Sharyl Attkisson Accuses Obama DOJ of Secretly Swapping Out Her Computer Hard Drive
Posted: March 2, 2018 Filed under: Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: CBS News, DOJ, Eric Holder, Hacking, Obama Adminstration, Sharyl Attkisson, Spying Leave a comment
The former CBS correspondent says the current DOJ is “stonewalling” her.
Paula Bolyard reports: Former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson accused the Department of Justice (DOJ) of monkeying around with her hard drive while her computer was in their possession. She tweeted on Thursday, “What would you think if I told you the hard drive of one of my personal computers was secretly switched out w/another while in custody of the Justice Dept. Inspector General– before they gave it back to me?”
Re: My govt. computer intrusions…What would you think if I told you the hard drive of one of my personal computers was secretly switched out w/another while in custody of the Justice Dept. Inspector General– before they gave it back to me? (Tick-tock.) #GettingCloserToAnswers
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) March 1, 2018
You may recall that Attkisson’s computer was hacked back in 2012 while she was working for CBS and reporting on the Benghazi scandal. CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair said at the time that a cybersecurity firm hired by CBS News “has determined through forensic analysis” that “Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012.”
[Read the full story here, at pjmedia.com]
“Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts,” McNair said. “While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.
This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion. CBS News is taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access.” Read the rest of this entry »
Richard Pollock: Obama Rarely Prosecuted Criminals Who Sought To Buy Guns Illegally
Posted: November 16, 2017 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Guns and Gadgets, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Barack Obama, Daily Caller, Dave Workman, DOJ, Duplicity, Eric Holder, FBI, Felons, Gun Crimes, lie and buy, National Instant Criminal Background Check System, Obama administration Leave a comment
Richard Pollock reports: More than 100,000 convicted felons or other “prohibited persons” tried to buy guns each year during President Barack Obama’s administration by lying on their applications, but the Justice Department only considered prosecuting about 30 to 40 people each year, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation.
The Obama administration may have publicly aligned itself with anti-gun activists, but it consistently turned a blind eye to prosecute known criminals who tried to buy guns.
A June 2016 Justice Department Inspector General’s report revealed that between 2008 and 2015 the U.S. Attorneys office considered prosecuting “less than 32 people per year” for lying on form 4473, the federal application to buy guns.
Surprisingly, the Obama administration’s harshest critics are gun manufacturers themselves.
“People could do what is called, ‘lie and buy,’” explained Lawrence Keane, a senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a nonprofit organization that represents gun manufacturers.
“But very infrequently is anyone ever prosecuted. What’s the point of making it a crime if you don’t enforce it?” he asked in an interview with TheDCNF.
“It’s a long-standing problem. And it was certainly true over the last eight years where the Department of Justice did not prosecute people,” he complained.
Daniel D. Roberts, who in 2009 was named Assistant Director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, confirmed that more than 100,000 criminals each year attempt to buy guns even though they have rap sheets.
“When I was there, it was running around 100,000 a year of firearm purchasers that tried to go through to buy guns. I think it’s more than 100,000 now,” he told TheDCNF in an interview. “That should trigger a referral to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for investigation for lying on the forms.”
Two of every 10 gun denials referred to the ATF was sent to field offices for prosecution, a Justice Department report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2013 and 2014 found. Eight of ten never faced prosecution, according to the report.
[Read the full story here, at dailycaller.com]
Roberts ran the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) checks, that is the main tool the bureau uses to conduct background checks of potential buyers of guns. He left the bureau only last year.
Dave Workman, a senior editor of the Gunmag.com, a publication owned by the pro-gun rights Second Amendment Foundation, claims the Obama administration simply didn’t want to spend the money to prosecute people who lied on their form 4473.
“The Justice Department didn’t want to spend the money or interest or time to prosecute the key people who lied on their 4473,” he told TheDCNF in an interview. Read the rest of this entry »
BREAKING: Former Attorney General Eric Holder Recommends Obama Administration Playbook to New AG Jeff Sessions
Posted: March 2, 2017 Filed under: Law & Justice, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: Department of Justice, DOJ, Eric Holder, Jeff Sessions, satire 1 Comment
Deep State: Obama Agitators Are Subverting Government and Undermining Trump
Posted: February 16, 2017 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: ABC News, Alexander, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Eric Holder, Frankfurt School, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, John Daniel Davidson, Organizing for Action, Presidency of George W. Bush, Progressive, Radical Left, Saul Alinsky, Shadow Government, Subversion, The Federalist, White House 1 Comment
The leaks that led to Michael Flynn’s resignation are just the beginning. Obama and his loyalists in and outside government are working to undermine Trump.
“As the leaks keep flowing from our intelligence agencies and the tweets keep flying from former Obama officials, keep in mind that although we haven’t heard much from Obama himself yet, the Trump administration is going to keep feeling the disruptions of what amounts to a shadow government.”
There are exceptions, of course. Jimmy Carter threw himself into international diplomacy, mediating an agreement in 1994 to return exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in Haiti, and generally agitating for a Palestinian state.
Then there is Obama. Less than a month out of office, the broad contours of Obama’s post-presidency career are already taking shape. Obama and his loyalists, it seems, will remain in the center of the political fray, officially and unofficially, in an organized effort to undermine the Trump administration.
The bizarre scandal now unfolding over the resignation of national security advisor Michael Flynn is a case in point. Flynn’s resignation was prompted by a series of coordinated and anonymous leaks from current and former Obama administration officials in our domestic intelligence agencies.
“Obama had eight years in the White House to secure his legacy. Any efforts on his part to undermine his successor aren’t just an affront to the principles of our democracy, they’re an admission that he and his acolytes never put much stock in democracy to begin with.”
Regardless of any valid criticism of Flynn, the leaks are part of a larger, loosely organized effort now underway to preserve Obama’s legacy. This effort involves Obama-era officials still inside the federal government, former Obama staffers working in the private sector, and Obama himself.
[Read the full story here, at thefederalist.com]
This isn’t some conspiracy theory. After the election, Obama indicated he intends to stay involved in the political fray. In an email to his supporters on his last day in office, Obama encouraged them to stay engaged, promising “I’ll be right there with you every step of the way.” Less than two weeks later, he issued a statement saying he was “heartened” by anti-Trump protests over the executive order on immigration.
But there’s more to all this than Obama issuing solidarity statements to Trump protestors. For one thing, the former president isn’t moving back to Chicago. The Obama family will remain in Washington DC, within a couple miles of the White House, for the next two years as Obama’s youngest daughter finishes high school. Read the rest of this entry »
Attorney General Loretta Lynch Threatens U.S. Citizens, Vows Aggressive Action Against Those Who Use ‘Anti-Muslim’ Speech
Posted: December 4, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, Terrorism, White House | Tags: ATF gunwalking scandal, California, Civil liberties, Civil Rights, Council on American–Islamic Relations, Eric Holder, Fast & Furious, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, ISIS, Islam, Jihadism, Loretta Lynch, Muslim, propaganda, San Bernardino, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, Social Justice Warrior, United States Constitution, United States Department of Justice 5 Comments
James Barrett reports: The day after a horrific shooting spree by a “radicalized” Muslim man and his partner in San Bernardino, California, Attorney General Loretta Lynch pledged to a group of Muslim activists that she would take aggressive action against anyone who used “anti-Muslim rhetoric” that “edges toward violence.”
“It is painfully clear that, like her predecessor Eric Holder, Lynch is far more concerned with promoting the social justice agenda than protecting the Constitutional rights of American citizens. What exactly is speech that “edges toward violence”? What exactly are “actions predicated on violent talk”? In the end, it is whatever she decides it to mean.”
