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. 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. He asked her: How will senators know you will not be another Holder? Caption Nominee for U.S. attorney general testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 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. 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. “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. 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. Immigration proved to be the most significant flash point during the hearing, with Republicans voicing continuing outrage over the administration’s executive actions. 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. “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. 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. 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. 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. “I certainly don’t hold that view and don’t agree with that view of marijuana,” Lynch said. 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. “As attorney general, I will draw all voices into this important discussion.” 
 
 Lynch was accompanied by her husband, Stephen Hargrove; her father, the Rev. 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. “No, I’m not, sir,” Lynch replied.
– 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.