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Most controversially, he defended the FBI's right to track people's cars without warrants. He approved of the National Security Agency's authority to sweep up millions of phone records of Americans accused of no crime.

Holder's department also wrote a legal justification for killing American citizens overseas if it is determined they pose a threat to U.S. lives and can't be apprehended through traditional means.

Each of these issues calls for serious debate, which too often is lacking on Capitol Hill. As much as lawmakers in both parties complain about a growing imperial presidency, depending on which party is sitting in the White House, Congress has not been eager to make those tough decisions, either.

I'm losing count, for example, of all the wars we have fought since World War II, the last time Congress actually voted formally to declare war, as called for in the Constitution.

Congress having avoided a formal declaration of war for so long, too many lawmakers would rather duck, dodge and delay making tough decisions -- and complain about whatever the White House does later.

With that in mind, I am dismayed but not shocked that what many journalists and civil libertarians see as a war on the press started in Holder's office.

He has subpoenaed journalists, their emails and their phone records in a crackdown on their sources. He has started more investigations than any of his predecessors into government officials who disclosed information to reporters.

The New York Times reporter James Risen, who has refused to reveal his sources about information on Iran, remains under subpoena.

For actions like these, as I have written, attorney James Goodale, who argued for the Times in the historic Pentagon Papers case against the Nixon administration before the Supreme Court, described Obama as "rapidly becoming the worst ... president ever" for respecting press freedom on national security matters.

Holder acknowledged in a New York Times exit interview after announcing his resignation that those efforts went too far at times. He praised his office's new rules to limit investigations involving journalists.

As one who participated as a representative of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists in one of his early meetings, I praise those rules as a good beginning to a necessary debate about freedoms in the age of counterterrorism.

Team Obama's concerns about keeping America safe are laudable, but always must be balanced by the need to keep Americans free.

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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.

(c) 2014 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.