It’s quite the sight to behold. This is about a 2002 Eric Holder quote about it being “hard to interrogate” John Walker Lindh “now that he has a lawyer and now that he is here in the United States.” Adam dredges up a Michael Mukasey quote:

In the same year, Mukasey ruled as a federal judge that detainees had a right to counsel and that “the interference with interrogation would be minimal or nonexistent.” So at best, we have Holder being to the right of Mukasey in 2002, and Mukasey being to the left of Holder. They’ve both changed their minds.

What hasn’t changed though, is that conservatives were dead silent as the Bushadministration proceeded to try terrorists in civilian courts all through their two terms in office. Holder’s statement yesterday, that “the practice of the U.S. government, followed by prior and current Administrations without a single exception, has been to arrest and detain under federal criminal law all terrorist suspects who are apprehended inside the United States,” remains accurate. Hayes himself forgot to raise a note of protest at the 145 trials of terrorists conducted over eight years of Bush. He was apparently too busy fabricating a nonexistent link between Iraq and al-Qaeda and fluffing Dick Cheney.

Not to give Holder a pass, but this isn’t the hysteria of 2002 anymore. We’ve settled into a situation of sustained vigilance against al-Qaeda, which is appropriate, as much as Hayes wants to say there’s nothing in between apathy and hysteria.