Posted on 01/13/2009 1:04:46 AM PST by Cindy
Despite a huge Democratic Senate majority, Eric Holder’s confirmation hearings are going to be difficult. He has a long record to defend. Whether it is his involvement and inconsistent statements about Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich’s or his pushing Clinton’s clemency of the FALN terrorists or his failure to disclose his work for troubled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich after Blagojevich's legal problems surfaced, he faces tough questions.
But Holder’s nomination raises other questions about what President-elect Barack Obama claimed he believed during the campaign. Numerous times he promised that he supported an individual’s right to own guns and that he wouldn’t do anything to take away people’s guns.
Just last year in a brief to the Supreme Court, Holder argued that “the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms,” that it only protected government militias’ rights to guns. He claimed that the Second Amendment posed no obstacle to implementing gun bans.
I can’t find even one gun control law that Holder has opposed. On every gun control regulation he has discussed, he has been supportive, including: bans, raising the age that someone can possess a gun, registration and licensing, one-gun-a-month limit on purchases, and mandatory waiting periods.
Even more troubling, while Holder served in the Clinton Justice Department, he oversaw the background check system, but he has never been asked to explain why the system broke down so consistently while he ran it.
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
With the run on guns, let us see what happens. Will the R’s cut bait and run away or will the Sara Palin factor be a force. This is what scares me the most. Cities with gun bans have the most gun crimes. We see it as a no brainer, but Obama has lied about everything. At least we have Hillary and Kerry as avid hunters.
Yep.
So, which Senator does the NRA have to ask Holder about all this during the approval hearings? Which Senator does the NRA have who will table this nomination like the Dems have done with so many of Bush’s nominations?
“Will the R’s cut bait and run away “
Yes.
There is a bill to resurrect the assault rifle ban now in the house sponsored by Republicans, including one Congressman Ferguson (R) from New Jersey.
Chiquita was facing the prospect of federal charges for paying protection money to Colombian terrorists to safeguard its banana crops, and the company needed help. It turned to Eric H. Holder Jr., an elite Washington lawyer well versed in the ways of the Justice Department.
When the National Football League was facing a legal and public-relations disaster in 2007 over a dogfighting scandal involving the Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, it turned to Mr. Holder to help navigate the maelstrom and represent the league.
The pharmaceutical giant Merck tapped him as its lawyer in a Medicaid overbilling case that ended in a $671 million civil settlement.
Mr. Holder’s brief association with Mr. Blagojevich has drawn scrutiny ... Blagojevich, the now-impeached governor of Illinois, picked Holder, albeit briefly, to investigate for the state a controversy over a casino development and its possible ties to organized crime.
Holder has entered a group of A-list lawyers in the capital who reportedly earn $800 to $1,000 an hour. Last spring, when Mr. Holder was traveling extensively to campaign for Mr. Obama, he joked to The American Lawyer magazine, “I hope the management committee is going to be real understanding when they see my billable hours this year.” (Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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There is a huge question as to whether Holder can administer US justice independent of a president.
How Obama's would-be attorney general, Eric Holder, won the release of 16 FALN terrorists as Clinton's Deputy AG
Let's not forget the raison d'etre for the pardoning of 16 Puerto Rican FALN terrorists: Hillary was then-running for office in NY and she needed the votes of hyphenates to win. She and Bill apparently conducted surveillance on the NY electorate and "profiled" the hyphenated groups she needed to win. They then went down the list and got Holder to facilitate pardons to individual connected with hyphenated groups to buy their votes.
