Is Eric Holder's grip on the 'Fast and Furious' fiasco slipping? (video)

"I have ultimate responsibility for that which happens in the department, but I cannot be expected to know the details for every operation that is ongoing in the Justice Department on a day-to-day basis," Holder told Congress last month. “Equally [as] unacceptable [as Fast and Furious], however, is the fact that too many in Congress are opposed to any discussion of fixing loopholes in our laws that facilitate the staggering flow of guns each year across our border to the south." It "seems clear that some in Congress are more interested in using this regrettable incident to score political points than in addressing the underlying problem," Holder said.

In a sign that the Fast and Furious furor is getting under his skin, Holder last week lambasted a reporter for the Daily Caller, a conservative Internet publication that has been zealously covering the scandal, telling him, “You guys need to – you need to stop this. It’s not an organic thing that’s just happening. You guys are behind it.”

While the White House has remained relatively quiet on Fast and Furious, other Democrats have come to Holder's defense, saying Republican calls for resignation are clearly partisan, in part because they've largely ignored a smaller-scale gun-walking program, “Operation Wide Receiver,” implemented during the Bush administration. However, that program, unlike Fast and Furious, was a joint operation with Mexican authorities.

“Holder has a history of dedication to the rule of law with little regard for partisan politics,” blogger Britton Loftin wrote on the opinion site, Politic365. “His ability to continue the work of chief lawyer for the United States in the face of intense political posturing shows that it is not likely the nation’s first African-American Attorney General is going anywhere any time soon." 

Unlike the 52 Republican congressmen, two GOP senators, the bulk of presidential candidates, and two sitting governors who have asked Holder to resign, Seantor Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California, who is conducting an investigation as head of the House oversight committee, have stopped short of asking him to do so.

“The fact is it is not about any one person. It is not about Eric Holder, it is not about [Breuer],” whose office signed off on the wiretaps for the operation, Representative Issa told reporters at a recent Monitor breakfast event. Instead, “it is about a failure that seems to be pervasive within [the Department of] Justice that investigations play fast and loose with the expectations of what is right or wrong when it comes to ... collateral damage. This isn’t the first time the FBI and other agencies have been involved in investigations in which bad people are allowed to continue doing bad things in the name of going after bad people.”

But after Grassley's call on Wednesday for Breuer to resign, Issa is expected to demand at Thursday's hearing that Holder “clean house” at the Justice Department.

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