To suggest that Eric Holder is not a political animal is laughable. Just consider, among the litany, his instrumental role in the pardoning of Marc Rich, his decision to dismiss an already-won case against New Black Panther Party members for voter intimidation activities, and his decision to get a second opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel on his own Justice Department's apolitical decision that granting voters in the District of Columbia a voting representative in the House would be unconstitutional.
Even more telling than Holder's MO of selectively putting politics above the law is his decision in this case, which reeks of politics and not blind justice. The Justice Department already conducted a thorough review of these dozen or so cases and, with one exception, affirmatively concluded that they should not be prosecuted. In its "declination memos," the department stated that there was "insufficient evidence of criminal conduct; insufficient evidence of the subject's involvement; insufficient evidence of criminal intent; (and) low probability of conviction."
Jennifer Rubin, for The Weekly Standard, reports that many former Justice attorneys stated that the federal prosecutors who reviewed these cases "were seasoned professionals" who would have blown the whistle had political appointees pressured them. Another former Justice lawyer said that a new prosecution would probably encounter "an insurmountable problem" unless "new facts" emerged. Yet as Rubin notes, there's no hint that Holder has reviewed the former task force's findings or conducted interviews himself.
Adding insult to injury, Holder has delegated the task of second-opinion making to the Office of Professional Responsibility, which is an odd choice to conduct an investigation of non-lawyer CIA agents because its job, as Rubin observes, is to oversee lawyers' professional and ethical conduct.
The question of whether to prosecute the interrogators has been asked and answered by career professionals, who insist Obama couldn't get a conviction if he were to decide to prosecute.
If Obama proceeds with this outrage on top of all the rest, he might just secure approval ratings so low that even ACORN and the New Black Panthers won't be able to gerrymander and intimidate his party to victory in 2010.