Today in Washington D. C. - Jan 12, 2009

Yesterday, the Senate voted 66-12 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the omnibus parks bill (S. 22). A final vote on the bill could come in the next day or two. Reid has said that after the lands bill is completed, he wants the Senate to take up a retread from last year, the Lilly Ledbetter bill, which is designed to eliminate statutes of limitations on suing employers over discrimination.

Over the past week, Senate committees have begun confirmation hearings for President-elect Barack Obama’s nominees. Hearings on the nomination of Eric Holder, former Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration, are set to being on Thursday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the have been a number of troubling stories about Holder and his actions when he was last working for the Department of Justice over the last week.

Last Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported, “Attorney general nominee Eric H. Holder Jr. repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations, according to interviews and documents.” Over the weekend, The New York Times reported, “Chiquita was facing the prospect of federal charges for paying protection money to Colombian terrorists to safeguard its banana crops, and the company needed help. It turned to Eric H. Holder Jr., an elite Washington lawyer well versed in the ways of the Justice Department.”

The Washington Post noted all these threads in a Saturday article and added another: “In a pointed effort to scrub Holder’s past, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) and two other leading GOP Judiciary Committee members submitted a public records request this week to Illinois officials, seeking information on a thwarted $300,000 legal services contract that Holder won from now-disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D).”

Last week, The New York Times noted that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, was critical of Holder over many of these issues.

And the Los Angeles Times reports that “Senate Judiciary Committee staffers vetting Eric H. Holder Jr.’s nomination for attorney general said Friday they are seeking testimony from the Justice Department’s former pardon attorney as they inquire into Holder’s role in the 1999 grant of clemency to members of a Puerto Rican terrorist organization.”

All of these issues signal to The Wall Street Journal that Holder will face tough questions at his hearings this week. And Politico deems Holder one of “5 coming confirmation collisions” in the Senate.

Meanwhile, on the legislative front, members of Obama’s economic team met with Senate Democrats over the weekend about their proposals for a stimulus package. Politico reports that “Senate Democrats praised the President-elect’s team for agreeing to make changes to its stimulus proposal based off of concerns senators raised last week at a meeting with the president-elect’s senior aides.” This is an interesting report, given that most of the complaints from Democrats last week seemed to focus on the inclusion of tax cuts in the package. Is Obama planning to walk back the amount of tax relief in his proposal?

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