I’m glad Attorney General Eric Holder dropped the case against Sen. Ted Stevens.

By doing so, Holder signals that he and President Obama will not be using the Justice Department for political purposes.

It would have been easy for Holder and Obama to let the case against the former Alaska Senator proceed.

After all, he was a doctrinaire and unpleasant Republican, and if Holder and Obama were vindictive, or if they didn’t care about the rule of law, they could have pressed forward.

After all, a jury had already convicted Stevens, and the Justice Department could have fought to uphold that conviction on appeal.

But Holder recognized that the government had withheld evidence, and he was rightfully appalled by that, and so he’s done the courageous thing and has dropped the charges against Stevens.

Now I only hope that Holder and Obama apply this same sense of integrity in other cases.

Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal, unlike Stevens, have spent many, many years behind bars for crimes they may not have committed and for sentences that were upheld despite gross prosecutorial misconduct.

And you can’t find grosser government conduct than that which was meted out to some of the detainees in Guantanamo.

One yardstick for all. That’s our justice system. So let’s apply it.