When will the Obama administration start hammering Cornyn with a statement like, "We find it simply astounding that Senator Cornyn is preventing an up-or-down vote on Eric Holder, and preventing the United States from having a brilliant, qualified Attorney General, because the Senator insists that Mr. Holder must first promise not to enforce the law!"

Holder needs another hearing, so he can have a "Have you at long last no shame, Senator Cornyn?" moment.

Good for Whitehouse, who, IIRC, has the credibility of being a former U.S. attorney.

I don't think the Obama Administration will get into the confirmation battle because A]They know they eventually have the numbers and he'll be confirmed and B]Getting involved would only further politicize Holder, and that is exactly what the GOP wants at this point. They want to paint Holder as Obama's right hand man, or even his DOJ lapdog, and if Obama came out with a full court press PR campaign and tried to bully Holder to be confirmed he'd be playing right into their hands.

Obama offered Holder up, and now it's the Senate's job to confirm him. Whitehouse and Feingold should be blasting Cornyn though and what Cornyn is asking for is ridiculous and he should absolutely nknow better.

It is not unreasonable for Cornyn to want a straight answer from Eric Holder and President Obama for that matter on whether it is a possibility that the DOJ will prosecute US intelligence agents and/or former government officials for what they did in interrogating terrorism suspects or approving such interrogations. This is not really a matter of assessing the "facts" concerning whether a criminal suspect violated a pre-existing criminal law, such as the prohibition on bank robbery, whose validity everyone acknowledges, which a nominee for a prosecutorial position obviously cannot do in advance taking up his or her position. It is now universally acknowledged that various terrorism suspects, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were tortured, if waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods constitute torture and that the use of such methods does constitute a violation of the Geneva Convention. That is a different matter from saying that they violate US law in the context in which they were used. Whether Holder thinks that those interrogation methods used in the war on terror are a violation of US law potentially subject to prosecution by the US government is a legitimate subject of inquiry, just as it is to ask a Supreme Court nominee whether he or she thinks Roe v. Wade was rightly decided.
It might also be noted that a prosecution of the relevant CIA officers, let alone Jim Haynes, John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney or George W. Bush, would rip this country apart and not be regarded as legitimate by half or more of it. But if that is what is coming, the Senate has a right to know about it.

Whatever Cornyn is trying to accomplish with this charade, he is only giving validity to the idea that people in Bush's administration have broken the law and could be prosecuted. Holder's reply should be, "I do not have the authority to offer a blanket pardon to officials in the Bush administration who may be found to have broken the law. Only the President has that authority."