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Attorney General Eric Holder was to appear this morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee. CNN is reporting that, all of a sudden, Holder is not available and the hearing was postponed:

Holder is out of town on travel the rest of this week, and Congress is out the following week, so no new hearing date is scheduled. The last-minute delivery of Justice Department responses to questions asked by the Republicans more than four months ago appeared to fuel an already agitated group of senators from the staunchly partisan Senate judiciary panel.

GOP staff members were scrambling to go through the documents in advance of what they expected would be Holder’s scheduled 9:30 a.m. appearance before the committee. If the hearing had taken place, it would have marked Holder’s first appearance before the Senate panel since November, a few days after he proclaimed his decision to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City.
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Republican sources say the minority side was prepared to bombard Holder with what they see as inconsistencies and errors. They said Justice Department officials acknowledged in Monday’s last-minute dump of documents that they can not provide the details to back their assertion that 300 terrorists have been successfully tried in civilian courts.

Republicans also prepared to attack Holder on other fronts, including his failure to disclose seven legal briefs he had written in support of positions in federal court cases.

Maybe Holder is just off practicing his next “Nation of Cowards” speech, while avoiding Congressional oversight.

Update: Word is the hearing is rescheduled for April 14. As Holder said last week that a decision “is weeks away” on where the 9/11 trials will be conducted, I suspect the administration worked out a deal with Senator Pat Leahy to avoid his testifying before an announcement on that is made.

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