"Independance"

Drudge posted a Newsweek article:

Alone among cabinet officers, attorneys general are partisan appointees expected to rise above partisanship. All struggle to find a happy medium between loyalty and independence... Holder... may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way... leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do... Such a decision... could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities.

It seems ill-fitting to characterize an Attorney General pursuing a course demanded by the President's most partisan supporters -- which the President, himself, has been reluctant to pursue for fear of alienating moderate voters -- as rising above partisanship.

The timing of this change of policy, in the face of the President's rapidly dropping approval ratings would suggest that the President's political calculations might have something to do with this change of course.

Until now, the President has tried to please his most partisan supporters by pursuing policies important to them (staking out far left positions on stimulus, healthcare, global warming, ...). His political advisors may now view that choice as costing too much moderate support (perhaps recognizing that the country is, by and large, more fundementally conservative, or centrist, than they thought initially). Prosecuting interrogators who went "far beyond what had been authorized in the legal opinions issued by the [Bush] Justice Department" is an easy way to please his most partisan supporters without disenchanting moderate, or even conservative, voters. Republicans would be politically foolish to protest prosecutions of interrogators who clearly violated the law as understood by the Bush Justice Department.

The only significant political risk this new policy poses to the President is the potential perception that the administration is engaged in partisan prosecutions, criminalizing honest policy differences with the previous administration. This risk is substantively mitigated by limiting prosecutions to interrogators who clearly violated the law, (as opposed to Bush Administration lawyers who issued "controversial" opinions) and to the degree that the investigation is perceived as emanating from an independent Attorney General, and not, or better: against the will of, the President.

In other words, in credulously reporting that Holder is, in this, acting independently of the President, Newsweek is doing Robert Gibbs' job.