Attorney General Eric Holder continually, in complete disregard for the fact that the Justice Department should be totally nonpartisan, goes from one flagrantly political action to another.There are many examples. Last year, Holder got into trouble playing politics when announcing that the administration would try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the terrorist architect of 9/11, in a civilian courtroom. He was trying to demonize the Bush administration's supposed lawlessness in confining Mohammed to Guantanamo. Unfortunately for the Attorney General, New Yorkers protested stoutly against holding the trial next to the scene of the 9/11 crime. Holder had to back off. The president quickly assured the nation that Mohammed would be "convicted" and have "the death penalty ... applied to him." Suddenly, Bush's planned military tribunals seemed a lot less prejudicial than Holder's planned civilian show trials.
Likewise entirely political is Holder's continual refusal to link radical Islam with the epidemic of global terrorism. When asked at a congressional hearing whether radical Islamic terrorists were behind the Fort Hood killings, the attempted Christmas Day bombing and the foiled Times Square bomb attack, Holder refused to identify that obvious common connection. Instead, he pointed to a "variety of reasons." The nation's chief prosecutor was not looking at the evidence, but sticking to his interpretation of a politically correct agenda.
Obama, in his campaign for the Presidency, repeatedly promised to close Guantanamo Bay. Holder blamed Congress for playing politics and preventing the Administration from closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center. He is being blatantly disingenuous for a variety of reasons.
First, Obama campaigned on calls to reverse the Bush administration anti-terrorism protocols, charging that they were either unnecessary or counterproductive. Then, when he was faced with the responsibility of governing and ensuring our safety, Obama suddenly reversed himself on almost all of them -- tribunals, renditions, Iraq, the Patriot Act, targeted airborne assassinations and Guantanamo Bay. Holder himself once openly supported the detention of terrorists without regard for the Geneva Conventions. What made him change his views so radically?
The simple fact is that, any time the President wants to close Guantanamo Bay, he can carry out his earlier executive order, without congressional approval, in the same manner in which President Bush opened it. By blaming Congress, Holder fails mention the real reasons why the president broke his promise: The American public now wants unrepentant terrorists to remain in Guantanamo. They do not want them to be incarcerated and tried in civilian courts here at home.
On matters of race, the Attorney General called America "a nation of cowards" for not engaging in a national conversation on race. This makes little sense when you realize that at present we have a black president, attorney general, EPA head and NASA chief, Hispanic secretaries of Labor and the Interior, and a recent Hispanic Supreme Court appointment, not to mention that both of the two previous secretaries of state were black. Plus the fact that our new Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, identified herself as a "wise Latina" who supposedly exercises superior judgment over the usual white male jurist. The plain truth is that the nation suffers from too much racial self-identification and politicking, not too little.
Holder himself has used race for political purposes. He criticized Arizona for its anti-illegal alien law -- after admitting that he hadn't even read it. Then he chose to sue the state for trying to enforce the unenforced federal immigration laws. Now he has promised that if his lawsuit fails, he will sue Arizona again, alleging that its new legislation would entail racial profiling. Remember, the law has not gone into effect yet, so Holder has no evidence of any racial profiling as a result of the Arizona law (which includes language specifically prohibiting this kind of profiling).
In another outrageous action, Holder dropped a voter fraud case against the New Black Panther Party, which was caught on tape intimidating voters at a polling place. He is leveling charges of racism against those who deliberately excluded racial profiling in their legislation, while giving a free pass to those who blatantly used race to hassle voters at the polls.
Holder has proven to be the most political attorney general in our history. He will continue to embarrass the nation until he steps down. He should be forced to resign, and the sooner the better!
Here is Mr. Holder making his comments regarding race. He does not once make any acknowledgment of the progress made in civil rights in this country in the past 40 years. The hypocrisy of his words is thick enough to cut with a knife.
On This Day in History:
1924 Don Knotts (actor) born
1952 Robin Williams (comedian) born
1588 Spanish Armada Defeated
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