Loretta Lynch delivered opening remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on Tuesday where she was being considered as President Obama’s nominee for attorney general. (AP) 
 
 Loretta Lynch delivered opening remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on Tuesday where she was being considered as President Obama’s nominee for attorney general. (AP) 
 
 Attorney general nominee Loretta E. Lynch carefully backed the Obama administration’s policies on immigration and drug enforcement Wednesday, sidestepping political tripwires before lawmakers deeply critical of the department she has been picked to lead. 
 
 During an all-day confirmation hearing that highlighted Republican anger with the administration, Lynch declined repeated opportunities to disavow actions taken by the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. 
 
 Instead, the first African American woman nominated to be attorney general cast herself as a career federal prosecutor determined to uphold the rule of law and willing to provide honest counsel to the president even when he might disagree. 
 
 In calm, polished replies, Lynch also acknowledged Republican concerns and pledged to foster a better relationship with lawmakers if confirmed. 
 
 “You’re not Eric Holder, are you?” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) asked at one point. 
 
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 “No, I’m not, sir,” Lynch replied. 
 
 Lynch, 55, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said she supports the use of the death penalty as an effective punishment and considers waterboarding “torture and thus illegal.” She said it was the Justice Department’s job to enforce the laws Congress passes, but when pushed about Holder’s decision not to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act, she said there are “rare instances” when careful analysis of existing laws raises constitutional issues. 
 
 Immigration proved to be the most significant flash point during the hearing, with Republicans voicing continuing outrage over the administration’s executive actions. 
 
 At the start of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, which was interrupted many times as senators left to vote, Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asked whether the president could defer deportations “for millions of individuals in the country illegally and grant them permits and other benefits, regardless of what the U.S. Constitution or immigration laws say.” 
 
 Lynch said that it was important for the Justice Department to ensure that any executive action be legal but that she was not involved in the decisions leading up to the president’s actions. 
 
 Referring to a Justice Department memo on the president’s authority on immigration matters, she said, “I don’t see any reason to doubt the reasonableness of those views.” 
 
 Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who has said he plans to vote against Lynch, said he was “very disappointed and frustrated” with her responses. 
 
 “I have a huge concern regarding what I think is the president’s illegal, unconstitutional executive amnesty, and I have a huge concern of the fact that you think it is within the law,” Vitter said. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) agreed with Vitter and said after the hearing that he will vote against Lynch. 
 
 Lynch is the first Obama Cabinet nominee to face a confirmation hearing since Republicans took over the Senate this year. The department she has been selected to oversee has been a regular target of Republicans’ ire on a range of issues, including investigations into the Internal Revenue Service and the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and a botched gun-trafficking operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 
 
 Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked his colleagues not to “turn this exceptional nominee into a political point-scoring exercise” by badgering her on immigration and the controversy over the investigation into the IRS. 
 
 He described Lynch as “one of the keenest legal minds that our country has to offer, someone who has excelled at every stage of her education and her career, while cultivating a reputation as someone who was level-headed, fair, judicious and eminently likable.” 
 
 Holder — whose six-year tenure overshadowed Wednesday’s hearing — had a particularly rocky relationship with Congress. Lynch has chaired the Justice Department committee that advises him on policy decisions. 
 
 Among the points of contention between the administration and Congress has been the Justice Department’s policy on marijuana in response to the legalization of the drug in Colorado and Washington state. The department announced that it would not challenge those state laws and said that in prosecutions it would prioritize marijuana offenses­ such as distribution to minors. 
 
 Asked about her own views on marijuana, Lynch said she does not support legalization. 
 
 Sessions asked Lynch whether she agreed with a remark made by President Obama — and published last year in the New Yorker magazine — that the drug was no more dangerous than alcohol. 
 
 “I certainly don’t hold that view and don’t agree with that view of marijuana,” Lynch said. “I certainly think that the president was speaking from his personal experience and personal opinion, neither of which I’m able to share.” 
 
 When pressed on the legality of the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance programs, Lynch replied that she believed they were “constitutional and effective.” 
 
 If Lynch is confirmed as the 83rd attorney general, she will take the reins of the Justice Department at a moment of high tension between law enforcement and minority communities across the country. 
 