Speaking to the audience at the Muslim Advocate’s 10th anniversary dinner Thursday, Lynch said her “greatest fear” is the “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric” in America and vowed to prosecute any guilty of what she deemed violence-inspiring speech. She said:
The fear that you have just mentioned is in fact my greatest fear as a prosecutor, as someone who is sworn to the protection of all of the American people, which is that the rhetoric will be accompanied by acts of violence. My message to not just the Muslim community but to the entire American community is: we cannot give in to the fear that these backlashes are really based on.
Assuring the pro-Muslim group that “we stand with you,” Lynch said she would use her Justice Department to protect Muslims from “violence” and discrimination.
Claiming that violence against Muslims is on the rise and citing France’s clamp down on potentially radicalized mosques, Lynch suggested the Constitution does not protect “actions predicated on violent talk” and pledged to prosecute those responsible for such actions….(read more)
At The Corner, David French writes:
Lynch addressed the Muslim Advocate’s 10th anniversary dinner and declared that she is concerned about an “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric . . . that fear is my greatest fear.” Her greatest fear is — not terrorism — but a nonexistent Islamophobic backlash? ISIS has demonstrated that it can bring down passenger jets, strike the heart of a great Western capitol with urban assault teams, and inspire horrible carnage in California. We also know that ISIS has pledged to keep attacking the U.S. and possesses chemical weapons. Yet it’s politically incorrect speech that strikes fear into the heart of our attorney general.
What about blurring the distinction between speech and violence? Lynch is so serious about stopping Islamophobia that she’s sending a clear message to those who engage in “anti-Muslim rhetoric” — the Department of Justice is watching you:
“When we talk about the First amendment we [must] make it clear that actions predicated on violent talk are not American. They are not who we are, they are not what we do, and they will be prosecuted.”
And yet, there is no legally meaningful category of “action[s] predicated on violent talk.” Lynch spoke against rhetoric that “edges towards violence,” but the law obviously prohibits violent actions — she’s speaking in terms alien to the First Amendment. True threats are unlawful, and true “incitement” isn’t protected by the Constitution, but these are extraordinarily narrow legal categories. Is it not enough to declare that the Department of Justice will enforce the law and uphold the Constitution?
The First Amendment protects an enormous range of speech — even speech that’s anathema to the Obama administration. Americans are perfectly within their rights to not just condemn jihad but also to make sweeping and angry statements about Islam. If the administration disagrees with this speech, it’s free to make its own statements, but when it starts making up legal categories of problematic speech, it is getting disturbingly close to discarding the Bill of Rights. Read the rest of this entry »
Thomas Sowell: Have We Learned Anything?
Posted: September 5, 2015 Filed under: Economics, Health and Social Issues, Think Tank | Tags: 1964 Civil Rights Act, Al Sharpton, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Barack Obama, Boy Scouts, Civil Rights, Democratic Party (United States), Disparate impact, EEOC, Eric Holder, Ghetto, Harlem, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Lester Maddox, New York, New York City, Same-sex marriage, Slavery, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thomas Sowell, White House 1 Comment
The conservative sage on the decline of intellectual debate, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and what the welfare state has done to black America.
Kyle Peterson interviews Thomas Sowell:
…Why do we never seem to learn these economic lessons? “I think there’s a market for foolish things,” Mr. Sowell says—and vested interests, too. Once an organization such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is created to find discrimination, no one should be startled when it finds discrimination. “There’s never going to be a time when the EEOC will file a report saying, ‘All right folks, there’s really not enough discrimination around to be spending all this money,’ ” he says. “You’re going to have ever-more-elaborate definitions of discrimination. So now, if you don’t want to hire an ax murderer who has somehow gotten paroled, then that’s discrimination.”
“One of the things I try to do in the book is to distinguish between what might be the legacy of slavery, and what’s the legacy of the welfare state. If you look at the first 100 years after slavery, black communities were a lot safer. People were a lot more decent. But then you look 30 years after the 1960s revolution, and you see this palpable retrogression—of which I think the key one is the growth of the single-parent family.”
It’s a funny line—and an instance of what sets Mr. Sowell apart: candor and independence of mind. No one can suggest that he doesn’t say what he thinks. In 1987, while testifying in favor of Judge Robert Bork’s ill-fated nomination to the Supreme Court, he told Joe Biden, a senator at the time, that he wouldn’t have a problem with literacy tests for voting or with $1.50 poll taxes, so long as they were evenly and fairly applied. When I ask whether he remembers this exchange, Mr. Sowell quips, “No, Joe Biden is forgettable.”
“If you say that Lester Maddox has to serve his chicken to blacks, you’re saying that the Boy Scouts have to have gay scout masters. You’re saying—ultimately—that the Catholic Church has to perform same-sex marriages.”
In our interview he maintains that the 1964 Civil Rights Act should have stuck to desegregating buses and government services, and let market forces take care of integrating lunch counters. Mr. Sowell says that the precedent set by imposing integration on people like Lester Maddox, a segregationist governor of Georgia who also owned a chicken restaurant, has opened a Pandora’s box.
“People want to believe what they want to believe, and the facts are not going to stop them’, he says, adding that black leaders—from President Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder down to Al Sharpton—’do all they can to feed that sense of grievance, victimhood and resentment, because that’s where the votes are.’”
“If you say that Lester Maddox has to serve his chicken to blacks, you’re saying that the Boy Scouts have to have gay scout masters. You’re saying—ultimately—that the Catholic Church has to perform same-sex marriages.”
“It’s not a question of the disproportion between blacks and whites, or Asians, but the disproportion between blacks of today and blacks of the previous generation. And that’s what’s scary.”
Mr. Sowell is unsparing toward those who purport to speak for American blacks. I ask him about the unrest in Ferguson, Mo. “People want to believe what they want to believe, and the facts are not going to stop them,” he says, adding that black leaders—from President Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder down to Al Sharpton—“do all they can to feed that sense of grievance, victimhood and resentment, because that’s where the votes are.”
“There’s never going to be a time when the EEOC will file a report saying, ‘All right folks, there’s really not enough discrimination around to be spending all this money.’”
What about Ta-Nehisi Coates, the black writer whose new book, a raw letter to his son about race relations in the U.S., is stirring public intellectuals? I read Mr. Sowell a line from Mr. Coates’s 15,000-word cover story for the Atlantic calling for reparations for slavery: “In America there is a strange and powerful belief that if you stab a black person 10 times, the bleeding stops and the healing begins the moment the assailant drops the knife.”
“Ah . . . yes,” Mr. Sowell sighs, as if recognizing a familiar tune. Read the rest of this entry »
AP Sues Feds Over Fake News Story
Posted: August 30, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere | Tags: Associated Press, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Eric Holder, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Freedom of information laws by country, Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, James B. Comey, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, The New York Times, United States Department of Justice 1 Comment
Federal documents revealed that an FBI agent had pretended to be an AP reporter in order to target a teenager suspected of making bomb threats to a local high school in 2007. The agent fabricated a draft of an AP story and placed it on a website made to look like The Seattle Times in order to plant malicious software on the suspect’s computer.
Julian Hattem reports: The Associated Press is bringing a lawsuit against the Department of Justice seeking information about the government’s use of a fake news story to catch a teenager suspected of calling in bomb threats.
“We cannot overstate how damaging it is for federal agents to pose as journalists. This practice undermines the credibility of the independent news media, and should not be tolerated.”
Along with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the AP asked a district court on Thursday to force the department to turn over records regarding the FBI’s impersonation of a journalist and creation of a fake story in 2007.
“Yet while the public clearly has a strong, compelling interest in knowing more about the FBI’s use of this tactic, the FBI seems determined to withhold that information. We have been left with no choice but to look to the court for relief.”
— Katie Townsend, the litigation director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Reporters from the two organizations submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests soon after news of the sting came to light in October but have not received any records in response, they said.
