Another Warning For Eric Holder And Obama

As I said ten days ago, if you want to know why suddenly "Obamacare is in dire straits" according to all the pundits, you have to go no further than Newsweek's warning to President Obama to reign in Eric Holder or pay the price:

While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months.

Less than a day after that article ran and the Village got wind that Holder might be going all "independent investigation" on them, the Wise Men of Washington revolted, saying that suddenly there was no way that Obamacare was going to be done before the August recess.

President Barack Obama's overhaul of the nation's health systems is unlikely to be completed by the White House's August deadline, lawmakers said Sunday as Congress turns its attention to other priorities.

Democrats and Republicans alike said the administration's sweeping health care proposals are moving forward on Capitol Hill but cautioned against rushing into a spending plan that could costs trillions of dollars over the next decade. Obama's health and human services secretary said she remains optimistic Congress would send the White House legislation before the year ends.

In fact just a few days earlier, we had the Congress chomping at the bit to quash Rahm Emanuel's notion that the public option was a negotiable point. Both henry Waxman and Chuck Schumer were crusading not only for a real health care reform plan, but one that included a public option. The plan was cruising along at a powerful clip.

Then the Newsweek article hit. The next day, Congress was suddenly "turning to other priorities".

Today, after the Sensible Centrists made good on their threat to try to derail Obamacare, the Village is delivering another warning on Eric Holder from the NY Times and David Johnston:

Mr. Holder has told associates he is weighing a narrow investigation, focusing only on C.I.A. interrogators and contract employees who clearly crossed the line and violated the Bush administration’s guidelines and engaged in flagrantly abusive acts.

But in taking that route, Mr. Holder would run two risks. One is the political fallout if only a handful of low-level agents are prosecuted for what many critics see as a pattern of excess condoned at the top of the government. The other is that an aggressive prosecutor would not stop at the bottom, but would work up the chain of command, and end up with a full-blown criminal inquiry into the intelligence agencies — just the kind of broad, open-ended criminal investigation the Obama administration says it wants to avoid.

In a sense, Mr. Holder put himself in this awkward position. Earlier this year he successfully argued, in the face of C.I.A. protests, for the release of legal memorandums produced by the Justice Department during the Bush administration. The memorandums showed that the administration had authorized the use of interrogation tactics like head-slapping, wall-slamming and waterboarding. The documents also put accusations of torture back in the public eye.

Once again the warning is that Obama has to put a leash on Holder or that Congress will make good on the threat to kill Obamacare. The pushback on the Obamacare plan ramped up considerably on Sunday, July 13th, just after the Newsweek article ran. Obamacare went from looking like progressing towards a deal to nearly dead in the space of about 48 hours, and the major event that happened during that time frame was the Newsweek article on the Holder investigations into torture. The White House said nothing about the Newsweek article, and Congress took Obama's silence to mean he had no objections to Holder's investigations proceeding. It was then that Obamacare's chances took a nosedive.

It makes sense then that the source of the friction is the investigations into torture. With Obama now having to commit all his political capital to the battle, the Village is again giving him a shot across the bow.

How will the President respond?