More On Why Holder Is Unfit To Be Attorney General

In my column on Wednesday, I documented only a small part of the massive case against the confirmation of Eric Holder for attorney general. I thought that his illegally and improperly facilitating the pardoning of 18 unrepentant terrorists and the biggest tax swindler in history who was also a fugitive for justice for 20 years was enough to raise fatal questions about President-elect Barack Obama’s judgment and confirmation.

But then I saw how the mainstream media is greasing the skids for his nomination, over any and all objections, so I thought I better spend more time trying to wake up the public and perhaps the Senate about the dangers of this nomination.

This came into focus when I read a front-page article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (Dec. 17, 2008) about Mr. Holder and his nomination. It was all one-sided salesmanship for Mr. Holder, passing over most objections, treating any of his mistakes as pluses, and ignoring all but one of the major points that cast a shadow over his nomination.

Only one major outrage in his record of many such outrages is even mentioned in the Inquirer story — the Mark Rich pardon case. The Inquirer only says Mr. Holder “reviewed” the case and Sen. Arlen Specter has indicated that would be an issue in the hearings on the nomination. The only other comment on that issue is that Mr. Holder “knows what it is to face criticism from that quarter.”

But Mr. Holder did not just review the Rich pardon. He was practically responsible for it and did so by violating all kinds of procedures of the Department of Justice and by even facilitating illegal involvement of an attorney representing Mr. Rich to assure the pardon.

Here is what Mr. Holder did in addition to the “review” of the pardon:

• Mr. Holder recommended that Mr. Rich, the fugitive felon, hire Jack Quinn as his attorney. Mr. Quinn was a former White House Counsel. Mr. Holder knew that Mr. Quinn was close to President Bill Clinton and knew exactly how to work the system to get the pardon. This violated an executive order prohibiting lobbying by recently departed White House staffers such as Mr. Quinn. So Mr. Holder set up the fugitive felon with a White House insider in violation of that executive order.

• If that’s not bad enough, Mr. Holder later admitted he did this to curry favor with Mr. Quinn, so Mr. Quinn could help him become attorney general in the future Al Gore administration. At that time, Mr. Gore was a candidate for president.

• Mr. Holder knew the road to the Rich pardon was paved with all kinds of illegalities and improprieties. Mr. Rich was number two on the FBI’s “Most Wanted List” at the time of the pardon. Andrew C. McCarthy, himself a former U.S. Attorney, writes of the Department of Justice procedure when dealing with a fugitive’s agent: “When the prosecutors deal with a fugitive’s representatives, the appropriate question is: ‘When is he going to turn himself in?’ It’s not, as Mr. Holder essentially asked, “How can I help?’”

• Mr. Holder also approved the pardon knowing that ordinary procedures were not followed. Those would include getting the opinion of prosecutors, investigators, and others who have important information on the criminal. Mr. McCarthy writes, “As Holder well knew, following it [the usually Department of Justice procedures] would have demonstrated beyond cavil that pardoning Rich would be an outrage, in violation of ever DOJ [Department of Justice] guideline.” In other words, Mr. Holder knew if the proposed pardon were sent to prosecutors and others for comment, there would have been overpowering condemnation of it.

• This all took place in the background of Mr. Rich’s ex-wife and advocate contributing $400,000 to the Clinton Library, $10,000 to the Clinton Defense Fund, and $1 million to other Democratic candidates. Everything about the pardon smelled of impropriety and illegality, but that didn’t even slow down Mr. Holder.

So Mr. Holder, contrary to the impression of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s front-page report, did not just review a pardon. He was central to it: Mr. McCarthy concludes, “The Marc Rich pardon was one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of the Justice Department. Not the modern history, the entire history. Rich was accused of mega-crimes: millions in fraud, tax evasion, and trading with America’s enemies. In 2000, he was a fugitive. He had been one for nearly two decades, during which the government had expended immense resources in a future attempt to apprehend d him.”

Ken Blackwell, a former Secretary of State of Ohio, was even more critical of the role of Mr. Holder in the Rich pardon: “The pardon looked far worse than a bad idea It looked like corruption. It looked like malfeasance in office — selling out justice for personal gain.”