[Read the full story here, at TheHill]
“We cannot overstate how damaging it is for federal agents to pose as journalists,” Katie Townsend, the litigation director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement. “This practice undermines the credibility of the independent news media, and should not be tolerated. Read the rest of this entry »
Noah Rothman on the Media’s Favorite Framing Device: ‘Republican Reaction’ Stories
Posted: July 15, 2015 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Associated Press, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Bobby Jindal, Cecile Richards, Democratic Party (United States), Eric Holder, Kermit Gosnell, Martin O'Malley, Obama administration, Planned Parenthood, Republican Party (United States), Social Security Administration, The New York Times, The Washington Post 2 Comments
When Republicans pounce, you can be sure that the press will cover the leap and not their target
Noah Rothmans writes: When political reporters are compelled by necessity to report on subjects that cast liberals in a negative light, nothing is more welcome than a reaction quote from a Republican. If a Democrat or a progressive interest group finds itself in the dock, the press can always count on Republicans to rescue liberals from due opprobrium by virtue of their very existence. The story is never the story; for political reporters and editors alike, the Republican reaction to the story is the preferred prism through which to view events Democrats find… discomforting.
” The story is never the story; for political reporters and editors alike, the Republican reaction to the story is the preferred prism through which to view events Democrats find… discomforting.”
On Tuesday, the federally-subsidized abortion provider Planned Parenthood had its worst news cycle since the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby. In a candid video filmed over a two-and-one-half hour lunch, Planned Parenthood’s senior director for medical services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, dished about the marketplace for discarded fetal organs and body parts in between delicate bites.
“Nucatola’s blasé butcher’s banter makes it clear that this is a competitive market and that supply and demand, not Planned Parenthood’s expenses, is what sets prices.”
— Kevin D. Williamson, National Review
“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part,” Nucatola told her dining partner. “I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.” She went on to describe how to best remove a child from a womb and to remove its brains while preserving its body in order to meet the demand for infant hearts, lungs, muscle tissue, et cetera.
“This is not a new phenomenon. Republicans engaging in displays of human cognition and reacting to exogenous events often frees the press of their responsibility to report on the merits of a particular story that reflects poorly on Democrats or liberal interest groups.”
The bombshell revelation about an organization that received $27.8 million from taxpayers this year alone should have made national headlines if only to clarify the nuanced legalities of Planned Parenthood’s organ transfer practices.
(Photo by Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images)
“Political reporters are curiously enthralled by how frequently ‘Republicans pounce’ on stories that could imperil Democratic electoral prospects.”
The 1993 National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act makes it illegal to “knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce,” although exceptions are made for reimbursements related to the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, and storage of human tissue. It is, however, legal to donate the discarded tissue of aborted infants with parental consent.
[Read the full text of Noah Rothman’s article here, at CommentaryMagazine.com]
That does not mean that there is no profit motive involved in the trade of fetal organs. Read the rest of this entry »
The New Nationwide Crime Wave
Posted: May 30, 2015 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Think Tank | Tags: Al Sharpton, Broken windows theory, City Journal (New York), Crime, Eric Holder, Ferguson, Investor-state dispute settlement, Los Angeles, Mahoning County, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Missouri, New York City Police Department 2 Comments
The consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’ are already appearing. The main victims of growing violence will be the inner-city poor
Heather Mac Donald writes: The nation’s two-decades-long crime decline may be over. Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every 
morning is how many people were shot the previous night.
[Heather Mac Donald is the author of “Are Cops Racist?“, available at Amazon.com]
Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.
“President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, before he stepped down last month, embraced the conceit that law enforcement in black communities is infected by bias.”
Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.
“Contrary to the claims of the ‘black lives matter’ movement, no government policy in the past quarter century has done more for urban reclamation than proactive policing. Data-driven enforcement, in conjunction with stricter penalties for criminals and ‘broken windows’ policing has saved thousands of black lives, brought lawful commerce and jobs to once drug-infested neighborhoods and allowed millions to go about their daily lives without fear.”
Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.
“Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.”
By contrast, the first six months of 2014 continued a 20-year pattern of growing public safety. Violent crime in the first half of last year dropped 4.6% nationally and property crime was down 7.5%. Though comparable national figures for the first half of 2015 won’t be available for another year, the January through June 2014 crime decline is unlikely to be repeated.
“Since last summer, the airwaves have been dominated by suggestions that the police are the biggest threat facing young black males today.”
The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months. Read the rest of this entry »
Victor Davis Hanson: ‘When Law Becomes Negotiable, Civilization Collapses’
Posted: May 7, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Economics, History, Law & Justice, Think Tank | Tags: Al Sharpton, Clinton Foundation, Eric Holder, Fox News Channel, Internal Revenue Service, Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC, National Review, Taxes, Touré Leave a comment
US’Tax Enforcement Is Harbinger of Decline:When law becomes negotiable, civilization collapses http://t.co/JrczvhIEf9pic.twitter.com/3NfgIUSKcp
— Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) May 7, 2015
Who will police the tax police?
Why did Rome and Byzantium fall apart after centuries of success? What causes civilizations to collapse, from a dysfunctional fourth-century-B.C. Athens to contemporary bankrupt Greece?
The answer is usually not enemies at the gates, but the pathologies inside them.
What ruins societies is well known: too much consumption and not enough production, a debased currency, and endemic corruption.
Americans currently deal with all those symptoms. But two more fundamental causes for decline are even more frightening: an unwillingness to pay taxes and the end of the rule of law.
Al Sharpton is again prominently in the news, blaming various groups for the Baltimore unrest. But Sharpton currently owes the U.S. government more than $3 million in back taxes, according to reports. His excuses have ranged from insufficient funds to pay them to sloppy record-keeping and mysterious fires.
Sharpton, a frequent White House guest, apparently assumes that his community-organizing provides him political exemption from federal tax law. He seems to be right, at least as long as the current administration is in power.
The Clinton Foundation is expected to refile its tax returns for 2010, 2011, and 2012 after failing to separate government grants from donations. If an average citizen tried to amend his taxes for such huge sums and from that long ago, he would probably be under indictment.
[Read the full text here, at VictorHanson.com]
News reports of undocumented donations from foreign governments caught the foundation underreporting its income. The well-connected Clinton clan apparently had assumed that their political status ensured them immunity. Read the rest of this entry »
Senate Confirms Loretta Lynch: Here’s the List of Ten GOP Senators Who Voted to Confirm
Posted: April 23, 2015 Filed under: Breaking News, Law & Justice, White House | Tags: Department of Justice, DOJ, Eric Holder, GOP, Loretta Lynch, Senate Confirmation Hearings 1 Comment
THE SMIDGEN REPORT: DOJ Will Not Seek Contempt Charges Against Lois Lerner
Posted: April 1, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: Attorney general, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Lois Lerner, Police officer Leave a comment
The DoJ won’t press contempt charges against her for her busted attempt to plead the fifth (Here Is a Statement of Alleged Facts I Want to Introduce Into the 
Record/Having Done That, I Now Say I Don’t Want to Speak for the Record).
Supposedly the DoJ is still considering bringing some sort of charges against her over the Tea Party Targeting.
Sure. I’m sure Eric Holder and Barack Obama want to get right to the bottom of the conspiracy they were participants in.
Richard A. Epstein: Race Baiting and Ferguson
Posted: March 17, 2015 Filed under: Law & Justice, Think Tank | Tags: Al Sharpton, Attorney general, Barack Obama, Bernice King, CNN, Eric Holder, Ferguson, Law enforcement officer, Missouri, Police officer, United States Department of Justice Leave a comment
The DOJ was determined to make a big deal out of the various misdeeds of the Department. In so doing, it set back race relations in the United States by sending out the unmistakable message that while the DOJ could not get Wilson, it could surely get the city for which he had worked.
