We've Lost Another One, Guys

It grieves me to say this, but the forces of reason have lost Esquire's Charles Pierce to the Great Firebagging, as the mighty Wurlitzer of right-wing nonsense has driven my favorite blogger into calling for Eric Holder's resignation over yesterday's Associated Press phone record subpoenas.

This isn't hard. This is what made Egil (Bud) Krogh famous. This is what got people sent to jail in the mid-1970s. This is the Plumbers, all over again, except slightly more formal this time, and laundered, disgracefully, even more directly through the Department Of Justice. And of course, this is not nearly good enough. And even if you point out, as you should, that the AP is hyping this story a little — The government "secretly" obtained the records? Doesn't that imply that nobody knew the records had been seized? Wasn't there a subpoena? The phone companies knew. — the ignoble clumsiness of this more than obviates those particular quibbles.

Oh Charles.  Subpoenas aren't a quibble here, they're the heart of the case...and the law that could have protected the AP in this leak investigation by requiring a warrant before being able to subpoena phone records or media organizations over leaks was...wait for it...proposed by Senate Democrats and filibustered to death by Senate Republicans.  You're better than this.

That is all my arse. At the least, this was a counter-terrorism operation. (Why else would Brennan have been questioned already?). Which puts the whole business inside the White House. And you'd have to be a toddler or a fool to believe that Eric Holder could go off on his own and take as politically volatile a step as this. But, let us take the White House at its word. Eric Holder did this by himself. He should be gone. This moment. Not only is this constitutionally abhorrent, it is politically moronic. Nobody likes the press, I will grant you that, but the administration is soft if it thinks the public distrusts the press that much. And to have this genuinely chilling revelation emerge simultaneously with the Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI! mummery and the IRS dumbassery is pretty much a full broadside below the water line of this administration's credibility. Good god, this is going to be one long-ass summer.

You're right about that, Charles.  And for the first time I can recall, you're part of the problem and not the solution.  Feel free to bemoan the administration, but you might want to check your own credibility, man.  You're taking on a lot of water yourself here.  You've been through this time and again.  You were there for the Clinton Rules.  You know what it means when the media turns on the Democrat and gets us 8 years of someone infinitely worse.

But Holder is not the problem and you damn well know it.

Sadly, Pierce is far from alone in calling for Holder's resignation from the left.