Remember that Led Zeppelin song, “The Song Remains the Same”? That’s all this aging Baby Boomer can think about as we learn of the familiar appointments that President-elect Barack Obama has been making. But it’s one thing to recycle old faces under the guise of “change” (think Joe Biden, first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972), and it’s quite another to bring back folks who were unapologetically in the middle of the various foibles and scandals of the Clinton administration (think Greg Craig).

And now, here’s another one: Eric Holder, now tipped to be the next Attorney General.

Eric Holder/AP photo

This is the way The Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman summed up the quick critique of Holder:

As Bill Clinton’s deputy attorney general, he was the gatekeeper for presidential pardons. Most famously, he waved through the pardon for fugitive financier Marc Rich in the waning days of the Clinton White House. But Republicans — through the Republican National Committee, conservative media outlets like The Wall Street Journal editorial page and aggressive freelance operators — are spreading their net wider. One target of opportunity: Clinton’s pardon of 16 Puerto Rican nationalists (or terrorists, depending on your perspective) linked to the FALN, the Spanish acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation.

Yes, those are good places to begin: Marc Rich, who broke U.S. law by trading with the Ayatollahs’ regime in Iran, and those Puerto Rican “nationalists” (the U.S. government thought they were terrorists when they were convicted).

Let’s hope that our senators, especially the Republicans, brush up on the Constitution, and the duties that document affords–and imposes. I’m especially thinking of Article Two, Section Three, which stipulates the “advice and consent” procedure for confirming high officials to office.

Such confirmation hearings are not just a formality: They are a vital part of our system of Constitutional checks-and-balances. So Holder—or anyone else—should not be confirmed without a full and detailed examination of his past. Because it won’t be “change we can believe in” if it is, in fact, the same old song and dance.