Richard A. Epstein writes: The most recent news from Ferguson concerns what Eric Holder has rightly called the “ambush shooting” of two police officers outside the city’s police department. This incident occurred in the wake of two detailed reports released by the Department of Justice. The first report deals in depth with the shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The report recommended that the case against him be closed. The second DOJ report contained a scathing indictment of the sad state of affairs within the entire criminal justice system of Ferguson. The combined effect of these two reports is likely to make matters worse in Ferguson by combining the back-handed exoneration of Darren Wilson with the unstinting condemnation of the City of Ferguson.
“The two DOJ reports do not cohere. The first shows that Wilson’s use of force against Michael Brown was fully justified. The second uses that incident to launch a scathing attack against Ferguson, leading to the resignation of its key officials for conduct that looks on balance to be no better or worse than that in other cities around the country.”
Let’s start with the DOJ report that exonerated Wilson. The federal prosecutors ran an exhaustive review of all the physical, forensic, and testimonial evidence in the case. It is necessary to state its final conclusion in full: “Darren Wilson’s actions do not constitute prosecutable violations under the applicable federal criminal civil rights statute, 18 U.S.C. § 242, which prohibits uses of deadly force that are ‘objectively unreasonable,’ as defined by the United States Supreme Court. The evidence, when viewed as a whole, does not support the conclusion that Wilson’s uses of deadly force were “objectively unreasonable” under the Supreme Court’s definition. Accordingly, under the governing federal law and relevant standards set forth in the USAM [United States Attorneys’ Manual], it is not appropriate to present this matter to a federal grand jury for indictment, and it should therefore be closed without prosecution.”
“The serious consequence of the second high-profile report is to keep alive the image that racial injustice is alive and well in the United States. What the report fails to understand is that it is as dangerous to exaggerate the risk of racial injustice as it is to ignore it.”
The legal conclusion is surely correct, but the tone of the report’s findings are slanted against Wilson. It is not just the case that there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution. It is that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the evidence supports that Wilson’s conduct was fully justified. During the initial encounter, Brown had tried to wrest Wilson’s gun from him by reaching into Wilson’s Chevy Tahoe SUV.
“What the DOJ now has to do is to acknowledge that the killing of Michael Brown was a justifiable homicide. It must abandon its contrived legalisms and defend Wilson, by condemning unequivocally the entire misguided campaign against him, which resulted in threats against his life and forced his resignation from the police force. Eric Holder owes Wilson an apology for the unnecessary anguish that Wilson has suffered.”
Wilson’s story was corroborated, to quote the report, “by bruising on Wilson’s jaw and scratches on his neck, the presence of Brown’s DNA on Wilson’s collar, shirt, and pants, and Wilson’s DNA on Brown’s palm.” Later on, the evidence also showed that Brown was running toward Wilson at the time Wilson fired the fatal shots, not knowing whether Brown was armed or not. The incident was far clearer than the oft-ticklish situations in which the courts have to decide whether a police officer used excessive force against a person who was resisting arrest, as with the controversial grand jury decision not to indict any police officer for the killing of Eric Garner. Read the rest of this entry »
U.S. Headed in the Right Direction! (Say 29%)
Posted: March 13, 2015 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, U.S. News, White House | Tags: African American, Associated Press, Attorney general, Barack Obama, Democratic Party (United States), Eric Holder, Ferguson, Missouri, Police officer, Racism, Rasmussen, Rasmussen Reports, Twitter, United States, United States Department of Justice Leave a comment
Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Likely U.S. Voters think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey for the week ending March 5.
This finding is down one point from the previous week. The week ending January 25, the percentage of voters who felt the country was heading in the right direction hit 35%, the highest level of confidence in nearly two years, but has been trending down since then. The number of voters who think the country is heading in the right direction had been 30% or higher since mid-December after being in the mid- to high 20s most weeks since mid-June 2013.
Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters now believe the nation is headed down the wrong track, up two points from the week before.
A year ago at this time, voters held an identical view of the country’s trajectory.
The national telephone survey of 2,500 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports from March 1-5, 2015. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
The older the voter, the more likely he or she is to believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Fifty-one percent (51%) of Democrats say the country is headed in the right direction. Eighty-three percent (83%) of Republicans and 71% of voters not affiliated with either major political party disagree.
Black voters by 50% to 42% margin think the country is headed in the right direction. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of whites and 57% of other minority voters say it’s headed down he wrong track.
The more money one earns, the more likely he or she is to think the country is heading in the right direction, but even among those who earn $100,000 or more a year, roughly 60% say the country is headed down the wrong track. Read the rest of this entry »
Bret Stephens: Ferguson, Lies and Statistics
Posted: March 10, 2015 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: African American, Barack Obama, Criminal justice, Direct evidence, Eric Holder, Ferguson, Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Michelle Alexander, Missouri, Police officer, Racism, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, United States Department of Justice, Voting Rights Act 5 Comments
Here’s a story for the media: a community in which honest people are afraid to tell the truth
“…honest people can’t tell the truth for fear of running afoul local thugs enforcing ‘the narrative reported by the media.’ Or is that more of a story about the media?”
It won’t be. The story line has failed, so the statistics have been put to work.
“At least half that fable was put to rest last week by an exhaustive Justice Department report. It demolishes the lie that Brown was shot in the back, along with the lie that he was surrendering to Mr. Wilson, hands in the air, when he was shot. It confirms that Brown physically assaulted the officer, who had good grounds to fear for his life.”
That the claims made against Mr. Wilson were doubtful should have been clear within days of Brown’s death, and again in November after a grand jury, having heard from some 60 witnesses, declined to indict the officer—an outcome one outraged commentator denounced as having “openly and shamelessly mocked our criminal justice system and laid bare the inequality of our criminal jurisprudence.”
“Is this racism? The Missouri Statistical Analysis Center notes that in 2012 African-Americans, about 12% of the state’s population, constituted 65% of murder arrests and 62% of murder victims. To suggest that the glaring statistical disproportion between relative population size and murder rate is somehow a function of race would be erroneous and offensive…”
Yet if anyone was openly and shamelessly mocking the criminal-justice system, it was so much of the media itself, credulously accepting or sanctimoniously promoting the double fable of Ferguson: that a “gentle giant” had been capriciously slain by a trigger-happy cop; and that a racist justice system stood behind that cop.
“…Yet tarring a police force as racist for far smaller statistical discrepancies is now one of the privileged “truths” of 21st century America.”
At least half that fable was put to rest last week by an exhaustive Justice Department report. It demolishes the lie that Brown was shot in the back, along with the lie that he was surrendering to Mr. Wilson, hands in the air, when he was shot. It confirms that Brown physically assaulted the officer, who had good grounds to fear for his life.
