Senator suggests Holder step down

A top-ranking Senate Republican suggested that Attorney General Eric Holder should "step down" one year into the job.

GOP Conference Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) said on "Fox News Sunday" that the embattled Holder likely made the decision to read Miranda rights to accused underpants bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, after 50 minutes of interrogation by the FBI.

"Perhaps he should step down," Alexander said on Sunday morning.

"(Holder's) doing a better job of interrogating CIA employees than he is of interrogating terrorists, and he's not making a distinction between enemy combatants and terrorists flying into Detroit trying to blow up planes and American citizens who are committing a crime. He needs to go to Congress and say I made that decsion, and here's why. And based on that perhaps he should step down," Alexander explained.

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod, however, pushed back against criticism of the decision made by unconfirmed officials in the administration to end the questioning of the suspected terrorist after less than an hour.

Axelrod said on NBC's "Meet The Press" that despite ending the interrogation on Christmas Day, the administration has since gleaned information from the native Nigerian who spent time in Yemen and is currently in federal custody.

"Over time they have had additional opporutinties to question; my sense is that he has given very valuable information. ... We have not lost anything by how his case has been handled," Axelrod said.

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