Hailed by civil liberties and watchdog groups alike for his pledge to "reverse the disastrous course that we have been on over the past few years" and usher in a new era of civil liberties under Obama, Holder has instead carried on the sorry tradition of his predecessors, going to great lengths to "justify" egregious government actions that can only be described as immoral, unjust and illegal.
"It is simply astounding that any member of the executive branch could have believed that our Constitution justified this egregious violation of plaintiffs' rights," Judge Holloway wrote.
It may explain the worst-case mind-set of many analysts, but can hardly justify the egregious overestimates of Iraqi capabilities.
But decades of repression and abuse cannot be wished away with a few flicks of an autocrat's fountain pen, no more than can the habit of mind that sustained and justified such egregious behaviour for so long.
In any case, Cinco de Mayo will not find me marking the day in any special manner, nor using it to justify guzzling egregious amounts of alcohol.
EVERY country likes its history books to celebrate its past and justify its more egregious acts.
When Joan Acocella reviewed "Lightning Rods" in this magazine, she pointed out that one of the main targets of DeWitt's satire is "the oily, sophistic reasoning" that is so often used to justify and dismiss egregious offenses against women in the workplace.
In the Christian faith, the Bible has been used to justify the most egregious components of life: sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as, some might argue, militarism and materialism.
A DealBook reader in New York asked "What type of activity can be considered so egregious that it justifies an 11 billion dollar fine yet not one individual is personally liable for it?" The Trade columnist, Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica, said that top JPMorgan executives should have been charged with misleading disclosure in the $6 billion London Whale trading loss.
