I didn't have one single reaction upon reading this morning that Attorney General Eric Holder is resigning. Maybe the first thing I thought was that President Obama is going to be a whole lot lonelier in the Oval Office for the next two years; Holder seems to have been one of Obama's staunchest allies over the last six years—a hell of a lot closer, and probably a hell of a lot more trustworthy, than Joe Biden. Obama has used Holder as a mouthpiece in situations where it's been too tricky for the president to become involved, as we recently saw in Ferguson. Holder has a spotty record on civil liberties—he's taken heat from both the left and the far right as an enemy of freedom of the press and a fearsome enforcer when it comes to whistleblowers. He let Wall Street and the big banks trample the middle class. He deserves all that criticism—Holder has done a lot to keep George W. Bush's paranoid, power-obsessed America alive for another eight years—but he's taken a lot of criticism that he doesn't deserve, too. The New York Times, for instance, describes Holder as a "lightning rod" for "partisan venom," which is a decidedly mixed metaphor that somehow works perfectly.

He's also been a force for good. Holder has been a strong supporter of civil rights, gay marriage, and reduced prison time for nonviolent drug offenders. He's been permissive of Washington and Colorado's experiments with legalized marijuana. We just got an e-mail from Christian ninnies Morality in Media saying Holder's resignation "can only give hope to those suffering the ravages of the pornography pandemic in America." Anyone painting him as a faux-liberal is intentionally obscuring half the man's record. Anyone trying to paint him as a strictly liberal politician is missing the point, too.

So now everyone's trying to figure out who's going to be attorney general for the next two years. Outgoing Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is a favorite with the celebrity-obsessed Washington media—they're trying to conflate a Washington DC trip on Patrick's schedule today with President Obama's 4:30 pm (1:30 pm Seattle time) official announcement of Holder's resignation—and, well, who knows? Patrick is a good friend of the president's, as Holder was, and Obama certainly seems to be happy with a friend filling that role. I can't imagine a politician as ambitious as Patrick would take the job unless there was a promise of some significant accomplishments in the next two years, so a Patrick nomination could be a hopeful sign that President Obama isn't looking to fade away at the end of his term. But Obama could go with a mirthless bureaucrat, too. Whoever winds up in the spotlight could be an important signal of how the Obama Administration plans to spend its last few months in office, and how Obama plans to frame his legacy.