Early opportunity to show some spine: filling the Attorney General spot

A couple of names being tossed about at this point. Fox News says that Loretta Lynch would be a low-profie pick:

Lynch, who grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, began her career as a federal prosecutor in 1990. While a chief assistant U.S. attorney, she was on the trial team in one of the most sensational police brutality cases in city history, the broomstick torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in a precinct bathroom.

She originally served as U.S. attorney in Brooklyn from 1999 to 2001 before entering private practice. She returned to the position in 2010 and was appointed to the Attorney General's Advisory Committee, a position that required her to spend more time in Washington and drew her closer to Holder.

During her second tenure at one of the country's busiest federal districts, Lynch's office has won convictions in a thwarted, al-Qaida sanctioned plot to attack New York City subways, and charged the head of a Mexican drug cartel with 12 murders. More recently, her office brought tax evasion charges against Republican Congressman Michael Grimm that's scheduled to go to trial next year.

Still, Lynch often has been overshadowed by the media-savvy Bharara, whose office has prosecuted numerous headline-grabbing cases against terrorists, corrupt politicians and Wall Street swindlers. But behind the scenes, she has won respect for dedicating much of her career to law enforcement without seeking publicity.

"I don't think that's why she's in government and that's a real admirable quality," said Andrew Weissman, a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with Lynch and now teaches law at New York University.

And then there's current Labor Secretary Tom Perez, whose career trajectory is a bit more controversial:

California Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez gushed to Politico: "Being around him makes me a little bit giddy. ...

He cares about the stuff that I care about, and he's so articulate about it." The "stuff" Perez cares about is the bread and butter of radical leftwing identity politics. It's "social justice"-crusading on steroids.

Just this week, a federal judge rebuked Perez's ambitious campaign to pervert housing discrimination laws and exploit racially disparate outcomes in order to prove manufactured bias.

"Disparate-impact" studies serve as high-octane fuel for a greedy fleet of civil-rights lawsuits. Once the numbers are cooked and disparate impact is shown, the heavy legal burden of disproving racial discrimination falls on the defendant. Lenders and insurers have forked over tens of millions of dollars in these social engineering shakedowns.

Neither Congress nor the federal Fair Housing Act embraces disparate impact theory or practice. But Perez plowed ahead anyway. Judge Richard Leon on Monday blasted Perez's legal overreach as "hutzpah (bordering on desperation)" and described Perez's backroom maneuvering to prevent the Supreme Court from weighing in on the scheme as "troubling."

A congressional investigation last year found that Perez -- then serving as an assistant attorney general in the Obama Justice Department -- cut a deal with the city of St. Paul, Minn., to withdraw a SCOTUS appeal that could have limited Perez's use of disparate impact tools. In exchange, the DOJ declined to intervene in two unrelated legal complaints against the city.

The quid pro quo wasn't just full of hutzpah. It reeked of the very kind of justice-sabotaging corruption that Holder trademarked at DOJ.

Leon isn't the only one who smells a rat. Last year, the DOJ Inspector General's office spotlighted racialist foul play at Perez's bureau, where "polarization and mistrust" reigned. Perez was explicitly hostile to race-neutral law enforcement and as Virginia GOP Rep. Frank Wolf summed up: The "report makes clear that the division has become a rat's nest of unacceptable and unprofessional actions, and even outright threats against career attorneys and systemic mismanagement."

Perez has used his power to conduct vengeful witch-hunts against police departments and advocates of strict immigration enforcement. The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and former special counsel for the late illegal alien amnesty champion Sen. Ted Kennedy made a career putting illegal aliens above law-abiding citizens. He is a selective enforcer of the nation's laws.  A leader of the George Soros-funded Casa de Maryland illegal alien advocacy group, Perez lobbied for in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students, driver's licenses and tax-subsidized day labor centers.

As I've reported previously, Casa de Maryland pushed for Obama's 800,000 illegal alien deportation waivers through administrative fiat. The group opposes enforcement of deportation orders, protested post-9/11 coordination of local, state and national criminal databases, and produced a "know your rights" propaganda pamphlet for illegal aliens that depicted federal immigration agents as armed bullies making babies cry.

Pretty much Holder Redux, maybe even Holder on steroids.

Will other possibilities emerge?

Within the universe of these two, it's obvious Pubs would have to give an instant thumbs-down to Perez and learn a lot more about Lynch.