And it confirms that eyewitnesses either lied to investigators or refused to be interviewed out of fear of local vigilantes. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] EXCLUSIVE: Preview of Hillary Clinton’s Address to the Nation
Posted: March 10, 2015 Filed under: Breaking News, Humor, Mediasphere, Politics, The Butcher's Notebook, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Clinton Foundation, Email, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, Richard Nixon, satire, scandal, State Department, United States Department of State 2 Comments
BREAKING: Eric Holder Delivers Formal Apology to Officer Darren Wilson
Posted: March 5, 2015 Filed under: Humor, Law & Justice, U.S. News | Tags: Al Sharpton, Attorney general, Big Lie, Civil and political rights, Darren Wilson, Department of Justice, DOJ, Eric Holder, Eyewitness, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ferguson, Hands up don't shoot, Left-wing politics, Missouri, Officer Wilson, Police, Real evidence, United States Department of Justice, Witness Leave a comment
Photo of Attorney General delivering apology to Darren Wilson
From The Washington Post:
Here is a key part of the conclusion of DOJ’s report:
As discussed above, Darren Wilson has stated his intent in shooting Michael Brown was in response to a perceived deadly threat. The only possible basis for prosecuting Wilson under section 242 would therefore be if the government could prove that his account is not true – i.e., that Brown never assaulted Wilson at the SUV, never attempted to gain control of Wilson’s gun, and thereafter clearly surrendered in a way that no reasonable officer could have failed to perceive. Given that Wilson’s account is corroborated by physical evidence and that his perception of a threat posed by Brown is corroborated by other eyewitnesses, to include aspects of the testimony of Witness 101, there is no credible evidence that Wilson willfully shot Brown as he was attempting to surrender or was otherwise not posing a threat. Even if Wilson was mistaken in his interpretation of Brown’s conduct, the fact that others interpreted that conduct the same way as Wilson precludes a determination that he acted with a bad purpose to disobey the law. (p. 86).
Audio Exclusive: Eric Holder’s Apology to Officer Wilson
Hopefully this report will put to rest some of the outlandish claims that have been made about Michael Brown’s death. For example, the report convincingly rebuts the “hands up, don’t shoot” account:
[T]here are no witnesses who could testify credibly that Wilson shot Brown while Brown was clearly attempting to surrender. The accounts of the witnesses who have claimed that Brown raised his hands above his head to surrender and said “I don’t have a gun,” or “okay, okay, okay” are inconsistent with the physical evidence or can be challenged in other material ways, and thus cannot be relied upon to form the foundation of a federal prosecution. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Eric Holder Won’t Let Go of Ferguson
Posted: February 24, 2015 Filed under: Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: Al Sharpton, Attorney general, Eric Holder, Ferguson, Lawsuit, Missouri, National Action Network, National Urban League, Police officer, President of the United States, Racism, United States Department of Justice, Wisconsin 2 Comments
The attorney general seems intent on taking one more jab at the police before leaving the Justice Department
Jason L. Riley writes: When all was said and done, the events that unfolded in Ferguson, Mo., last summer were not extraordinary but rather all too familiar. Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, a black robbery suspect, resisted arrest, attacked a police officer and was shot dead. We’ve seen this movie many times before. But what might have prompted a helpful discussion about high crime rates in black communities has instead prompted a dishonest debate over police behavior.
“…the Justice Department seems to have come to the same conclusion as the Ferguson grand jury and found no grounds for a criminal prosecution of Mr. Wilson. Mr. Holder might now be trying to justify his bigfooting by suing the city, but there is probably no basis for that, either. Hence, the leak to the media that a civil lawsuit may be in the works.”
Professional agitators in the civil-rights community push false narratives to stay relevant, but we should expect more from the Justice Department. Instead, we have Attorney General Eric Holder channeling Al Sharpton . Last week Mr. Holder said that he will soon announce the results of his Ferguson investigation. CNN, citing “sources,” reported that Darren Wilson, the police officer involved in the shooting, is unlikely to be charged but that Justice is preparing to sue the Ferguson police department “over a pattern of racially discriminatory tactics used by police officers, if the police department does not agree to make changes on its own.”
“This is about expanding federal power in the police departments. The lawyers at Justice believe they are the ones who should be promulgating national standards of how cops should behave. And police departments are so afraid of bad publicity that they agree to settle the case with all kinds of rules that Justice wants to impose.”
— Hans von Spakovsky, former Justice Department attorney
After months of looking into the incident, the Justice Department seems to have come to the same conclusion as the Ferguson grand jury and found no grounds for a criminal prosecution of Mr. Wilson. Mr. Holder might now be trying to justify his bigfooting by suing the city, but there is probably no basis for that, either. Hence, the leak to the media that a civil lawsuit may be in the works. The leak was an 
egregious breach of protocol and, in effect, a threat. We’ve seen this movie before, too.
[Check out Jason Riley’s book “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed” at Amazon]
In 1994, Congress passed a bill that made unlawful “the pattern or practice” of conduct by police “that deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Since the law’s inception, the Justice Department has taken action against more than 50 state and local police departments, and nearly all have opted to settle rather than litigate. Investigations often come at the urging of groups like the NAACP and ACLU. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Eric Holder Promotes Fox News
Posted: February 17, 2015 Filed under: Breaking News, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: DOJ, Eric Holder, Fox News, ISIS, Islamic extremism, Islamism, Jihadism, Justice Department 1 Comment[VIDEO] ‘We Call You ‘The Duck’: MSNBC Host Asks Eric Holder to ‘Quack Like a Duck’
Posted: February 9, 2015 Filed under: Entertainment, Law & Justice, Mediasphere | Tags: African American, Attorney general, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Gun politics, Law enforcement officer, Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC, National Review, Quackery, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting 1 CommentAt The Corner, Andrew Johnson reports:
MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry made a rather unusual request of Eric Holder in an interview over the weekend.
On her MSNBC show on Sunday, Harris-Perry informed the attorney general of a nickname that she and her fans have for him: the Duck.
“You’re absolutely right — those little duck feet are just moving as fast as they can underneath. I may have been cool in congressional hearings on the outside, but I was pissed off a lot of the time too.”
— U.S. Attorney General Eric ‘The Duck” Holder
“We say that you have a very placid, even way of presenting, but you’re working for justice underneath,” she explained.
”Would you quack for us?”
— Giggling MSNBC “reporter” Melissa Harris-Perry
Then came what is likely the first time the nation’s top law-enforcement officer has been presented with this question: ”Would you quack for us?” Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Holder: I Cleaned Up Bush’s Politicized Justice Dept
Posted: February 4, 2015 Filed under: Law & Justice, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: corruption, cronyism, Department of Justice, DOJ, Eric Holder, Obstruction of Justice, Partisan, Radical Leave a comment
A favorite tactic of Obama and members of his Regime, is to run with the biggest, boldest lie possible, and dare anyone to question it. Eric Holder – easily the most corrupt Attorney General in our nation’s history – fully embraced that tactic in spectacular fashion at a press conference Tuesday when he made the ludicrous claim that he cleaned up Bush’s Justice Dept.
Yep. He actually said that.
Attorney General Eric Holder pushed back against Republicans who said the Justice Department, under his leadership, had become little more than a political machine to push liberal causes — and said that he’s actually cleaned up all the politicking that had taken place under the former Bush administration.
In a press conference that began with his personal introduction — “For the record, I am Eric Holder” — the exiting agency head took shots at critics who suggested…
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Politicians who Campaign Against Cops are Inviting Mayhem
Posted: December 22, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Politics | Tags: Al Sharpton, Andrew Cuomo, Barack Obama, Bill de Blasio, Brooklyn, Eric Holder, New York, New York City, New York City Police Department, United States Attorney General, William J. Bratton 1 Comment
Progressives and the Police
‘What do we want? Dead cops!” So chanted marchers at one of the protests organized in the last month against the failure of grand juries to indict white officers in the death of black crime suspects Michael Brown and Eric Garner. On Saturday they got their wish, as a black assailant citing revenge for Brown and Garner traveled from Maryland to murder two cops sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn.
What’s old is new again: New York in the 1970s, when the welfare state’s failures were taking root
“America is full of Brinsleys who no longer abide the norms of civilized behavior, if they even know what those norms are. They need but the slightest excuse to take justice into their own hands and go on a rampage.”
“They were quite simply assassinated, targeted for their uniform,” New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said, and so they were. Garner and Brown were resisting arrest, but the two young officers never had a chance even to pull their guns. They had been marked for death near a high-crime housing project they were trying to protect against criminal predators.
