How does Holder survive?

Michael A. Walsh calls him Obama's alter ego. Holder says and does things that the president can't say.

By turns whiny, shifty, obfuscatory, petulant, insulting and arrogant, Holder has become a fixture before congressional investigating committees, fending off one Obama scandal after another, while proclaiming that he — the nation’s top cop — doesn’t know anything about anything and highly resents any implication that he does.

Indeed, all the Obama scandals — the murderous gunrunning scheme called Fast and Furious, the secret monitoring of the Associated Press and Fox News reporter James Rosen (personally approved by Holder), even the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups for special scrutiny — find their nexus at the top of the Justice Department.

That's true but there is a much bigger reason. Holder is more than Obama's trigger man, he's holding Obama up. There are too many bodies buried by Holder to allow someone else, perhaps with a higher threshold of corruption, to take over Justice. Obama can't take the chance that the truth of Fast and Furious, the IRS, the internal spying, come out during his administration.

Without Holder, Obama becomes vulternable to the law. Glenn Reynolds: Holder is also protection