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Pardoning Terror--How would-be attorney general Eric Holder won the release of 16 FALN terrorists
By John Perazzo, FrontPageMagazine.com
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=3BDF4733-1689-4B8A-B263-B119AD5407D9 ^ | John Perazzo
In 1997, Holder became President Clinton’s Deputy Attorney General in the Justice Department headed by Janet Reno. In this role, Holder was responsible for overseeing clemency investigations and determining which of those requests were ultimately worthy of President Clinton’s attention. As evidenced by a September 1997 memorandum from the Pardon Attorney, the Justice Department was, at this point, receiving numerous inquiries about the FALN and Macheteros—from the White House and from supporters of the prisoners. The aforementioned House Committee on Government Reform report stated:
“Throughout the closing months of 1997 it appears that Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder was active in the issue. The privilege log reflects at least two notes regarding his questions on the clemency or his thoughts on the matter.” On November 5, 1997, Holder met with Representatives Gutierrez, Serrano, and Velazquez to discuss the clemency issue. He advised the legislators that they might greatly increase the likelihood of a presidential pardon if they could convince the prisoners to write letters testifying as to the personal remorse they felt for their past actions. But no such letters would be produced for five months, during which time the clemency issue remained on hold.
Meanwhile, in a January 6, 1998 letter, a senior Justice Department official expressly referred to the FALN members as “terrorists.” Then on April 8, 1998, Holder again met with FALN supporters. This time, they finally delivered statements from the prisoners as Holder had advised in November. Once again, however, there was a problem: all their statements were identical, indicating that not one of the prisoners had made the effort to craft his own personal expression of repentance. Undeterred, Holder asked whether the prisoners might at least agree to renounce future violence in exchange for clemency.
One of the prisoners’ backers, Reverend Paul Sherry, made it clear that they surely “would not change their beliefs”—presumably about the issue of Puerto Rican independence—but was vague as to whether they would eschew violence altogether.
Over the next few weeks, Holder and the Justice Department continued to meet with clemency advocates. Holder was the point man for these negotiations. As Brian Blomquist wrote in the New York Post, “A list of FALN documents withheld from Congress shows that many memos on the FALN clemency decision went directly to Holder, while Reno’s role was minimal.” Similarly, New York Daily News reporter Edward Lewine wrote that Holder was “the Justice Department official most involved with this issue.”
It should be noted that throughout the clemency review process, neither Holder nor anyone else in the Justice Department contacted the FALN’s victims or their families. As a result, most were never aware that clemency for the terrorists was even being contemplated. Those few who were aware of the possibility were rebuffed in their efforts to participate in the review process.
On May 19, 1998, DOJ’s pardon attorney sent Eric Holder a 48-page draft memorandum “concerning clemency for Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners.” Seven weeks later, on July 8, Holder sent President Clinton a “memorandum regarding clemency matter.” Behind the scenes, indeed, the Deputy Attorney General was methodically spearheading the march toward clemency—despite the fact that the sentencing judges, the U.S. Attorneys, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the FBI were unanimous in their opposition to pardoning the FALN.
In late July 1999 an attorney from Holder’s office spoke to White House Counsel Charles Ruff regarding the clemency. On August 9, 1999, Holder’s office and OPA held one final meeting to hammer out the details, and two days later the President made his announcement: clemency had been granted to the 16 terrorists, most of whom had served only a fraction of their prison terms. Of the sixteen, twelve accepted the offer and were freed; two refused it; and two others, already out of prison, never responded.
Clinton, who previously had complied with just 3 of 3,229 requests for clemency, justified his decision by explaining that the prisoners already had served sufficient prison time for their crimes. He further cited executive privilege for his refusal to give Congress a number of documents related to his verdict. Congress, for its part, was not pleased—condemning the clemencies by votes of 95-2 in the Senate and 311-41 in the House.
In the aftermath of August 11, 1999, a report by the very same Justice Department that employed Eric Holder stated that the FALN posed an “ongoing threat” to national security. And in late October 1999 the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report from Attorney General Janet Reno stating that the FALN members’ “impending release from prison” would “increase the present threat” of terrorism. Dangerous terrorists had been set free, and Eric Holder had made it happen.
Holder’s response to the threat reports was unconvincing at best. In an October 20 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and again with reporters the following day, Eric Holder denied that Reno was referring to the same FALN terrorists whose pardons he had worked so long and hard to secure. Yet, when Holder was asked to identify whom Reno was in fact talking about, his response amounted to little more than a pathetic stammer:
I don’t know, no, I don’t know that. We might be able to get you some more information on that, but, I mean, you know, there were certain people who are due to be released, or who were at least eligible for parole, had a release date in the next, as I said, three, four years. I don’t know exactly who they were. Maybe—we might be able to get you that information.
