Free Republic

Pattern or practice” police litigation did drop significantly under the Bush administration, though to its discredit Bush’s DOJ did not try to dismantle the existing consent decrees. Some criminologists are already calling for the Obama administration to revive Clinton-era tactics. This Thursday, during attorney general–designate Holder’s confirmation hearings, senators should ask him on what grounds he would inflict his civil-rights attorneys on police departments. They should also inquire whether he believes that a racially disparate stop rate provides prima facie evidence of police racism. As the economic recession deepens, the last thing cash-strapped police departments and municipalities need is more...

Senate Republicans have invited the son of man killed in a 1975 Puerto Rican nationalist bombing as well as a former FBI agent who investigated two violent groups supporting Puerto Rican independence to appear at Eric Holder’s confirmation hearings. In particular, they question Holder’s role in President Clinton’s 2001 pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich as well as Holder’s involvement in Clinton’s 1999 decision to grant clemency to 16 violent Puerto Rican nationalists. To drive home those questions, Republicans have arranged for Joseph F. Connor, whose father was killed in the Jan. 24, 1975, bombing of Fraunces Tavern in New...

In two days, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) will begin the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Eric Holder, former Clinton deputy attorney general who is President-elect Barack Obama’s highly controversial nominee to the office of Attorney General. Holder, best known for playing a major role in the Clinton pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, will face skeptical Republicans, including ranking Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Specter has run into a Leahy roadblock in his attempts to get some of the background documents on the nomination. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy has refused to sign off on document requests by Republicans...

Eric H. Holder Jr. is facing increasing resistance to his bid to become the next attorney general, emerging from President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet nominees as the prime target of Senate Republicans, both because of troubling episodes during his service in the Clinton administration and because of the sensitivity of the post overseeing the Justice Department. With two days of confirmation hearings set to begin Thursday, Holder must demonstrate his independence from Obama to a vocal chorus of GOP lawmakers who want to warn the incoming president that he should not veer too far to the left on national security and...

Reporting from Washington — Attorney general nominee Eric H. Holder Jr. repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations, according to interviews and documents. Details of the role played by Holder, who was deputy attorney general at the time, had not been publicly known until now. The new disclosures are of particular interest because Republican senators have vowed to revisit Holder's role during his confirmation hearings next week. Holder had no comment for this article, but...

Holder omitted Blagojevich link from questionnaire Announced as a ‘special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board’ in 2004 December 17, 2008 BY CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporter/cfusco@suntimes.com Before Eric Holder was President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be attorney general, he was Gov. Blagojevich's pick to sort out a mess involving Illinois' long-dormant casino license. Blagojevich and Holder appeared together at a March 24, 2004, news conference to announce Holder's role as "special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board" -- a post that was to pay Holder and his Washington, D.C. law firm up to $300,000. Holder, however, omitted that event from...

A conservative senator would be a true American hero if he or she would put a hold on -- i.e., threaten to filibuster -- the nomination of Eric Holder to be the next attorney general. Let me be clear: I don’t believe that conservatives should use the filibuster to block Holder. But I do think the filibuster is an excellent procedural tool to force a needed debate. Senators should explore Holder’s views on the right to bear arms and the Elian Gonzales raid before they consent to his appointment. The Second Amendment is sacrosanct to all freedom-loving Americans. Yet Holder,...

Soon after Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, the former president and I had a brief telephone conversation. I had been downright heated about the pardon, a lot angrier than I had ever been about Monica Lewinsky. Clinton implied that I had things historically backward. Long after the Rich pardon had been forgotten, he said, the Lewinsky scandal would remain a vivid memory. That day is yet to come. The Rich pardon is back. The vehicle for this lingering echo from the year 2001 is the choice of Eric Holder as Barack Obama's attorney general. Holder was Clinton's deputy attorney general...

One of Barack Obama’s first acts as president should be to instruct his attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation of former Bush Administration officials who gave the green light to torture. At Obama’s press conference on Dec. 1, he spoke of upholding America’s highest values as he introduced Eric Holder as his choice for attorney general. Holder insisted there was no tension between protecting the people of the United States and adhering to our Constitution. A few months ago, Holder was even more explicit. “Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret...

