OUR REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT:

Before election week was out, he had nominated a replacement for the outgoing Attorney General, Eric Holder. In Loretta Lynch, the mob-busting, terrorist-trying U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island), the White House found a prosecutor who seems likely to pursue much of Holder's agenda, but also to avoid some of the partisan bickering that characterized his tenure. Lynch has already been confirmed by the Senate twice, and even Fox News personalities find it hard to fault her. "Lynch is both highly qualified and abundantly experienced to become the nation's top law enforcement officer," Fox's Gregg Jarrett, a former defense attorney, wrote at foxnews.com. Jarrett went on, "Unlike her predecessor, she has no close ties to Obama. ...There is no history or evidence to suggest she will use her high office to act like a carnival barker in abetting the political manifesto of President Obama. If confirmed, Lynch has the potential to breathe new life and a principled stewardship into a vital department that has lost sight of its own name."

Before departing on a trip to Asia and Australia, Obama followed up his nomination of Lynch by issuing a forceful statement in favor of net neutrality. In an earlier post, I said that the President could have accompanied this clarion call to preserve the open, non-discriminatory spirit of the Web with a commitment to protecting the interests of ordinary Internet users, many of whom are being ripped off by quasi-monopolistic Internet-service providers. On its own terms, though, Obama's declaration was a powerful and welcome one. In addition to reaffirming a policy stance he campaigned on in 2008, the President showed that he is willing to stand up, where necessary, to the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill. In calling on the Federal Communications Commission to regulate I.S.P.s as public utilities, he surely knew that he would spark outrage among conservatives, as well as Congressional hearings, and, quite likely, a lengthy legal battle that will end up before the Supreme Court. But he went ahead anyway.

And then, after he arrived in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, the President unveiled a much bigger surprise: an agreement with the Chinese government on confronting climate change, which garnered the praise of environmental organizations the world over. 

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