Andrew McCarthy " When critics contended that Americans had a right to know whether lawyers who chose to donate their services to al-Qaeda were now in charge of counterterrorism policy, Holder wailed that the patriotism of Justice Department lawyers was being attacked. The legal profession’s heroic self-image notwithstanding, there is nothing patriotic about volunteering to represent terrorists; that something is legal doesn’t make doing it patriotic. But the patriotism strawman is neither here nor there. The point has always been a commonsense one: When you do something you don’t have to do — as Holder did as a private lawyer in 2004, filing an amicus brief on behalf of al-Qaeda terrorist Jose Padilla — that is a free choice. We are entitled to weigh what that choice tells us about where you’re coming from.
"In taking up Padilla’s cause, Holder was not acting out of obligation. He was acting out of passion, out of ideology."
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