Obama would only replace him with someone even more hostile to the idea of the rule of law in the pursuit of terrorism cases.^*

Money quote:

GREGORY: So, let me– let me unpack that a little bit. What you’d like to see happen is that Congress would pass a law that would say to judges, “Hey, look, in this environment, if we extract information that could be valuable intelligence about another terror plot, about who they’re involved in. Whether they’re connected to the Pakistani Taliban. We want to get all that without them lawyering up and still be able to use that against them in a court of law.” And you need more flexibility to do that, you think?

HOLDER: Yeah, we certainly need more flexibility. And we want the public safety exception to be consistent with– the public safety concerns that we now have in the 21st Century, as opposed to the public safety concerns that we had back in the 1980s.

GREGORY: So, that’s news. I mean, that’s an important development. Would you work with Congress to try to get that new law passed?

HOLDER: Yeah, we want to work with Congress to come up with a way in which we make our public safety exception more flexible. And again, more consistent with the threat– that we face. And yes, this is in fact the big news. This is a proposal that– we’re gonna be making and that we want to work– with Congress about.

GREGORY: So, a new priority for the administration.

HOLDER: It is a new priority.

It’s clear that Barack Obama has made a purely political decision to ape the worst aspects of the Bush administration, because he thinks that it will defuse criticism from the right, which it clearly hasn’t anyway.

This is venal, craven, and just plain un-American, as well as being stupid, because it does not work from a political perspective.

Would that we had some Democrats who were not a bunch of cowards.

H/t Crooks and Liars

^*But remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.