The Democratic chairs of the Senate Judiciary and intelligence committees told President Barack Obama today they support Attorney General Eric Holder’s handling of terrorism suspects.

Patrick Leahy (Getty Images)

Dianne Feinstein (gov)

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary panel chairman, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said they disagree with the barrage of recent criticism of the Attorney General and the Obama administration over decisions on terrorism cases.

“We should not let partisan distractions lead us to cast aside such valuable tools as the experienced terrorism interrogators of the FBI or forego convicting terrorists in our Federal courts,” the senators wrote in a joint letter to the president.

For months, Republicans have condemned Holder’s decision to try self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged coconspirators in a New York City federal court, arguing a military tribunal is a better forum. Democrats last month joined the criticism after New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) raised concerns about the costs and disruptions to Lower Manhattan of a lengthy trial requiring high security.

Republicans have also been upset over the decision to treat alleged Christmas Day airplane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a civilian and allow the FBI to read him the Nigerian national his Miranda rights after a brief interrogation. Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin have suggested Holder resign over the issue.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced legislation earlier this month that would prohibit the Justice Department from using funds to prosecute KSM and his alleged accomplices in federal court. The bill has 27 co-sponsors, including Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Jim Webb of Virginia, all of whom represent conservative-leaning states. Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who caucuses with the Democrats, also is a co-sponsor.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) introduced a companion bill in the House earlier this month. The bill has 49 co-sponsors, including Democratic Reps. Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania, Dan Boren of Oklahoma and Bobby Bright of Alabama.

“Congress should not tie the hands of our national security and law enforcement agencies, but should instead ensure they have the flexibility to use every means available,” Leahy and Feinstein said in their letter. “Congress should be working with you in a shared mission to most effectively protect our national security and to ensure that just convictions, once obtained, will be sustained and upheld.”

Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-Mo.) today became the second Senate Republican and third prominent conservative to suggest that Attorney General Eric Holder should resign over his decisions on terrorism cases.

Kit Bond (gov)

Bond, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has joined Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in calling for Holder’s resignation.

Conservatives have been critical of the administration’s decision to charge the alleged Christmas Day attempted airline bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in federal court as a criminal rather than put him in military custody for interrogation.

Bond said yesterday that John Brennan, President Obama’s chief homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, “needs to go” because of his role in the events surrounding the decision on how to handle alleged bomber.

And today, Bond told The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog, “I think Eric Holder has been totally wrong, and he should go too. It’s a question of trust,” adding: “They [Holder and Brennan] both came up short.”

Bond also took a dig at Holder for the Attorney General’s decision to try five alleged 9/11 plotters in a New York City federal court. The terrorism suspects will now likely be tried elsewhere after immense criticism from local politicians and members of Congress.

“Eric Holder said the 9/11 trial in New York will be the defining moment of his tenure,” Bond told the Washington Wire. “I hope it is.”

The White House has supported its national security leaders, according to the blog. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs earlier this week called on Bond to apologize for his barbs, the Washington Wire said.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) today became the second prominent Republican to suggest that Attorney General Eric Holder resign over his handling of terrorism cases.

Sarah Palin (America.gov)

Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, said on “Fox News Sunday” that “sure, he should” resign, “because of the way that we are treating these terrorists and allowing them our constitutional rights when they don’t deserve them.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who holds the No. 3 GOP leadership position in the Senate, last week said Holder should consider stepping down for similar reasons.

Conservatives have been critical of the administration’s decision to charge the alleged Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, criminally rather than put him in military custody for interrogation.

Senators have sent several letters to the Attorney General condemning the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian. Read our previous reports on three of the letters here, here and here.

Last week, Holder defended his handling of the alleged bomber in a letter to Republican senators. The Attorney General said his decision was “fully consistent” with the practices and policies of the federal government.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was critical of Holder’s response and has demanded the Attorney General explain himself before a congressional hearing, which is expected to take place next month.

But in a brief interview with Main Justice in the Capitol last week, Sessions stopped short of suggesting Holder should resign, saying only that he’s been “disappointed” in some of the Attorney General’s decisions.

“I supported Eric Holder for Attorney General. He was a former Deputy Attorney General and former federal judge. And I felt like he would be able to stand firm on these issues. I have been disappointed,” Sessions said.

“The Attorney General has been exceedingly wrong on trials of terrorists. This is not a little bitty matter. It’s a very large error and it’s got to be reversed. If he becomes a roadblock, not only does he hurt the president politically, but he definitely subjects himself to intense criticism and those kinds of comments,” Sessions added.

