Tragedy Becoming Tragicomedy

Tragedy Becoming Tragicomedy

By now, pretty much everyone is aware of the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida. The shooting was done by a wannabe cop and self-styled Neighborhood Watch captain. Perverting Florida’s “stand your ground” law, the killer was continuing a pattern he had been following for a very long time. A sensible neighborhood crime prevention program and a sensible law were twisted into the loss of a young life on the flimsiest of grounds.

The travesty is grounded in two perfectly acceptable concepts. First, neighborhoods have a basic right to make sure their families and homes are safe. Neighborhood Watch was created years ago to provide eyes and ears to accomplish that goal. But look at the name of the group: Neighborhood Watch. These are not duly-sworn police agencies, nor even well-trained armed private response teams. They are there to watch and report. They are not there to bag strangers or to shoot human beings that they perceive to be some kind of abstract deadly danger. Even well-trained police officers have made tragic mistakes misidentifying an innocent act as a deadly threat. In most cases, those were true mistakes, but they bear no resemblance to the homicide in Florida.

Here, an amateur protector of the peace essentially stalked a lone teenager whom he considered to be “acting suspiciously” and who looked like “he didn’t belong there” (more on that later). Instead of “watching and reporting,” he followed the kid like a bloodhound, finally calling the local police to report the “suspicious activity.” The police recognized the modus operandi of wannabe cop George Zimmerman, who had called in dozens of similar reports, none of which had turned out to be a genuinely dangerous threat to the neighborhood.

The police took the call, noted the report and said they would send a patrol car out to investigate. Zimmerman then asked if he should continue to follow the boy. The police were very specific: “That’s not necessary. Do not continue to follow him.” But this self-appointed protector of the public peace continued to follow the youngster anyway. His activity finally caused the mystified teenager to approach Zimmerman to find out what was going on and why he was being followed.

We’ll probably never know for sure what went on in Zimmerman’s fevered mind, but whatever his motivations, he decided that the teenager was now a physical threat, and proceeded to shoot him down. Had he followed the instructions of the police dispatcher, an unnecessary death would have been avoided, and the police would have gotten a completely valid explanation from the boy as to why he was moving through the neighborhood at that time of night. He had simply gone out to get candy and soft drinks for the relatives he was visiting. Zimmerman didn’t know that, and it’s my opinion that he didn’t want to know that. He just wanted an excuse to fire his weapon at someone he had decided didn't belong there.

Second, Zimmerman was [incorrectly] hiding behind Florida’s new “stand your ground” law. As with the concept of Neighborhood Watch, this law was perfectly sensible and was passed in order to protect citizens from criminal prosecution and/or civil liability for using deadly force to counter deadly force when confronted with a situation that previously required the potential victim to flee rather than protect himself.

The law was not designed to protect self-appointed peacekeepers who put themselves into a volatile situation voluntarily and provocatively. Such activity turns the innocent victim/aggressive perpetrator scenario on its head. Zimmerman’s use of the law is totally misplaced. Part of the problem is the long history of the law abandoning simple common sense and the ancient principle of “the reasonable man” standard (more recently, the “reasonable person” standard).

Both sides of the legal spectrum have erroneously gone to a more absolutist view of any criminal statute rather than inferring the actual “intent of the law.” The old view (and the far better one) is “what would a reasonable man, under the same or similar circumstances, believe he should do?” The teenager was out in the late hours of the evening, but he was not doing anything a reasonable person would consider dangerously suspicious. A reasonable person would have followed the instructions of the police and abandoned the activity of following the teenager.

A reasonable person, even if he decided to continue following the boy, would have done so at a distance and left when the police arrived. But Zimmerman continued to follow the boy, up close and personal. The youngster apparently got either tired of being followed or curious as to what was going on. What he couldn’t know is that Zimmerman appears already to have determined that a young, black man wearing a hoodie (hooded sweatshirt) with the hood up is automatically a deadly threat. So Trayvon Martin approached Zimmerman’s car, resulting in his own unexpected and violent death.

Whether Zimmerman was a racist vigilante or not will eventually be determined. But he is at best a dangerous fool who knew just enough law to get it all wrong and commit a homicide which should have been completely avoided. And then it got worse. The police investigated the shooting, and applying the same misinterpretation of the new statute as Zimmerman himself was pleading, they let the killer go and didn’t confiscate his weapon. Even a police officer who, in the performance of his official duties, shoots a suspect is automatically relieved of his weapon until the investigation is completed. But Zimmerman was sent home, with the deadly weapon in hand.

And then the race vultures got into the act. Those who automatically assumed that this was a race-based homicide called for the immediate arrest of Zimmerman. Not entirely a bad idea, but not automatically the correct thing to do either. But simply determining that Zimmerman bore no responsibility has resulted in the “stepping down” of the police chief. He didn’t resign, and he wasn’t fired, indicating that he still believes his cops did the right thing in releasing Zimmerman complete with his weapon. The city's police review commission issued a no confidence vote as a result of the chief's earlier actions.

[Note: The facts and statements continue to come out. The police have said that they had no contact with the police review commission. But one of the commissioners has stated that after she voted against the no confidence resolution, a police officer informed her that Zimmerman's clothes and gun had indeed been taken from him. That remains to be verified at the time of this writing.]

Our first post-racial President diverged from his usual pattern of not answering questions following a public announcement of the nomination of a new head of the World Bank, and did answer a question about the shooting. Rather than say that the legal authorities should do their job, he went into full emotional mode and declared that the youngster could have been his own son if he had had a boy. Well, he could have been my son as well, if his mother and I were black. But what does that have to do with the known facts? About as much as his “typical white person” grandmother, and the “stupid cops” who arrested his Harvard buddy. In the name of racial harmony, he has once again found a way to stir up racial resentment without actually saying so.

The ”Reverend” Al Sharpton immediately called for Zimmerman’s head. The same man directly responsible for the Tawana Brawley hoax and a riot which resulted in the death of a Jewish shopkeeper over “people who don’t belong in our neighborhood” is now calling for the immediate prosecution and conviction of a man who apparently did exactly the same kind of thing. Race hustler and filmmaker Spike Lee has Tweeted what he believes to be Zimmerman's home address, and asked all his followers to pass it on. Thousands have complied, many with the addition of death threats and exhortations to violence.

On the other hand, Geraldo Rivera (a man who routinely finds racism under every white bed) inadvertently supported the shooter and the police chief by contending that the hoodie was a valid reason to believe that the teenager was up to something dangerous. He was immediately reviled for his remark by hysterical partisans on both the left and right. And despite his being a licensed lawyer, Rivera also misplaced the intent of the Florida “stand your ground” law.

The hoodie may or may not raise reasonable suspicion, but every action the gunman took on that possibly-reasonable belief ignored the other half of the law. Which is to say that Zimmerman had no reasonable excuse to use deadly force even if his initial suspicion was reasonable. To add to the confusion, there's now a mystery witness who claims to have seen some kind of physical confrontation between Zimmerman and the teenager.

The mainstream media are treating this as a racist vigilante matter (and they may be right). But their role in stirring up racial animosities is to expand that simple possibility into a general theory that the Ku Klux Klan is ready, willing and able to use this opportunity to retake the entire South into its racist grip. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the killing of black suspects in northern cities by police officers is just another piece of evidence that white racism is still alive and well and waiting to put Jim Crow into place nationwide.

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget the poll-watchers of the New Black Panther Party. That organization has decided to fight vigilantism with, well, vigilantism. At a rally in Jacksonville, Florida, they passed around their new piece of racial retribution—a “wanted” poster. It reads: “Murdered in cold blood. Child-killer of Trayvon Martin wanted—dead or alive.” In case you think that was just rhetoric, they've added a $10,000 reward. Somehow, the mainstream media are ignoring or spinning that juicy little tidbit of news while roundly condemning the alleged racial vigilantism of the shooter and the police who let him go.

President Obama has ordered race-neutral Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department to investigate the killing. Considering Holder’s history of finding racism where it doesn’t exist and ignoring it where it does, this tragedy will soon turn into tragicomedy.

By now, pretty much everyone is aware of the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida. The shooting was done by a wannabe cop and self-styled Neighborhood Watch captain. Perverting Florida’s “stand your ground” law, the killer was continuing a pattern he had been following for a very long time. A sensible neighborhood crime prevention program and a sensible law were twisted into the loss of a young life on the flimsiest of grounds.

The travesty is grounded in two perfectly acceptable concepts. First, neighborhoods have a basic right to make sure their families and homes are safe. Neighborhood Watch was created years ago to provide eyes and ears to accomplish that goal. But look at the name of the group: Neighborhood Watch. These are not duly-sworn police agencies, nor even well-trained armed private response teams. They are there to watch and report. They are not there to bag strangers or to shoot human beings that they perceive to be some kind of abstract deadly danger. Even well-trained police officers have made tragic mistakes misidentifying an innocent act as a deadly threat. In most cases, those were true mistakes, but they bear no resemblance to the homicide in Florida.

Here, an amateur protector of the peace essentially stalked a lone teenager whom he considered to be “acting suspiciously” and who looked like “he didn’t belong there” (more on that later). Instead of “watching and reporting,” he followed the kid like a bloodhound, finally calling the local police to report the “suspicious activity.” The police recognized the modus operandi of wannabe cop George Zimmerman, who had called in dozens of similar reports, none of which had turned out to be a genuinely dangerous threat to the neighborhood.

The police took the call, noted the report and said they would send a patrol car out to investigate. Zimmerman then asked if he should continue to follow the boy. The police were very specific: “That’s not necessary. Do not continue to follow him.” But this self-appointed protector of the public peace continued to follow the youngster anyway. His activity finally caused the mystified teenager to approach Zimmerman to find out what was going on and why he was being followed.

We’ll probably never know for sure what went on in Zimmerman’s fevered mind, but whatever his motivations, he decided that the teenager was now a physical threat, and proceeded to shoot him down. Had he followed the instructions of the police dispatcher, an unnecessary death would have been avoided, and the police would have gotten a completely valid explanation from the boy as to why he was moving through the neighborhood at that time of night. He had simply gone out to get candy and soft drinks for the relatives he was visiting. Zimmerman didn’t know that, and it’s my opinion that he didn’t want to know that. He just wanted an excuse to fire his weapon at someone he had decided didn't belong there.

Second, Zimmerman was [incorrectly] hiding behind Florida’s new “stand your ground” law. As with the concept of Neighborhood Watch, this law was perfectly sensible and was passed in order to protect citizens from criminal prosecution and/or civil liability for using deadly force to counter deadly force when confronted with a situation that previously required the potential victim to flee rather than protect himself.

The law was not designed to protect self-appointed peacekeepers who put themselves into a volatile situation voluntarily and provocatively. Such activity turns the innocent victim/aggressive perpetrator scenario on its head. Zimmerman’s use of the law is totally misplaced. Part of the problem is the long history of the law abandoning simple common sense and the ancient principle of “the reasonable man” standard (more recently, the “reasonable person” standard).

Both sides of the legal spectrum have erroneously gone to a more absolutist view of any criminal statute rather than inferring the actual “intent of the law.” The old view (and the far better one) is “what would a reasonable man, under the same or similar circumstances, believe he should do?” The teenager was out in the late hours of the evening, but he was not doing anything a reasonable person would consider dangerously suspicious. A reasonable person would have followed the instructions of the police and abandoned the activity of following the teenager.

A reasonable person, even if he decided to continue following the boy, would have done so at a distance and left when the police arrived. But Zimmerman continued to follow the boy, up close and personal. The youngster apparently got either tired of being followed or curious as to what was going on. What he couldn’t know is that Zimmerman appears already to have determined that a young, black man wearing a hoodie (hooded sweatshirt) with the hood up is automatically a deadly threat. So Trayvon Martin approached Zimmerman’s car, resulting in his own unexpected and violent death.

Whether Zimmerman was a racist vigilante or not will eventually be determined. But he is at best a dangerous fool who knew just enough law to get it all wrong and commit a homicide which should have been completely avoided. And then it got worse. The police investigated the shooting, and applying the same misinterpretation of the new statute as Zimmerman himself was pleading, they let the killer go and didn’t confiscate his weapon. Even a police officer who, in the performance of his official duties, shoots a suspect is automatically relieved of his weapon until the investigation is completed. But Zimmerman was sent home, with the deadly weapon in hand.

And then the race vultures got into the act. Those who automatically assumed that this was a race-based homicide called for the immediate arrest of Zimmerman. Not entirely a bad idea, but not automatically the correct thing to do either. But simply determining that Zimmerman bore no responsibility has resulted in the “stepping down” of the police chief. He didn’t resign, and he wasn’t fired, indicating that he still believes his cops did the right thing in releasing Zimmerman complete with his weapon. The city's police review commission issued a no confidence vote as a result of the chief's earlier actions.

[Note: The facts and statements continue to come out. The police have said that they had no contact with the police review commission. But one of the commissioners has stated that after she voted against the no confidence resolution, a police officer informed her that Zimmerman's clothes and gun had indeed been taken from him. That remains to be verified at the time of this writing.]

Our first post-racial President diverged from his usual pattern of not answering questions following a public announcement of the nomination of a new head of the World Bank, and did answer a question about the shooting. Rather than say that the legal authorities should do their job, he went into full emotional mode and declared that the youngster could have been his own son if he had had a boy. Well, he could have been my son as well, if his mother and I were black. But what does that have to do with the known facts? About as much as his “typical white person” grandmother, and the “stupid cops” who arrested his Harvard buddy. In the name of racial harmony, he has once again found a way to stir up racial resentment without actually saying so.

The ”Reverend” Al Sharpton immediately called for Zimmerman’s head. The same man directly responsible for the Tawana Brawley hoax and a riot which resulted in the death of a Jewish shopkeeper over “people who don’t belong in our neighborhood” is now calling for the immediate prosecution and conviction of a man who apparently did exactly the same kind of thing. Race hustler and filmmaker Spike Lee has Tweeted what he believes to be Zimmerman's home address, and asked all his followers to pass it on. Thousands have complied, many with the addition of death threats and exhortations to violence.

On the other hand, Geraldo Rivera (a man who routinely finds racism under every white bed) inadvertently supported the shooter and the police chief by contending that the hoodie was a valid reason to believe that the teenager was up to something dangerous. He was immediately reviled for his remark by hysterical partisans on both the left and right. And despite his being a licensed lawyer, Rivera also misplaced the intent of the Florida “stand your ground” law.

The hoodie may or may not raise reasonable suspicion, but every action the gunman took on that possibly-reasonable belief ignored the other half of the law. Which is to say that Zimmerman had no reasonable excuse to use deadly force even if his initial suspicion was reasonable. To add to the confusion, there's now a mystery witness who claims to have seen some kind of physical confrontation between Zimmerman and the teenager.

The mainstream media are treating this as a racist vigilante matter (and they may be right). But their role in stirring up racial animosities is to expand that simple possibility into a general theory that the Ku Klux Klan is ready, willing and able to use this opportunity to retake the entire South into its racist grip. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the killing of black suspects in northern cities by police officers is just another piece of evidence that white racism is still alive and well and waiting to put Jim Crow into place nationwide.

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget the poll-watchers of the New Black Panther Party. That organization has decided to fight vigilantism with, well, vigilantism. At a rally in Jacksonville, Florida, they passed around their new piece of racial retribution—a “wanted” poster. It reads: “Murdered in cold blood. Child-killer of Trayvon Martin wanted—dead or alive.” In case you think that was just rhetoric, they've added a $10,000 reward. Somehow, the mainstream media are ignoring or spinning that juicy little tidbit of news while roundly condemning the alleged racial vigilantism of the shooter and the police who let him go.

President Obama has ordered race-neutral Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department to investigate the killing. Considering Holder’s history of finding racism where it doesn’t exist and ignoring it where it does, this tragedy will soon turn into tragicomedy.

Tragedy Becoming Tragicomedy

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Protecting Minority Voters—Part II

Protecting Minority Voters—Part II

I didn’t have any intention of writing a Part II to my discussion of Eric Holder and his misuse of the Voting Rights Act to pander to Hispanics. That was until I started finding articles all over the place about the fact that the regressives progressives aren’t satisfied with abusing logic and the Constitution to retain power. Why keep it in the family when you can go to the United Nations?

At the same time that the attorney general is using executive orders and the federal courts to squelch the reasonable requirement of possessing a valid state-issued photo ID in order to vote, Holder’s progressive pals are proffering complaints to the United Nations Human Rights Council. According to the progressives (99% Democratic), requiring a photo ID is on a par with other human rights violations such as genocide, torture, dictatorial rule and suppression of religious freedom.

The NAACP along with several other “civil rights groups” claim that the simple requirement of proving you are who you say you are before voting is a violation of the human rights of minorities under international law. These groups obviously understand that there is one organization that is even goofier than the Democratic left, and that is the United Nations. Most of the members of the Human Rights Council represent nations which don’t allow women to vote, oppress any religion but their own, and rig elections to perpetuate their own regimes.

It’s good to know that there are still people who won’t rely on the racist American Constitution to protect minorities. They believe that Holder is doing the right thing, but possibly in the wrong forum. The American people are under the thumb of an oppressive white society, and the courts are rigged to keep minorities in their place. So what better forum to have your case heard in than where the judges are from bastions of freedom and democracy like China, Russia, Iran, Sudan, Angola, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba?

It is quite possible that Holder’s order and litigation will finally result in the death knell of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act at the Supreme Court, freeing Southern states to impose the same voter ID requirements as the Northern states. It is also likely that without expedited proceedings, this will not happen in time for the 2012 presidential election.

The NAACP is wise to go to the United Nations, where such ridiculous charges will be met with open arms. The only entity more anti-American than the race-baiting American left is the United Nations. At the United Nations, they don’t care if or how voting is suppressed anywhere else in the world. But when it comes to America, the complaint will be well-received and well-publicized.

The only upside to this moronic behavior is that it’s also likely that Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and the Democratic Senate majority will all be gone in 2013. If the United Nations votes to condemn American voter ID requirements, the new administration can simply paraphrase Andrew Jackson and say “the UN Human Rights Council has issued its order, now let them enforce it.”

I didn’t have any intention of writing a Part II to my discussion of Eric Holder and his misuse of the Voting Rights Act to pander to Hispanics. That was until I started finding articles all over the place about the fact that the regressives progressives aren’t satisfied with abusing logic and the Constitution to retain power. Why keep it in the family when you can go to the United Nations?

At the same time that the attorney general is using executive orders and the federal courts to squelch the reasonable requirement of possessing a valid state-issued photo ID in order to vote, Holder’s progressive pals are proffering complaints to the United Nations Human Rights Council. According to the progressives (99% Democratic), requiring a photo ID is on a par with other human rights violations such as genocide, torture, dictatorial rule and suppression of religious freedom.

The NAACP along with several other “civil rights groups” claim that the simple requirement of proving you are who you say you are before voting is a violation of the human rights of minorities under international law. These groups obviously understand that there is one organization that is even goofier than the Democratic left, and that is the United Nations. Most of the members of the Human Rights Council represent nations which don’t allow women to vote, oppress any religion but their own, and rig elections to perpetuate their own regimes.

It’s good to know that there are still people who won’t rely on the racist American Constitution to protect minorities. They believe that Holder is doing the right thing, but possibly in the wrong forum. The American people are under the thumb of an oppressive white society, and the courts are rigged to keep minorities in their place. So what better forum to have your case heard in than where the judges are from bastions of freedom and democracy like China, Russia, Iran, Sudan, Angola, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba?

It is quite possible that Holder’s order and litigation will finally result in the death knell of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act at the Supreme Court, freeing Southern states to impose the same voter ID requirements as the Northern states. It is also likely that without expedited proceedings, this will not happen in time for the 2012 presidential election.

The NAACP is wise to go to the United Nations, where such ridiculous charges will be met with open arms. The only entity more anti-American than the race-baiting American left is the United Nations. At the United Nations, they don’t care if or how voting is suppressed anywhere else in the world. But when it comes to America, the complaint will be well-received and well-publicized.

The only upside to this moronic behavior is that it’s also likely that Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and the Democratic Senate majority will all be gone in 2013. If the United Nations votes to condemn American voter ID requirements, the new administration can simply paraphrase Andrew Jackson and say “the UN Human Rights Council has issued its order, now let them enforce it.”

Protecting Minority Voters—Part II

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Holder Saves An Oppressed Minority

Holder Saves An Oppressed Minority

Having gotten all of America’s other legal problems firmly taken care of (including Fast and Furious), Attorney General Eric Holder has moved on to fixing one of the most egregious civil rights violations in all of American history. Holder saw the horrendous wrong in requiring valid photo ID in order to vote, and is using his executive powers to block the current Texas law.

The Texas law is almost identical to photo ID laws which have been upheld in other states. But Holder has a slight advantage in the Texas matter. Texas is among those states directly impacted by the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) designed to end discrimination against black voters in the formerly segregated South. Any change to voting rules, regulations, and even districting must be first approved by the Civil Rights Division of the Attorney General’s office. The consent decree did not include any northern state which did not have a record of de jure and de facto discrimination against blacks.

Holder only cares about pandering to Hispanic votes at election time, while exhibiting benign neglect the rest of the time. But it is election time, and Texas has a lot of Hispanic votes to pander to. Blacks in Texas are registered to vote and have valid photo ID at nearly the same rate as whites, so Holder needed a different stalking horse to misuse the Voting Rights Act for his own nefarious purposes.

Therefore, Holder’s surrogate at the Justice Department, Tom Perez, sent a six page demand letter to the Texas Director of Elections informing him that “Texas has not sustained its burden under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to show that the new law will not have a discriminatory effect on minority (in this case, read “Hispanic”) voters." Now if that burden of proof sounds backwards, it is. And here’s why.

Under regular rules, the Attorney General would have the burden of proof to show that there is intentional discrimination rather than the state proving there is not. But the VRA and the consent decree turn the burden of proof on its head. There is good reason why the Democrats have managed to extend the Act multiple times rather than let it die a natural death some time in the late 80s or early 90s. It prevents logical redistricting based on current realities rather than 60s realities, and it prevents conscientious elections boards from verifying their voting rolls and preventing voter fraud.

Holder and his legal storm troopers based their ridiculous decision on one lousy set of statistics. An estimated 11% of Hispanics in Texas do not have state-issued photo ID. And of the total estimated three-quarters of a million eligible Texas voters who don’t have state-issued photo ID, the estimates also show that somewhere between 29% and 38% are Hispanic. Well, so what? Upsetting a reasonable state law using estimates of estimates is hardly sound legal reasoning.

In his letter to the Director, Perez also wrote: “While the state law says the new photo ID requirement is to ensure electoral integrity and deter ineligible voters from voting, the state did not include evidence of significant in-person voter impersonation not already addressed by existing state law.” Since when does the federal government object to “redundant” legislation? God knows, during the Obama administration multiple redundant and even self-contradictory laws have been passed. Furthermore, where is the rule that says that the Attorney General can substitute his wisdom for that of the state? Even the consent decree doesn't distort burden of proof that much.

The state actually did conduct extensive investigations into voter fraud, and found that there was a sufficient number to justify the new law. On the other hand, Perez’s statement is what lawyers call a “naked allegation” without supporting evidence. Should we not have laws against violent murders because they are somewhat rare? And how does Holder explain the ACORN and SEIU investigations which showed thousands of attempts to register dead people, people who don't exist, people in more than one precinct, and cartoon characters? Next to the right to live, the right to protect the sanctity of the ballot box stands out as nearly equal in importance in a free, self-governing society.

Because of the consent decree, Holder felt safe about not proving that there was any actual discrimination, and if there was, that it was intentional. Concurrence is not causation, and the fact that an unusually large percentage of the population lacking state-issued photo ID is Hispanic is not in any way proof that the state legislature was targeting Hispanics and only Hispanics for “voter suppression.” Furthermore, Texas is among the states which make obtaining state-issued photo ID easy and cheap (free, if necessary). The only group that the law discriminates against is those too lazy or too devious to obtain one of those ID’s.

Perez didn’t even bother with the argument about “poor people,” or the elderly, or even other “oppressed minorities.” That wouldn’t gain Obama any votes in Texas. But striking down a law that is disingenuously described as anti-Hispanic is top-notch demagoguery.

The Holder/Obama decision to interfere with the Texas law demonstrates just how low this race-baiting administration will go to use the law to perpetuate racial and ethnic division at the expense of the Constitution and the integrity of the voting booth. Equally importantly, it demonstrates just how much harm a once-good law can do when it is extended well beyond its useful and realistic life.

Except for the sole guiding principle of guaranteeing the right of American citizens to vote in a fair and honest election, the entirety of the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be repealed. Thinking people have known that for over two decades, but Congress just keeps extending it. Democrats claim to be “progressive,” but in fact they are still living their imaginary lives back in their heydays of the 60s.

Having gotten all of America’s other legal problems firmly taken care of (including Fast and Furious), Attorney General Eric Holder has moved on to fixing one of the most egregious civil rights violations in all of American history. Holder saw the horrendous wrong in requiring valid photo ID in order to vote, and is using his executive powers to block the current Texas law.

The Texas law is almost identical to photo ID laws which have been upheld in other states. But Holder has a slight advantage in the Texas matter. Texas is among those states directly impacted by the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) designed to end discrimination against black voters in the formerly segregated South. Any change to voting rules, regulations, and even districting must be first approved by the Civil Rights Division of the Attorney General’s office. The consent decree did not include any northern state which did not have a record of de jure and de facto discrimination against blacks.

Holder only cares about pandering to Hispanic votes at election time, while exhibiting benign neglect the rest of the time. But it is election time, and Texas has a lot of Hispanic votes to pander to. Blacks in Texas are registered to vote and have valid photo ID at nearly the same rate as whites, so Holder needed a different stalking horse to misuse the Voting Rights Act for his own nefarious purposes.

Therefore, Holder’s surrogate at the Justice Department, Tom Perez, sent a six page demand letter to the Texas Director of Elections informing him that “Texas has not sustained its burden under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to show that the new law will not have a discriminatory effect on minority (in this case, read “Hispanic”) voters." Now if that burden of proof sounds backwards, it is. And here’s why.

Under regular rules, the Attorney General would have the burden of proof to show that there is intentional discrimination rather than the state proving there is not. But the VRA and the consent decree turn the burden of proof on its head. There is good reason why the Democrats have managed to extend the Act multiple times rather than let it die a natural death some time in the late 80s or early 90s. It prevents logical redistricting based on current realities rather than 60s realities, and it prevents conscientious elections boards from verifying their voting rolls and preventing voter fraud.

Holder and his legal storm troopers based their ridiculous decision on one lousy set of statistics. An estimated 11% of Hispanics in Texas do not have state-issued photo ID. And of the total estimated three-quarters of a million eligible Texas voters who don’t have state-issued photo ID, the estimates also show that somewhere between 29% and 38% are Hispanic. Well, so what? Upsetting a reasonable state law using estimates of estimates is hardly sound legal reasoning.

In his letter to the Director, Perez also wrote: “While the state law says the new photo ID requirement is to ensure electoral integrity and deter ineligible voters from voting, the state did not include evidence of significant in-person voter impersonation not already addressed by existing state law.” Since when does the federal government object to “redundant” legislation? God knows, during the Obama administration multiple redundant and even self-contradictory laws have been passed. Furthermore, where is the rule that says that the Attorney General can substitute his wisdom for that of the state? Even the consent decree doesn't distort burden of proof that much.

The state actually did conduct extensive investigations into voter fraud, and found that there was a sufficient number to justify the new law. On the other hand, Perez’s statement is what lawyers call a “naked allegation” without supporting evidence. Should we not have laws against violent murders because they are somewhat rare? And how does Holder explain the ACORN and SEIU investigations which showed thousands of attempts to register dead people, people who don't exist, people in more than one precinct, and cartoon characters? Next to the right to live, the right to protect the sanctity of the ballot box stands out as nearly equal in importance in a free, self-governing society.

Because of the consent decree, Holder felt safe about not proving that there was any actual discrimination, and if there was, that it was intentional. Concurrence is not causation, and the fact that an unusually large percentage of the population lacking state-issued photo ID is Hispanic is not in any way proof that the state legislature was targeting Hispanics and only Hispanics for “voter suppression.” Furthermore, Texas is among the states which make obtaining state-issued photo ID easy and cheap (free, if necessary). The only group that the law discriminates against is those too lazy or too devious to obtain one of those ID’s.

Perez didn’t even bother with the argument about “poor people,” or the elderly, or even other “oppressed minorities.” That wouldn’t gain Obama any votes in Texas. But striking down a law that is disingenuously described as anti-Hispanic is top-notch demagoguery.

The Holder/Obama decision to interfere with the Texas law demonstrates just how low this race-baiting administration will go to use the law to perpetuate racial and ethnic division at the expense of the Constitution and the integrity of the voting booth. Equally importantly, it demonstrates just how much harm a once-good law can do when it is extended well beyond its useful and realistic life.

Except for the sole guiding principle of guaranteeing the right of American citizens to vote in a fair and honest election, the entirety of the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be repealed. Thinking people have known that for over two decades, but Congress just keeps extending it. Democrats claim to be “progressive,” but in fact they are still living their imaginary lives back in their heydays of the 60s.

Holder Saves An Oppressed Minority

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Obama Thanks Buffett, Again

Obama Thanks Buffett, Again

Warren “Tax Me, Bro” Buffett got a big gift from Barack Obama and the Department of Justice last week. Crony socialist Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the government had reached a settlement with five major U.S. banks in regard to foreclosure abuse. The settlement: $25 billion. Buffett’s profit: $154 million. Since it’s growth in the value of his bank shares, it won’t be taxed as ordinary income, and his secretary will continue to pay at a higher rate.

Now if you happen to have a few billion dollars lying around unused, and want to make a big profit with the help of the President, here’s how the Sagebrush of Omaha did it. Back in 2011, Buffett invested $5 billion in Bank of America. He knew that it would eventually be a solid investment, since BofA was too big to fail and did very well with government bailouts. As part of his purchase, he also got warrants to buy 700 million shares at the depressed price of $7.14 per share.

A few months later, amid bonus and mortgage abuse scandals at BofA, those shares had dropped to $4.94. But never fear, the government is here. Not known for panicking at a mere downtick, Buffett held onto his shares and increased the number at the even-lower price. On Thursday, the DOJ announced the settlement, and BofA shares promptly rose to $8.13 per share. By Friday afternoon, the shares had risen to $8.35 per share.

Now I’m absolutely sure that this and other Buffett windfalls as a result of administration action are purely coincidental (sarcasm intentional). Just prior to this gift, Barack Obama announced that despite Congress’s urging, he would not allow the State Department to approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas. No direct largess there either. But nevertheless, by eliminating the pipeline, the Canadian oil has to be transported to the refineries in Texas somehow.

That would be railroads, folks. And the biggest beneficiary is Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC, which is owned by, you guessed it, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. At the time the pipeline was nixed, Kirata York-Wooley of Burlington Northern said simply: “If Keystone XL doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul.” I’ll bet they are.

Buffett’s “billionaires should be taxed at a much higher rate” statement is much beloved or much hated, depending on your political/economic stance. But this is the same man who also said: “Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won.” This was before his love affair with Barack Obama, and he wasn’t saying it apologetically.

Given his ties to this corrupt administration, there is plenty of reason to believe that he may have what is called an informational advantage for investments in the not-so-free market. Proving that he is trading on insider information is of course an entirely different matter. It’s good to have knowledgeable friends in Congress, and even better to have them close to the White House.

That’s twice in a very short period of time that Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have greatly benefited by administration action, the details of which the average investor couldn’t know in advance. Coincidence is not concurrence, but I’m still getting a faint odor of rat. Perhaps Buffett will donate a few billion dollars of these two big gains to the public treasury while giving his secretary a raise. The increase in value of Buffett’s shares in BofA and Burlington Northern is what our socialist friends call “windfall profits.” When they’re gained this way, I have another name for them—“convenient luck.”

Warren “Tax Me, Bro” Buffett got a big gift from Barack Obama and the Department of Justice last week. Crony socialist Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the government had reached a settlement with five major U.S. banks in regard to foreclosure abuse. The settlement: $25 billion. Buffett’s profit: $154 million. Since it’s growth in the value of his bank shares, it won’t be taxed as ordinary income, and his secretary will continue to pay at a higher rate.

Now if you happen to have a few billion dollars lying around unused, and want to make a big profit with the help of the President, here’s how the Sagebrush of Omaha did it. Back in 2011, Buffett invested $5 billion in Bank of America. He knew that it would eventually be a solid investment, since BofA was too big to fail and did very well with government bailouts. As part of his purchase, he also got warrants to buy 700 million shares at the depressed price of $7.14 per share.

A few months later, amid bonus and mortgage abuse scandals at BofA, those shares had dropped to $4.94. But never fear, the government is here. Not known for panicking at a mere downtick, Buffett held onto his shares and increased the number at the even-lower price. On Thursday, the DOJ announced the settlement, and BofA shares promptly rose to $8.13 per share. By Friday afternoon, the shares had risen to $8.35 per share.

Now I’m absolutely sure that this and other Buffett windfalls as a result of administration action are purely coincidental (sarcasm intentional). Just prior to this gift, Barack Obama announced that despite Congress’s urging, he would not allow the State Department to approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas. No direct largess there either. But nevertheless, by eliminating the pipeline, the Canadian oil has to be transported to the refineries in Texas somehow.

That would be railroads, folks. And the biggest beneficiary is Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC, which is owned by, you guessed it, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. At the time the pipeline was nixed, Kirata York-Wooley of Burlington Northern said simply: “If Keystone XL doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul.” I’ll bet they are.

Buffett’s “billionaires should be taxed at a much higher rate” statement is much beloved or much hated, depending on your political/economic stance. But this is the same man who also said: “Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won.” This was before his love affair with Barack Obama, and he wasn’t saying it apologetically.

Given his ties to this corrupt administration, there is plenty of reason to believe that he may have what is called an informational advantage for investments in the not-so-free market. Proving that he is trading on insider information is of course an entirely different matter. It’s good to have knowledgeable friends in Congress, and even better to have them close to the White House.

That’s twice in a very short period of time that Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have greatly benefited by administration action, the details of which the average investor couldn’t know in advance. Coincidence is not concurrence, but I’m still getting a faint odor of rat. Perhaps Buffett will donate a few billion dollars of these two big gains to the public treasury while giving his secretary a raise. The increase in value of Buffett’s shares in BofA and Burlington Northern is what our socialist friends call “windfall profits.” When they’re gained this way, I have another name for them—“convenient luck.”

Obama Thanks Buffett, Again

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Look Into My Eyes And Believe

Look Into My Eyes And Believe

This past week, Attorney General Eric Holder appeared again before the House Oversight Committee. During that hearing, he attempted to hypnotize the Republican majority members into ignoring the 500 pound gorilla in the room (Operation Fast and Furious) and instead to concentrate on Holder’s many accomplishments in office.

This was a new tactic for Holder, since mounting evidence seemed to disprove his claim that he knew nothing about the operation. Apparently, Republicans are not highly-susceptible to the new Mesmer’s intense gaze. Rep. Ann Buerdle (R-New York) chose instead to produce a video of the earlier testimony of the family of murdered Border Agent Brian Terry. Terry was shot down by Mexican cartel members using weapons purchased during the Fast and Furious fiasco.

Buerdle simply couldn’t be charmed by Holder’s hypnotic eyes and sleep-inducing voice. After showing the video, she asked Holder: “How many more Border Patrol agents would have to die as a part of Operation Fast and Furious for you to take responsibility?”

Holder was unable to dodge the question entirely, but continued his previous pattern of refusing to use Brian Terry’s name, preferring to refer to him as “the Border Agent” or “that Agent” so he didn’t have to admit that a real human being had been brutally murdered as a result of Holder’s negligence and incompetence.

Having failed to hypnotize the Republicans, he did seem to have hypnotized himself. Never mind “that agent.” The real victim of Fast and Furious is Holder himself, with Republicans unfairly piling on. The Democrats pleaded with him not to answer Buerdle’s questions. He even ignored the sage wisdom of the Al Gore defense: “I didn’t do it, and I’ll never do it again.” Holder simply launched into a tear-jerking “poor me” performance.

Says Holder: “You know I should be held accountable for certainly my role in whatever I did or didn’t do in connection with the supervision of Fast and Furious. But, yeah, I’m Attorney General of the United States, and I should also be held accountable and perhaps even given some credit—imagine that—given some credit for the things this Justice Department has done under my leadership whether it deals with national security, revitalizing antitrust, revitalizing civil rights enforcement efforts, so one has to balance all of these things.”

OK, Mr. Attorney General, let’s look at a few of your accomplishments. In the voting rights arena, you dismissed already-proven charges against Black Panthers who intimidated white voters at the polls in Philadelphia. But on the other hand, you have used your power under the Voting Rights Act to quash redistricting in North Carolina and Texas because it might favor Republicans. In at least one of those cases, under an Act of Congress designed solely to eliminate racial discrimination, the vast majority of the voters are black in the district in question. You chose to prevent the redistricting because the locals wanted to make partisan Democratic offices into nonpartisan offices.

As for religious freedom, you have thrown your full support behind the HHS Secretary’s requirement that Catholic institutions provide free birth control and abortifacient drugs despite the strong objection of the Catholic Church. And that is merely one facet of your perpetual defenses of the unconstitutional mandates of Obamacare. In your pursuit of legalization of unconstitutional power-grabs by the Obama executive branch and its monomaniacal czars, you have written Article One and the Tenth Amendment out of the Constitution entirely.

There are even indications, unproven so far, that Fast and Furious was expanded on your watch to accomplish the goal in which it did ultimately succeed. You forgot the likely and foreseeable but unintended consequences. The indication is that you approved the operation for the purpose of getting weapons into the hands of criminals so you could then pass massive gun-control legislation to stop the sales of weapons that you and your boss don’t want in the hands of mere American citizens. Even I don’t believe that you intended for “that agent” to be murdered, but that was the result nevertheless.

Here is more of Holder’s “poor me” recitation: “I’m not claiming to be a perfect person or a perfect attorney general. I get up every day and try to do the best job that I can. I have faith in the people that work in the department, and you know that kind of question [referring to Buerkle’s grilling], I think is frankly, and again respectfully, I think that’s beneath a member of Congress.”

And so you see, dear reader, that the real villain here is Buerkle (and her Republican colleagues). After all, the AG was just doing his job and was only following orders. Seems we’ve heard that somewhere before. I should also add that Eric Holder is the last person on earth who should be deciding what is “beneath” a member of Congress. His standards are not those of a decent and fair-minded official of the law, but rather the street thuggishness of a Chicago South Side politician who will attempt to achieve his agenda by any means necessary.

This past week, Attorney General Eric Holder appeared again before the House Oversight Committee. During that hearing, he attempted to hypnotize the Republican majority members into ignoring the 500 pound gorilla in the room (Operation Fast and Furious) and instead to concentrate on Holder’s many accomplishments in office.

This was a new tactic for Holder, since mounting evidence seemed to disprove his claim that he knew nothing about the operation. Apparently, Republicans are not highly-susceptible to the new Mesmer’s intense gaze. Rep. Ann Buerdle (R-New York) chose instead to produce a video of the earlier testimony of the family of murdered Border Agent Brian Terry. Terry was shot down by Mexican cartel members using weapons purchased during the Fast and Furious fiasco.

Buerdle simply couldn’t be charmed by Holder’s hypnotic eyes and sleep-inducing voice. After showing the video, she asked Holder: “How many more Border Patrol agents would have to die as a part of Operation Fast and Furious for you to take responsibility?”

Holder was unable to dodge the question entirely, but continued his previous pattern of refusing to use Brian Terry’s name, preferring to refer to him as “the Border Agent” or “that Agent” so he didn’t have to admit that a real human being had been brutally murdered as a result of Holder’s negligence and incompetence.

Having failed to hypnotize the Republicans, he did seem to have hypnotized himself. Never mind “that agent.” The real victim of Fast and Furious is Holder himself, with Republicans unfairly piling on. The Democrats pleaded with him not to answer Buerdle’s questions. He even ignored the sage wisdom of the Al Gore defense: “I didn’t do it, and I’ll never do it again.” Holder simply launched into a tear-jerking “poor me” performance.

Says Holder: “You know I should be held accountable for certainly my role in whatever I did or didn’t do in connection with the supervision of Fast and Furious. But, yeah, I’m Attorney General of the United States, and I should also be held accountable and perhaps even given some credit—imagine that—given some credit for the things this Justice Department has done under my leadership whether it deals with national security, revitalizing antitrust, revitalizing civil rights enforcement efforts, so one has to balance all of these things.”

OK, Mr. Attorney General, let’s look at a few of your accomplishments. In the voting rights arena, you dismissed already-proven charges against Black Panthers who intimidated white voters at the polls in Philadelphia. But on the other hand, you have used your power under the Voting Rights Act to quash redistricting in North Carolina and Texas because it might favor Republicans. In at least one of those cases, under an Act of Congress designed solely to eliminate racial discrimination, the vast majority of the voters are black in the district in question. You chose to prevent the redistricting because the locals wanted to make partisan Democratic offices into nonpartisan offices.

As for religious freedom, you have thrown your full support behind the HHS Secretary’s requirement that Catholic institutions provide free birth control and abortifacient drugs despite the strong objection of the Catholic Church. And that is merely one facet of your perpetual defenses of the unconstitutional mandates of Obamacare. In your pursuit of legalization of unconstitutional power-grabs by the Obama executive branch and its monomaniacal czars, you have written Article One and the Tenth Amendment out of the Constitution entirely.

There are even indications, unproven so far, that Fast and Furious was expanded on your watch to accomplish the goal in which it did ultimately succeed. You forgot the likely and foreseeable but unintended consequences. The indication is that you approved the operation for the purpose of getting weapons into the hands of criminals so you could then pass massive gun-control legislation to stop the sales of weapons that you and your boss don’t want in the hands of mere American citizens. Even I don’t believe that you intended for “that agent” to be murdered, but that was the result nevertheless.

Here is more of Holder’s “poor me” recitation: “I’m not claiming to be a perfect person or a perfect attorney general. I get up every day and try to do the best job that I can. I have faith in the people that work in the department, and you know that kind of question [referring to Buerkle’s grilling], I think is frankly, and again respectfully, I think that’s beneath a member of Congress.”

And so you see, dear reader, that the real villain here is Buerkle (and her Republican colleagues). After all, the AG was just doing his job and was only following orders. Seems we’ve heard that somewhere before. I should also add that Eric Holder is the last person on earth who should be deciding what is “beneath” a member of Congress. His standards are not those of a decent and fair-minded official of the law, but rather the street thuggishness of a Chicago South Side politician who will attempt to achieve his agenda by any means necessary.

Look Into My Eyes And Believe

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DOJ Discovers The Constitution

DOJ Discovers The Constitution

The United States Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder considers the Constitution to be an infinitely malleable document, subject to the whim of temporary majorities, Congress and the Chief Executive. But as of last week, it found one constitutional provision it considers cast in concrete. That would be the Fifth Amendment.

US Attorney Patrick J. Cunningham, deeply-involved in the Fast and Furious scandal, is invoking his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The Committee is looking into who is responsible for the gun-running operation which has ended up with thousands of weapons in the hands of Mexican criminal cartels and which has resulted in an unimaginable number of deaths in Mexico and that of a Border Agent inside America's borders.

Sooner or later, high-ranking members of criminal organizations such as the Mafia and the Department of Justice learn that lying only trips them up, while silence protected by the Constitution only makes them look guilty but can’t be used as proof of guilt. That certainly fits Cunningham, who is the chief of the Criminal Division of the US Attorney’s Field Office in Arizona. When you get caught flouting the law and end-running the Constitution, become a devotee of that selfsame Constitution.

Then, when your arse is showing as you get caught with your pants down, hire a savvy lawyer to blame the victims and the system. Use the Al Gore defense when El Rotundo was caught taking money from the cash box of Buddhist nuns: “I didn’t do it, and I’ll never do it again.” Cunningham’s lawyer says: “Department of Justice officials have reported to the Committee that my client relayed inaccurate information to the Department upon which it relied in preparing its initial response to Congress [on Operation Fast and Furious]. If, as you claim, Department officials have blamed my client, they have blamed him unfairly.” Deny the claim, then call the informants liars.

The lawyer even uses classic mob jargon. “The Department of Justice in Washington is making him the fall guy, claiming he failed to accurately provide the Oversight Committee with information on the execution of Fast and Furious.” Cunningham doesn’t even have the honor to fall on his sword and take the heat for the actions of his Capo, Eric Holder. So he attacks the Justice Department before it has even accused him of anything. Right now, the only ones pointing the finger of blame at him are Congressional investigators, some Committee members, and a lineup of witnesses. But not the Department itself.

Now Cunningham may find himself directly in line with that pointed finger from DOJ. He is soon going to find out how much honor Holder, Obama and the whole Democratic machine have. You won’t take a small hit for us? Then we will utterly destroy you, your family, and your reputation. You have fouled up our gun-grabbing, gun-running plan, and you will pay the price for trying to dirty our skirts!

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa says “The assertion of the Fifth Amendment by a senior Justice official is a significant indictment of the Department’s integrity in Operation Fast and Furious. The former head of the ATF has previously told the committee that the Justice Department is managing its response to Operation Fast and Furious in a manner designed to protect its political appointees. This is the first time anyone has asserted their Fifth Amendment right in this investigation and heightens concerns that the Justice Department’s motivation for refusing to hand over subpoenaed materials is a desire to shield responsible officials from criminal charges and other embarrassment.”

As tough as that statement is, it’s probably mild compared to what Cunningham has been threatened with by those same DOJ political appointees (including Holder himself) if he caves in somewhere along the line and refuses to take the fall for the unethical and vicious behavior of the out-of-control Justice Department.

At first, the Obama administration, with Holder as its front-man, claimed they were completely unaware of the “gunwalking” plot and had no knowledge of any of its details. Over the months since, huge piles of evidence and testimony have piled up that show those original statements to be outright lies. In order to protect their political skins, it became necessary to find someone in the Justice Department who could be blamed for keeping Holder and Obama in the dark about Fast and Furious. It’s a lame tactic, but it could become the focus on one individual that takes the spotlight off Holder and Obama long enough to get through the next election cycle. It looks like the designated sacrifice is Cunningham.

The “rogue agents” and “rogue Justice Department field office heads” theory simply reeks of unethical and perhaps criminal manipulation of facts and what Bill Clinton called the politics of personal destruction. Holder and Obama are pedaling like mad to distance themselves from this deadly scandal. Poor Cunningham is going to have to make a choice somewhere along the line. Face the possibility of serious legal sanctions against him and ‘fess up now, or wait, and risk the possibility of that plus the wrath of the Holder Justice Department. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, etc.

The United States Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder considers the Constitution to be an infinitely malleable document, subject to the whim of temporary majorities, Congress and the Chief Executive. But as of last week, it found one constitutional provision it considers cast in concrete. That would be the Fifth Amendment.

US Attorney Patrick J. Cunningham, deeply-involved in the Fast and Furious scandal, is invoking his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The Committee is looking into who is responsible for the gun-running operation which has ended up with thousands of weapons in the hands of Mexican criminal cartels and which has resulted in an unimaginable number of deaths in Mexico and that of a Border Agent inside America's borders.

Sooner or later, high-ranking members of criminal organizations such as the Mafia and the Department of Justice learn that lying only trips them up, while silence protected by the Constitution only makes them look guilty but can’t be used as proof of guilt. That certainly fits Cunningham, who is the chief of the Criminal Division of the US Attorney’s Field Office in Arizona. When you get caught flouting the law and end-running the Constitution, become a devotee of that selfsame Constitution.

Then, when your arse is showing as you get caught with your pants down, hire a savvy lawyer to blame the victims and the system. Use the Al Gore defense when El Rotundo was caught taking money from the cash box of Buddhist nuns: “I didn’t do it, and I’ll never do it again.” Cunningham’s lawyer says: “Department of Justice officials have reported to the Committee that my client relayed inaccurate information to the Department upon which it relied in preparing its initial response to Congress [on Operation Fast and Furious]. If, as you claim, Department officials have blamed my client, they have blamed him unfairly.” Deny the claim, then call the informants liars.

The lawyer even uses classic mob jargon. “The Department of Justice in Washington is making him the fall guy, claiming he failed to accurately provide the Oversight Committee with information on the execution of Fast and Furious.” Cunningham doesn’t even have the honor to fall on his sword and take the heat for the actions of his Capo, Eric Holder. So he attacks the Justice Department before it has even accused him of anything. Right now, the only ones pointing the finger of blame at him are Congressional investigators, some Committee members, and a lineup of witnesses. But not the Department itself.

Now Cunningham may find himself directly in line with that pointed finger from DOJ. He is soon going to find out how much honor Holder, Obama and the whole Democratic machine have. You won’t take a small hit for us? Then we will utterly destroy you, your family, and your reputation. You have fouled up our gun-grabbing, gun-running plan, and you will pay the price for trying to dirty our skirts!

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa says “The assertion of the Fifth Amendment by a senior Justice official is a significant indictment of the Department’s integrity in Operation Fast and Furious. The former head of the ATF has previously told the committee that the Justice Department is managing its response to Operation Fast and Furious in a manner designed to protect its political appointees. This is the first time anyone has asserted their Fifth Amendment right in this investigation and heightens concerns that the Justice Department’s motivation for refusing to hand over subpoenaed materials is a desire to shield responsible officials from criminal charges and other embarrassment.”

As tough as that statement is, it’s probably mild compared to what Cunningham has been threatened with by those same DOJ political appointees (including Holder himself) if he caves in somewhere along the line and refuses to take the fall for the unethical and vicious behavior of the out-of-control Justice Department.

At first, the Obama administration, with Holder as its front-man, claimed they were completely unaware of the “gunwalking” plot and had no knowledge of any of its details. Over the months since, huge piles of evidence and testimony have piled up that show those original statements to be outright lies. In order to protect their political skins, it became necessary to find someone in the Justice Department who could be blamed for keeping Holder and Obama in the dark about Fast and Furious. It’s a lame tactic, but it could become the focus on one individual that takes the spotlight off Holder and Obama long enough to get through the next election cycle. It looks like the designated sacrifice is Cunningham.

The “rogue agents” and “rogue Justice Department field office heads” theory simply reeks of unethical and perhaps criminal manipulation of facts and what Bill Clinton called the politics of personal destruction. Holder and Obama are pedaling like mad to distance themselves from this deadly scandal. Poor Cunningham is going to have to make a choice somewhere along the line. Face the possibility of serious legal sanctions against him and ‘fess up now, or wait, and risk the possibility of that plus the wrath of the Holder Justice Department. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, etc.

DOJ Discovers The Constitution

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California Doesn't Need Dead Voters

California Doesn't Need Dead Voters

While Eric Holder is blocking voter ID requirements in South Carolina, Rahm Emmanuel is registering dead people in Chicago, and ACORN's successors are registering people randomly selected from the phone book or the Baseball Hall of Fame, California Democrats are guaranteeing their success the old-fashioned way. Redistricting.

While Holder in the DOJ is protecting “minority and poor” voters in South Carolina from the onerous burden of having to obtain a [free] state photo ID, he is perfectly fine with photo ID being required to get on an airplane, to buy cigarettes and booze, some OTC medications and to obtain a “get your food free” electronic debit card. Meanwhile, the Chicago mayor is working furiously to protect the additional right to vote guaranteed in the Constitution to the deceased. In St. Louis, Indianapolis and other places, persons with the same name as famous sports figures and cartoon characters must be protected from the racists who want them to prove who they are before voting. It makes me wonder if in Chicago dead sports figures or Mickey Mouse get two votes.

California, being the most creative of all the states in guaranteeing Democratic victories, has avoided such common methods of adding extra votes. In fact, given their current plan, they don’t even need to add phony votes. And why, you ask? Because the state has been so carefully gerrymandered that it makes strong Democratic majorities almost inevitable.

That’s nothing new, you say. Well, I mentioned that California is übercreative. Unlike other states where the majority political machine draws electoral districts, Democratic Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown and the entire Democratic Party are the beneficiaries of a “people’s initiative” which took the power to redistrict away from the legislature and placed it in the hands of a “non-partisan” commission comprised of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four independents.

The result is a redistricting map for Congressional and state elections which favors Democrats even more than the previous Democratic legislature’s gerrymander. The public was sold on the non-partisan nature of the commission, and Republicans cooperated because all indications were that they would pick up a few seats in the conservative Central Valley if the lines were drawn fairly. The road to electoral disaster is paved with good intentions.

Unknown to the public, various left wing and Democratic (redundancy?) organizations were preparing well in advance to skew the results of the commission hearings. ProPublica is the whistleblower that is now bringing the matter to the public’s attention and participating in a new initiative drive to abolish the commission and put redistricting into the hands of the courts. You might think that this is just sour grapes from the Republicans. But ResPublica is a non-profit investigative journalism group formed by liberal Democrats, even getting funding from George Soros surrogates. The only person in the watchdog journalism group who is not a Democrat or Independent is former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger. They obviously took their duty to be more important than their funding.

The commission held hearings throughout the state, not realizing that facts and opinions thought to be from “average citizens” were actually heavily-infiltrated by Democratic operatives. Each witness was, for obvious reasons, supposed to be a member of the local community where each successive hearing was held. ProPublica found a secret memo outlining the results of an earlier meeting of prominent California Democrats mapping out a strategy for misinforming the commission.

Part of the plan was to get Democratic and leftist allies to show up to testify in swing and weakly-Republican districts, purporting to be local citizens. The enabling legislation which pretended to put the voter initiative into operation fairly was written by the Democrat-controlled legislature. Oddly (?) it contained no requirements that those testifying before the commission prove that they were residents of the locale in which the hearing was being held. I wonder how that happened. Maybe they should have required valid state-issued photo ID.

The most egregious of the scams uncovered by ProPublica was a female witness who claimed to be a lifelong member of the Asian community in the San Gabriel Valley. In fact, ProPublica investigated and found that she is a paid Democratic lobbyist who spent most of her life in rural Idaho and at the time of the hearings lived (and still lives) in Sacramento.

As you can see, California is exceptionally creative. Why register dead people, convicted felons, names drawn from the telephone book, and sports figures when you can obtain electoral victories by meddling with an independent commission and producing what appears to be a nonpartisan, fairly-drawn electoral map? The result of the commission’s redistricting, even if drawn in good faith, was weighted far more heavily toward preserving or creating Democratic districts and breaking up Republican-leaning districts, all with a cover of non-partisanship and fairness. And it was based largely on false input from the “public.”

While Eric Holder is blocking voter ID requirements in South Carolina, Rahm Emmanuel is registering dead people in Chicago, and ACORN's successors are registering people randomly selected from the phone book or the Baseball Hall of Fame, California Democrats are guaranteeing their success the old-fashioned way. Redistricting.

While Holder in the DOJ is protecting “minority and poor” voters in South Carolina from the onerous burden of having to obtain a [free] state photo ID, he is perfectly fine with photo ID being required to get on an airplane, to buy cigarettes and booze, some OTC medications and to obtain a “get your food free” electronic debit card. Meanwhile, the Chicago mayor is working furiously to protect the additional right to vote guaranteed in the Constitution to the deceased. In St. Louis, Indianapolis and other places, persons with the same name as famous sports figures and cartoon characters must be protected from the racists who want them to prove who they are before voting. It makes me wonder if in Chicago dead sports figures or Mickey Mouse get two votes.

California, being the most creative of all the states in guaranteeing Democratic victories, has avoided such common methods of adding extra votes. In fact, given their current plan, they don’t even need to add phony votes. And why, you ask? Because the state has been so carefully gerrymandered that it makes strong Democratic majorities almost inevitable.

That’s nothing new, you say. Well, I mentioned that California is übercreative. Unlike other states where the majority political machine draws electoral districts, Democratic Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown and the entire Democratic Party are the beneficiaries of a “people’s initiative” which took the power to redistrict away from the legislature and placed it in the hands of a “non-partisan” commission comprised of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four independents.

The result is a redistricting map for Congressional and state elections which favors Democrats even more than the previous Democratic legislature’s gerrymander. The public was sold on the non-partisan nature of the commission, and Republicans cooperated because all indications were that they would pick up a few seats in the conservative Central Valley if the lines were drawn fairly. The road to electoral disaster is paved with good intentions.

Unknown to the public, various left wing and Democratic (redundancy?) organizations were preparing well in advance to skew the results of the commission hearings. ProPublica is the whistleblower that is now bringing the matter to the public’s attention and participating in a new initiative drive to abolish the commission and put redistricting into the hands of the courts. You might think that this is just sour grapes from the Republicans. But ResPublica is a non-profit investigative journalism group formed by liberal Democrats, even getting funding from George Soros surrogates. The only person in the watchdog journalism group who is not a Democrat or Independent is former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger. They obviously took their duty to be more important than their funding.

The commission held hearings throughout the state, not realizing that facts and opinions thought to be from “average citizens” were actually heavily-infiltrated by Democratic operatives. Each witness was, for obvious reasons, supposed to be a member of the local community where each successive hearing was held. ProPublica found a secret memo outlining the results of an earlier meeting of prominent California Democrats mapping out a strategy for misinforming the commission.

Part of the plan was to get Democratic and leftist allies to show up to testify in swing and weakly-Republican districts, purporting to be local citizens. The enabling legislation which pretended to put the voter initiative into operation fairly was written by the Democrat-controlled legislature. Oddly (?) it contained no requirements that those testifying before the commission prove that they were residents of the locale in which the hearing was being held. I wonder how that happened. Maybe they should have required valid state-issued photo ID.

The most egregious of the scams uncovered by ProPublica was a female witness who claimed to be a lifelong member of the Asian community in the San Gabriel Valley. In fact, ProPublica investigated and found that she is a paid Democratic lobbyist who spent most of her life in rural Idaho and at the time of the hearings lived (and still lives) in Sacramento.

As you can see, California is exceptionally creative. Why register dead people, convicted felons, names drawn from the telephone book, and sports figures when you can obtain electoral victories by meddling with an independent commission and producing what appears to be a nonpartisan, fairly-drawn electoral map? The result of the commission’s redistricting, even if drawn in good faith, was weighted far more heavily toward preserving or creating Democratic districts and breaking up Republican-leaning districts, all with a cover of non-partisanship and fairness. And it was based largely on false input from the “public.”

California Doesn't Need Dead Voters

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More Crony Socialism From The DOJ

More Crony Socialism From The DOJ

Eric Holder and the US Department of Justice (Civil Rights Division) have been handed another pot of gold to distribute to his racist friends. This past month, as a Christmas gift to Holder and Barack Obama, the US District Court for the Central District of California (Los Angeles and environs) issued its ruling in the case of The United States v Countrywide Financial Corporation.

A $335 million award was granted to blacks and Hispanics who took out loans with Countrywide during the period from 2004 to 2008. Now if this judgment had been entered after an extended court battle, including hard evidence and believable testimony, it might not be so bad. But Countrywide Financial is not in a position to defend itself, since it no longer exists. Its toxic assets were purchased in 2008 by Bank of America, and Bank of America seemed uninterested in pursuing the matter further. That might have something to do with simple financial risk calculation. I find it more likely that B of A, a recipient of largess from the federal government in the form of bailouts, was being very timid about offending its benefactors in the Obama administration.

So there was what is called a “consent decree.” The plaintiff (DOJ) and defendant (Countrywide/B of A) enter into an agreement on money damages, how they were determined, and how the agreement will be presented to the public in the form of a formal judgment. Here’s the money quote from the decision: “The money damages awarded are intended to compensate allegedly aggrieved persons for monetary and other damages they may have suffered.”

The court rubberstamped the DOJ contention that blacks and Hispanics were charged higher interest rates than whites based solely on their race or ethnicity rather than their creditworthiness. There were approximately 200,000 aggrieved borrowers, but it will be up to Holder and the DOJ to determine who gets what, and how much. Any money not distributed within two years of the decree will go to persons and causes to be determined by the DOJ. And you can bet there will be plenty of undistributed money left over to be used by Holder to reward his political cronies.

Holder and his boss are of course expecting to be back in office in 2012 with the full power of the DOJ to enrich their pet causes and supporters. And even before the election, Holder can play accountant-in-chief for how the money damages will be distributed and to whom. That is very likely to include those who would benefit most from Barack Obama’s reelection. Among the potential recipients mentioned in the decree are nonprofit community organizations that “provide education, counseling and other assistance to low-income and minority borrowers.” Isn’t that what got us into this mortgage mess in the first place?

There is honor among thieves, so Holder will make sure there is plenty of money “undistributed” and he will make promises to supporters of Obama’s reelection that they will be recipients of that money after Obama’s reelection and the passage of the two-year distribution period. I have no doubt that he will keep his word. There is no provision whatsoever in the decree for oversight of the distribution by any person or entity other than Holder and the DOJ themselves.

Holder’s history of favoritism and race-baiting pretty much guarantees that “leftover” money will be distributed to persons and interest groups which have no connection at all to the original lawsuit. The first one that comes to my mind is The New Black Panther Poll-Watching Consortium. Ok, I made that up. But is it really that far-fetched? Need I say that this is just another chapter in the history of what Michelle Malkin calls “the culture of corruption?”

Eric Holder and the US Department of Justice (Civil Rights Division) have been handed another pot of gold to distribute to his racist friends. This past month, as a Christmas gift to Holder and Barack Obama, the US District Court for the Central District of California (Los Angeles and environs) issued its ruling in the case of The United States v Countrywide Financial Corporation.

A $335 million award was granted to blacks and Hispanics who took out loans with Countrywide during the period from 2004 to 2008. Now if this judgment had been entered after an extended court battle, including hard evidence and believable testimony, it might not be so bad. But Countrywide Financial is not in a position to defend itself, since it no longer exists. Its toxic assets were purchased in 2008 by Bank of America, and Bank of America seemed uninterested in pursuing the matter further. That might have something to do with simple financial risk calculation. I find it more likely that B of A, a recipient of largess from the federal government in the form of bailouts, was being very timid about offending its benefactors in the Obama administration.

So there was what is called a “consent decree.” The plaintiff (DOJ) and defendant (Countrywide/B of A) enter into an agreement on money damages, how they were determined, and how the agreement will be presented to the public in the form of a formal judgment. Here’s the money quote from the decision: “The money damages awarded are intended to compensate allegedly aggrieved persons for monetary and other damages they may have suffered.”

The court rubberstamped the DOJ contention that blacks and Hispanics were charged higher interest rates than whites based solely on their race or ethnicity rather than their creditworthiness. There were approximately 200,000 aggrieved borrowers, but it will be up to Holder and the DOJ to determine who gets what, and how much. Any money not distributed within two years of the decree will go to persons and causes to be determined by the DOJ. And you can bet there will be plenty of undistributed money left over to be used by Holder to reward his political cronies.

Holder and his boss are of course expecting to be back in office in 2012 with the full power of the DOJ to enrich their pet causes and supporters. And even before the election, Holder can play accountant-in-chief for how the money damages will be distributed and to whom. That is very likely to include those who would benefit most from Barack Obama’s reelection. Among the potential recipients mentioned in the decree are nonprofit community organizations that “provide education, counseling and other assistance to low-income and minority borrowers.” Isn’t that what got us into this mortgage mess in the first place?

There is honor among thieves, so Holder will make sure there is plenty of money “undistributed” and he will make promises to supporters of Obama’s reelection that they will be recipients of that money after Obama’s reelection and the passage of the two-year distribution period. I have no doubt that he will keep his word. There is no provision whatsoever in the decree for oversight of the distribution by any person or entity other than Holder and the DOJ themselves.

Holder’s history of favoritism and race-baiting pretty much guarantees that “leftover” money will be distributed to persons and interest groups which have no connection at all to the original lawsuit. The first one that comes to my mind is The New Black Panther Poll-Watching Consortium. Ok, I made that up. But is it really that far-fetched? Need I say that this is just another chapter in the history of what Michelle Malkin calls “the culture of corruption?”

More Crony Socialism From The DOJ

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Darrell, Why Persecutest Thou Me?

Darrell, Why Persecutest Thou Me?

Attorney General Eric Holder is shown during one of many trying moments for him during Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing into Operation Fast and Furious. Since Holder last appeared before a Congressional committee on the subject, multiple e-mails, memos and notes from Justice Department staff became available to Congress. It is over the differences in these documents from Holder’s former testimony that he was brought back to testify.

Things didn’t go well for Holder from the get-go. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, asked that Holder be placed under oath. Issa is somewhat suspicious of Holder’s veracity, to say the least. Holder had earlier refused to take the oath, and Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) did not want Holder to escape without answering questions, so he merely ruled that Holder was “deemed” to be under oath since he had sent Holder a letter reminding him of his responsibility to be truthful.

Lying under oath is perjury—a felony. But if a court were later to decide that Holder’s refusal to be placed under oath protected him from a perjury charge, he could still be found guilty of other statutory violations such as lying to Congress and impeding a Congressional inquiry. If a later Justice Department official were to pursue the matter, Holder would not get off entirely scot free. Smith’s compromise kept Holder in the room, and probably made him very nervous as well.

During the questioning, the proceedings got very heated more than a few times. Some of the various committee members threatened Holder with everything from impeachment to charges of contempt of Congress for his evasiveness. Issa called Holder’s testimony “outright lying,” and he had stacks of documents in front of him that seem to support that conclusion.

In one exchange, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) took a very combative line. “Do you think the buck stops with you?” he asked. Then, as Holder seemed to shrink behind the witness table, Sensenbrenner went on to remind Holder that lying to Congress is a federal crime. But he softened the charge by following up with “I don’t want to say you lied, but what are you going to do to clean up the mess?”

In his answer to the not-too-veiled charges of lying, Holder channeled Clinton’s “it all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Confronted with serious inconsistencies between known fact and supporting evidence and Holder’s prior testimony, he punted. His Justice Department had made a very unusual move a few days earlier by “withdrawing” a letter it had sent to the committee in answer to certain committee questions. The DOJ actually called its answers “misleading.” That withdrawal followed earlier testimony by ATF Special Agent William Newell that was also “withdrawn” as Newell termed his answers as “lacking completeness.”

Facing questions about these major inconsistencies and DOJ backtrackings, Holder was then asked by Sensenbrenner how “misleading” and “lying” were different from each other, if they are indeed different. Holder said that the difference between “lying” and “misleading” was state of mind. But Holder was merely tossing out a legal distinction that, though true, doesn’t apply to this matter. He hoped nobody would notice.

If one “misleads” because he has himself been misled or misinformed, and has a reasonable excuse for not knowing the true facts, there is no intent to lie. But if one misleads, knowing that the words used to mislead are incorrect, then “misleading” becomes “lying.” The DOJ, ATF and DEA testimony that Congress had already determined was intentionally misleading was available to Holder and his department long before Congress ever saw it. Ergo, he lied.

During the testimony, Democratic committee members frequently attempted to protect Holder from hard scrutiny and/or turn the investigation of Holder’s part in Fast and Furious into a forum on gun control. The spin was marvelous to behold. Attempting to prove how dangerous all weapons in the hands of individuals are, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) asked “how many firearms had been sold to Al Qaeda terrorists, to other convicted felons, to domestic violence perpetrators, and to white supremacists.”

He neglected to ask about how many had been sold to the Crips or the Bloods. But even if he had been an equal opportunity disarmer, the question would have been entirely irrelevant, given what the hearing was actually about. The hearing is about Operation Fast and Furious, why it was so poorly-planned and deadly in execution, and most importantly, who knew what, and when. But that didn’t stop Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) from asking why there is no requirement for a federal firearms dealer to report, say, the sale of 100 AK-47s.

The final exchange was between Issa and Holder. Issa suggested contempt of Congress for Holder’s refusal to release committee-requested document without citing Constitutional or case law to support the refusal. Holder responded: “We will respond as other attorneys general and other Justice Departments have done.” Issa snapped back with: “That’s how John Mitchell responded (referring to the Watergate hearings of the Nixon administration).”

Holder, who has the same ability as Obama and Nixon to play the victim rather than the perpetrator, channeled McCarthy hearing defense counsel Joseph Welch and pleaded: “As they said at the McCarthy hearings, have you no shame?” Quick, get me a hankie. I need to wipe away the tears I’m shedding for poor, innocent, persecuted Eric Holder.

At the end of the hearings, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-California) summed up Holder’s testimony and the attempts of the Democrats to change the subject: “You screwed up, you admit you screwed up, but don’t use your screw-up as an attempt to justify your actions and extend your authority.”

Attorney General Eric Holder is shown during one of many trying moments for him during Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing into Operation Fast and Furious. Since Holder last appeared before a Congressional committee on the subject, multiple e-mails, memos and notes from Justice Department staff became available to Congress. It is over the differences in these documents from Holder’s former testimony that he was brought back to testify.

Things didn’t go well for Holder from the get-go. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, asked that Holder be placed under oath. Issa is somewhat suspicious of Holder’s veracity, to say the least. Holder had earlier refused to take the oath, and Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) did not want Holder to escape without answering questions, so he merely ruled that Holder was “deemed” to be under oath since he had sent Holder a letter reminding him of his responsibility to be truthful.

Lying under oath is perjury—a felony. But if a court were later to decide that Holder’s refusal to be placed under oath protected him from a perjury charge, he could still be found guilty of other statutory violations such as lying to Congress and impeding a Congressional inquiry. If a later Justice Department official were to pursue the matter, Holder would not get off entirely scot free. Smith’s compromise kept Holder in the room, and probably made him very nervous as well.

During the questioning, the proceedings got very heated more than a few times. Some of the various committee members threatened Holder with everything from impeachment to charges of contempt of Congress for his evasiveness. Issa called Holder’s testimony “outright lying,” and he had stacks of documents in front of him that seem to support that conclusion.

In one exchange, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) took a very combative line. “Do you think the buck stops with you?” he asked. Then, as Holder seemed to shrink behind the witness table, Sensenbrenner went on to remind Holder that lying to Congress is a federal crime. But he softened the charge by following up with “I don’t want to say you lied, but what are you going to do to clean up the mess?”

In his answer to the not-too-veiled charges of lying, Holder channeled Clinton’s “it all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Confronted with serious inconsistencies between known fact and supporting evidence and Holder’s prior testimony, he punted. His Justice Department had made a very unusual move a few days earlier by “withdrawing” a letter it had sent to the committee in answer to certain committee questions. The DOJ actually called its answers “misleading.” That withdrawal followed earlier testimony by ATF Special Agent William Newell that was also “withdrawn” as Newell termed his answers as “lacking completeness.”

Facing questions about these major inconsistencies and DOJ backtrackings, Holder was then asked by Sensenbrenner how “misleading” and “lying” were different from each other, if they are indeed different. Holder said that the difference between “lying” and “misleading” was state of mind. But Holder was merely tossing out a legal distinction that, though true, doesn’t apply to this matter. He hoped nobody would notice.

If one “misleads” because he has himself been misled or misinformed, and has a reasonable excuse for not knowing the true facts, there is no intent to lie. But if one misleads, knowing that the words used to mislead are incorrect, then “misleading” becomes “lying.” The DOJ, ATF and DEA testimony that Congress had already determined was intentionally misleading was available to Holder and his department long before Congress ever saw it. Ergo, he lied.

During the testimony, Democratic committee members frequently attempted to protect Holder from hard scrutiny and/or turn the investigation of Holder’s part in Fast and Furious into a forum on gun control. The spin was marvelous to behold. Attempting to prove how dangerous all weapons in the hands of individuals are, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) asked “how many firearms had been sold to Al Qaeda terrorists, to other convicted felons, to domestic violence perpetrators, and to white supremacists.”

He neglected to ask about how many had been sold to the Crips or the Bloods. But even if he had been an equal opportunity disarmer, the question would have been entirely irrelevant, given what the hearing was actually about. The hearing is about Operation Fast and Furious, why it was so poorly-planned and deadly in execution, and most importantly, who knew what, and when. But that didn’t stop Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) from asking why there is no requirement for a federal firearms dealer to report, say, the sale of 100 AK-47s.

The final exchange was between Issa and Holder. Issa suggested contempt of Congress for Holder’s refusal to release committee-requested document without citing Constitutional or case law to support the refusal. Holder responded: “We will respond as other attorneys general and other Justice Departments have done.” Issa snapped back with: “That’s how John Mitchell responded (referring to the Watergate hearings of the Nixon administration).”

Holder, who has the same ability as Obama and Nixon to play the victim rather than the perpetrator, channeled McCarthy hearing defense counsel Joseph Welch and pleaded: “As they said at the McCarthy hearings, have you no shame?” Quick, get me a hankie. I need to wipe away the tears I’m shedding for poor, innocent, persecuted Eric Holder.

At the end of the hearings, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-California) summed up Holder’s testimony and the attempts of the Democrats to change the subject: “You screwed up, you admit you screwed up, but don’t use your screw-up as an attempt to justify your actions and extend your authority.”

Darrell, Why Persecutest Thou Me?

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Voter ID Is A Racist Conspiracy

Voter ID Is A Racist Conspiracy

Or so says the NAACP. Chairman Benjamin Todd Jealous was joined by civil rights hysteric Rev. Al Sharpton and ethics-challenged Rep. Charles Rangel to denounce the current wave of voter suppression laws. In case you don't know, simple, inexpensive and readily-available official ID required for voting purposes is "voter suppression."

In reality, the only voting that gets suppressed by requiring valid identification is fraudulent or illegal voting. But since Democrats count on those votes, they are outraged. The race card is always a good way of attacking reasonable and unburdensome law. The same party that required rigged voting tests to suppress black voting in the South now wants no requirements to vote.

Using class warfare and race warfare as his stalking-horses, Jealous appeared on the steps of New York City Hall to announce: "The rallies are intended to get this conversation out of the thought leader class and down to the street corners, so folks understand that their rights are being attacked. This is the greatest assault on voting rights, happening right now, that we have seen since the dawn of Jim Crow."

The sanctity of the ballot box has been eroded badly over the past few decades. Patriots gave their lives to get the vote, but today it's too much effort to get out of bed, go to a polling place, show your valid ID, and mark a ballot. Absentee ballots for unusual circumstances have been replaced with mail-in ballots for the lazy. Early voting takes place with weeks to go before the election, disregarding the fact that a lot can happen during those weeks. Physical presence at the polls is made to sound archaic. Oregon has already experimented with voting by I-Pad.

Voting is not something that ought to be made as easy as buying a new shirt on Amazon.com. The franchise was a right for which people fought hard, risked much, and treaured greatly. Now, it's devolving into something that you grudgingly work into your busy schedule, if you can. Or it's something annoying that interferes in your life, like having to stop at a red light. Registering to vote is an imposition on one's life, requiring that a form actually be filled out with some information. It could take as long as five or even six minutes. What a burden!

Those who are of the least value to society, the lazy and shiftless, don't want to be further burdened by having to prove they are who they say they are in order to vote. The same people who can fill out reams of paperwork to get those beautiful, easy-to-use EBT free-food-from-the-government cards are somehow being oppressed by having to do a great deal less to get a valid state-issued identification card.

But that's not what the NAACP thinks. Going after the national movement to require valid identification already in place in Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin, and about to go into operation in Texas and South Carolina, Jealous says the requirements are draconian and oppressive. On the day that Mississippi amended its constitution to require valid photo voter ID, he charged that blacks, Hispanics, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and the poor are less likely to have the required photo IDs. He also argues that others would be disfranchised like students with school IDs, those who don't carry ID on their persons, and (get this) women who have ID that doesn't reflect their married names.

What a load of horse manure. Anybody too lazy or mentally-deficient to do the simple, inexpensive task of getting a valid state-issued photo ID shouldn't be voting anyway. How many legal Social Security recipients didn't have to prove who they were by validating their identity? How many adults (i.e., voters) don't have either a driver's license or an easily-obtained state ID? Most states will issue the IDs for free if the registrant is in dire financial straits, and many will even provide public transportation or home visits by state officials to assist in obtaining the ID.

But the Democrats and the NAACP prefer the "vote early, vote often, vote fraudulently, vote illegally" path. Requiring people to show up at the polls with a valid ID and eliminating all other forms of voting except for absentee ballots issued carefully under very special circumstances should be the norm. But it isn't, and won't be. In fact, voting is made far too easy for those who have no stake in America's success, along with illegal immigrants, and in Chicago, dead people. On the other hand, soldiers risking their lives on foreign battlefields have their absentee votes disqualified on ridiculous technical grounds.

Jealous, Sharpton and Rangel all demand that the Attorney General investigate the constitutionality of voter ID laws and take action against the states which have them. This would be the same Attorney General who dismissed voter intimidation convictions against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia--cases which had already been won. In the House of Representatives, a group including the Black Caucus sent a request to all fifty state secretaries of state to oppose voter identification laws.

Joining the gang of three at the news conference were the United Federation of Teachers, the Health Care Workers Union, the National Council of La Raza and the Asian-American Legal Defense. Aside from the statements, the group has called for a national day of protest against the voter ID laws for December 10. I don't think I'll be joining them.

Or so says the NAACP. Chairman Benjamin Todd Jealous was joined by civil rights hysteric Rev. Al Sharpton and ethics-challenged Rep. Charles Rangel to denounce the current wave of voter suppression laws. In case you don't know, simple, inexpensive and readily-available official ID required for voting purposes is "voter suppression."

In reality, the only voting that gets suppressed by requiring valid identification is fraudulent or illegal voting. But since Democrats count on those votes, they are outraged. The race card is always a good way of attacking reasonable and unburdensome law. The same party that required rigged voting tests to suppress black voting in the South now wants no requirements to vote.

Using class warfare and race warfare as his stalking-horses, Jealous appeared on the steps of New York City Hall to announce: "The rallies are intended to get this conversation out of the thought leader class and down to the street corners, so folks understand that their rights are being attacked. This is the greatest assault on voting rights, happening right now, that we have seen since the dawn of Jim Crow."

The sanctity of the ballot box has been eroded badly over the past few decades. Patriots gave their lives to get the vote, but today it's too much effort to get out of bed, go to a polling place, show your valid ID, and mark a ballot. Absentee ballots for unusual circumstances have been replaced with mail-in ballots for the lazy. Early voting takes place with weeks to go before the election, disregarding the fact that a lot can happen during those weeks. Physical presence at the polls is made to sound archaic. Oregon has already experimented with voting by I-Pad.

Voting is not something that ought to be made as easy as buying a new shirt on Amazon.com. The franchise was a right for which people fought hard, risked much, and treaured greatly. Now, it's devolving into something that you grudgingly work into your busy schedule, if you can. Or it's something annoying that interferes in your life, like having to stop at a red light. Registering to vote is an imposition on one's life, requiring that a form actually be filled out with some information. It could take as long as five or even six minutes. What a burden!

Those who are of the least value to society, the lazy and shiftless, don't want to be further burdened by having to prove they are who they say they are in order to vote. The same people who can fill out reams of paperwork to get those beautiful, easy-to-use EBT free-food-from-the-government cards are somehow being oppressed by having to do a great deal less to get a valid state-issued identification card.

But that's not what the NAACP thinks. Going after the national movement to require valid identification already in place in Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin, and about to go into operation in Texas and South Carolina, Jealous says the requirements are draconian and oppressive. On the day that Mississippi amended its constitution to require valid photo voter ID, he charged that blacks, Hispanics, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and the poor are less likely to have the required photo IDs. He also argues that others would be disfranchised like students with school IDs, those who don't carry ID on their persons, and (get this) women who have ID that doesn't reflect their married names.

What a load of horse manure. Anybody too lazy or mentally-deficient to do the simple, inexpensive task of getting a valid state-issued photo ID shouldn't be voting anyway. How many legal Social Security recipients didn't have to prove who they were by validating their identity? How many adults (i.e., voters) don't have either a driver's license or an easily-obtained state ID? Most states will issue the IDs for free if the registrant is in dire financial straits, and many will even provide public transportation or home visits by state officials to assist in obtaining the ID.

But the Democrats and the NAACP prefer the "vote early, vote often, vote fraudulently, vote illegally" path. Requiring people to show up at the polls with a valid ID and eliminating all other forms of voting except for absentee ballots issued carefully under very special circumstances should be the norm. But it isn't, and won't be. In fact, voting is made far too easy for those who have no stake in America's success, along with illegal immigrants, and in Chicago, dead people. On the other hand, soldiers risking their lives on foreign battlefields have their absentee votes disqualified on ridiculous technical grounds.

Jealous, Sharpton and Rangel all demand that the Attorney General investigate the constitutionality of voter ID laws and take action against the states which have them. This would be the same Attorney General who dismissed voter intimidation convictions against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia--cases which had already been won. In the House of Representatives, a group including the Black Caucus sent a request to all fifty state secretaries of state to oppose voter identification laws.

Joining the gang of three at the news conference were the United Federation of Teachers, the Health Care Workers Union, the National Council of La Raza and the Asian-American Legal Defense. Aside from the statements, the group has called for a national day of protest against the voter ID laws for December 10. I don't think I'll be joining them.

Voter ID Is A Racist Conspiracy

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Primer: Obama/Holder v. Iran

Primer: Obama/Holder v. Iran

I figured you might like a primer on the new Iranian issue, as it’s all over the headlines and it’s an issue which could actually lead to war if mishandled -- although that’s extremely unlikely. Here’s what’s up:

● What Happened: On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the DEA and FBI had foiled a plot to murder the Saudi Arabian ambassador and blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies. This plot was supposedly masterminded by Iran’s “elite” Quds military unit. The Quds are a special unit within Iran’s Revolutionary Guard whose job it is to “export” Iran’s Islamic revolution to other countries.

According to Holder, Manssor Arbabsiar (a Corpus Christi, Texas car salesman) was tasked by the Iranian government with finding someone to carry out the killing and the bombings. Arbabsiar turned to the nastiest of the Mexican drug cartels, Los Zetas, a group of former special forces soldiers who started their own cartel. I wrote about Los Zetas here: LINK. Arbabsiar wanted Los Zetas to do both the killing and the bombings and he wanted them to agree to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East into Mexico.

However, the person Arbabsiar contacted turned out to be a DEA informant. Whoops.

● Team Obama’s Response: The administration accuses Iran and describes this as: “a dangerous escalation of Iran's long-scale use of violence.” The reason they claim Iran did this was “the Iranians watch the Saudis roll tanks in Bahrain, and they see a key ally in Syria going down, so they step up the Quds Force.”

Joe Biden has been sent forth from the Idiotorium to take the lead on this. He described this as “really over the top” and said it was “an outrage that violates one of the fundamental premises on which nations deal with one another.” He also said that “no options have been taken off the table” for dealing with this, though the administration has already ruled out military action. Instead, they are considering sanctions, the standard response by liberals when they don’t know what to do.

● The Saudi Response: Saudi Arabia and Iran are bitter regional rivals largely because their versions of Islam consider the other to be heretics. The Saudi embassy said this was “a despicable violation of international norms, standards and conventions,” and their former head of intelligence said Iran will have to “pay the price.” They have not been more specific yet. However, Saudi Arabia does not have a military capable of defeating Iran.

● The Iranian Response: For its part, Iran denies involvement. They told the UN they are “outraged” and “strongly and categorically reject these fabricated and baseless allegations, based on the suspicious claims by an individual.” Tehran claims Obama has fabricated this to “divert attention from the Wall Street uprising.” Ha ha! They also repeated claims the US has assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists in the past two years.

For the record, the only link so far to Iran is that the car dealer apparently is a cousin of someone in the Qud and he visited Iran right before $100,000 was wired into the informant’s account by the car dealer. The FBI claims this was wired from a Qud bank account.

● The World Reaction: The world reaction has been skeptical. Iranian experts say that Arbabsiar does not fit the profile of the typical Iranian agent, who tend to be professionals. And they say it’s unlikely Iran would be behind such a plot. Similarly, an Iranian expert in Berlin said these claims would be viewed with skepticism as “everyone is extremely skeptical about US intelligence revelations” and added, “I don’t regard it as impossible but rather improbable, even if the details of the story presented by the attorney general are essentially true.”

One western diplomat said: “I don't believe Iran's regime was behind the plot. If we assume it was Iran's plot, it would seem like a group of professional gangsters hiring a careless agent for their most important project. It's impossible.”

Even a senior American law enforcement official said (on condition of anonymity) that the US isn’t quite sure what this was and it was likely a “rogue plan. . . so outside their normal track of activity.”

● Some Questions: This all leaves us with some odd questions. If we assume Holder is correct, then what will Obama do about it? Even Clinton dropped a few cruise missiles on Sudan after the embassy bombings in Africa. So Obama can’t just pretend this didn’t happen.

But if Holder is wrong, then is he simply wrong or is there more to this?

I never like conspiracies as an answer, especially when there are more likely answers -- such as this guy just being a nut job. But it is extremely coincidental that the day after Darrell Issa starts talking about subpoenaing Holder to answer for what are likely criminal acts related to Fast and Furious, that Holder manages to unveil a huge distraction involving the very elements of Fast and Furious -- DEA, drugs, Mexican cartels and cross border crime. This is one of those coincidences you can’t put in films or people will lose their suspension of disbelief.

My normal response would be to trust professional law enforcement. BUT we’ve already seen how compromised they’ve been by Democratic Justice bosses, such as when Janet Reno ordered the Branch Davidian attack to show that she was tough or the Elian Gonzalez deportation to show Castro goodwill or Holder’s actions in Fast and Furious itself, where potentially hundreds of lives have been taken or destroyed by Holder’s attempt to use the ATF for political purposes. Trust is in short supply here.

So I think we should keep an open mind at this point and not assume anything unless and until strong, verifiable, independent proof is provided.

I figured you might like a primer on the new Iranian issue, as it’s all over the headlines and it’s an issue which could actually lead to war if mishandled -- although that’s extremely unlikely. Here’s what’s up:

● What Happened: On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the DEA and FBI had foiled a plot to murder the Saudi Arabian ambassador and blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies. This plot was supposedly masterminded by Iran’s “elite” Quds military unit. The Quds are a special unit within Iran’s Revolutionary Guard whose job it is to “export” Iran’s Islamic revolution to other countries.

According to Holder, Manssor Arbabsiar (a Corpus Christi, Texas car salesman) was tasked by the Iranian government with finding someone to carry out the killing and the bombings. Arbabsiar turned to the nastiest of the Mexican drug cartels, Los Zetas, a group of former special forces soldiers who started their own cartel. I wrote about Los Zetas here: LINK. Arbabsiar wanted Los Zetas to do both the killing and the bombings and he wanted them to agree to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East into Mexico.

However, the person Arbabsiar contacted turned out to be a DEA informant. Whoops.

● Team Obama’s Response: The administration accuses Iran and describes this as: “a dangerous escalation of Iran's long-scale use of violence.” The reason they claim Iran did this was “the Iranians watch the Saudis roll tanks in Bahrain, and they see a key ally in Syria going down, so they step up the Quds Force.”

Joe Biden has been sent forth from the Idiotorium to take the lead on this. He described this as “really over the top” and said it was “an outrage that violates one of the fundamental premises on which nations deal with one another.” He also said that “no options have been taken off the table” for dealing with this, though the administration has already ruled out military action. Instead, they are considering sanctions, the standard response by liberals when they don’t know what to do.

● The Saudi Response: Saudi Arabia and Iran are bitter regional rivals largely because their versions of Islam consider the other to be heretics. The Saudi embassy said this was “a despicable violation of international norms, standards and conventions,” and their former head of intelligence said Iran will have to “pay the price.” They have not been more specific yet. However, Saudi Arabia does not have a military capable of defeating Iran.

● The Iranian Response: For its part, Iran denies involvement. They told the UN they are “outraged” and “strongly and categorically reject these fabricated and baseless allegations, based on the suspicious claims by an individual.” Tehran claims Obama has fabricated this to “divert attention from the Wall Street uprising.” Ha ha! They also repeated claims the US has assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists in the past two years.

For the record, the only link so far to Iran is that the car dealer apparently is a cousin of someone in the Qud and he visited Iran right before $100,000 was wired into the informant’s account by the car dealer. The FBI claims this was wired from a Qud bank account.

● The World Reaction: The world reaction has been skeptical. Iranian experts say that Arbabsiar does not fit the profile of the typical Iranian agent, who tend to be professionals. And they say it’s unlikely Iran would be behind such a plot. Similarly, an Iranian expert in Berlin said these claims would be viewed with skepticism as “everyone is extremely skeptical about US intelligence revelations” and added, “I don’t regard it as impossible but rather improbable, even if the details of the story presented by the attorney general are essentially true.”

One western diplomat said: “I don't believe Iran's regime was behind the plot. If we assume it was Iran's plot, it would seem like a group of professional gangsters hiring a careless agent for their most important project. It's impossible.”

Even a senior American law enforcement official said (on condition of anonymity) that the US isn’t quite sure what this was and it was likely a “rogue plan. . . so outside their normal track of activity.”

● Some Questions: This all leaves us with some odd questions. If we assume Holder is correct, then what will Obama do about it? Even Clinton dropped a few cruise missiles on Sudan after the embassy bombings in Africa. So Obama can’t just pretend this didn’t happen.

But if Holder is wrong, then is he simply wrong or is there more to this?

I never like conspiracies as an answer, especially when there are more likely answers -- such as this guy just being a nut job. But it is extremely coincidental that the day after Darrell Issa starts talking about subpoenaing Holder to answer for what are likely criminal acts related to Fast and Furious, that Holder manages to unveil a huge distraction involving the very elements of Fast and Furious -- DEA, drugs, Mexican cartels and cross border crime. This is one of those coincidences you can’t put in films or people will lose their suspension of disbelief.

My normal response would be to trust professional law enforcement. BUT we’ve already seen how compromised they’ve been by Democratic Justice bosses, such as when Janet Reno ordered the Branch Davidian attack to show that she was tough or the Elian Gonzalez deportation to show Castro goodwill or Holder’s actions in Fast and Furious itself, where potentially hundreds of lives have been taken or destroyed by Holder’s attempt to use the ATF for political purposes. Trust is in short supply here.

So I think we should keep an open mind at this point and not assume anything unless and until strong, verifiable, independent proof is provided.

Primer: Obama/Holder v. Iran

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Holder Searches For F&F Answers

Holder Searches For F&F Answers

This past Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder found himself on the hot seat before the House Oversight Committee questioning him about his involvement in the deadly Operation Fast and Furious. Finding no answers that would exonerate him in law or reality, Holder searched for exoneration wherever he could find it. His answers did little to alter his image as less an attorney than a Chicago politician.

Holder turned first to his speech and debate training, and instead of answering a direct question, attempted to use the tu quoque (thou also) argument. Pardon the metaphor, but that gun backfired. Hoping to deflect the spotlight from himself to the Bush administration, Holder brought out an old Bush-era operation which he claimed was just like Fast and Furious. The problem is that the operation (called Wide Receiver) was nothing like Fast and Furious.

Holder wanted to stymie the Committee by stunning them with an "everybody does it" non-responsive answer. According to Holder, Wide Receiver also "walked guns" to the Mexican cartels. Holder's "gotcha" moment quickly turned into a complete rout. The media attention he wanted to draw to the Bush administration and off his own won't happen because he got the facts wrong. In the alternative, he may have been given the wrong facts, or was attempting to spin the true facts, but the Committee members were prepared in advance for just such an attempt.

Wide Receiver was indeed an early attempt to track cartel members and the weapons they purchased in the United States. The operation didn't work, largely because just like Fast and Furious, the people who came up with the bright idea relied on high-tech and unproven methods to trace the purchases, and that technology was simply not available. Entirely unlike Fast and Furious, Wide Receiver was strictly a local ATF operation which never really got off the ground, and never even got close to being presented to the higher echelons of law enforcement or the Justice Department. Few weapons went to cartel members, nobody got killed, and the guns are largely accounted for.

So far, the Washington Post is the only major newspaper to accept Holder's claim of equivalence and "plenty of blame to go around" as an excuse for his own failed policy. Since the Post supports the Obama/Holder gun control agenda, it blindly missed the point that Wide Receiver was designed to prevent widespread cartel purchases of weapons while Fast and Furious was designed to get guns into the cartels' hands so that more rigid gun-control laws could be passed in the United States.

Holder should have known he set a trap for himself. Also on the Committee's agenda that day were the e-mails that strongly indicate that Holder's knowledge of Fast and Furious was a long way from incidental. Within those e-mails was a specific mention of Wide Receiver, and how it could be used to enhance Fast and Furious. The e-mail was sent to Holder's chief deputy AG Jason Weinstein. If Holder didn't know, he should have known.

Wide Receiver involved a botched local ATF operation. Fast and Furious involved the FBI, DEA, ATF, and possibly even Homeland Security. He might be excused for not knowing about a hare-brained local ATF scheme, but not knowing about Gunwalker and Fast and Furious, involving so many agencies directly or indirectly under his control, is either disingenuous or grossly incompetent. One also has the right to expect that a major operation fully-discussed with his chief deputy would reach the Attorney General himself before being given the green light.

If Holder didn't know of it, and/or didn't authorize or monitor it, then at best his department is out of control. Most recent evidence shows that Holder was personally informed of the death of Border Agent Brian Terry, who was murdered with a Fast and Furious gun. So even if Holder didn't know about the operation at an earlier date (which is highly doubtful), Terry's murder and its connection were known to Holder much earlier than he claimed he first heard about Fast and Furious. If he isn't lying, then his Alzheimer's has advanced too far for him to continue in office.

After stuttering and stammering his way around this self-created mess, Holder then fell back on his favorite dodge: "This matter is currently under investigation, and I therefore refer you to the office of the Inspector General." And why not? The Inspector General, Cynthia A. Schnedar, is an old crony of Holder's. While both were in lesser positions in the Justice Department, they worked together on somewhere between fifteen and twenty major cases. They have both filed briefs and written articles advocating strict gun control. That creates a clear conflict of interest when Holder refers matters to his buddy, the Inspector General.

What's a boy to do? Holder couldn't allow himself to be so easily and so clearly publicy humiliated. So right after the hearing, he went into high spin cycle. With the assistance of the compliant mainstream media, Holder put on his best righteous indignation mask and declared the hearing a political ambush. He puffed himself up to declare that he had to defend his honor. Yeah, right.

Knowing that he couldn't claim to be a strong law enforcement kind of guy (see: New Black Panthers), and not daring to attack the law enforcement officers who are most at risk in this dangerous venture, he instead attempted to deflect the issue away from himself. "I could not sit idly by as a Majority Member of the House Committee (Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona) suggests, as happened this week, that law enforcement and government employees who dedicate their lives to protecting our citizens be considered 'accessories to murder.'" Gosar, of course, said nothing of the kind, and if Holder disagreed with what Gosar did say, a good government servant and top lawyer would have addressed that in his answers at the hearing.

And then, almost unbelievably, Holder concluded his remarks to the MSM by proving the point conservatives and Second Amendment supporters have been arguing all along: "Current [gun] laws are insufficient to stop weapons trafficking." If this all adds up correctly, the suspicions of Holder's opponents will be confirmed. For all its danger, and its deadly results, Holder apparently approved of Fast and Furious in order to undo the effects of two major decisions of the United States Supreme Court upholding the individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms.

If this can all be proven conclusively, Holder should resign, or face impeachment and removal. He should also prepare to defend himself against multiple criminal charges, including lying to Congress. Scooter Libby went to prison for far less.

This past Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder found himself on the hot seat before the House Oversight Committee questioning him about his involvement in the deadly Operation Fast and Furious. Finding no answers that would exonerate him in law or reality, Holder searched for exoneration wherever he could find it. His answers did little to alter his image as less an attorney than a Chicago politician.

Holder turned first to his speech and debate training, and instead of answering a direct question, attempted to use the tu quoque (thou also) argument. Pardon the metaphor, but that gun backfired. Hoping to deflect the spotlight from himself to the Bush administration, Holder brought out an old Bush-era operation which he claimed was just like Fast and Furious. The problem is that the operation (called Wide Receiver) was nothing like Fast and Furious.

Holder wanted to stymie the Committee by stunning them with an "everybody does it" non-responsive answer. According to Holder, Wide Receiver also "walked guns" to the Mexican cartels. Holder's "gotcha" moment quickly turned into a complete rout. The media attention he wanted to draw to the Bush administration and off his own won't happen because he got the facts wrong. In the alternative, he may have been given the wrong facts, or was attempting to spin the true facts, but the Committee members were prepared in advance for just such an attempt.

Wide Receiver was indeed an early attempt to track cartel members and the weapons they purchased in the United States. The operation didn't work, largely because just like Fast and Furious, the people who came up with the bright idea relied on high-tech and unproven methods to trace the purchases, and that technology was simply not available. Entirely unlike Fast and Furious, Wide Receiver was strictly a local ATF operation which never really got off the ground, and never even got close to being presented to the higher echelons of law enforcement or the Justice Department. Few weapons went to cartel members, nobody got killed, and the guns are largely accounted for.

So far, the Washington Post is the only major newspaper to accept Holder's claim of equivalence and "plenty of blame to go around" as an excuse for his own failed policy. Since the Post supports the Obama/Holder gun control agenda, it blindly missed the point that Wide Receiver was designed to prevent widespread cartel purchases of weapons while Fast and Furious was designed to get guns into the cartels' hands so that more rigid gun-control laws could be passed in the United States.

Holder should have known he set a trap for himself. Also on the Committee's agenda that day were the e-mails that strongly indicate that Holder's knowledge of Fast and Furious was a long way from incidental. Within those e-mails was a specific mention of Wide Receiver, and how it could be used to enhance Fast and Furious. The e-mail was sent to Holder's chief deputy AG Jason Weinstein. If Holder didn't know, he should have known.

Wide Receiver involved a botched local ATF operation. Fast and Furious involved the FBI, DEA, ATF, and possibly even Homeland Security. He might be excused for not knowing about a hare-brained local ATF scheme, but not knowing about Gunwalker and Fast and Furious, involving so many agencies directly or indirectly under his control, is either disingenuous or grossly incompetent. One also has the right to expect that a major operation fully-discussed with his chief deputy would reach the Attorney General himself before being given the green light.

If Holder didn't know of it, and/or didn't authorize or monitor it, then at best his department is out of control. Most recent evidence shows that Holder was personally informed of the death of Border Agent Brian Terry, who was murdered with a Fast and Furious gun. So even if Holder didn't know about the operation at an earlier date (which is highly doubtful), Terry's murder and its connection were known to Holder much earlier than he claimed he first heard about Fast and Furious. If he isn't lying, then his Alzheimer's has advanced too far for him to continue in office.

After stuttering and stammering his way around this self-created mess, Holder then fell back on his favorite dodge: "This matter is currently under investigation, and I therefore refer you to the office of the Inspector General." And why not? The Inspector General, Cynthia A. Schnedar, is an old crony of Holder's. While both were in lesser positions in the Justice Department, they worked together on somewhere between fifteen and twenty major cases. They have both filed briefs and written articles advocating strict gun control. That creates a clear conflict of interest when Holder refers matters to his buddy, the Inspector General.

What's a boy to do? Holder couldn't allow himself to be so easily and so clearly publicy humiliated. So right after the hearing, he went into high spin cycle. With the assistance of the compliant mainstream media, Holder put on his best righteous indignation mask and declared the hearing a political ambush. He puffed himself up to declare that he had to defend his honor. Yeah, right.

Knowing that he couldn't claim to be a strong law enforcement kind of guy (see: New Black Panthers), and not daring to attack the law enforcement officers who are most at risk in this dangerous venture, he instead attempted to deflect the issue away from himself. "I could not sit idly by as a Majority Member of the House Committee (Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona) suggests, as happened this week, that law enforcement and government employees who dedicate their lives to protecting our citizens be considered 'accessories to murder.'" Gosar, of course, said nothing of the kind, and if Holder disagreed with what Gosar did say, a good government servant and top lawyer would have addressed that in his answers at the hearing.

And then, almost unbelievably, Holder concluded his remarks to the MSM by proving the point conservatives and Second Amendment supporters have been arguing all along: "Current [gun] laws are insufficient to stop weapons trafficking." If this all adds up correctly, the suspicions of Holder's opponents will be confirmed. For all its danger, and its deadly results, Holder apparently approved of Fast and Furious in order to undo the effects of two major decisions of the United States Supreme Court upholding the individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms.

If this can all be proven conclusively, Holder should resign, or face impeachment and removal. He should also prepare to defend himself against multiple criminal charges, including lying to Congress. Scooter Libby went to prison for far less.

Holder Searches For F&F Answers

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Politicized Justice

Politicized Justice

The United States is free and stable because we depoliticized the most dangerous parts of our government: the power to tax, the power to police and make war, and the legal system. The power to tax is the power to destroy. The power to police and make war is the power to kill. And the legal system controls every other aspect of our lives. If you control the legal system, then there are no rights, only privileges given at the whim of our masters. The Democrats are trying to undo this, as shown by the Gibson Guitar case.



It took our country a long time to depoliticize much of our government. Until the 1930s, both the army and the federal bureaucracy were considered spoils to be exploited by the political victors, and they would appoint their supporters to government jobs or give them military commissions. Changing this was a monumental achievement. Unfortunately, in the past 20 years, the Democrats have worked hard to re-politicize these government functions.



Clinton took the first big steps in this regard, when he sent the IRS after churches because they were seen as supporters of Republicans -- the Republicans never counter-attacked, despite the fact that so many leftist groups are hiding behind non-profit labels, which cannot by law be partisan. Clinton’s Justice Department's Civil Rights Division spent its time doing the bidding of feminists, while its Antitrust Division went after the competitors of campaign donors and ignored F.O.Bs (Friends of Bill) like the nation’s colleges, which conspire to fix prices. At the same time, Justice struggled mightily to blind itself to all of Clinton’s illegal Chinese donors, some of whom apparently had ties to Chinese Intelligence, e.g. John Huang, Charlie Trie, Johnny Chung and Maria Hsia.



Under Holder, the Civil Right Division has become an agent of black racism. This was shown by testimony from Justice Department employees, who confirmed that Justice only sees the nation’s civil rights laws as protecting blacks from whites and not the reverse. Of course, you could also have seen this from the way Justice subverted any investigation into voter intimidation by blacks, e.g. the Black Panther case. Justice couldn’t even be bothered to examine ACORN, which was caught red-handed, and it continues to attack any attempt to require minorities to show voter identification.



Holder also sued Arizona, on behalf of Obama’s illegal alien friends, to stop Arizona from enforcing the very laws the Justice Department is sworn to uphold. And we understand INS has all but stopped deporting illegal aliens.



Holder also stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act, as a sop to Obama’s gay supporters.



In Operation Fast and Furious, we see the Justice Department’s ATF allowing the sale of guns to criminals in the hopes of generating political data to be used to support gun control advocates.



Meanwhile, Holder has been pursuing peaceful pro-lifers who march outside clinics, while refusing to investigate union thugs beating people up at townhall meetings or intimidating employers or acting like racketeers against private companies or making death threats to Republican legislators in Wisconsin.



And now we have the Gibson Guitar case.



To make its guitars, Gibson imports rosewood from India and Madagascar. The wood it imports is certified for export by both countries as being from sustainable sources. That makes it legal for import into the United States.



But the Justice Department just swooped in and seized over a million dollars in wood and equipment from Gibson. What was Justice’s reasoning? No one knows. They won’t tell Gibson. This is a complete violation of our Constitution, which requires that you be informed of the charges against you and that you be given an opportunity to defend yourself. It is also an obscenity because if Justice won’t tell Gibson why it has done this, then the only reasonable answer is intimidation. People need to be fired for this!



And it gets worse. It turns out that Gibson is a well-known Republican contributor. Its primary competitor, C.F. Martin & Company, is a well-known Democratic contributor. Martin gets its wood from the exact same sources as Gibson. Yet, Holder’s Justice Department has not raided Martin. . . it only hassles Gibson. It would be stupid to think this wasn’t politically motivated. The message is clear: this is an attempt to intimidate Republican business to keep them out of politics.



So what do we do about Obama/Holder deeply politicizing the Justice Department? The usual Republican response would be to swear that we will put a stop to this. Then we act scared as soon as the Democrats accuse us of interfering with Justice. Let me suggest a smarter way to handle this: fight fire with fire.



Appoint a seasoned political operative to lead the Justice Department. This person’s job will be to focus the Justice Department on unions, race lobbyists, and fake non-profits that are really hidden Democratic support organizations. Start investigating George Soros for any number of his crimes, real or suggested. Target groups like the New York Times, in retaliation for Holder’s political attacks on News Corp. Use the full resources of the United States to tie up and pursue these organizations.



This may make Republicans queasy, but this is the only way the Democrats will ever stop politicizing parts of the government. So long as they can keep doing this and the only Republican response is to promise not to do it themselves, they will keep doing this. Only by teaching the Democrats that there are consequences, i.e. that we can take the weapons they create and use them to much greater effect will the Democrats begin to respect the non-partisan nature of government. There must be consequences. And if some Democrats end up in jail in the meantime. . . that's just too bad for them.

The United States is free and stable because we depoliticized the most dangerous parts of our government: the power to tax, the power to police and make war, and the legal system. The power to tax is the power to destroy. The power to police and make war is the power to kill. And the legal system controls every other aspect of our lives. If you control the legal system, then there are no rights, only privileges given at the whim of our masters. The Democrats are trying to undo this, as shown by the Gibson Guitar case.



It took our country a long time to depoliticize much of our government. Until the 1930s, both the army and the federal bureaucracy were considered spoils to be exploited by the political victors, and they would appoint their supporters to government jobs or give them military commissions. Changing this was a monumental achievement. Unfortunately, in the past 20 years, the Democrats have worked hard to re-politicize these government functions.



Clinton took the first big steps in this regard, when he sent the IRS after churches because they were seen as supporters of Republicans -- the Republicans never counter-attacked, despite the fact that so many leftist groups are hiding behind non-profit labels, which cannot by law be partisan. Clinton’s Justice Department's Civil Rights Division spent its time doing the bidding of feminists, while its Antitrust Division went after the competitors of campaign donors and ignored F.O.Bs (Friends of Bill) like the nation’s colleges, which conspire to fix prices. At the same time, Justice struggled mightily to blind itself to all of Clinton’s illegal Chinese donors, some of whom apparently had ties to Chinese Intelligence, e.g. John Huang, Charlie Trie, Johnny Chung and Maria Hsia.



Under Holder, the Civil Right Division has become an agent of black racism. This was shown by testimony from Justice Department employees, who confirmed that Justice only sees the nation’s civil rights laws as protecting blacks from whites and not the reverse. Of course, you could also have seen this from the way Justice subverted any investigation into voter intimidation by blacks, e.g. the Black Panther case. Justice couldn’t even be bothered to examine ACORN, which was caught red-handed, and it continues to attack any attempt to require minorities to show voter identification.



Holder also sued Arizona, on behalf of Obama’s illegal alien friends, to stop Arizona from enforcing the very laws the Justice Department is sworn to uphold. And we understand INS has all but stopped deporting illegal aliens.



Holder also stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act, as a sop to Obama’s gay supporters.



In Operation Fast and Furious, we see the Justice Department’s ATF allowing the sale of guns to criminals in the hopes of generating political data to be used to support gun control advocates.



Meanwhile, Holder has been pursuing peaceful pro-lifers who march outside clinics, while refusing to investigate union thugs beating people up at townhall meetings or intimidating employers or acting like racketeers against private companies or making death threats to Republican legislators in Wisconsin.



And now we have the Gibson Guitar case.



To make its guitars, Gibson imports rosewood from India and Madagascar. The wood it imports is certified for export by both countries as being from sustainable sources. That makes it legal for import into the United States.



But the Justice Department just swooped in and seized over a million dollars in wood and equipment from Gibson. What was Justice’s reasoning? No one knows. They won’t tell Gibson. This is a complete violation of our Constitution, which requires that you be informed of the charges against you and that you be given an opportunity to defend yourself. It is also an obscenity because if Justice won’t tell Gibson why it has done this, then the only reasonable answer is intimidation. People need to be fired for this!



And it gets worse. It turns out that Gibson is a well-known Republican contributor. Its primary competitor, C.F. Martin & Company, is a well-known Democratic contributor. Martin gets its wood from the exact same sources as Gibson. Yet, Holder’s Justice Department has not raided Martin. . . it only hassles Gibson. It would be stupid to think this wasn’t politically motivated. The message is clear: this is an attempt to intimidate Republican business to keep them out of politics.



So what do we do about Obama/Holder deeply politicizing the Justice Department? The usual Republican response would be to swear that we will put a stop to this. Then we act scared as soon as the Democrats accuse us of interfering with Justice. Let me suggest a smarter way to handle this: fight fire with fire.



Appoint a seasoned political operative to lead the Justice Department. This person’s job will be to focus the Justice Department on unions, race lobbyists, and fake non-profits that are really hidden Democratic support organizations. Start investigating George Soros for any number of his crimes, real or suggested. Target groups like the New York Times, in retaliation for Holder’s political attacks on News Corp. Use the full resources of the United States to tie up and pursue these organizations.



This may make Republicans queasy, but this is the only way the Democrats will ever stop politicizing parts of the government. So long as they can keep doing this and the only Republican response is to promise not to do it themselves, they will keep doing this. Only by teaching the Democrats that there are consequences, i.e. that we can take the weapons they create and use them to much greater effect will the Democrats begin to respect the non-partisan nature of government. There must be consequences. And if some Democrats end up in jail in the meantime. . . that's just too bad for them.

Politicized Justice

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How Did I Miss His Call?

How Did I Miss His Call?

We all know that Barack Obama, head of the Obama family in America, is always concerned about the welfare of his extended family. He is also very much sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants. So he must have been wondering why he never received a call from Onyango Obama, aka "Uncle Omar."



You see, last Wednesday Uncle Omar nearly rammed his SUV into a Framingham, Massachusetts police vehicle. Subsequently, Uncle Omar was charged with several violations of the law, including driving while intoxicated. I guess that dispels the rumor that the Obamas are all Muslims, since the Prophet forbids the use of intoxicating liquors. Either that or Uncle Omar is a lapsed Muslim.



There must have been a glitch somewhere. When the Framingham police asked Uncle Omar if he wanted to make his phone call, he replied "I think I will call the White House." He was led off to a phone bank to make the call, but procedure allows the arrestee to make the call in private. We may never know for sure whether he did indeed try to make that call to the White House.



Assuming he did, and somehow failed, that's too bad for Uncle Omar. After all, the Obama pater familias is the most powerful man in the western world, and also retains the most powerful law firm in America, the Department of Justice. Surely if he had been able to get through, the entire matter would have been dismissed, while at the same time a lawsuit would have been filed by the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department against Framingham for violating the rights of a black man who is also an illegal immigrant. Another example of racial/ethnic/immigrant profiling.



The thread of discovery of Uncle Omar's entry into the United States has been a bit tortuous. During the 2008 campaign, an investigative reporter for a British newspaper did some digging and found the future President's "Aunt Zeituni" living illegally in Boston. That led to a search for other possible Obama relatives living in the US illegally. One tip came from Barack's own book Dreams From My Father. Describing his visitation with his relatives in Kenya, the future President notes that they told him stories of family members who had emigrated to the West and were never heard from again, "like our Uncle Omar, in Boston. They've been lost, you see."



Although Uncle Omar was not found to be living with Aunt Zeituni, there was a relationship and correspondence. It eventually led to the discovery of Uncle Omar in the Boston area. He was living there under the name O. Onyango Obama, though he has come to use the name Obama Onyango. If that's an attempt at subterfuge, it's a pretty poor one. When informed of all this, candidate Barack replied "Oh, really?" Not "I already knew that," or "As President, I'll enforce immigration law regardless of whom it may affect." Just a simple non sequitur. Barack's recent executive order skirting Congress and the Constitution stalling 300,000 deportation cases explains the lack of clarity in his earlier response to questions about his relatives living in the US illegally.



Uncle Omar is a lucky man. If this were a country run by the rule of law instead of Presidential whim, Uncle Omar would be tried, possibly convicted, then turned over to immigration authorities for deportation. But the Mayor of Boston and the Governor of Massachusetts have formally declared that they will ignore federal law and report illegal immigrants to the feds only if they are convicted of serious felonies. It wouldn't matter if they did comply, since Barack has now ordered exactly the same thing, and he controls the immigration services.



I suppose if Uncle Omar had managed to kill an officer in the patrol car he almost hit, somebody might have reported him to ICE, but nothing much would be done anyway, so it would be an exercise in futility.



It appears that Uncle Omar has been living most of his life in America on the dole. But illegal longevity in the US is now a plus for immigrants who have managed to avoid killing anyone while they are here. I think it's time for Barack to use his power appropriately, and find Uncle Omar a job. He'd have to consult with Attorney General Holder, but I think there are openings for poll watchers in Philadelphia.

We all know that Barack Obama, head of the Obama family in America, is always concerned about the welfare of his extended family. He is also very much sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants. So he must have been wondering why he never received a call from Onyango Obama, aka "Uncle Omar."



You see, last Wednesday Uncle Omar nearly rammed his SUV into a Framingham, Massachusetts police vehicle. Subsequently, Uncle Omar was charged with several violations of the law, including driving while intoxicated. I guess that dispels the rumor that the Obamas are all Muslims, since the Prophet forbids the use of intoxicating liquors. Either that or Uncle Omar is a lapsed Muslim.



There must have been a glitch somewhere. When the Framingham police asked Uncle Omar if he wanted to make his phone call, he replied "I think I will call the White House." He was led off to a phone bank to make the call, but procedure allows the arrestee to make the call in private. We may never know for sure whether he did indeed try to make that call to the White House.



Assuming he did, and somehow failed, that's too bad for Uncle Omar. After all, the Obama pater familias is the most powerful man in the western world, and also retains the most powerful law firm in America, the Department of Justice. Surely if he had been able to get through, the entire matter would have been dismissed, while at the same time a lawsuit would have been filed by the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department against Framingham for violating the rights of a black man who is also an illegal immigrant. Another example of racial/ethnic/immigrant profiling.



The thread of discovery of Uncle Omar's entry into the United States has been a bit tortuous. During the 2008 campaign, an investigative reporter for a British newspaper did some digging and found the future President's "Aunt Zeituni" living illegally in Boston. That led to a search for other possible Obama relatives living in the US illegally. One tip came from Barack's own book Dreams From My Father. Describing his visitation with his relatives in Kenya, the future President notes that they told him stories of family members who had emigrated to the West and were never heard from again, "like our Uncle Omar, in Boston. They've been lost, you see."



Although Uncle Omar was not found to be living with Aunt Zeituni, there was a relationship and correspondence. It eventually led to the discovery of Uncle Omar in the Boston area. He was living there under the name O. Onyango Obama, though he has come to use the name Obama Onyango. If that's an attempt at subterfuge, it's a pretty poor one. When informed of all this, candidate Barack replied "Oh, really?" Not "I already knew that," or "As President, I'll enforce immigration law regardless of whom it may affect." Just a simple non sequitur. Barack's recent executive order skirting Congress and the Constitution stalling 300,000 deportation cases explains the lack of clarity in his earlier response to questions about his relatives living in the US illegally.



Uncle Omar is a lucky man. If this were a country run by the rule of law instead of Presidential whim, Uncle Omar would be tried, possibly convicted, then turned over to immigration authorities for deportation. But the Mayor of Boston and the Governor of Massachusetts have formally declared that they will ignore federal law and report illegal immigrants to the feds only if they are convicted of serious felonies. It wouldn't matter if they did comply, since Barack has now ordered exactly the same thing, and he controls the immigration services.



I suppose if Uncle Omar had managed to kill an officer in the patrol car he almost hit, somebody might have reported him to ICE, but nothing much would be done anyway, so it would be an exercise in futility.



It appears that Uncle Omar has been living most of his life in America on the dole. But illegal longevity in the US is now a plus for immigrants who have managed to avoid killing anyone while they are here. I think it's time for Barack to use his power appropriately, and find Uncle Omar a job. He'd have to consult with Attorney General Holder, but I think there are openings for poll watchers in Philadelphia.

How Did I Miss His Call?

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Gun Hysteria On The Right

Gun Hysteria On The Right

At the risk of offending my fellow conservatives and fellow gun-owners, I feel compelled to point out that Second Amendment absolutism is as naive as First Amendment absolutism. Yes, the left has long sought to get our guns out of our hands on multiple pretenses and factual inaccuracies. The old NRA slogan "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" remains as true today as when it was first coined.



But some pro-gun advocates need to lighten up and recognize that the government occasionally comes up with a reasonable idea. The FBI recently told military-surplus stores to keep records of bulk purchases of the following items: Weatherproof ammunition or match containers, meals ready-to-eat, night vision devices, high-power flashlights, gas masks, high capacity magazines, and bi-pods or tripods for rifles. The handout to storeowners also advised them to require valid ID from all customers not personally known to them, talk to customers, ask questions, and listen to and observe their responses, watch for people and actions that are "out of place," make note of suspicious statements, people, and/or vehicles, and if something seems wrong, notify law enforcement offices.



As a Second Amendment near-purist, were I a military-surplus/gun store owner, I would be doing exactly those things, with or without instructions from the FBI. But several gun ownership advocates have gone ballistic (pun intended) over the handout. There seems to be a consensus among them that the government has no business advising private businesses to be watchful for potential terrorists or just plain violent criminals. Oath Keepers, a group of former and current military and police members, have sworn not to enforce unconstitutional government orders, and they include this handout as one of those unconstitutional orders. They are advising storeowners not to comply with the FBI handout.



Now I'm as suspicious of the federal government as the next gun-toting, Constitution-loving, Bible-clinging guy. But even I can recognize FBI instructions which are nothing more than plain common sense. Store owners are not being required to become unpaid FBI and anti-terrorism agents. Rather, they are being asked to do what a good citizen in dangerous times ought to do--assist law enforcement in identifying potential danger. Most of the potentially disastrous attacks planned in America since 9-11 have been thwarted first and foremost by alert citizens who reported suspicious activity to law enforcement.



The handout is part of an FBI program to garner public participation in stopping terrorist attacks and criminal violence. It is called "Communities Against Terrorism." The handout includes the following statement: "Preventing terrorism is a community effort. By learning what to look for, you can make a positive contribution in the fight against terrorism. The partnership between the community and law enforcement is essential to the success of anti-terrorism efforts." Again, a common sense statement backed by proof that community awareness is essential to the efforts to prevent terrorist and violent criminal activity.



Could there be an ulterior motive for the handout? You bet there could. The gun-grabbers in the Obama administration want to identify their "enemies" in the gun-owning community. Furthermore, there is a hint of this mentality in the handout, which says: "Consider as suspicious anyone who demands identity privacy or anyone who expresses extreme religious statements, and those who make suspicious comments regarding anti-US or radical theology." Even a good idea can be perverted, but that doesn't make the idea any less good.



The Obama administration is paranoid about "Christian militias" and "Christian extremists" which largely don't exist. But I'd be the first to report an alleged Christian who wants to blow up or shoot people for having different views. Christianity strongly opposes such violence, but like good ideas, religion can also be perverted. So let's face it--the underlying point of the handout is that Muslims attacked the World Trade Center, even if it were true that this was a perversion of Islam. If so, there are a lot of Muslim perverters of Islam. As for Christianity, both Timothy McVeigh and the Oslo terrorist spouted perverted versions of Christianity and both would have been "suspicious" if they had turned up to buy weapons at my gun store.



And as further criticism of the handout, there is the genuine argument and glaring fact that conscientious gun storeowners attempted to report suspicious gun sales to federal authorities who were participating in the disastrous Operation Fast and Furious. They were told by ATF and FBI agents to go ahead and make the sales, move on, nothing to see here. If government agencies choose to ignore reports of suspicious activity, or worse, are actively participating in the suspicious activities, that is a problem quite separate from the purposes of the handout. Congress is already investigating that deadly fiasco.



Can I see that this common sense approach to preventing terrorism could be detoured or perverted by government authorities? Of course I can. But there is a sensible balancing test in the law (and philosophy) which addresses the issue: "Does the utility of the act outweigh the risk of harm?" In this case, I believe it does. And we must remember that the leftist anti-gun Obama administration will not be in power much longer, nor will the prosecution of terrorist activities be in the hands of the highly-politicized Holder Justice Department forever.



The likelihood of innocent civilians being persecuted as a result of complying with the FBI handout is extremely small. I didn't say impossible, just extremely small. Frankly, I'd like to know why a completely upright citizen would need or want multiple semi-automatic weapons and paraphernalia myself. I wouldn't deny him that right, but I'd sure want to do at least a cursory investigation into what his legitimate purposes are and whether they are for purposes of hunting and self-defense or more sinister purposes.



The burden on the government is to prove that the guns are being purchased for unlawful purposes rather than on the citizen to prove he is using them lawfully. That is a legal distinction which does indeed seem to escape the Obama administration. But we must also remember that for now at least, the Supreme Court has upheld the individual right to keep and bear arms pursuant to the Second Amendment. Yet like the exception to the First Amendment that says you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, it is likely that there will be exceptions to the Second Amendment rule.



Multiple gun ownership will not be forbidden by one of those exceptions, but multiple gun ownership for purposes which are a clear and present danger to the safety of American citizens likely will be. Still, the FBI handout isn't advocating gun confiscation. It is merely asking for citizen participation in identifying suspicious activity and staving off potentially deadly terrorist and criminal use of deadly weapons. I support the theory completely. It remains to be seen whether I will support the way it is practiced.

At the risk of offending my fellow conservatives and fellow gun-owners, I feel compelled to point out that Second Amendment absolutism is as naive as First Amendment absolutism. Yes, the left has long sought to get our guns out of our hands on multiple pretenses and factual inaccuracies. The old NRA slogan "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" remains as true today as when it was first coined.



But some pro-gun advocates need to lighten up and recognize that the government occasionally comes up with a reasonable idea. The FBI recently told military-surplus stores to keep records of bulk purchases of the following items: Weatherproof ammunition or match containers, meals ready-to-eat, night vision devices, high-power flashlights, gas masks, high capacity magazines, and bi-pods or tripods for rifles. The handout to storeowners also advised them to require valid ID from all customers not personally known to them, talk to customers, ask questions, and listen to and observe their responses, watch for people and actions that are "out of place," make note of suspicious statements, people, and/or vehicles, and if something seems wrong, notify law enforcement offices.



As a Second Amendment near-purist, were I a military-surplus/gun store owner, I would be doing exactly those things, with or without instructions from the FBI. But several gun ownership advocates have gone ballistic (pun intended) over the handout. There seems to be a consensus among them that the government has no business advising private businesses to be watchful for potential terrorists or just plain violent criminals. Oath Keepers, a group of former and current military and police members, have sworn not to enforce unconstitutional government orders, and they include this handout as one of those unconstitutional orders. They are advising storeowners not to comply with the FBI handout.



Now I'm as suspicious of the federal government as the next gun-toting, Constitution-loving, Bible-clinging guy. But even I can recognize FBI instructions which are nothing more than plain common sense. Store owners are not being required to become unpaid FBI and anti-terrorism agents. Rather, they are being asked to do what a good citizen in dangerous times ought to do--assist law enforcement in identifying potential danger. Most of the potentially disastrous attacks planned in America since 9-11 have been thwarted first and foremost by alert citizens who reported suspicious activity to law enforcement.



The handout is part of an FBI program to garner public participation in stopping terrorist attacks and criminal violence. It is called "Communities Against Terrorism." The handout includes the following statement: "Preventing terrorism is a community effort. By learning what to look for, you can make a positive contribution in the fight against terrorism. The partnership between the community and law enforcement is essential to the success of anti-terrorism efforts." Again, a common sense statement backed by proof that community awareness is essential to the efforts to prevent terrorist and violent criminal activity.



Could there be an ulterior motive for the handout? You bet there could. The gun-grabbers in the Obama administration want to identify their "enemies" in the gun-owning community. Furthermore, there is a hint of this mentality in the handout, which says: "Consider as suspicious anyone who demands identity privacy or anyone who expresses extreme religious statements, and those who make suspicious comments regarding anti-US or radical theology." Even a good idea can be perverted, but that doesn't make the idea any less good.



The Obama administration is paranoid about "Christian militias" and "Christian extremists" which largely don't exist. But I'd be the first to report an alleged Christian who wants to blow up or shoot people for having different views. Christianity strongly opposes such violence, but like good ideas, religion can also be perverted. So let's face it--the underlying point of the handout is that Muslims attacked the World Trade Center, even if it were true that this was a perversion of Islam. If so, there are a lot of Muslim perverters of Islam. As for Christianity, both Timothy McVeigh and the Oslo terrorist spouted perverted versions of Christianity and both would have been "suspicious" if they had turned up to buy weapons at my gun store.



And as further criticism of the handout, there is the genuine argument and glaring fact that conscientious gun storeowners attempted to report suspicious gun sales to federal authorities who were participating in the disastrous Operation Fast and Furious. They were told by ATF and FBI agents to go ahead and make the sales, move on, nothing to see here. If government agencies choose to ignore reports of suspicious activity, or worse, are actively participating in the suspicious activities, that is a problem quite separate from the purposes of the handout. Congress is already investigating that deadly fiasco.



Can I see that this common sense approach to preventing terrorism could be detoured or perverted by government authorities? Of course I can. But there is a sensible balancing test in the law (and philosophy) which addresses the issue: "Does the utility of the act outweigh the risk of harm?" In this case, I believe it does. And we must remember that the leftist anti-gun Obama administration will not be in power much longer, nor will the prosecution of terrorist activities be in the hands of the highly-politicized Holder Justice Department forever.



The likelihood of innocent civilians being persecuted as a result of complying with the FBI handout is extremely small. I didn't say impossible, just extremely small. Frankly, I'd like to know why a completely upright citizen would need or want multiple semi-automatic weapons and paraphernalia myself. I wouldn't deny him that right, but I'd sure want to do at least a cursory investigation into what his legitimate purposes are and whether they are for purposes of hunting and self-defense or more sinister purposes.



The burden on the government is to prove that the guns are being purchased for unlawful purposes rather than on the citizen to prove he is using them lawfully. That is a legal distinction which does indeed seem to escape the Obama administration. But we must also remember that for now at least, the Supreme Court has upheld the individual right to keep and bear arms pursuant to the Second Amendment. Yet like the exception to the First Amendment that says you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, it is likely that there will be exceptions to the Second Amendment rule.



Multiple gun ownership will not be forbidden by one of those exceptions, but multiple gun ownership for purposes which are a clear and present danger to the safety of American citizens likely will be. Still, the FBI handout isn't advocating gun confiscation. It is merely asking for citizen participation in identifying suspicious activity and staving off potentially deadly terrorist and criminal use of deadly weapons. I support the theory completely. It remains to be seen whether I will support the way it is practiced.

Gun Hysteria On The Right

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Victimizing The Victims Of Fast & Furious

Victimizing The Victims Of Fast & Furious

Shown are some of the beneficiaries of notorious Operation Fast and Furious. The same administration that regularly attempts to hogtie the Second Amendment for American citizens is also the one that helped create a well-armed militia in Mexico. After arming Mexican drug cartel members to the teeth, resulting in deaths on both sides of the border, the administration now chooses to deny assistance for victims of their boondoggle.

Several decades back, the states and the federal government decided to assist victims of violent crime and family members by granting certain monetary compensation. In many cases, the compensation was a simple administrative act, but many others first required a formal showing of a direct link between the harm caused and the defendant charged (considerably less than a conviction in open court). As time went on, more "victim's rights" were legislated, including the right of the victims and their families to be notified of all court proceedings, to meet with the prosecutors, and to testify at sentencing and parole hearings. This latter expansion of victim's rights has had a recent unintended consequence.

So long as compensation to the victims' families was purely monetary, it had little effect on any pending criminal investigations or court proceedings. But once the victims became actual participants in the judicial process, the game plan for prosecutors changed. Honest and ethical prosecutors would proceed without regard for any possible negative effects the trial participation (active or passive) of the victims might be. But highly-politicized prosecutors often began to look at another factor. Could bringing this victim or his family into the proceedings by way of the victims of violent crimes statutes harm their position or that of the political party to which they have fealty? And thus it is with Operation Fast and Furious.

The operation has already become a major scandal for the Obama administration, and federal prosecutors under orders from their Attorney General are doing everything in their power to keep the botched and deadly operation from leading directly to the White House. We have discussed the operation and its deadly results in several posts at this site. Now a new twist to the nefarious activities of the government has been added. Federal prosecutors are denying victims of violent crimes protection and assistance to the family of Border Agent Brian Terry. Terry was killed by cartel member Jaime Avila using a high-powered rifle purchased during Fast and Furious.

Compensation that would in the past have been treated as a routine court/administrative matter has now become a political hot potato because compensating Terry's family and allowing them participation in the penalty phase would be a tacit admission that a thug murdered a law enforcement officer on American soil using a weapon purchased and reimported into the United States as a result of the government's failed operation. Attorney General Eric Holder is not going to allow that to happen without putting roadblocks in the way of the wife and children of the slain officer.

Even though Brian Terry's horrible death was the final blow to Operation Fast and Furious, federal prosecutors have decided that until the murder weapon is linked to both Avila and Fast and Furious beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, the Terry family will just have to fend for itself. There is very little doubt that Avila committed the crime and that the weapon used was part of the botched operation, but if the prosecutors can put off actual trial until after next year's elections, the taint of government participation in a resulting death would not be in front of the American voters. So the grieving family can simply wait to get that one small piece of justice that the victims of violent crimes acts provide.

The prosecutors went before a federal judge specifically to deny victim status to the Terry family, arguing that it has not yet been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Avila and the operation "directly and proximately harmed Terry (and his family). Although the same prosecutors have charged Avila with conspiring to deal in firearms without a license, dealing firearms without a license, and lying to federal investigators, they have held off charging him with unlawful homicide and use of an illegal weapon in Terry's murder. Thus they can use the reprehensible argument that "the victim of the offenses is not any particular person, but society in general."

The government's CYA tactics were bad enough before they pulled this one. Denying a widow and her now-fatherless children of satisfaction to gain a political advantage is beneath contempt. Said George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council: "I think it's pretty bold of the government to take this position. It's the government trying to cover its backside and minimize the embarrassment over a failed gun investigation. There is no other reason for this."

If there is any justice in this world, the DOJ attempt at a further coverup will backfire. As word gets out that Mrs. Terry and the kids are being told that their husband/father was just an insignificant casualty of war, mere collateral damage, the public is likely to be even more outraged than they were at the earlier revelations about the disaster that was Operation Fast and Furious. No thanks to Eric Holder and his department for even those revelations.

Terry's family is the victim of a violent crime, regardless of what is or is not proven later at trial. He wasn't struck by lightning. He didn't fall off a cliff. He was shot and killed while on duty by a criminal or criminals during the commission of a violent act. The statutes require compensation, now. Justice delayed is indeed justice denied.

Shown are some of the beneficiaries of notorious Operation Fast and Furious. The same administration that regularly attempts to hogtie the Second Amendment for American citizens is also the one that helped create a well-armed militia in Mexico. After arming Mexican drug cartel members to the teeth, resulting in deaths on both sides of the border, the administration now chooses to deny assistance for victims of their boondoggle.

Several decades back, the states and the federal government decided to assist victims of violent crime and family members by granting certain monetary compensation. In many cases, the compensation was a simple administrative act, but many others first required a formal showing of a direct link between the harm caused and the defendant charged (considerably less than a conviction in open court). As time went on, more "victim's rights" were legislated, including the right of the victims and their families to be notified of all court proceedings, to meet with the prosecutors, and to testify at sentencing and parole hearings. This latter expansion of victim's rights has had a recent unintended consequence.

So long as compensation to the victims' families was purely monetary, it had little effect on any pending criminal investigations or court proceedings. But once the victims became actual participants in the judicial process, the game plan for prosecutors changed. Honest and ethical prosecutors would proceed without regard for any possible negative effects the trial participation (active or passive) of the victims might be. But highly-politicized prosecutors often began to look at another factor. Could bringing this victim or his family into the proceedings by way of the victims of violent crimes statutes harm their position or that of the political party to which they have fealty? And thus it is with Operation Fast and Furious.

The operation has already become a major scandal for the Obama administration, and federal prosecutors under orders from their Attorney General are doing everything in their power to keep the botched and deadly operation from leading directly to the White House. We have discussed the operation and its deadly results in several posts at this site. Now a new twist to the nefarious activities of the government has been added. Federal prosecutors are denying victims of violent crimes protection and assistance to the family of Border Agent Brian Terry. Terry was killed by cartel member Jaime Avila using a high-powered rifle purchased during Fast and Furious.

Compensation that would in the past have been treated as a routine court/administrative matter has now become a political hot potato because compensating Terry's family and allowing them participation in the penalty phase would be a tacit admission that a thug murdered a law enforcement officer on American soil using a weapon purchased and reimported into the United States as a result of the government's failed operation. Attorney General Eric Holder is not going to allow that to happen without putting roadblocks in the way of the wife and children of the slain officer.

Even though Brian Terry's horrible death was the final blow to Operation Fast and Furious, federal prosecutors have decided that until the murder weapon is linked to both Avila and Fast and Furious beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, the Terry family will just have to fend for itself. There is very little doubt that Avila committed the crime and that the weapon used was part of the botched operation, but if the prosecutors can put off actual trial until after next year's elections, the taint of government participation in a resulting death would not be in front of the American voters. So the grieving family can simply wait to get that one small piece of justice that the victims of violent crimes acts provide.

The prosecutors went before a federal judge specifically to deny victim status to the Terry family, arguing that it has not yet been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Avila and the operation "directly and proximately harmed Terry (and his family). Although the same prosecutors have charged Avila with conspiring to deal in firearms without a license, dealing firearms without a license, and lying to federal investigators, they have held off charging him with unlawful homicide and use of an illegal weapon in Terry's murder. Thus they can use the reprehensible argument that "the victim of the offenses is not any particular person, but society in general."

The government's CYA tactics were bad enough before they pulled this one. Denying a widow and her now-fatherless children of satisfaction to gain a political advantage is beneath contempt. Said George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council: "I think it's pretty bold of the government to take this position. It's the government trying to cover its backside and minimize the embarrassment over a failed gun investigation. There is no other reason for this."

If there is any justice in this world, the DOJ attempt at a further coverup will backfire. As word gets out that Mrs. Terry and the kids are being told that their husband/father was just an insignificant casualty of war, mere collateral damage, the public is likely to be even more outraged than they were at the earlier revelations about the disaster that was Operation Fast and Furious. No thanks to Eric Holder and his department for even those revelations.

Terry's family is the victim of a violent crime, regardless of what is or is not proven later at trial. He wasn't struck by lightning. He didn't fall off a cliff. He was shot and killed while on duty by a criminal or criminals during the commission of a violent act. The statutes require compensation, now. Justice delayed is indeed justice denied.

Victimizing The Victims Of Fast & Furious

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More Proof That Liberals Are Insane

More Proof That Liberals Are Insane

Liberalism truly is a mental condition. Time and again, liberal policies lead to disaster and yet liberals absolutely refuse to see that. If at first you don’t succeed, just keep doing the same thing over and over until you get a different result. . . and don’t you dare try to fix any problems that may arise. Consider these examples.



1. Food Stamps For Rich College Kids Liberals believe in food stamps as a way to help poor people who “don’t earn enough to survive.” So you would assume liberals would want to stop rich and middle class moochers from exploiting the food stamp program? Apparently not.



Unlike other states, Michigan allows college kids to get food stamps. Federal law forbids this, but Michigan liberals got around that by classifying college as an “employment training program.” They also check eligibility for food stamps on the basis of income only without regard to assets. Hence, someone with a ton of money but no actual income can qualify for food stamps. . . someone like Leroy Fick, who won the state lottery but remained on food stamps.



Michigan is now changing its rules. College kids can now only get food stamps if they are single mothers or if they work more than 20 hours per week and still fall within income restrictions (assets will be considered as well). This change will kick 30,000 college kids off the program and save the state $75 million per year in food stamps.



Liberals should be thrilled. These middle class to rich moochers living comfortably on parental support and federal student loans, most of whom have better job prospects upon graduation than 90% of taxpayers, were robbing taxpayers (including “the working poor”) and draining the system, which prevented the money from reaching people who really needed it. But liberals aren’t outraged at the moochers, they’re outraged at the conservative governor who has made the change. Their reasoning? A change in the law to prevent the rich from taking money meant for the poor “will be unfair to the poor.”



Stupidity or insanity?



2. Stimulus Failure (redux): The evidence is indisputable that government spending to boost an economy in the short term is a disaster. I do believe careful spending in certain types of infrastructure can lead to long term growth. For example, the creation of a highway or getting electricity to people can create a wealth of opportunities as consumers and businesses make use of those services to reach each other. But you can’t boost an economy just by hiring people to build something.



History has shown this over and over. In fact, the biggest ignored lesson of the Great Depression came from FDR’s own Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, who wrote this in his diary about their efforts to stem the recession:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . [A]fter eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . and an enormous debt to boot!”

Sound familiar? Now the Democrats want to go for another stimulus bill. . . a fifth under Obama. The others all failed, yet they think this one will work. That’s Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: repeating the same action over and over, but expecting a different result. Hence, liberals are insane.



3. CAFE Standards Obama just introduced new fuel efficiency standards (CAFE) for trucks. Raising CAFE standards makes cars more expensive, driving down demand and keeping poor people in older, less-safe vehicles longer. What’s more, the one type of vehicle in which American car companies still dominate is the truck. This will hurt Detroit. I guess Obama’s slogan for 2012 will be, “The GM bailout was so successful, I want to repeat it in 2014!”



4. Obama Strong Warlord The last Democrat with any sense of how to win a war was Harry Truman, and he seemed to lose that by the time Korea came along. Since that time, the Democrats have become a party of pacifists, cowards and military incompetents. Obama looks to continue this ignoble tradition by tucking his tail in Afghanistan and Libya. But the Democrats want to portray him as a big tough killer. What to do? What to do?



Oh, I know. Let’s have Hollywood make a movie about Obama’s dithering over the killing of Osama bin Laden to prove his resolve of steal (hmm, is that spelled right?).



Here’s the catch. When Obama was thumping his chest after the military killed bin Laden, he got all of a three point bounce, which vanished again before the first shark took a bite out of bin Laden’s body. Obama got no bounce form running away in Iraq or cowering before Iran or Honduras. He got no bounce from the surge in Afghanistan. He got a negative bounce from bombing Libya. And Americans have stayed away in droves from every war film Hollywood has produced about the war on terror. Hmmm. So what makes liberals think this will help the man of steal? Insanity.



5. London Violence London police killed some gangbanger. According to liberals, it is outrageous that anyone should ever be killed and violence is unacceptable. So what do liberals do to protest? They start rioting in London, burning buses with people in them, beating people with baseball bats, etc. In other words, they have turned to massive, random violence to protest a single instance of probably justified violence. Nice.



As an "interesting" aside -- at least it will be interesting for most liberals (possibly even mind-boggling) -- the rioting stopped in London once the police threatened to use rubber bullets. The rioters moved on to other cities at that point. As a further aside, they don't riot in my neighborhood because we don't waste our time with rubber bullets.

Liberalism truly is a mental condition. Time and again, liberal policies lead to disaster and yet liberals absolutely refuse to see that. If at first you don’t succeed, just keep doing the same thing over and over until you get a different result. . . and don’t you dare try to fix any problems that may arise. Consider these examples.



1. Food Stamps For Rich College Kids Liberals believe in food stamps as a way to help poor people who “don’t earn enough to survive.” So you would assume liberals would want to stop rich and middle class moochers from exploiting the food stamp program? Apparently not.



Unlike other states, Michigan allows college kids to get food stamps. Federal law forbids this, but Michigan liberals got around that by classifying college as an “employment training program.” They also check eligibility for food stamps on the basis of income only without regard to assets. Hence, someone with a ton of money but no actual income can qualify for food stamps. . . someone like Leroy Fick, who won the state lottery but remained on food stamps.



Michigan is now changing its rules. College kids can now only get food stamps if they are single mothers or if they work more than 20 hours per week and still fall within income restrictions (assets will be considered as well). This change will kick 30,000 college kids off the program and save the state $75 million per year in food stamps.



Liberals should be thrilled. These middle class to rich moochers living comfortably on parental support and federal student loans, most of whom have better job prospects upon graduation than 90% of taxpayers, were robbing taxpayers (including “the working poor”) and draining the system, which prevented the money from reaching people who really needed it. But liberals aren’t outraged at the moochers, they’re outraged at the conservative governor who has made the change. Their reasoning? A change in the law to prevent the rich from taking money meant for the poor “will be unfair to the poor.”



Stupidity or insanity?



2. Stimulus Failure (redux): The evidence is indisputable that government spending to boost an economy in the short term is a disaster. I do believe careful spending in certain types of infrastructure can lead to long term growth. For example, the creation of a highway or getting electricity to people can create a wealth of opportunities as consumers and businesses make use of those services to reach each other. But you can’t boost an economy just by hiring people to build something.



History has shown this over and over. In fact, the biggest ignored lesson of the Great Depression came from FDR’s own Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, who wrote this in his diary about their efforts to stem the recession:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . [A]fter eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . and an enormous debt to boot!”

Sound familiar? Now the Democrats want to go for another stimulus bill. . . a fifth under Obama. The others all failed, yet they think this one will work. That’s Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: repeating the same action over and over, but expecting a different result. Hence, liberals are insane.



3. CAFE Standards Obama just introduced new fuel efficiency standards (CAFE) for trucks. Raising CAFE standards makes cars more expensive, driving down demand and keeping poor people in older, less-safe vehicles longer. What’s more, the one type of vehicle in which American car companies still dominate is the truck. This will hurt Detroit. I guess Obama’s slogan for 2012 will be, “The GM bailout was so successful, I want to repeat it in 2014!”



4. Obama Strong Warlord The last Democrat with any sense of how to win a war was Harry Truman, and he seemed to lose that by the time Korea came along. Since that time, the Democrats have become a party of pacifists, cowards and military incompetents. Obama looks to continue this ignoble tradition by tucking his tail in Afghanistan and Libya. But the Democrats want to portray him as a big tough killer. What to do? What to do?



Oh, I know. Let’s have Hollywood make a movie about Obama’s dithering over the killing of Osama bin Laden to prove his resolve of steal (hmm, is that spelled right?).



Here’s the catch. When Obama was thumping his chest after the military killed bin Laden, he got all of a three point bounce, which vanished again before the first shark took a bite out of bin Laden’s body. Obama got no bounce form running away in Iraq or cowering before Iran or Honduras. He got no bounce from the surge in Afghanistan. He got a negative bounce from bombing Libya. And Americans have stayed away in droves from every war film Hollywood has produced about the war on terror. Hmmm. So what makes liberals think this will help the man of steal? Insanity.



5. London Violence London police killed some gangbanger. According to liberals, it is outrageous that anyone should ever be killed and violence is unacceptable. So what do liberals do to protest? They start rioting in London, burning buses with people in them, beating people with baseball bats, etc. In other words, they have turned to massive, random violence to protest a single instance of probably justified violence. Nice.



As an "interesting" aside -- at least it will be interesting for most liberals (possibly even mind-boggling) -- the rioting stopped in London once the police threatened to use rubber bullets. The rioters moved on to other cities at that point. As a further aside, they don't riot in my neighborhood because we don't waste our time with rubber bullets.

More Proof That Liberals Are Insane

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