Loretta Lynch Confirmed as Attorney General After Embarrassing Delay

By Erin Gloria Ryan  |  April 23, 2015 | 6:45pm
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By a vote of 56-43, Loretta Lynch was confirmed as Attorney General of the United States on Thursday afternoon. It took the do-nothings in the Senate more than five months to take their thumbs out of their asses and stop swordfighting with their proverbial dicks for long enough to take care of this simple task.

Lynch’s confirmation as current Attorney General Eric Holder’s replacement was stalled while Senators wasted time and money yelling about President Obama to anyone who will listen, the main activity of legislators since a historically anemic voter turnout in the 2014 elections gift-wrapped both chambers of Congress for the GOP (before the election flip, Democrats declined to confirm Lynch, instead focusing confirming more controversial Obama nominees). Per the Washington Post, ten Republicans crossed party lines to vote for Lynch’s confirmation. The rest have already commenced whining with great violence to any television camera that will listen. Via Post reporter Mike DeBonis,

“Ms. Lynch has said flat-out that she supports those policies and is committed to defending them in court,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Thursday. “So I think Congress has a real role here. We do not have to confirm someone to the highest law enforcement position in America if that someone is publicly committed to denigrating Congress.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that, under Lynch, “We are sadly going to see more and more lawlessness, more recklessness, more abuse of power, more executive lawlessness.”

Lawless, reckless, abuse, denigrating. We need these words to describe crimes, and Congress is using them to describe, essentially, lawyer slapfights. I’m embarrassed. This is embarrassing.

PBS’s Frontline points out that a confirmation quagmire will likely be among the lesser challenges of Lynch’s tenure as AG. As the federal government’s top attorney, she’ll be charged with “policing the police,” a group that needs a much harsher reigning in than a few dozen grandstanding career politicians spouting Fox News talking points.

Image via Getty.

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