They never did. Neither Holder nor the Justice Department ever provided the names of any of these mystery men.
In the final analysis, Eric Holder was the individual most central to the Clinton White House’s dogged quest to pardon the FALN terrorists. His efforts toward that end can more accurately be characterized as partisan advocacy than as dispassionate dispensation of justice. As the December 1999 House Committee on Government Reform report put it:
The 16 terrorists appear to be most unlikely candidates. They did not personally request clemency. They did not admit to wrongdoing and they had not renounced violence before such a renunciation had been made a quid pro quo for their release. They expressed no contrition for their crimes, and were at times openly belligerent about their actions.
Notwithstanding the fact that the 16 did not express enough personal interest in the clemency process to file their own applications, the White House appeared eager to assist throughout the process. Meetings were held with supporters, and some senior staff [i.e., Holder] even suggested ways to improve the likelihood of the President granting the clemency. Overall, the White House appears to have exercised more initiative than the terrorists themselves.
Nearly ten years after the FALN pardons, Holder is once again set to enter the Attorney General’s office – this time as its head. But before assuming that important post, he owes the American people – and the victims of FALN terror – the explanation he failed to provide when the terrorists were set free.
http://www.cov.com/news/detail.aspx?news=1381
“WASHINGTON, DC, December 3, 2008 — President-elect Barack Obama announced on December 1 that he has nominated Eric H. Holder, Jr. to serve as Attorney General. Mr. Holder has been a partner with Covington & Burling since 2001.”
Check out how much money Covington & Burling gave 0bama, another pay to player:
Thank you appleseed.
That is interesting.
An honest reporter or journalist (I know, that’s an oxymoron) should pose the following question to Odumbo:
“Will you name to the federal bench justices who support a woman’s right to choose?” His answer, of course, will be a resounding “yes!”
Then ask him this:
“If you will name a justice who supports a woman’s right to choose, will you also appoint justices who support the Second Amendment and an individual’s right to keep and bear arms?” Let’s see how he answers that. He either has to say Yes or No, in which case he will have a lot of explaining to do to someone. If he hedges and hums and haws, he will be seen as an equivocator and untrustworthy (which I think describes him perfectly).
Put him on the spot! Make him declare!
“There is a bill to resurrect the assault rifle ban now in the house sponsored by Republicans, including one Congressman Ferguson (R) from New Jersey.”
There is a Republican in New Jersey? Who knew? But, given the bill this idiot is sponsoring I think his Republican credentials are suspect.
Anyone who possibly thought that Obama wasn’t a dyed in the wool gun-banner given his voting record and past statements, was delusional.
Anyone who says different is either lying or is an idiot. Or is a lying idiot.
Mark
North-eastern “republicans” are notorious liberals.
Look at Lincoln Chaffee. Or his late daddy, for that matter. One of the most notorious gun-grabbers ever in the senate. Him, along with Dennis Deconcini and Red Howie Metzenbaum had nothing but disdain for gun owners, and hated the second amendment.
Mark
My dead cold fingers.
And the point is coming soon with more and more regulations that we will just all be criminals regardless of intent or motives. Atlas shrugs indeed.
It makes me pause to go get my CCW. I have enough paperwork to buy a gun, but not sure I want the increased scrutiny.
a weapon bought “sub rosa” is just as effective as a registered one and much easier to retain.
barbra ann
LLS
I have my VA CCW and a FL out of state CCW. I also have a high government security clearance for the past 26 years. My file a 6’ feet thick. They can read all day about me.
“Will the R’s cut bait and run away or will the Sara Palin factor be a force...”
You can forget about the “R’s.” They will run away from a baby that threatened them with a crying spell. It’s over for the “R’s” in my opinion since they have insured the fact that our democracy and capitalist way of life is over. Them, and them alone!
Sara Palin, well, that’s something we can hope for.
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