WASHINGTON — In the much praised career of Eric H. Holder Jr., President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be attorney general, there is one notable blemish: Mr. Holder’s complicated role in the 2001 pardon of Marc Rich, a billionaire financier who had fled the country rather than face federal tax evasion charges. Mr. Holder’s supporters portray him as having been a relatively uninvolved bystander caught in a Clinton-era controversy, the remarkable granting of a last-minute pardon by President Bill Clinton to a fugitive from justice. But interviews and an examination of Congressional records show that Mr. Holder, who at the time...

"As President, I will uphold the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun-owners, hunters, and sportsmen. I know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne." That was Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on June 26, 2008, responding to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down Washington, DC's draconian handgun ban and held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms—not a collective one. "I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals," Obama went on, "but I also identify with the need for...

Barack Obama’s nomination of Eric Holder for attorney general will not sit well with advocates of Second Amendment rights — Holder has consistently championed stronger gun-control measures. As deputy attorney general in the Bill Clinton administration from 1997 to 2001, Holder “was a strong supporter of restrictive gun control,” according to The Volokh Conspiracy, a Web site that focuses on the legal system and the courts. He advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three-day waiting period on handgun sales, rationing handgun sales to no more than one per month, banning possession of handguns and so-called "assault weapons" by anyone...

The Democrats have bleated for years about the detention of illegal combatants at Guantanamo, while the Left and the "international community" have demanded that captured terrorists be treated as prisoners of war. We read in the November 22-23 Wall Street Journal (page A13) that Barack Obama's selected Attorney General, Eric Holder, agrees with us that terrorists are not uniformed combatants who are entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention. Per an interview on CNN in January 2002, One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find...

"It's like Keystone Cops."

Earlier this year, Eric Holder--along with Janet Reno and several other former officials from the Clinton Department of Justice--co-signed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller. The brief was filed in support of DC's ban on all handguns, and ban on the use of any firearm for self-defense in the home. The brief argued that the Second Amendment is a "collective" right, not an individual one, and asserted that belief in the collective right had been the consistent policy of the U.S. Department of Justice since the FDR administration. A brief filed by some other former DOJ officials...

In the VIDEO below, Eric Holder testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the pardons extended by President Clinton to the 16 FALN terrorists. Then Judiciary Committee Chairman Orin Hatch grills Holder concerning the lack of screening in connection with the pardons. In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton's commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN terrorists who even Holder conceded had not expressed any remorse. The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife's impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York's substantial Puerto...

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=e4qGQuQuQu In a 07 radio interview Obama promises that one of his first acts as president is going to be to call in his new Attorney General to review every single executive order and if they can find that any laws were broken, accountability would be his Attorney General’s job. He also admits the democrats are currently documenting and investigating the Bush Administration Also in the Video Eric Holder is insulting Bush. Saying there was NO real leader of the free world for the last 6 years.

Danny Glover at Eyeblast reveals a nine-year-old NPR interview with Eric Holder regarding how the government needs to regulate Internet communications. The rumored front-runner for Attorney General told NPR that the Columbine killers may have found some of their venom through Internet access, as well as a bomb recipe or two. If the government can regulate pornography, Holder insisted while serving as Deputy AG during the Clinton administration, surely the government can restrict speech in general:

Here's the next Attorney General talking about curbing free speech on the internet:

New Year's Eve, 1982...New York Police Department's elite bomb squad rushed to headquarters at One Police Plaza, where minutes earlier an explosion had destroyed the entrance to the building. A total of four bombs exploded in a single hour on that night, including at FBI headquarters in Manhattan and the federal courthouse in Brooklyn. The perpetrators were members of ... FALN ... Its members waged war on America with bombings, arson, kidnappings, prison escapes, threats and intimidation. The most gruesome attack was the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan. Timed to go off during the lunch-hour rush... FALN bragged...