In addition to playing the Rich pardon as a minor misstep, the Inquirer totally ignores even worse strikes against Mr. Obama. He also engineered the pardoning of 18 unrepentant terrorists, who had the blood of innocents all over their hands. He was the Department of Justice official most involved with the pardoning of the terrorists. Even though he contacted many pardon supports he never both the contact the victims or their families. But even that’s only a small part of the case against Mr. Holder. Here are some more counts in that indictment:

• Mr.    Holder believes that all rights that U.S. citizens have should also be granted to foreign terrorists captured abroad. This view would mean that we would be turning over the fighting of the war against Islamofascist terror to lawyers and crippling the military and its ability to fight that war. You can imagine U.S. soldiers reading captives their Miranda rights. Mr. Holder and Mr. Obama have views that if implemented will turn the U.S. Constitution into something it is not supposed to be — a suicide pact.

• Mr. Holder has the same far-left, extremist, liberal views on abortion without restriction as Mr. Obama does. Abortion without restriction perhaps is the first in Mr. Obama’s unwritten “Bill of Rights.” Mr. Obama and Mr. Holder seem to view the major purpose of the constitution is to facilitate abortion without restriction.

•   Mr. Holder has long-held views that the Second Amendment confers no rights on private citizens to bear arms. He signed onto a brief earlier this year, in the infamous case in the District of Columbia over whether there can be an absolute ban on handguns, even in homes. This again reaffirmed his views that citizens have no constitutional rights to arms. The founder of the Second Amendment Foundation recently said that despite his campaign rhetoric, the appointments and prior positions of the president-elect suggest he is going to be against the citizen’s right to bear arms. He said, “America’s 85 million gun owners have ample reason to be pessimistic about how their civil rights will fare under the Obama administration. Mr. Obama will have a Congress with an anti-gun Democrat majority leadership to push his gun control agenda. Gun owners have not forgotten Mr. Obama’s acknowledged opposition to concealed carry rights, nor his support for a ban on handgun ownership when he was running for the Illinois state senate.” I’m afraid this is classic Obama —campaign one way and then do the opposite when the time comes. I’m afraid Mr. Obama, his attorney general designate and his likely appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court will not only shred the Second Amendment but also the rest of the Constitution.

• FrontPageMagazine.com (Dec. 3, 2008) notes Mr. Holder condemned the Guantanamo Bay detention center as an “international embarrassment” despite the fact that detainees are treated humanely, even more humanely that the Geneva Convention requires.

• Mr. Holder also wants an immediate end to wireless wiretapping, a policy that if adopted would cripple us in our fight against terror. Mr. Holder’s views, like Mr. Obama’s, would mean we’ lose the war against Islamofascist terrorism.

• HumanEvents.com (Nov. 24, 2008) points out that Mr. Holder, then Deputy Attorney General to Janet Reno, was involved with the decision “to remove Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint from a Miami home because the seven-year-old was a danger to Americans.” I wonder about his judgment on this matter based on his interview on Fox Cable News with Judge Andrew Napolitano. Judge Napolitano said, “We have a photograph showing that he [Gonzalez] was taken at the point of a gun.” Mr. Holder responds, “They were armed agents who went in there and acted very sensitively.” Napolitano then said, “I don’t know if you can see the screen, but the gun is pointing at the boy. The agent is grabbing the boy.” Anyone who sees the picture that Judge Napolitano referred to will lose all confidence in Mr. Holder’s judgment and the claim the agents acted “sensitively.” They had the same stance and sensitivity of the terrorists at Mumbai.

•    Law.com also points out Republicans are “exploring Mr. Holder’s involvement in Justice Department investigations into Clinton-era fundraising and the administration’s decision to allow Loral Space to export a communications satellite to China to be launched on a Chinese-built rocket.”

•    Mr. Obama when asked by the Senate considering his nomination for attorney general, for a list of his press interviews, press conferences and the like omitted his appearance with Gov. Rod Blagojevich, during an announcement in 2004 that the governor was appointing Mr. Holder to conduct an investigation into a casino licensing issue. This omission is hard to accept as a pure oversight, as the omission occurred just five days after Mr. Blagojevich’s arrest. So it is hard to believe that he would have omitted this contact. There is evidence to suggest that Mr. Blagojevich was appointing Mr. Holder, as he knew his report would come out as the governor wanted it to. And among those involved in this casino controversy was Tony Rezko, the convicted felon, and close supporter and associate of Barack Obama.

There is another aspect of the Holder nomination that raises concern. Mr. Blackwell points out that the nomination of the attorney general usually foreshadows the kinds of Supreme Court appointment a president will make. The Holder nomination suggests that Mr. Obama will appoint far-left judges like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Mr. Blackwell writes this means, “plunging this nation further into a regime where unelected, unaccountable jurists impose their personal political views on the rest of us through the courts, declaring the Constitution to require whatever they think the public policy should be.”

