a far worse problem: being second-guessed, very publicly, from within the administration—by the president himself.

On Friday, the White House disclosed that the president will become involved in the decision of how and where to try to terrorist suspects—decisions that Holder had previously described as free of political influence because they were his and his alone.

The drumbeat of criticism has anxious Democrats wondering if the attorney general, despite what appears to be a genuine friendship with Obama, can hold on to the job that admirers say he has coveted since he first signed on at the Justice Department as an ambitious young prosecutor in the 1970s.

"Eric needs to fight back hard," a senior Senate Democrat tells The Daily Beast. "He has real enemies among the Republicans, who want to make him the face of how Democrats have supposedly gone soft on terrorism. And it looks like he has real adversaries in the White House, too."

...that attacking his subordinates is thoroughly plausible. Does anyone think they--any more than Congress--were listening to or following him?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 15, 2010 6:47 AM