Robert Flanagan (U.S. government photo via AP)

An associate of conservative video-maker James O’Keefe, who is charged with trying to interfere with the phones at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) office in New Orleans, has accused the prosecutor overseeing the case of leaking information about the arrests to the news media.

Andrew Breitbart, a former Drudge Report editor and founder of BigGovernment.com, which employs O’Keefe, directed his ire at Jim Letten, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Breitbart made the claims in an appearance on Fox News. Letten’s office has denied his allegations.

Breitbart also alleged that  O’Keefe “sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney.”

O’Keefe, 25, gained fame last year for making secret videos in several offices of the community organizing group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) that led to congressional efforts to cut off federal funding for the group.

O’Keefe was arrested last week in New Orleans along with three other conservative activists, including Robert Flanagan, the son of William J. Flanagan, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana in Lafayette.

Breitbart said that Letten’s purported leaks were a “concerted effort” to frame the episode in a way that would put O’Keefe in a bad position, reports Talking Points Memo. But the first report of the arrests came last Tuesday after the U.S. Attorney’s Office put out a press release around the same time as an article on the case, in the Times-Picayune was posted online.

Asked what motivation the U.S. Attorney would have to make such an effort, Breitbart responded: “Well, it’s tied to the Justice Department. And we’ve been very aggressive in asking Eric Holder to investigate what’s seen on the ACORN tapes, and he’s ignored it.”

Letten is a Republican who was appointed by President George W. Bush. He has bipartisan support from the state’s two senators to continue serving during the Obama administration, and was today named to an advisory panel for the Attorney General, a strong indication that Holder will retain him in his post.

Letten’s office denied Breitbart’s allegations in an interview with TPMmuckraker this afternoon. Jan Mann, first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, told the site: “The suggestion that he makes about the motivations of our office are untrue. We’re not going to try this case in the press. But we deny the accusations about our office.”

According to an Associated Press narrative about the events leading up to the arrests, Flanagan  met O’Keefe, Joseph Basel, 24, and Stan Dai, 24, after O’Keefe spoke at The Pelican Institute, a think tank where Flanagan works. Their first meeting came five days before their arrest, said J. Garrison Jordan, Flanagan’s lawyer.

Flanagan, writes the AP, was an All-American pitcher for the Division III baseball team at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., He enrolled last year at Missouri State University’s Department of Defense and Strategic Studies, in Fairfax, Va. And he interned for Republican Rep. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma and Sen. Lamar Alexander, (R-Tenn.).

This story has been edited from its original version for clarity and to make clear that Jim Letten’s office denies the allegations.

Officials from the Central Intelligence Agency participated in a government-wide discussion on Christmas Day about how to handle a Nigerian national who allegedly attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger airliner, the Los Angeles Times reported today, citing unnamed sources.

The decision to advise Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of his Miranda rights rather than put him in military custody for interrogation was made after “hastily called teleconferences” between representatives of the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, State Department and CIA, the newspaper said. By that time, the suspect had stopped talking with law enforcement, the Times said.

The Times story appeared as the Justice Department found itself increasingly on the defensive over the matter.

Republicans say Abdulmutallab should have been taken into military custody for questioning by intelligence officials. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, a Barack Obama appointee, has also criticized the decision to charge Abdulmutallab criminally. The issue has become politically sensitive for Holder, with  GOP senators demanding he come to Capitol Hill to explain his role. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the GOP’s No. 3 leader in the Senate, even suggested Sunday that Holder consider resigning over the incident.

The Times story appeared to push back against the criticism by suggesting the CIA had been at the table all along.

It still isn’t clear who precisely authorized treating the accused al-Qaeda operative as a criminal suspect with rights against self-incrimination. No one in the government has come forward publicly yet to explain how the decision was made, though White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Jan. 21 said he believed that decision ultimately lay with Attorney General Eric Holder.

Citing unnamed sources, the LA Times said after Northwest Airlines Flight 253 landed in Detroit on Christmas Day, Abdulmutallab was taken to a hospital for treatment for burns allegedly sustained after he tried to ignite explosives in his underwear.

He was question by two experienced counter-terrorism agents who have “been around a long time and have traveled internationally,” an anonymous source told the newspaper.

The questioning lasted just shy of an hour. The agents did not immediately tell him he had the right to remain silent or let his words be used against him at trial, citing an exemption that allows law enforcement officials to pose questions if they believe another crime is about to be committed. The suspect gave information that suggested other terrorism plots were in the works, the newspaper said.