 In her testimony, she emphasized her strong bonds with law enforcement and her desire to heal the rifts between police and the communities they are tasked with protecting. 
 
 One of her priorities, she said, will be to work to strengthen “the vital relationships between our courageous law enforcement personnel and all the communities we serve.” 
 
 “In my career, I have seen this relationship flourish — I have seen law enforcement forge unbreakable bonds with community residents and have seen violence-ravaged communities come together to honor officers who risked all to protect them,” Lynch said. “As attorney general, I will draw all voices into this important discussion.” 
 
 Lynch was accompanied by her husband, Stephen Hargrove; her father, the Rev. Lorenzo Lynch, who traveled from Durham, N.C., and sat behind her; and her only surviving brother, Leonzo Lynch, who is a preacher in Charlotte. Her other brother, Lorenzo Jr., a former Navy SEAL, died in 2009. She placed his Navy SEAL trident pin on the witness table in front of her while she testified. 
 
 A group of two dozen of Lynch’s fellow U.S. attorneys from across the country were in Washington, watching the hearing together on television from the Justice Department building. In the audience at the hearing was a group of Lynch’s Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters, dressed in bright red. 
 
 Lynch told the committee about her family and the values instilled in her by her parents, both from North Carolina. 
 
 “My mother, Lorine, who was unable to travel here today, is a retired English teacher and librarian for whom education was the key to a better life,” Lynch said. “She recalls people in her rural community pressing a dime or a quarter into her hands to support her college education. As a young woman, she refused to use segregated restrooms, because they did not represent the America in which she believed.” 
 
 “She instilled in me an abiding love of literature and learning, and taught me the value of hard work and sacrifice,” Lynch said. 
 
 Lynch’s father, a fourth-generation Baptist preacher, opened his Greensboro church in the early 1960s to those planning sit-ins and marches­, standing with the protesters while carrying her on his shoulders. 
 
 “As I come before you today in this historic chamber, I still stand on my father’s shoulders, as well as on the shoulders of all those who have gone before me and who dreamed of making the promise of America a reality for all and worked to achieve that goal,” Lynch said. “I believe in the promise of America because I have lived the promise of America.” ||||| 'I will be Loretta Lynch' The attorney general nominee promised senators a fresh start from the Eric Holder era. 
 
 President Barack Obama’s attorney general nominee came to Capitol Hill with one overriding message Wednesday: “I will be Loretta Lynch.” 
 
 Translation: She won’t be Eric Holder — not the attorney general who has angered Republicans during a six-year contentious relationship in which lawmakers called for his resignation and the House held him in contempt. 
 
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 But Senate Republicans repeatedly used Lynch’s nearly eight-hour confirmation hearing to invoke the controversies of Holder’s tenure, even as she pledge a fresh start with Congress, promised to maintain her independence from the White House and repeatedly declined to be pulled into drawn-out debates about issues like immigration, gay marriage and alleged targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service. 
 
 Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) — asking her in jest, “You’re not Eric Holder, are you?” — told Lynch that the outgoing attorney general’s six-year record at the Justice Department was weighing heavily on lawmakers’ minds. He asked her: How will senators know you will not be another Holder? 
 
 “If confirmed as attorney general, I will be myself. I will be Loretta Lynch,” the veteran federal prosecutor responded. “And I would refer you to my record as United States attorney on two occasions as well as a practicing lawyer to see the independence that I have always brought to every particular matter.” 
 
 Lynch, who would be the first black female attorney general, turned in a polished performance free of any serious stumbles. But some GOP senators were visibly frustrated that Lynch continually refused to weigh in on the substance of Obama’s recent moves on immigration — beyond her view that Obama had acted within the Constitution and that the administration’s legal rationale for its actions was “reasonable.” 
 
 “I don’t see any reason to doubt the reasonableness of those views,” Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee, while stressing that she was not involved in the decisions behind the actions. She also defended prosecutorial discretion and said law enforcement officials should be able to set priorities for using their limited resources when carrying out immigration enforcement. 
 
 Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), one of the most persistent critics of the administration’s immigration policies, was clearly not satisfied with Lynch’s responses on Obama’s latest executive action, telling her: “That’s why I have difficulty with your nomination.” 
 
 “Now you’re here defending it, and I believe it’s indefensible, so I’m worried,” Sessions said. “I just want to tell you, that’s a big problem.” 
 
 Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — after trying to get Lynch to expand on issues involving national security, immigration and the IRS — showed similarly displeasure. 
 
 “Try as I might, there has been nothing I have been able to ask you that has yielded any answer suggesting any limitations whatsoever on the authority of the president,” Cruz told Lynch. “That does not augur well for this committee’s assessment of your willingness to stand up to the president when the Constitution and the laws so require.” 
 
 Lynch found some signals of support from GOP corners, however. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), after finishing his round of questions, told her, “Should you be confirmed, I look forward to working with you.” And Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said to her, “I’m impressed with your qualifications, and I hope I can support your nomination.” 
 
 The committee is not expected to vote on Lynch for at least a few more weeks, as the panel hops through procedural hoops involved with any nomination. She would need at least two Republican votes on the 20-member panel. 
 
 But immigration wasn’t a complete slam-dunk issue for Lynch, despite her weeks of preparation for the hearing and the widespread expectation that it would be one of the prime sticking points for Republican lawmakers. 
 
 As she waded into questions about immigration, Lynch muddled some of the nuances of the law that apply to employers. During an exchange with Sessions, she referred repeatedly to employers taking account of a worker’s “citizenship,” seeming to bless the practice. 
 
 “We have in place at this point in time a legal framework that requests — requires employers to both provide information about citizenship, as well as not hire individuals without citizenship,” Lynch said. In fact, businesses cannot limit their hiring to U.S. citizens, and a Justice Department office that Lynch would oversee seeks out cases in which employers unlawfully deny employment to legal immigrants. 
 
 At another point, Lynch seemed to indicate that everyone in the United States has a “right” to work in the United States, regardless of their immigration status. Later, she walked back those answers, telling the committee under questioning from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that an immigrant who’s here illegally cannot work, unless he or she has prior government approval. 
 
 Congressional Republicans enraged at Obama’s actions had prepared to make Lynch’s confirmation battle a broader war over the administration’s immigration policies. Democrats argued that Obama’s actions should not play a role in whether Lynch is confirmed, and that she should be judged on her own merits. 
 
 “Now, they can sue [Obama] and let the courts decide,” Schumer said, referring to Republicans. “The confirmation of America’s highest law enforcement official is not the time nor place to vent frustration.” 
 
 Though immigration was a dominant issue early in the hearings, the Brooklyn-based federal prosecutor touched on other key issues in her opening remarks: terrorism, cyber-crimes, human trafficking and relations between law enforcement and minority communities. 
 
 And she addressed a litany of other issues the senators threw at her: lethal use of drones, gay marriage, criminal justice reforms, gun rights and financial crimes. 
 
 She emphasized her record on terrorism as a federal prosecutor in New York, noting that her office has tried more terrorism cases than any other U.S. attorney’s office since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, including plots against the city’s transportation systems and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 
 
 When Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asked her to comment on waterboarding, Lynch said that “waterboarding is torture … and thus illegal.” 
 
 In response to a question from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lynch indicated that she backed the death penalty, calling it an “effective” punishment. On the matter of controversial surveillance programs led by the National Security Agency, Lynch said she believed they were “certainly constitutional and effective.” 
 
 She declined to weigh in on the merits of an August 2013 decision by the Justice Department not to challenge state laws that allow some uses of marijuana, stressing that it “certainly would be my policy … to continue to enforcing marijuana laws” on the federal level. She also broke with Obama on opinions about marijuana, disputing a year-old comment to The New Yorker in which the president said the drug was no more harmful than alcohol. 
 
 And in response to questions from Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), Lynch indicated that she supports sending some terrorism cases to military commissions under certain conditions, telling the committee that she would use “all the tools in our arsenal” as attorney general, including the military commission process. 
 
 “When terrorists threaten Americans here or abroad, they will face American justice,” Lynch said. 
 
 Lynch’s nomination comes at a time of tense relations between minority communities and law enforcement officials — stemming in part from the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner of Staten Island, New York, both black men who were killed by white police officers last year. Grand juries declined to return indictments in both cases. 
 
