Wednesday, November 16, 2011

HOLDER MUST GO


The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. Eric Holder has been all wrong from the beginning.

The entire country saw the video of members of the New Black Panther Party in front of a polling place in Philadelphia, dressed in paramilitary uniforms, wielding clubs, and yelling racial threats at white voters. By the time Holder took office, the Bush administration had won the civil suit against these perpetrators. Holder soon dropped the charges, claiming there was insufficient evidence.

Really? Everyone else saw the video.

Holder’s true motivation was revealed by his statement “when you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, to compare …. that with what happened in Philadelphia, …does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line for my people.” No, Mr. Holder. The point was to protect the voting rights for all Americans. Same crime, just different players.

Members of the Dept. of Justice resigned, revealing that they had been instructed by Holder not to prosecute minorities for civil rights violations. Is this the Obama post racial presidency?

Holder pushed to have the five 9/11 defendants headed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tried in civilian court rather than by military tribunal, the traditional venue for war related crimes. In the middle of a national economic catastrophe, this maneuver would have cost the taxpayers 2 billion dollars, given the terrorists a public propaganda platform, and put the people of New York City at risk for reprisal. All for a poorly thought out ideological statement that remains resistant to comprehension.

It was Holder that personally resurrected the closed case against CIA members involved in counter-terrorism after 9/11. He did this over warnings by President Obama and the objections of 7 previous directors of the CIA. Professional prosecutors under the Bush administration had investigated and cleared the agents of wrongdoing, and it was revealed that Holder had never bothered to read their memos before reopening the case. More misguided ideology, and the case was ultimately dropped in July, 2011.

In August, Holder’s justice department raided the Gibson Guitar Company, confiscating ebony fingerboards imported from India and used to make high range guitars. This action was taken under the Lacey Act, signed by McKinley in 1900, that protects against importing illegal plant products. It didn’t matter to Holder that the Indian government certified these products as quite legal. To our justice department all would have been fine if Indian workers had done some form of finishing of the fingerboards. Holder’s action threatened to close in the middle of an unemployment crisis two American plants which make valuable export products and which employ 1500 people. The justice department should have better things to do.

Other guitar manufacturers in the U.S. that use the same part were not raided. The CEO of Gibson Guitar is a registered Republican who contributes to Republican candidates. The owners of Gibson’s chief competition contribute to Democratic candidates.

Fast forward to Fast and Furious. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms under the Justice Department decides to sell thousands of automatic weapons to Mexican drug gangs in order to trace the flow of weapons. Bonehead. One of those weapons killed an American border agent. Who knows how many Mexican law enforcement agents and civilians are killed using these guns. Next we’ll sell processed uranium to arms dealers in Pakistan and see if it shows up in Iranian nuclear weapons.

This taxpayer funded secret program was exposed, and in his testimony before Congress, Holder stated that he had only heard of it a few weeks before. Trouble for Holder began when investigative reporters uncovered memos describing this program in great detail were sent directly to Holder a year before this testimony. Our chief law enforcement officer may be seen as having lied to Congress. This is a felony.

In his defense, Holder claims that he receives hundreds of memos and did not read these. If we accept his explanation, then the attorney general is simply lazy or incompetent. There is a pattern here. When Holder filed suit against Arizona to block its revised immigration law and was brought before Congress to explain, he admitted that he had not read the Arizona bill. He had heard about it on the news. Remarkable, as the bill was only thirteen pages long.

Eric Holder is supposed to be an Obama favorite. If this American justice, then we are a banana republic.