Free Republic

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...

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...

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, have not been publicly known until now. However the new disclosures are of particular interest because Republican senators vow to revisit Holder's role during his confirmation hearings next week.

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...

ARTICLE SNIPPET: "During Barack Obama’s presidential run, Eric Holder, Bill Clinton’s Deputy Attorney General from 1997 to 2001, campaigned heavily for the then-Illinois senator. This past summer, Obama tapped Holder to serve on the vice presidential selection team that ultimately chose Joe Biden to be Obama’s running mate. Now Holder may receive his own position in the Obama administration, which he has been nominated to serve as Attorney General." ARTICLE SNIPPET: "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...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Monday dismissed any concern that Attorney General nominee Eric Holder’s confirmation process would be haunted by the pardon of Marc Rich. Speaking at a press conference to praise President-elect Barack Obama’s nominations, Leahy singled out Holder as “a longtime friend” and an “especially fitting” choice to lead the Justice Department. He predicted Holder’s involvement in the 2001 pardon of Rich — a fugitive commodities trader granted clemency on President Bill Clinton’s last day in office — would play only a minor role in the upcoming hearings. Leahy acknowledged that, while the topic...

November 25, 2008, 9:45 a.m. Opposed to Holder without ApologyThe shameful pardons are disqualifying. By Andrew C. McCarthy I’ll concede this much to Lanny Davis: Last Friday night, during our Hannity & Colmes debate over President-Elect Barack Obama’s selection of Eric Holder to be the next Attorney General, Davis said (or I should say, screeched) that I’d soon be apologizing, and he’s right. I am sorry that our discussion degenerated into a screaming match. That’s wince-making television that doesn’t edify anyone. So I do apologize to anyone who had to endure that segment. But Davis’s hysterical suggestion that I...

I received today via email, the scan of a sworn declaration from a confidential witness. The hard copy will be in my possession in a few days. Neither the name nor sex of the witness will be revealed at this time. The witness is prepared to testify and should testify in the confirmation hearings of Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder. A statement by the witness will be on YouTube in a few days with a voice that is disguised. The witness is willing to submit to a polygraph. Senator Arlen Specter has indicated that confirmation hearings will involve a serious...

WHEN President Bill Clinton pardoned a billionaire fugitive from justice on his last day in office, even usually loyal Democrats were dismayed. Representative Henry Waxman of California called it “bad precedent” and “an end run around the judicial process.” He said it appeared to set a double standard for the wealthy and powerful. The billionaire was Marc Rich, a commodities trader, and his pardon is a subject of discussion again because Eric Holder, Mr. Clinton’s deputy attorney general at the time[.]

JOE CONNOR ON HANNITY & SCUMBAG discussing FALN and Eric Holder Joe sent me this by email to make sure I didn't miss it. We have spoken many times, and we finally met for lunch late last year when I was in New York screening HILLARY! UNCENSORED. Alan Colmes deserved to be smacked in the face for this performance.

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...

Last week I told you about Valerie Jarrett, the corrupt Chicago poltician serving as co-chair of Obama's transition team. This is in addition to Clinton co-conspirator John Podesta (the other co-chair) and Clinton attack dog Rahm Emmanuel as Obama's Chief of Staff. Hillary is expected to take over State. We can also add two other Clinton insiders: Clinton impeachment lawyer Greg Craig who defended the worst of the Clinton scandals and who was also involved in the violent government raid that delivered Elian Gonzalez to Castro's Cuba. In fact, we believe Craig was working with the communist Cuban government. And...

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...

As we observed throughout the campaign, Barack Obama gave indications that his election would mean a return to the September 10 mentality, a national-security outlook marked prominently by its lack of seriousness about the terrorist threat. In choosing Eric Holder to be his attorney general, President-Elect Obama has taken a step toward confirming those misgivings. [...] Holder is a conventional, check-the-boxes creature of the Left. He is convinced justice in America needs to be “established” rather than enforced; he’s excited about hate crimes and enthusiastic about the constitutionally dubious Violence Against Women Act; he’s a supporter of affirmative action and...

Most notable among the petitions for clemency granted during Holder’s tenure is the request from 16 members of a Puerto Rican Marxist terrorist group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation, known by its Spanish acronym FALN, which engaged in a robbery and terror campaign in both the U.S. and Puerto Rico during the 1970s and 1980s. The clemency petition, which was supported by Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-N.Y.), Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) and Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), became the subject of fiery controversy after it was revealed that none of the convicted terrorists had renounced violence and that their victims had not been...

While promising Hope and Change, Obama's real promise is clearly being translated as Hopeless Corruption. The pick of Clinton Administration figure Eric Holder who was criticized in a Congressional report for ethical violations involving the infamous pardon of fugitive criminal Marc Rich 'snip' Of course Eric Holder's slime trial doesn't end there. Pardongate also involved the pardons handed out to Weather Underground terrorists Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg who were transporting 740 pounds of explosives for use in bombings. Here is what those 740 pounds of explosives were intended to do. 'snip' But that's just the tip of the iceberg...

Ejected at ’04 Convention, a Protester Gets $55,000 By COLIN MOYNIHAN Published: November 15, 2008 During President Bush’s acceptance speech in Madison Square Garden at the 2004 Republican National Convention, a San Francisco woman briefly interrupted the proceedings by standing on a chair and unfurling a banner that accused the president of lying. That protest set into motion a chain of events that has ended in one of the more unusual legal resolutions connected to the four days of the convention, during which more than 1,800 demonstrators and bystanders were arrested, most of them in street protests. Hundreds of them...

"No issue has bothered me more than the UCC's [United Church of Christ] relationship with convicted Puerto Rican terrorists that are responsible for over 150 bombings in the U.S. during the 70's and 80's. There is no moral or theological reason for defending members of this group who have killed and injured dozens of people. What is further shocking and completely contradictory to any of our beliefs is that there is no record (in the nearly 30 years that the UCC has been advocating for these terrorists) that our denomination ever reached out to the victims of FALN violence." Source:...

During the April 16 Democratic debate in Philadelphia, moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Barack Obama about his relationship to William Ayers, the unrepentant member of the Weather Underground who had participated in several bombings of government facilities back in 1970s. Since that time, Ayers had become active in leftist circles in Chicago. In 2001, Ayers bragged, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." At the debate, Sen. Hillary Clinton condemned Obama's association with Ayers, adding that in those bombings "people died." "So it is--I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about," said...

Between 1974 and 1985 the FALN (Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation) organized 120 terrorist bombings in the United States. Many Americans were killed in those bombings, and many more were crippled. In 1983, another Puerto Rican terrorist group known as the Macheteros, attacked and robbed a Wells Fargo armored car in Connecticut. The Macheteros intended to use the money to finance a terrorist campaign against the United States. Working under the cover of Puerto Rican nationalism and claiming to act on behalf of the "oppressed people of Puerto Rico," the FALN and the Macheteros are nothing but Communist...