Andy Warhol’s 1964 “Race Riot,” in four parts painted with acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen. (AP Photo/Christie’s)
“Especially in urban America, the police walk that line between civilization and mayhem every day.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio , Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama were all quick to condemn the shooting. And let’s stipulate that no one other than the alleged shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, is responsible for pulling the trigger. Chased into the subway by police, he then shot himself. Read the rest of this entry »
‘If you visited from Mars in the last few months, you would think police do no good in society at all”
Posted: December 21, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Ambush, Attorney general, Bedford–Stuyvesant, Bill de Blasio, Brooklyn, Eric Holder, Mayor of New York City, Metro station, Myrtle Avenue, New York, New York City, New York City Police Department, Police car, Police officer, Suicide methods 1 Comment
There have been at least three ambushes this year of law-enforcement officials that garnered national attention. In June Las Vegas police officers Alyn Beck, 41, and Igor Soldo, 31 were ambushed as they sat in a restaurant. One of the suspects in that shooting died in a gunbattle with authorities, and his wife committed suicide.
The assassination of two New York City police officers this weekend has emboldened police and their supporters to lash out at weeks of nationwide protest and criticism that they say have left police more vulnerable.
“This senseless murder of two of New York’s finest further exemplifies the dangerous political climate in which all members of law enforcement, nationwide, now find themselves. Not since the political unrest of the 1960s have police officers been so targeted.”
— Baltimore police union President Gene Ryan, in a posting on the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police website
Police are investigating social-media posts by the apparent assailant in the point-blank fatal shootings Saturday of the two officers who were sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn. In them, he allegedly talked about killing officers in retaliation for the deaths of Eric Garner on Staten Island, N.Y., and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., this summer in confrontations with police.
Experts on law enforcement said the demonstrations that followed grand jury decisions not to charge the officers in those cases have strained police morale across the U.S. as officers have been forced to defend their tactics, then deploy in big numbers to demonstrations against those tactics.
“This senseless murder of two of New York’s finest further exemplifies the dangerous political climate in which all members of law enforcement, nationwide, now find themselves,” Baltimore police union President Gene Ryan said in a posting on the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police website. “Not since the political unrest of the 1960s have police officers been so targeted.”
“If you visited from Mars in the last few months, you would think police do no good in society at all”
— Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City
On Sunday, a somber-faced New York Mayor Bill de Blasio , who has come under withering criticism from the city’s police union after the killings, attended Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, flanked in a pew by his wife and Police Commissioner William Bratton . “We are in solidarity with you,” New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan told the public officials. Read the rest of this entry »
Document Dump: Attorney General Eric Holder Releases ‘Fast and Furious’ Documents That Got Him Cited for Contempt
Posted: November 4, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Contempt of Congress, Court order, Darrell Issa, Eric Holder, Fast and Furious, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee 4 Comments
In an “election eve dump,” as House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa put it, DOJ handed over 64,280 pages of documents, a release that is still only a partial fulfillment of the committee’s request.
“This production is nonetheless a victory for the legislative branch, a victory for transparency, and a victory for efforts to check Executive Branch power.”
— House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa
At The Corner, Joel Gehrke writes:
Justice Department officials provided House investigators with thousands of documents related to Operation Fast and Furious that President Obama had previously claimed were exempt from congressional review.
[Order John Fund’s book “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department
In an “election eve dump,” as House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) put it, DOJ handed over 64,280 pages of documents, a release that is still only a partial fulfillment of the committee’s request.
“Since these pages still do not represent the entire universe of the documents the House of Representatives is seeking related to the Justice Department’s cover-up of the botched gun-walking scandal that contributed to the death of a Border Patrol agent, our court case will continue.”
— Darrell Issa
DOJ handed over the documents pursuant to a court order. Read the rest of this entry »
Who’s Up For Some Fresh Hot Executive Privilege?
Posted: October 23, 2014 Filed under: Law & Justice, U.S. News, White House | Tags: ATF gunwalking scandal, Congress, Eric Holder, Executive privilege, Freedom of Information Act, Judicial Watch, Obama, Obama administration, United States Department of Justice, Vaughn 1 Comment
Judicial Watch: Obama Asserts Fast and Furious Executive Privilege Claim for Holder’s Wife
Judicial Watch announced today that it received from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) a “Vaughn index” detailing records about the Operation Fast and Furious scandal. The index was forced out of the Obama administration thanks to JW’s June 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent September 2012 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)). A federal court had ordered the production
over the objections of the Obama Justice Department.
“This is the first time that the Obama administration has provided a detailed listing of all records being withheld from Congress and the American people about the deadly Fast and Furious gun running scandal.”
[Check out John’s Fund’s book, authored with Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky: “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department“]
The document details the Attorney General Holder’s personal involvement in managing the Justice Department’s strategy on media and Congressional investigations into the Fast and Furious scandal.
Notably, the document discloses that emails between Attorney General Holder and his wife Sharon Malone – as well as his mother – are being withheld under an extraordinary claim of executive privilege as well as a dubious claim of deliberative process privilege under the Freedom of Information Act. The “First Lady of the Justice Department” is a physician and not a government employee.
“The 1307-page ‘draft’ Vaughn index was emailed to Judicial Watch at 8:34 p.m. last night, a few hours before a federal court-ordered deadline. In its cover letter, the Department of Justice asserts that all of the responsive records described in the index are ‘subject to the assertion of executive privilege’.”
This is the first time that the Obama administration has provided a detailed listing of all records being withheld from Congress and the American people about the deadly Fast and Furious gun running scandal. The 1307-page “draft” Vaughn index was emailed to Judicial Watch at 8:34 p.m. last night, a few hours before a federal court-ordered deadline. In its cover letter, the Department of Justice asserts that all of the responsive records described in the index are “subject to the assertion of executive privilege.”
“A week before the contempt finding, to protect Holder from criminal prosecution and stave off the contempt vote, President Obama asserted executive privilege over the Fast and Furious records the House Oversight Committee had subpoenaed eight months earlier.”
The Vaughn index explains 15,662 documents. Typically, a Vaughn index must: (1) identify each record withheld; (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption. Read the rest of this entry »
The Inequality Bed-Wetters are Misleading You
Posted: September 30, 2014 Filed under: Economics, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Barack Obama, Burkina Faso, Chuck Schumer, Donald Trump, Eric Holder, Gilded Age, Grover Cleveland, Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, Paul Krugman, United States, White House 1 Comment
The Gilded Gelded Age
I offer this for two reasons. One, because I’ve never read anything by Kevin D. Williamson that I didn’t like and want everyone to read. And two, because there’s this very disturbing photo of Paul Krugman that I’ve been dying to get off my desk. Now you can have nightmares about Krugman’s face, staring scoldingly into the abyss. And I can go back to my usual nightmares about Obama cutting a nuke deal with Iran in order to speed up the coming global apocalypse. Which reminds me. Do you have Williamson’s book yet? I think everyone should read that, too. See the full text of Williamson’s article here.
For National Review Online, Kevin D. Williamson writes: The inequality police are worried that we are living in a new Gilded Age. We should be so lucky: Between 1880 and 1890, the number of employed Americans increased by more than 13 percent, and wages increased by almost 50 percent.
“…if your assumption here is that this is about redistribution, then you should want the billionaires’ incomes to go up, not down: The more money they make, the more taxes they pay, and the more money you have to give to the people you want to give money to, e.g., overpaid, lazy, porn-addicted bureaucrats…”
I am going to go out on a limb and predict that the Barack Obama years will not match that record; the number of employed Americans is lower today than it was when he took office, and household income is down. Grover Cleveland is looking like a genius in comparison.