 In her opening remarks, Lynch said strengthening relationships between law enforcement and the public will be a key priority for her as attorney general, promising to “draw all voices into this important discussion.” She praised law enforcement officers “who risk their lives every day in the protection of the communities we all serve.” 
 
 “I have served with them. I have learned from them. I am a better prosecutor because of them,” Lynch told senators. “Few things have pained me more than the recent reports of tension and division between law enforcement and the communities we serve.” 
 
 In the 1990s, Lynch helped secure convictions of New York City police officers who brutally assaulted Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, and as the current U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, her office is leading the investigation into the Garner case. 
 
 Republicans raised other controversies under the Justice Department’s portfolio as the GOP majority began taking up the first major Obama administration nominee to face confirmation under its control of the Senate. 
 
 In his opening statement, committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) raised issues such as the botched “gun-walking” operation Fast and Furious, alleged targeting of conservative groups by the IRS and his view that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel’s legal opinions should be regularly made public. 
 
 “I don’t expect Ms. Lynch and I will agree on every issue,” Grassley said. “But I, for one, need to be persuaded she will be an independent attorney general, and I have no reason to believe — at this point — that she won’t be.” 
 
 Much of her opening remarks, Lynch’s first chance to publicly introduce herself to Congress, took a personal tone. Lynch, the daughter of a Baptist minister and a retired English teacher, talked about how her parents fought against segregation and instilled in her the values of education, hard work and sacrifice. 
 
 Lynch was accompanied by her husband, Stephen Hargrove, her father, Lorenzo, and her brother Leonzo. Her other brother, former Navy SEAL Lorenzo Lynch Jr., died in 2009, and the attorney general nominee had his Navy SEAL trident with her on the witness table. Dozens of members of her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, were there in support of Lynch, decked out in their traditional red. 
 
 She recalled how in the early 1960s, her father would open up his Greensboro, North Carolina, church to civil rights activists and stand alongside them as he carried Lynch, as a little girl, on his shoulders. 
 
 “As I come before you today in this historic chamber, I still stand on my father’s shoulders, as well as on the shoulders of all those who have gone before me and who dreamed of making the promise of America a reality for all and worked to achieve that goal,” Lynch said. “I believe in the promise of America because I have lived the promise of America.” 
 
 Lynch was not an unfamiliar face to the committee. She had already met with all 20 members privately, and one of its Democratic members — Schumer — introduced Lynch at her confirmation hearing along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). 
 
 She got a largely warm reception during the morning first round of hearings from both Republicans and Democrats, with one senior member — Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) — telling Lynch that of the six attorney general nominations she has sat through in her tenure, Lynch’s opening statement was “the best.” 
 
 “I am confident that if we stay focused on Ms. Lynch’s impeccable qualifications and fierce independence, she will be quickly confirmed by the Senate,” said Leahy, the committee’s former chairman. “Ms. Lynch deserves a fair, thoughtful, and respectful confirmation process.” 
 
 Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
– President Obama's pick to be the next attorney general has wrapped up a daylong confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, and the AP writes that Loretta Lynch's day can be summed up in one question posed to her by Republican Sen. John Cornyn. “You’re not Eric Holder, are you?” Cornyn asked her in jest. Lynch assured him she wasn't, adding later that, as attorney general, “I will be myself. I will be Loretta Lynch. And I will refer you to my record [as U.S. attorney] as well as a practicing lawyer to see the independence that I have always brought to every particular matter.” Generating the most headlines today was her defense of President Obama's controversial policy to ease deportation rules for millions of undocumented immigrants. Noting that Holder's Justice Department had backed Obama's action, Lynch said, “I don’t see any reason to doubt the reasonableness of those views.” Other high-profile issues that came up before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as noted by the Washington Post and Politico: Death penalty: She backs it as an "effective penalty." Waterboarding: It is "torture and thus illegal." NSA surveillance: The programs were "constitutional and effective." Marijuana: It “certainly would be my policy" to continue enforcing marijuana laws at the federal level. Bottom line? Lynch is expected to win approval of the committee and be confirmed by the full Senate, reports the New York Times. To do so, she needs three Republican votes on the panel, and, barring surprises, Democrats think they have them in Lindsey Graham, Orrin Hatch, and Jeff Flake.