Gun Banning Clinton Official for Obama's AG?

Drudge is currently running a news article that President-elect Obama is trying to gauge if he will have enough Senate confirmation votes to successfully nominate Eric Holder, former Clinton administration Deputy AG. Holder was one of Clinton's enforcers when it came to firearms policy, and while Obama says his administration will choose to focus on other things than guns, it is hard to see someone like Holder not pushing more restrictions with both houses of congress currently held by the Democrats.

Check out the transcript of a press conference headed by Holder during the Clinton era that was focusing on ending the so-called "gun show loophole". In it he says that no reasonable person could oppose private firearms transactions and takes a potshot at the NRA (garnering laughter from a friendly press corps):

Q: Is the NRA opposition waning a bit to all of this?
DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER: I wouldn't want to be a spokesman for the NRA, I simply don't know what their position would be on this. But it would seem to me that any reasonable person who would look at what are very reasonable --
Q: We're not talking about reasonable people. We're talking about the NRA.
DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER: Well, that was your characterization. (Laughter.)

I am sure that this would just be the beginning of the "common sense" legislation that Obama has stated he supports. Of course, if we want to use actual common sense, it would be difficult to justify the use of high level government officials to waste time and political capital restricting the rights of law abiding citizens on a law that would have little to no measurable effect on crime. And that is according to multiple sources including the New York Times, the NRA, and the very Clinton Justice department that Holder worked for. Even democratic strategist (and Ragin' Cajun) James Carville looked at these stats and argued that the left needs to do a cost-benefit analysis when it comes to this initiative.

I will give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt for the time being, but nominating Holder seems pretty far from the President-elect's promise of bringing in a broad coalition to his cabinet. Especially when you add in former Clinton official Rham Emmanuel, whose record on firearms issues stands firmly in the "anti" camp with an "F" from the NRA. Let's not even mention the rumors floating around about Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Or the short lived agenda that appeared on Obama's transition website where he outlined his true agenda for the second amendment. I'll have more on that one later....