ArcaMax

Departing Attorney General Eric Holder deserves cheers for his stance on civil rights, in my view, but bemused jeers for his assaults on civil liberties.

Holder may well be remembered ironically as a leading advocate for both human rights and for the advancement of government powers that infringe on those rights.

I have no quarrel with his aggressive pursuit of necessary civil rights reforms. He took actions to expand benefits for same-sex couples, for example, and reduce long, costly and ultimately counterproductive sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

He took on racial disparities in criminal sentencing and voting laws. He also became a more assertive voice against alleged police abuses when President Barack Obama had to walk a more diplomatic middle ground.

Some, like me, compared him in such instances to "Luther," Obama's fictitious alter ego in Comedy Central's "Key and Peele" who reveals what the president "really thinks."

But the administration's liberal base also hated Holder's failure to arrest any Wall Street bankers for the fraud that triggered the economic collapse of 2008, although his Justice Department did win some record fines.

Even so, his critics on the left were mild compared to the firestorm he generated in Congress, mostly from Republicans.

His refusal to turn over some internal documents related to a botched gunrunning probe known as Fast and Furious, for example, resulted in a House vote in 2012 largely along party lines to hold him in contempt of Congress.

These are not small issues, but the debate is so often clouded by partisan rancor that where you stand can quickly become a matter of where you sit politically.

Both parties have good reasons to be upset when Obama's Justice Department tilts, as Benjamin Franklin might put it, too far away from liberty in their pursuit of safety.

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