In my view, the case against Mr. Holder should disqualify him from the office. But with a strong Democratic majority in the Senate, Mr. Holder may well be approved.

That would be a d disaster. As Rep. Dan Burton has pointed out, the lesson from the Clinton administration is that if a president wants to get away with everything, he should appoint the “right” attorney general. Given Mr. Holder’s lapses of ethics and judgment in the past, and his apparent willingness to use his position in the Department of Justice for his own future benefit and that of his political allies It sounds like Eric Holder is exactly that kind of attorney general. Mr. Burton got it exactly right when he said “The one thing I learned from the investigation of Clinton and Reno and the Department of Justice during that time, if you want to make sure you can do anything at all with impunity, just make sure that one appointment — attorney general — is someone who will back you no matter what. Then you can get [away] with anything.” And remember that Mr. Holder was Ms. Reno’s Deputy Attorney General and so learned from the master how to let a president get away with anything with impunity. Also remember during the final phase of Ms. Reno’s tenure as attorney general, her deputy, Mr. Holder, was calling most of the shots.

There’s one other key lesson from the Mr. Holder nomination: If you rely on the likes of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Times, and the rest of the mainstream media, you’re going to get pure Obama propaganda and nothing that even remotely resembles fair and balanced news. That mainstream media sold the American public on Mr. Obama by not properly vetting him and acting as his propagandist and campaign manager. Now, that same mainstream media is starting to sell the Obama administration just as they sold the Obama candidacy.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.

Holder is a quasi criminal....just the guy to *legalize* Barry's little private 'Civilian Security Force'...... it'll be time to Lock and Load if he's becomes AG. (and get all the guns and ammo you can asap - Holder wants them all)

You got that right. Obaba knows nobody BUT criminals. Like this creep Rahm Emanuel named WH Chief of Staff---his bgrnd is just as bad.

Did Rahm AND HOLDER fillout the 63-count seven-page personnel application Obama gave to future appointees? How did they answer about gun ownership? How about legal problems, including traffic violations with fines above $50? How about embarrasuing emails?

REFERENCE

How did Rahm outline his numerous ties to financial institutions involved in the federal bailout. Did he mention his position on the Board of the corrupt Freddie Mac? Will Rahm's emails to Bernie Madoff embarass Obama?

MEMORY LANE After doing duty with the nefarious Clintions, Mr. Emanuel went down the well-trodden, gilded path out of politics and into the lucrative world of the finance business.....making more than $18 million in just 2 1/2 years, turning his substantial political Rolodex into paying clients and directing his negotiating prowess and trademark intensity to mergers and acquisitions.

After bilking, er I mean, building a fortune, Emanuel left banking to run for Congress; the securities and investment industry became his biggest backers, donating more than $1.5M to his campaigns dating back to 2002, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Mr. Emanuel also leaned heavily upon the industry as 2006 Dem Congressional Campaign Committee Chair. Financial industry donors contributed more than $5.8M to the Dem committee, behind only retirees.

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Rahm went on to make more than $18M in just 2 1/2 years”......Watta financial genius. Maybe Bernie Madoff gave Rahm inside tips? (snicker)

Quoting an astute poster: The idea that Emmanuel made $18 million dollars in 2 1/2 years because he was an “effective banker” is preposterous! Consider that $18 million dollars is not coming out of thin air. It’s coming off the backs of illegal labor, sweat shops, slave labor in the Congo, outsourcing to the lowest bidder............

......so Rahm could meet that “number he had in his head. Rahm would do ANYTHING to make enough for his family” (his brother’s comment) before he “gave back” by working in the public sector.

In the public sector he’ll get a pension for life and a gold-plated health plan. He’s not “giving back”...... he’s taking even more.

To a lot of people, Obama seemed better than Hillary Clinton her husband, and members of the Clinton administration.....who were too easily swayed by the easy money on Wall Street.....Chelsea works for a hedge fund. How are we even going to begin to effect a change in this country if the president-elect’s closest advisor rationalized earning $18.5 million in two and a half years to......um......support his family??? Most Americans won’t earn a fraction of that amount of money in their entire lifetimes.

The money Rahm made did not come out of thin air, it was taken. Let’s drop this fatuous notion of “giving back” .......let's have a govt that make it possible for everyone to make it on their own.

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