But then, doctors said they needed to sedate Abdulmutallab to treat his injuries. By the time Abdulmutallab was available again for questioning, he had clammed up. The decision was made to read him his Miranda rights. The Obama administration’s policy is to try terrorism suspects arrested on U.S. soil in federal courts rather than in military commissions.

Department of Justice spokesman Matthew Miller last week released a list of other successful terrorism prosecutions, including that of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen and al-Qaeda operative who was arrested after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and convicted in the Eastern District of Virginia.

A Senate Republican leader suggested Sunday that Attorney General Eric Holder should consider resigning over the decision to criminally charge alleged Christmas Day airplane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab rather than put him in military custody for interrogation.

Holder is “doing a better job of interrogating CIA employees than he is of interrogating terrorists, and he’s not making a distinction between enemy combatants and terrorists flying into Detroit trying to blow up planes and American citizens who are committing a crime,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said in an appearance on Fox News Sunday.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)

“He needs to go to Congress and say I made that decision, and here’s why. And based on that perhaps he should step down,” Alexander said, according to The Hill.

Alexander is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the No. 3 GOP leadership position in the Senate. He is among the least partisan of Senate Republicans, according to an analysis by Congressional Quarterly, which found the Tennessee Republican was among those GOP senators who voted most often with President Barack Obama.

Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and four top Republican committee members wrote in a letter to Holder that the decision to have FBI agents instead of intelligence officials interrogate Abdulmutallab was “hasty. The Nigerian national and alleged al-Qaeda-linked operative is accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner with explosives hidden in his underwear.

Holder has been under fire from Republicans for a number of national security decisions, including his decision in August to appoint a special prosecutor, John Durham, to investigate whether CIA employees and contractors broke anti-torture laws during the Bush administration.

The decision to have Durham look into the matter came on heels of the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility recommendation that urged Holder to reopen nearly a dozen alleged CIA prisoner-abuse cases.

Holder also backed release of Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel memos in April that justified brutal interrogation techniques that critics consider torture. The White House at the time fretted over the political implications of releasing the memos but ultimately decided the matter was the Attorney General’s call.

And on Friday, the Obama administration reversed Holder’s November decision to hold a trial in Lower Manhattan of self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The decision to move the trial came after a bipartisan outpouring of criticism about the security costs and disruptions of holding a trial in New York.

The Senate sent legislation to the White House today that would protect people who are attacked because of their sexual orientation, gender or disability.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was part of the defense authorization bill that passed the Senate by a 68-29 vote. The House approved the defense bill Oct. 8 by a 281-146 vote. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law.

The hate crimes legislation makes the most significant changes to federal hate crimes law since the approval of a 1968 bill that covered crimes carried out on the basis of religion, race, color or national origin.

Backers of the legislation have tried to attach it to the annual defense authorization bill since 1999, but it was always removed before a final vote on the defense legislation. Attorney General Eric Holder said it was “one of [his] highest personal priorities” to help usher the hate crimes legislation through Congress.

“The action by Congress today to pass this vital legislation is a milestone in helping protect Americans from the most heinous bias-motivated violence,” Holder said in a statement. “Hate crimes victimize not just individuals, but entire communities. Perpetrators of hate crimes seek to deny the humanity that we all share, regardless of the color of our skin, the God to whom we pray, or whom we love.”

Several Republicans said they voted against the overall defense bill because of the hate crimes provision, which was added as an amendment in July by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who voted nay, said the legislation went “too far.”

“I voted against the Defense bill because the Democratic majority attached something which has nothing to do with defense: an expansion of hate crimes rules,” Alexander said in a statement.

The legislation is named after two victims of hate crimes. In 1998, Shepard, who was gay, was tortured and murdered Wyoming. Byrd, who was black, was killed in 1998 by two white supremacists who tied him up to a truck and dragged him down a road in Texas.

Here’s the roll call vote on the defense authorization bill that included the hate crimes legislation:

Sonia Sotomayor won Senate confirmation this afternoon to the Supreme Court by a vote of 68 to 31.

Only nine Republicans voted in favor of her confirmation. They were:

-Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.)

-Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.)

-Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine)

-Sen. Susan Collins (Maine)

-Sen. Richard Lugar (Ind.)

-Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.)

-Sen. Christopher Bond (Mo.)

-Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.)

-Sen. George Voinovich (Ohio)

Here’s the Senate roll call vote: