Showing posts with label Holder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holder. Show all posts

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Breaking News from 2010


Breaking news this evening: election voting was marred by violence that killed 26 and closed polling places across the country.

About 11 percent fewer polling places opened than originally estimated as election day violence spilled onto the streets. Sarah Goodscott is tracking the situation in our election center. Sarah?

Thanks, Bip. Federal election officials have decried the outbreaks of violence that have killed at least 26 people across the country and injured hundreds.

One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, reported that his organization had tracked 135 separate clashes.

Increasing militarization and conflict at polling places had been predicted before the election, but no one was anticipating anything like this.

Security concerns clearly had an impact on voter turnout.

"I wanted to vote, but what I heard was happening at the polls I decided not to." This 70-year old woman from Philadelphia said she had voted in every election since 1960 until today.

Prior to the election, the New Black Panthers, the SEIU, ACORN and other left-leaning organizations had promised to "ensure a fair election by maintaining a presence at every polling location."

But in Chicago, ACORN protesters accosted voters wearing Republican garb.

In Lowell, Massachusetts a gunfight erupted after more than a dozen Republicans were denied entry to a polling place by members of the SEIU.

In East Los Angeles, a shootout raged for more than three hours between members of an unidentified leftist group and police after dozens of reports of voter intimidation.

The fight only ended after a heavily armed National Guard unit arrived at the scene. Eight persons were killed and more than two dozen injured in that incident alone.

Philadelphia was arguably the birthplace of the militarized polling place, after the controversial 2008 incident in which New Black Panther Party members harrassed voters.

In a 2009 interview, civil rights attorney Bartle Bull called the incident "the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen."

"I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters."

"They tried to interfere with the work of other poll observers ... whom the uniformed men apparently believed did not share their preferences politically... one of the Panthers turned toward the white poll observers and said 'you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.'"

Why, then did President Obama, and the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder, decide to drop charges against the Panthers?

No one knows the answer to that question, but there is no dispute that the incident encouraged lawlessness at polling places across the country this time around.

Officials across the country have promised that investigations will get to the bottom of this terrible day in American history, but some are already decrying November 2, 2010 as an ominous milestone.

Speaking today at the National Press Club, talk show pundit and best-selling author Mark Levin called it "the day the United States became a third-world country. When the President and the Attorney General conspire to abrogate the rule of law, as they did in the 2008 Panther case, this sort of anarchy is inevitable. This is a terrible, terrible day in American history."

This is Sarah Goodscott reporting from Washington.


Postscript: Obviously, I hope and pray that this sort of thing never happens. But I fear that tolerating voter intimidation -- in any of its forms -- is antithetical to Democracy. That would be the case if any legitimate voter were denied their right to vote, no matter their skin color, ethnicity or religion. But the precedent set by Obama and Holder is an ominous one. If our polling places are not kept pristine from the threat of violence, then what has our Democracy become?
Real news update: "MoveOn.Org, SEIU, ACORN To Infiltrate/Disrupt Recess Protests"

Friday, July 31, 2009

Eric Holder: Worst Attorney General in U.S. History


Last year, Wired Magazine visited the Homeland Security Stakeholders SI Conference and snapped some photos of a transportation security display.

This is a replica of a nitroglycerin bomb that Ramzi Yousef used in an attempt to destroy Philippine Airlines flight 434. The bomb detonated and killed a passenger, but failed to take the plane down.

This shoe-bomb is an accurate copy of Richard Reid's footwear. The terrorist was subdued by passengers after attempting to ignite his shoes.

According to an FBI investigation, had Reid succeeded, 197 men, women and children would have perished.

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder decided to improve Reid's sentencing conditions, permitting him to socialize, evangelize and recruit fellow prisoners. In addition, he can now communicate with sympathetic members of the press. These actions directly contravene advice from every national security expert.

On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., ...inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner—Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the “Shoe Bomber”—were being allowed to expire. SAMs are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when “there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury” to others...

...in order to appease political constituencies both here and abroad, the Obama administration is moving full steam ahead, operating on the false premise that giving more civil liberties to religious fanatics bent on destroying Western civilization will make a difference in the Muslim world. In a letter sent to his father as he began his hunger strike, Reid provided a preview of how he will exercise his newly enlarged free speech rights, calling Mr. Obama a “hypocrite” who is “no better than George Bush.” His lawsuit remains active while the Department of Justice works out a settlement that satisfies the man who declared, “I am at war with America.”

Put simply, Holder -- following President Obama's orders, it would seem -- has unleashed Reid to pursue Jihad in prison, evangelizing, preaching and editorializing to recruit those who would re-enact 9/11 on a grander scale.

Perhaps this action should not comes as a surprise. Holder was a senior partner in the prestigious law firm of Covington & Burling, which represents 17 Yemenis currently held at Gitmo. In January, an anonymous contributor to Michelle Malkin's website wrote:

The fact that Mr. Holder, while Deputy Attorney General, pushed for the release of 16 violent FALN terrorists against the advice of the FBI, the US Attorneys who prosecuted them and the NYPD officers who were maimed by them, suggests that he was perfectly willing to put politics before the national security interests of the country. He is not suited for the job of attorney general...

That statement was, quite obviously, prescient.

Remember the case where several "New Black Panthers" intimidated Caucasian, Hispanic and Asian voters at a polling place in Philadelphia? They flaunted billy clubs at at the polls until the police showed up. One of the defendants, Jerry Jackson, is an elected member of the local Democratic Committee and, at the time of the incident, was a "credentialed poll watcher for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party".

Attorney General Eric Holder's Department of Justice (i.e., the Obama administration) killed a civil complaint related to the incident. A prominent 1960s civil rights activitist called the case "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" he'd ever seen, including the Mississippi voting rights crisis. A former commissioner at the Federal Election Commission stated, "In my experience, I have never heard of the department refusing to take a default judgment."

Holder's behavior is outrageous. He has not only failed to uphold his oath of office, but his decisions to act as a puppet for administration policy, consequences be damned, indicate a reckless disregard for the law and the safety of all Americans. Holder must resign or be ejected from office.


Update: Hack Panthers.

Linked by: McClatchy Watch. Thanks!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Pre-Post-Racial President


"A teachable moment."

That is how President Obama described the incident involving Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley -- and his own controversial reaction.

Recall that in February, Obama's Attorney General -- Eric Holder -- received national attention for calling the United States "a nation of cowards" for its failure to honestly deal with race relations. He claimed that most Americans avoid discussion of lurking racial issues. He went on to justify a significant expenditure of Justice Department resources in pursuit of the traditional straw-men:

• Investigating whether police stop and arrest blacks at disproportionate rates because of racism
• Whether blacks are disproportionately in prison because of racism
• Whether blacks are failing in school because of racist inequities in school funding
• Whether the black poverty rate is the highest in the country because of racism
• Whether blacks were given mortgages that they couldn’t afford because of racism

While Obama and Holder jumped instantaneously to the same, racially-fired conclusion, some formidable statistics and truths stand in their way.

Of 23 peer-reviewed U.S. studies since 2000, 20 found that family structure directly affects crime and/or delinquency. Most research "strongly suggests both that young adults and teens raised in single-parent homes are more likely to commit crimes, and that communities with high rates of family fragmentation (especially unwed childbearing) suffer higher crime rates as a result."

One two-decade study found that nearly 90% of the change in violent crime rates can be attributed to the change in percentages of out-of-wedlock births. Conversely, divorce rates had no relationship with crime.

In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted that the "relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation's mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime."

Let me repeat: Control for single-parent families and there are no differences between the races when it comes to crime.

In addition, the statistical link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is conclusive. There have been dozens of studies that link the availability of welfare benefits to out-of-wedlock birth.

One study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.

Additional research for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of combined AFDC and food stamp benefits led to a 117 percent increase in the crime rate among young black men.

In 1995, Dr. Patrick Fagan wrote a seminal summary of the situation: "Over the past thirty years, the rise in violent crime parallels the rise in families abandoned by fathers... High-crime neighborhoods are characterized by high concentrations of families abandoned by fathers... The rate of violent teenage crime corresponds with the number of families abandoned by fathers... Neighborhoods with a high degree of religious practice are not high-crime neighborhoods... Even in high-crime inner-city neighborhoods, well over 90 percent of children from safe, stable homes do not become delinquents. By contrast only 10 percent of children from unsafe, unstable homes in these neighborhoods avoid crime... Criminals capable of sustaining marriage gradually move away from a life of crime after they get married."

Statistics demonstrate that welfare is a primary contributor to the breakdown of the American family.

In 1994 the Maryland NAACP published a report that concluded "the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today."

Author Robert Rector argued that "[f]or thirty years, the welfare system has paid for non­work and non­marriage and has achieved massive increases in both." Rector noted that when New Jersey began denying increases in cash welfare benefits to single mothers who have additional children while on welfare, out-of-wedlock births decreased 10% with no increase in abortions.

Idealogues like Obama, Gates and Holder notwithstanding, experts offer a series of legislative proposals that strengthen the family:
  • identifying every child's father, by having states ensure that a document exists at birth to identify the name and social security number of both parents
  • forcing fathers to take responsibility for their children through programs like Charles Ballard's National Institute for Responsible Fatherhood, in which fathers are strongly encouraged to legitimate their children, attend school, and find gainful employment
  • rescinding no-­fault divorce laws for parents with children
  • purging the destructive incentives of the welfare system

So what did the Obama administration and Democrats do? They passed a pork-filled Stimulus package that helps dismantle the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and will increase the number of single-parent families.

Buried deep inside the massive spending orgy that Democrats jammed through the House this week lie five words that could drastically undo two decades of welfare reforms.

The very heart of the widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of federal cash that can be sent to states each year for welfare payments.

But, thanks to the simple phrase slipped into the legislation, the new "stimulus" bill abolishes the limits on the amount of federal money for the so-called Emergency Fund, which ships welfare cash to states.

"Out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, there are appropriated such sums as are necessary for payment to the Emergency Fund," Democrats wrote in Section 2101 on Page 354 of the $819 billion bill. In other words, the only limit on welfare payments would be the Treasury itself.

In other words, while Gates, Holder and Obama market racist straw-men, their own Democrat-controlled government has unleashed more single-parent families, more poverty and more violent crime that directly target the African-American family.

They cry racism while undermining the very freedoms that protect minorities and the urban poor.

It can't be called a 'teachable moment' if Democrats fail, decade over decade, to learn.


Update: Liberals Support Crime, Not Punishment.

Saturday, June 06, 2009

A Mosque in Memphis and Eric Holder


Blue Collar Republican has tracked down some interesting connections between a mosque in Memphis and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who is accused of shooting two U.S. military personnel in Arkansas last week. In doing so, it became clear that Memphis may be linked to a pattern of anti-American and pro-Jihad activities.

Even more disturbing, Attorney General Eric Holder has singled out Muslim-Americans for specific -- and perhaps preferential -- treatment when it comes to law enforcement and domestic counterterrorism operations. On June 4, the DOJ website published this missive:

The President’s pledge for a new beginning between the United States and the Muslim community takes root here in the Justice Department where we are committed to using criminal and civil rights laws to protect Muslim Americans. A top priority of this Justice Department is a return to robust civil rights enforcement and outreach in defending religious freedoms and other fundamental rights of all of our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the housing market, in our schools and in the voting booth.

There are those who will continue to want to divide by fear - to pit our national security against our civil liberties - but that is a false choice. We have a solemn responsibility to protect our people while we also protect our principles.

"Takes root here?" This aligns perfectly with intelligence gleaned from a recent Stratfor report, which stated:

Several weeks ago, STRATFOR heard from sources that the FBI and other law enforcement organizations had been ordered to “back off” of counterterrorism investigations into the activities of Black Muslim converts. At this point, it is unclear to us if that guidance was given by the White House or the Department of Justice, or if it was promulgated by the agencies themselves, anticipating the wishes of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

I think that's entirely clear now.

Many FBI supervisors are reluctant to authorize investigations that they believe may have negative blow-back on their career advancement. In light of this institutional culture, and the order to be careful in investigations relating to Black Muslim converts, it would not be at all surprising to us if a supervisor refused to authorize a full-field investigation of Muhammad that would have included surveillance of his activities... Had the FBI opened a full-field investigation on Muhammad, and had it conducted surveillance on him, it would have been able to watch him participate in preoperational activities such as conducting surveillance of potential targets and obtaining weapons.

Put simply, Holder's public memo is circumstantial evidence that Stratfor's sources are spot on. Orders were very likely given to put the lid on counterterror operations involving Muslim converts -- of the exact sort to which Blue Collar Republican alludes.

This plainly marks a return to the Clinton-era practice of treating Jihadists as common criminals. And Americans will die because of these woefully misguided principles.


Update: Huffyton Poast and Media Mutters could not be reached for comment.

Hat tip: Dan from New York.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Eric Holder's Chickens Come Home to Roost


Attorney General Eric Holder received a lot attention for calling the United States "a nation of cowards" when it comes to race relations. He claims that most Americans avoid discussion of lurking racial issues.

In a speech to a group of Justice Department employees that marked Black History Month, Holder said businesses are largely integrated but Americans still divide themselves along racial lines in their private lives.

Stripped bare, it's the traditional liberal pablum, a policy prescription that translates to blind support for phony "profiling" studies and illegal immigration.

Holder therefore feels justified in devoting significant Justice Department resources toward the investigation of traditional progressive busy-work projects:

• Police stop and arrest blacks at disproportionate rates because of racism
• Blacks are disproportionately in prison because of racism
• Blacks are failing in school because of racist inequities in school funding
• The black poverty rate is the highest in the country because of racism
• Blacks were given mortgages that they couldn’t afford because of racism

But facts are stubborn things.

Consider that, of 23 peer-reviewed U.S. studies since 2000, 20 found that family structure directly affects crime and/or delinquency. Most research "strongly suggests both that young adults and teens raised in single-parent homes are more likely to commit crimes, and that communities with high rates of family fragmentation (especially unwed childbearing) suffer higher crime rates as a result."

One study that ran more than two decades found that nearly 90% of the change in violent crime rates can be attributed to the change in percentages of out-of-wedlock births. Conversely, divorce rates had no relationship with crime.

In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted that the "relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation's mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime."

Got that, Holder? Control for single-parent families and there are no differences between the races when it comes to crime.

In addition, the statistical link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is conclusive. There have been dozens of studies that link the availability of welfare benefits to out-of-wedlock birth.

One study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.

Research for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of combined AFDC and food stamp benefits led to a 117 percent increase in the crime rate among young black men.

In 1995, Dr. Patrick Fagan wrote a seminal summary of the situation: "Over the past thirty years, the rise in violent crime parallels the rise in families abandoned by fathers... High-crime neighborhoods are characterized by high concentrations of families abandoned by fathers... The rate of violent teenage crime corresponds with the number of families abandoned by fathers... Neighborhoods with a high degree of religious practice are not high-crime neighborhoods... Even in high-crime inner-city neighborhoods, well over 90 percent of children from safe, stable homes do not become delinquents. By contrast only 10 percent of children from unsafe, unstable homes in these neighborhoods avoid crime... Criminals capable of sustaining marriage gradually move away from a life of crime after they get married."

But what caused the breakdown of the American family?


There are certainly many factors, but the welfare system; glorification of the single-parent household; and ill-conceived legislation are among the chief culprits.

Welfare: In 1994 the Maryland NAACP published a report that concluded "the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today."

Author Robert Rector argued that "[f]or thirty years, the welfare system has paid for non­work and non­marriage and has achieved massive increases in both." Rector noted that when New Jersey began denying increases in cash welfare benefits to single mothers who have additional children while on welfare, out-of-wedlock births decreased 10% with no increase in abortions.

Glorification of single-parent households: During a 1994 commencement address at George Washington University First Lady Hillary Clinton stated, "If it ever did, [the American family] no longer does consist of two parents, a dog, a house with a white picket fence, and a station wagon in the driveway."

In 1992 Vice President Dan Quayle ignited a media kerfuffle by criticizing the character of Murphy Brown for raising a child out of wedlock without any discernible father figure. Though mocked for months in the press, Quayle's words now seem prescient: It doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.

Furthermore, "Feminist" organizations have long opposed measures to reduce single-parent families and revamp welfare accordingly.

But even more important than Hollywood, the media and feminist efforts to glorify single-parent households, legislation played a critical role in the breakdown of the family.

Legislation: Tax law hits married couples directly in their wallets. Studies have determined that the "marriage penalty" disincentivizes both marriage and labor, since "[the] best approach to appear to have a lower family income is to not have an employed spouse in the home."

Research shows that tax and transfer programs have a direct effect on marital stability. Financial stress contributes heavily to family problems, including marital difficulties that can lead to divorce. Therefore, tax policies that penalize married couples by increasing their tax liabilities, contribute directly to the breakdown of families.

Tax policies of the 1940s provided a family-oriented tax structure which preceded the sustained prosperity and social stability of the 1950s and early 1960s. During this time period, the rate of divorce actually declined.

Social researcher Allan Carlson proposed a variety of pro-­family tax policies, saying "a tax code recognizes that tax structure does influence human behavior. It would help children and strengthen families."

Other experts have offered a series of legislative proposals that strengthen the family, including: (a) identifying every child's father, by having states ensure that a document exists at birth to identify the name and social security number of both parents; (b) forcing fathers to take responsibility for their children through programs like Charles Ballard's National Institute for Responsible Fatherhood, in which fathers are strongly encouraged to legitimate their children, attend school, and find gainful employment; (c) rescind no-­fault divorce laws for parents with children; and (d) eradicate the destructive incentives of the welfare system.

So what does the Obama administration do?


They pass a pork-filled Stimulus package that helps dismantle the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and increase the number of single-parent families.

Buried deep inside the massive spending orgy that Democrats jammed through the House this week lie five words that could drastically undo two decades of welfare reforms.

The very heart of the widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of federal cash that can be sent to states each year for welfare payments.

But, thanks to the simple phrase slipped into the legislation, the new "stimulus" bill abolishes the limits on the amount of federal money for the so-called Emergency Fund, which ships welfare cash to states.

"Out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, there are appropriated such sums as are necessary for payment to the Emergency Fund," Democrats wrote in Section 2101 on Page 354 of the $819 billion bill. In other words, the only limit on welfare payments would be the Treasury itself.

In other words, while Holder and Obama construct racist straw-men and then knock them down with powerful, pointless blows, the Democrat establishment has simultaneously set the stage for more single-parent families and more violent crime.

And then they will cry racism when their chickens come home to roost.



Update: Remove Eric Holder.

Linked by: Ann Coulter. Thanks!