This week Loretta Lynch was sworn in as Attorney General of the United States, replacing Eric Holder. Let’s hope for change, and for America’s sake, the replacement is a huge upgrade.

Holder’s service was a dangerous and troublesome threat to the whole of America. No doubt Lynch holds many of the same tenets, or Obama wouldn’t have selected her, but let’s put our minds on the side of confidence that she has scruples, understands the Constitution and knows laws are for everyone, not just the select few.

Holder had a practice of photo-oping where he should not have been, and being absent where he should have been acting.

L.A. Times reporter Timothy Phelps covers the Department of Justice and wrote a piece on Holder’s departure in which he noted that Holder worked in the Justice Department “on and off” since 1976. Holder is proud of his record, saying, “this department has been restored to what it always was, free of politicization and focused on the mission without any kind of interference from political outsiders.”

Two comments: 1) If it’s always been so good, how could it be restored? 2) It is astounding he would claim “free of politicization” under his direction.

He is right about one thing: It was free of “political outsiders,” as the taint was from deep within.

Holder evinced his shady tendencies long ago.

In 2001, then-President Bill Clinton, urged by then-Deputy Assistant General Eric Holder, pardoned Marc Rich, who had fled the country on massive tax evasion charges and made the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list.

The 2001 House Committee on Government Reform Report concluded that Rich hired attorney Jack Quinn, as recommended by Holder. Quinn was a confidante of Al Gore, and with hopes of Gore being elected president in 2001, Holder had a good shot at becoming U.S. Attorney General.

Holder would reach his aspirations with Barack Obama’s 2008 election.

Only the date changed. The man did not.

Holder, as the United States’ top attorney, has repeatedly done grave disservices to the citizens.

For the 2008 election, at a Philadelphia polling place, New Black Panther members stood at the entrance in full-on hoodlum garb to intimidate would-be voters. At least one prominently held a billy club.

Audio-video evidence and personal testimonies clearly evidenced their violations of the Federal Voting Rights Act.

In 2010 Holder, in synchronization with the Obama administration, ordered the charges dismissed; the violators would not be prosecuted.

Former Justice Department Attorney J. Christian Adams resigned in protest over the illicit command.

When the United States Commission on Civil Rights subpoenaed Adams to testify, the Justice Department refused to let him appear. Adams revealed he incurred great personal expenses to hire personal lawyers for advice on the subpoenas; they said he must comply.

Adams’ employer did nothing in his defense.

In his May 19, 2010, resignation letter, Adams laid out the atrocities leading to his resignation including the “criminal character and violent tendencies” of the New Black Panthers.

In later interviews with various media, Adams said, among other things:

* “There is a pervasive hostility within the civil rights division at the Justice Department toward these sorts of cases.”

* (Not enforcing the Voter Rights Act) “raises serious questions about the department’s enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election.”

* This New Black Panther Party case was the “easiest I ever had at the Justice Department.”

Holder failed again in 2013.

James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, testified before Congress in March 2013 concerning the NSA spying on Americans.

He was questioned by Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who asked: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper answered: “No, sir … not wittingly.”

Wyden followed up with more questions in writing. Not surprising, neither Clapper nor and his mouthpiece, Shawn Turner, replied. Astoundingly, on June 12, 2013, Clapper told NBC: “I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner, by saying no.”

In other words, “I lied.”

That lie was ignored with Obama stating on PBS on June 17, 2013, four days after Clapper’s admission: “What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls and the NSA cannot target your e-mails.”

Both men spoke when the public was aware the NSA had accumulated all phone records from, at least, AT&T and Verizon.

Eric Holder never touched Clapper for lying to Congress, and Clapper still holds his post.

2013 also brought us Lois Lerner and the IRS.

Lerner’s misdeeds of spending lots of taxpayer money to fund her staff for the political mission of targeting anything deemed “conservative” and handing over personal taxpayer information to Eric Holder’s clan are still being smothered.

In multiple appearances before Congress, Lerner felt free both to voice her innocence and plead her Fifth Amendment rights.

The average American would not be afforded both sides of the coin — give testimony on your holiness and then say, I don’t have to tell you anything adverse about my key role in this scandal.

Oops, Lois, you just did.

In May 2014, Politico referenced DOJ attorney Ronald Machen’s lockstep position, reporting, “Machen’s office has been reviewing the issue since then,” and “given that assessment, we have further concluded that it is not appropriate for a United States attorney to present the matter to the grand jury for action where, as here, the Constitution prevents the witness from being prosecuted for contempt.”

Nearly one year later, April 1, 2015, the DOJ announced it would not seek criminal contempt charges against Lerner, stating that Lerner “did not waive her Fifth Amendment right by making an opening statement on May 22, 2013, because she made only a general claims of innocence.”

It would be “hope” to think Loretta Lynch would view this differently, and it would be “change” to see her act accordingly.

Betty Arenson has lived in the SCV since 1968 and describes herself as a conservative who’s concerned about progressives’ politics and their impacts on the country, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She says she is unashamed to own a gun or a Bible, couldn’t care less about the color of the president’s skin, and demands that he uphold his oath to protect and follow the Constitution of the United States in its entirety.