“…poor people are not poor because rich people are rich, nor vice versa. Very poor people are generally poor because they do not have jobs, and taking away Thurston Howell III’s second yacht is not going to secure work for them…”
The inequality-based critique of the American economy is a fundamentally dishonest one, for a half a dozen or so reasons at least. Claims that the (wicked, wicked) “1 percent” saw their incomes go up by such and such an amount over the past decade or two ignore the fact that different people compose the 1 percent every year, and that 75 percent of the super-rich households in 1995 were in a lower income group by 2005.
“The 3 million highest-paying jobs in America paid a lot more in 2005 than did the 3 million highest-paying jobs in 1995” is a very different and considerably less dramatic claim than “The top 1 percent of earners in 1995 saw their household incomes go up radically by 2005.” But the former claim is 
true and the latter is not.
[If you haven’t read Kevin D. Williamson’s “The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome” then your Global Panic checklist is incomplete. Fear not, it’s available at Amazon]
Paul Krugman, who persists in Dickensian poverty, barely making ends meet between six-figure sinecures, is a particularly energetic scourge of the rich, and he is worried about conspicuous consumption: “For many of the rich, flaunting is what it’s all about. Read the rest of this entry »
Glenn Reynolds: For Next Attorney General, Reach Across Aisle
Posted: September 30, 2014 Filed under: Law & Justice, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Eric Holder, George Washington, Glenn Reynolds, Holder, John F. Kennedy, Obama, Richard Nixon, United States, United States Department of Justice 1 Comment
Eric Holder has announced that he will be stepping down as attorney general as soon as a replacement can be named. And already, National Journal notes that with Holder’s departure, President Obama will be losing one of his few friends in 
Washington.
“…Holder’s role has been not so much law enforcement as ‘scandal-goalie,’ ensuring that whatever comes out in the news or in congressional investigations, no one in the government will go to jail…”
[Glenn Reynolds‘ book The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself is available at Amazon]
As the article by George Condon notes, in choosing a friend, Obama was following in the footsteps of presidents going all the way back to George Washington, who named Revolutionary War comrades-in-arms to the slot.
“Writing in Above The Law, Tamara Tabo notes that Holder’s stonewalling, which led him to be the first attorney general ever found in contempt of Congress, has poisoned relations between the Justice Department and legislators, ensuring a rocky reception for whoever Obama names next.”
John F. Kennedy named his brother Robert to be attorney general, and Richard Nixon named his law partner, John Mitchell. In many ways, this makes sense: The attorney general of the United States is at the top of the law enforcement apparatus, and in that position, you want someone you can trust.
Heather Mac Donald on Obama’s Shameful New Low: Comparing American Cops with Islamic Terrorists
Posted: September 27, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Diplomacy, Law & Justice, War Room | Tags: America, Barack Obama, City Journal, CNN International, Eric Holder, Ferguson, Ferguson Missouri, HEATHER MAC DONALD, Obama, United Nations General Assembly 1 Comment
The idea that the Ferguson riots were the result of a predatory police force tantamount to sectarian murderers in the Middle East is a poisonous calumny. The threat to America’s blacks comes almost exclusively from other blacks, not from the police.
President Obama has announced to the world that America’s police officers are as disruptive to civil society as Middle Eastern beheaders and Russian-backed rebels.
“Obama is right about one thing: the world did take notice of the Ferguson riots, which were covered obsessively by CNN International, desperate to play up every wisp of alleged racism it could find.”
…Even a local newspaper in Salzburg, Austria, carried a fawning profile of America’s first black attorney general, Eric Holder, and his fight against police racism.
“This last Saturday, a 14-year-old girl was killed on the streets of Paterson, New Jersey, in a drive-by gang shooting. She is the sixth homicide death in the area since a 12-year-old girl was shot in the head while riding a scooter in July…Obama and Eric Holder will have nothing to say about these homicides…”
All the more important, then, for Obama to set the record straight. The idea that the Ferguson riots were the result of a predatory police force tantamount to sectarian murderers in the Middle East is a poisonous calumny. The threat to America’s blacks comes almost exclusively from other blacks, not from the police.
“…In fact, the only government representatives who work day in and day out to stop the black bloodbath are police officers.”
Every year, thousands of African Americans are gunned down by other African Americans, with no attention from the media and local government officials. The homicide death rate for blacks in Los Angeles, for example, like in most other American cities, is ten times that for whites.
“Few are the departments that don’t try to forge bonds with their communities but their officers are still met with resistance, abuse, and hatred from criminals and their associates, and from ordinary people who have been fed a steady diet of anti-police propaganda.”
It’s not whites or police officers who are gunning down black Angelenos, it’s other blacks, killing in cold blood, also at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic homicide commission combined. Read the rest of this entry »
Sharyl Attkisson: Multiple Controversies Plagued Eric Holder Prior to Resignation
Posted: September 26, 2014 Filed under: Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: ATF gunwalking scandal, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, John D. Bates, Judicial Watch, Justice Department, United States Department of Justice, United States district court, Vaughn Leave a comment
Sharyl Attkisson writes: The unexpected resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder follows a series of court rulings against his Department of Justice over its failure to produce documents related to the government’s “Fast and Furious” firearms operation.
Holder also has come under increasing congressional criticism for a tepid investigation of evidence that IRS officials deliberately targeted tea party and other conservative groups for greater scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.
Calling the government’s arguments for “even more time … unconvincing,” a federal judge this week refused to grant Holder’s Justice Department the additional time it requested to turn over a list of Operation Fast and Furious documents withheld under executive privilege exerted by President Obama.
The list is referred to as a “Vaughn index” and requires the Justice Department to justify document-by-document the reasons it hasn’t released the materials. This exercise alone often prompts the release of documents.
The Justice Department sought to delay the Vaughn index until one day before the Nov. 4 midterm elections. But the court ordered the index produced by Oct. 22 instead. The order comes in a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch. Read the rest of this entry »
BREAKING: Anticipating Midterm Losses, Eric Holder Rushes to Step Down as Attorney General to Help Confirmation Effort
Posted: September 25, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Holder, John Gleeson, Justice Department, New York City, Osama bin Laden, United States Department of Justice Leave a comment
Holder most wants to be remembered for his record on civil rights. In reality, he will be remembered as a divisive, combative, arrogant, partisan hatchet man for the administration, in a period marked by selective enforcement, stonewalling, evasion, and contempt.
Two sources familiar with the decision tell NPR that Holder, 63, intends to leave the Justice Department as soon as his successor is confirmed, a process that could run through 2014 and even into next year. A former U.S. government official says Holder has been increasingly “adamant” about his desire to leave soon for fear that he otherwise could be locked in to stay for much of the rest of President Obama’s second term.
“…some of that early glow faded in part due to the politicized nature of the job and in part because of Holder’s own rhetoric, such as a 2009 Black History Month speech where he said the country was ‘a nation of cowards’…”
Holder already is one of the longest-serving members of the Obama Cabinet and ranks as the fourth-longest tenured AG in history. Hundreds of employees waited in lines, stacked three rows deep, in early February 2009 to witness his return to the Justice Department, where he previously worked as a young corruption prosecutor and as deputy attorney general — the second in command — during the Clinton administration.
“Even though the attorney general has his eyes on the door, the two sources say several more policy and enforcement initiatives are underway and could be announced soon.”
Five years later, violence erupted between police and protesters in Ferguson, Mo., after a white policeman killed an unarmed black 18-year-old. And this time, the White House dispatched Holder to speak his piece, in effect jump-starting that conversation and helping to settle nerves in the frayed community.
“For instance, Holder sent a memo to U.S. attorneys Wednesday urging them not to use sentencing enhancements known as “851” tools to gain leverage in plea negotiations with defendants — in essence, threatening defendants into avoiding trial with huge amounts of prison time.”
Another huge controversy — over his decision to try the Sept. 11 plotters in a New York courthouse in the shadow of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center — prompted venomous reaction from lawmakers, New York City officials and some victims’ families. Read the rest of this entry »
Messaging: Biden Uses ‘Take Back America’ Phrase Obama And Holder Think is Racist
Posted: September 1, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: American Broadcasting Company, Attorney general, Eric Holder, Joe Biden, Ken Walsh, U.S. News & World Report, United States Leave a comment
From The Corner, Joel Gehrke: Vice President Joe Biden staked his claim to the labor vote by declaring that “it’s time to take back America” in order to ensure that the middle class gets an “equal share” of prosperity in the country.
“It’s time to take back America. If we don’t, America’s in trouble.”
Biden said in Detroit Monday.
“You know, people talking about taking their country back…There’s a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some there’s a racial animus.”
— Attorney General Eric Holder
Biden’s comments come in the 6th year of his vice presidency, shortly after Attorney General Eric Holder said that such language is racist,
“There’s a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that’s directed at me [and] directed at the president,” Holder told ABC last month, per The Hill. “You know, people talking about taking their country back. … There’s a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some there’s a racial animus.”
- Eric Holder Stands By Controversial ‘Nation Of Cowards’ Speech (dailycaller.com)
- Eric Holder’s Distractions and Excuses (punditfromanotherplanet.com)
- Eric Holder, America’s chief law enforcement official, tries to spark racial hatred (hotair.com)
And Obama agrees, or did in 2011, according to U.S. News and World Report’s Ken Walsh…(read more)
Reality Check: Of 163 Arrests Since Shooting, Only 7 are from Ferguson
Posted: August 21, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Attorney general, Eric Holder, Ferguson, Michael Brown, Photo, Police, Protest, St. Louis Leave a comment
FERGUSON, Mo. AP — Police records show that 163 arrests have been made in the Ferguson protest zone since the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, but just seven are residents of the St. Louis suburb…(read more)
Associated Press – Breitbart.com
Report: Eric Holder Heading to Ferguson to ‘Personally Perform Autopsy’, Dismissing Objections from Medical Community
Posted: August 19, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Law & Justice, Mediasphere | Tags: Charles Krauthammer, Eric Holder, Ferguson, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Brown, Nancy Pelosi, Parody, political humor, Rand Paul, satire, United States Department of Justice, YouTube 1 Comment
“Any attorney general who is not an activist, even in matters of medical inquiry, is not doing his or her job.”
— Attorney General Eric Holder
FERGUSON, Mo. —Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will travel to this embattled St. Louis suburb to personally perform an autopsy on Michael Brown, dismissing charges that he’s interfering with the investigation by injecting himself into an examination for which he has no medical qualification.
“We’ve all heard the rumor that Holder removed his own gall bladder with a pocket knife, without anesthesia, without pain medication. Utter nonsense. I happen to know that Mr. Holder did, in fact, use pain medication before that procedure.”
— National Review’s Jonah Goldberg
Holder didn’t confirm the self-surgery rumor, but defended his decision, insisting that his critics are misguided. “An autopsy is not that hard. It’s a critical part of an investigation like this, one that requires the full attention of this office. If you want to call me a renegade, I will proudly accept that label. Any attorney general who is not an activist, even in matters of medical inquiry, is not doing his or her job.”
“I am on record strongly advising against it. I have urged Mr. Holder to reconsider.”
— Acting Surgeon Genreal Rear Admiral (RADM) Boris D. Lushniak, M.D., M.P.H
In what has already become a politically-charged investigation, Holder’s decision to perform a medical autopsy on the victim has raised further concerns about violations of constitutional authority, and have renewed charges of professional misconduct.
“Watching reruns of ‘Law and Order Special Victims Unit’ does not qualify anyone to perform a legitimate medical examination. This is preposterous. Eric Holder is not a medical officer. ”
—Dr. Charles Krauthammer
Republican leaders immediately took steps to remove Attorney General Eric Holder from office. Emergency meetings on Capitol Hill were rumored to run late into the night. Senior Democrat officials stood by Holder, accusing Republicans of attempting to capitalize on the tragedy in
Ferguson.
“Is it beyond the traditional scope of the office of the Department of Justice? Absolutely. Do I apologize for it? Absolutely not.”
— Attorney General Eric Holder
“The allegations against the Attorney General are nothing more than a political stunt”, said Nancy Pelosi, adding, “It’s part of a racist attempt to smear Holder, it’s obvious to everyone that his skin color is the primary reason Republicans object”.
[Reporting from the protest zone? Order from Amazon – Civilian Gas Mask w/ Nato Filter]
BREAKING: ‘Shot-in-the-Back-While-Fleeing’ Narrative Up in Smoke: Autopsy Shows Michael Brown Was Struck at Least 6 Times
Posted: August 17, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, Mediasphere | Tags: Autopsy, Brian Fallon, Eric Holder, Ferguson Missouri, Michael Baden, Michael Brown, Missouri, New York Times, United States Department of Justice 2 CommentsAutopsy Shows Michael Brown Was Struck at Least 6 Times, including twice in the head. via NYT http://t.co/Y3W4a1IA0zpic.twitter.com/oPvkfqB73i
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) August 18, 2014
UPDATED: A private autopsy on the unarmed black teen who was shot by a white police officer in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo. nine days ago suffered six gunshot wounds, including two in the head, according to a new report.
“We need more information; for example, the police should be examining the automobile to see if there is gunshot residue in the police car.”
The New York Times reported late Sunday that the autopsy was carried out at the request of Michael Brown’s family by Dr. Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner for New York City.
Baden told the Times that one of the bullets struck the top of Brown’s skull, suggesting that the 18-year-old’s head was bent forward when he was shot. The doctor added that four of the six shots struck Brown in the right arm, and all the bullets entered from the teen’s front. Only three of the bullets were recovered from Brown’s body.
Baden did not have access to Brown’s clothes, which may have gunpowder residue on them if the bullets were fired from close range. Baden also did not have access to X-rays that may have shown where the bullets were found, nor did he see any witness or police statements. Read the rest of this entry »
BREAKING: Court Shuts Down D.O.J. Over Voter ID, Holder Loses in the Carolinas—Again
Posted: August 11, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: Eric Holder, Hans von Spakovsky, Judicial Watch, North Carolina, Photo identification, Progressive Democrats, United States Department of Justice, Voter Fraud, Voter ID laws, Voting Rights Act 2 Comments
“Significantly, Judge Schroeder cited the testimony of DOJ’s own experts against it.”
From capitalisminstitute.org: Voter ID laws are a pretty simple concept that enjoy widespread support. Voter ID laws simply state that anyone showing up to vote at the polls must provide a valid ID of some sort, to prove that they are who they claim to be.
[Related: thinkprogress.org goes completely cuckoo bananas over loss of Democratic party’s long-cherished corrupt voter fraud advantage, repeats discredited claim that it’s “bad for voting rights”]
Voter ID laws help prevent and cut down on voter fraud, and help to protect the integrity of elections. Progressive Democrats abhor voter ID laws, and Attorney General Eric Holder has attacked such laws in multiple states, claiming they are racist and prevent minorities from voting.
From The Corner, Hans A. von Spakovsky elaborates:
Attorney General Eric Holder suffered a huge loss on Friday in his war on election integrity. A federal judge refused to issue a preliminary injunction against North Carolina’s omnibus election reform law that includes voter ID, as well as measures such as the elimination of same-day registration…
Holder Loses in the Carolinas—Again
…Significantly, Judge Schroeder cited the testimony of DOJ’s own experts against it. This included one expert who admitted that black turnout in North Carolina is on par with that of whites, and another DOJ expert who acknowledged that the black registration rate is higher than that of whites. That makes it a bit difficult to argue that state officials have been discriminating against minority voters. Read the rest of this entry »
pundit from another planet 