Friday, September 26, 2014

Eric Holder was certainly no Abu Gonzales

Not even Richard Nixon's John Mitchell, for that matter.

Still, there remain any number of good reasons his departure is long overdueWay past time that he make like cow chips and hit the dusty trail.  Head on back to where he came from, or perhaps Goldman Sachs or some such.

Holder’s tenure as Attorney General has been a tragic one. Not only has he been engulfed in partisan scandals over an incompetent gun running sting known as “Fast and Furious,” he has been under fire for attacking the First Amendment rights of the media and is widely seen as having given his friends and former clients on Wall Street a complete pass on the criminal conduct that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

Holder’s involvement with the war on whistleblowers, tracking and intimidating reporters, killing Americans without judicial review, and the abysmal failure to enforce the law against criminals in the financial services industry has left America a more divided and unjust society. Not a particularly good legacy to leave behind.
America not only saw a white collar crime wave go unpunished, but saw Holder himself announce a doctrine that has been called Too Big To Jail. Holder claimed in congressional testimony that some Wall Street banks could not be prosecuted because of their size, saying  “If you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.”

Holder made no corresponding effort to break up the banks so they could become the appropriate size for him to feel comfortable prosecuting them when they broke the law. Instead, the comment signaled to everyone that if you were big and powerful enough the Holder Justice Department was not coming after you in criminal court – which still holds true as there has not been any major prosecutions against the banks or bankers.

I appreciate what Eric Holder has done in standing up for the Voting Rights Act, and more specifically I am grateful for his fight against Greg Abbott over photo IDs for Texas voters.  How that case eventually turns out may well be a star in his crown.  In terms of admiration, it's difficult for me to remember the day, nearly six years ago, that the Senior Box Turtle from Texas stalled Holder's nomination to AG because Cornyn disagreed that waterboarding was torture.

Ah, the memories.  From June of 2008, Eric Holder, speaking to the American Constitution Society.

"I never thought I would see the day when a Justice Department would claim that only the most extreme infliction of pain and physical abuse constitutes torture and that acts that are merely cruel, inhuman and degrading are consistent with United States law and policy, that the Supreme Court would have to order the president of the United States to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention, never thought that I would see that a president would act in direct defiance of federal law by authorizing warrantless NSA surveillance of American citizens. This disrespect for the rule of law is not only wrong, it is destructive."

And in June a year ago.

Eric Holder did do some good as attorney general of the United States, but his refusal to prosecute so many more crimes and injustices -- to say nothing of the broken promises of transparency -- is a black mark in the history books.  A very easy bottom line: as long as war criminals and Wall Street thieves walk about free while thousands of petty offenders of marijuana laws languish in jail, Holder's grade as the nation's top law enforcement officer is a failing one.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

James O'Keefe might be in Houston, and other things

-- There's some folks who think the destroyer of ACORN might be in town to try to catch some voter "fraud"... or something.

Though it probably did take him a couple of weeks to hitchhike up here from the border after his latest stunt, he's still a little too soon for early voting.  So beware all you people getting folks registered between now and the deadline for that.  You don't want to be on Candid Conservative Camera.

Update:


-- Frankly, I don't understand why Republicans are so worried about their election results in Texas.  Maybe they're listening to what Harvey Kronberg (Quorum Report) and Ross Ramsey (Texas Tribune) are saying, and also taking no solace in Politico's assessment of the gubernatorial contest.

-- Ladies and gentlemen: here is your Texas NORML Voter's Guide.

-- Awful DC leftists blast Hillary Clinton in secret e-mails.  The Hill has finally gone TMZ, complete with autoplay video.

The Hill reviewed hundreds of emails from a progressive members only Google group called the “Gamechanger Salon,” a forum where nearly 1,500 activists, strategists and journalists debate issues and craft messaging campaigns.

The group includes prominent Democrats, Sierra Club officials, journalists who work for The Huffington Post and The Nation magazine, senior union representatives, leaders at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the president of NARAL.

In the emails spanning over a year — starting in June 2013 through July of this year — frustration with Clinton is evident.

Clinton’s too much of a hawk, too cozy with Wall Street, hasn’t spoken out enough on climate change, and will be subject to personal questions and criticisms, members of the group stated in the emails.

The existence of the group was reported earlier this year by the conservative outlet MediaTrackers.org, but this is the first time the emails have become public.

Will more developments like this convince Bernie Sanders to run as a Democrat in 2016?

-- After almost nine years and more than $79 billion, the F-22 Raptor flew its first combat mission.  "Successfully".

The stealth F-22 has had chances to fight before – during Air Force operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan as well as its role in the no-fly zone over Libya in 2011 – but in each case the Air Force said the high-tech jet was not an “operational requirement.” 

The Pentagon apparently decided the U.S.-led strikes against ISIS in Syria, for which the Syrian government says it was given warning, were different. 

Do you think this fresh new war is going to lift the fortunes of Democrats in November?  After all, Rush Limbaugh and John Bolton and Sean Hannity are all afraid it might.

I would simply observe that Syria became the 7th predominantly Muslim nation to be bombed by the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate.  And that perhaps that's where all these new terrorists might be coming from. As for wars, bombing, 'protecting the Homeland', etc. and so on...