Holder said coping with tough workload

WASHINGTON, July 14 (UPI) -- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is facing tremendous pressure from the right and left, and appears to be aging quickly, friends and colleagues say.

Holder has lost weight, his hair is quickly graying and new lines have appeared on his face as he copes with criticism from the right that he's too soft on terrorism and from the left that he's too slow to unearth ethical lapses of the Bush administrations, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

"Under normal circumstances, the attorney general is one of the hardest jobs in government," prominent Washington lawyer and longtime friend Reid Weingarten told the newspaper. "There is a constant stream of impossibly difficult policy, case-related, bureaucratic and personnel decisions crossing your desk every minute."

Holder is dealing with such weighty issues as torture allegations at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the unprecedented financial meltdown and restoring the credibility lost by the Justice Department under the previous administration, observers told the Times.

"From what I've heard, he's working like a dog," Washington lawyer James Cole said. "The issues he has on his plate are fascinating and frustrating. He's got all the tools to do it, but those are really tough issues."