Democrats Rush Holder Confirmation

HumanEvents.com ^ | 1/13/2009 | Connie Hair

[2nd amendment mama]

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 relevant to the hearing from the Department of Justice and the Clinton administration archives at the library in Little Rock.

This is -- according to Republican staff sources -- enormously frustrating to Specter. He cannot make document requests unilaterally using the power of the Committee. Only if Leahy joins in the request will it likely even be answered. Those staffers said that they cannot recall any instance in which Specter refused a Leahy request when the Republican was chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

According to Republican committee staffers, Leahy declined to sign these requests for production of documents. The initial letters were sent in early December. Late Monday, the DOJ finally dumped 600 pages of documents in response, noting that Republicans on the committee could receive more documents “in the future” related to this request. There have to date been literally no documents produced by Republican requests to the Clinton presidential archives. Under this shadow of the appearance of a possible cover-up, Senate Democrats are still attempting to expedite Holder’s nomination.

Chairman Leahy should be aware that his refusal to put the force of his committee chair behind the Republican request for documentation results in the request carrying little more weight than a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request from the general public -- which has proven in the past to take as long as 10 years for fulfillment. Republican Judiciary Committee staffers could not recall any instance where then Chairman Arlen Specter denied Democrats any request for documentation on a Bush nominee.

Another Clinton administration retread, Holder was at the epicenter of some of the largest Clinton presidential scandals. Document requests to the DOJ and Clinton archives include information on Holder’s role in matters such as the Waco-Branch Davidian massacre, the Elian Gonzales snatch and grab, pardons of Weather Underground domestic terrorists and FALN Puerto Rican terrorists, the DOJ investigation into fundraising activities involving representatives of the Chinese government by then Vice-President Al Gore, and the DOJ investigation by the Clinton administration into the dual-use nuclear and communications technology transfer to China by top Democrat donor Loral Space Corporation.

Most notable of Holder’s pardon scandals was his leading role in the Marc Rich pardon; Rich -- on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list for millions of dollars in federal income tax evasion and violations of the Trading with the Enemy Act for Rich’s business dealings with Iran -- was pardoned by President Clinton on his last day in office.

Adding further appearance of impropriety, according to Senate staffers, Holder has also neglected to fully complete his nominations questionnaire in areas related to his opinions and published opinions.

To further complicate matters, reports came to light on Monday evening of a more extensive connection between Holder and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich which Holder did not fully disclose. Holder claims that he did not perform any “substantive” work for the disgraced Illinois governor in a gaming board licensing matter that was clouded by charges of corruption. Yet in response to a request for documentation from Republican Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the Illinois governor’s office has produced an April 22, 2004 letter from Holder himself on his firm’s letterhead which states that Blagojevich hired him for oversight on the entire investigation. Reports show Holder’s firm was paid $300,000 in legal fees. This latest development may be the first crack in the wall of secrecy erected by Senate Democrats around Holder’s confirmation process.

From the truth is stranger than fiction file, Holder in private practice was the attorney for Fernando Aquirre, CEO of Chiquita Brands International wherein Holder acquired a $25 million settlement for the corporation when its top executive was charged with paying $1.7 million to a Columbian death squad that killed thousands of people, including hundreds of labor leaders and workers organizing banana picking laborers in Columbia.

Given the extent of the multitude of controversies swirling around this nominee, it is fair to ask why Senate Democrats are attempting to push this nomination through in an expedited manner while withholding participation in the fulfillment of requests for documentation. What are Senate Democrats trying to hide?

Connie Hair is a freelance writer, a former speechwriter for Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and a former media and coalitions advisor to the Senate Republican Conference

[Salvation]

Leaky Leahy doin his non-duty duties.

[SumProVita]

“They have no power...”

Filibuster...

Eric Holder would be a GRAVE mistake.

[Red Badger]

If they try a filibuster then Harry Reid will go nuclear, end of game................

[savedbygrace]

Democrats are overplaying their hand, and in doing so are inviting a filibuster on Holder.

Or not.

[SumProVita]

Let him go “nuclear.” It will simply further demonstrate his lunacy.

[lonestar]

How dare you think this is as important to the country as -— Sarah Palin’s daughter had a baby out of wedlock.

[Red Badger]

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there, does it make a sound?
If a Dem shows his lunacy, and the MSM totally ignores it, does it make the news?.............

[Ingtar]

I know the House rules have been changed to strip the Republicans of any power. I believe the Senate rules have been changed also. They just bypassed a long standing filibuster by Coburn (I believe it was him,) with no recourse to stop them.

[ETL]

Are you WATCHING this Hillary political love fest?? My goodness, they are drooling all over her and Kerry.

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June, 1970 -- Kerry joins Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), a national veterans group that is part of the Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice. The PCPJ is a broad coalition of local and national organizations, including the Communist Party, USA, "committed to conducting demonstrations aimed at ending the war in Indochina, and poverty, racism and injustice at home." The VVAW, CCI and PCPJ all have headquarters at 156 Fifth Avenue in New York City. VVAW Executive Secretary Al Hubbard, a former Black Panther, is also on the coordinating committee of the PCPJ. Hubbard soon appoints Kerry to the VVAW's Executive Committee, bypassing the normal election process.

November 22, 1970 -- During a fund-raising tour for GI deserters, Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Black Panthers, Jane Fonda is quoted in the Detroit Free Press as telling a University of Michigan audience:
"I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist," and "The peace proposal of the Viet Cong is the only honorable, just, possible way to achieve peace in Vietnam."
http://www.wintersoldier.com/index.php?topic=Timeline
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From the Maoist Internationist Movement:
[1960s/original] Black Panther Party [BPP] Archives
From the article: REVOLUTIONARY HEROES

"On May 1st, May Day [1969], the day of the gigantic Free Huey rally, two of Alioto's top executioners vamped on the brothers from the Brown Community who were attending to their own affairs. These brothers, who are endowed with the revolutionary spirit of the Black Panther Party defended themselves from the racist pig gestapo.

Pig Joseph Brodnik received his just reward with a big hole in the chest. Pig Paul McGoran got his in the mouth which was not quite enough to off him.

The revolutionary brothers escaped the huge swarm of pigs with dogs, mace, tanks and helicopters, proving once again that "the spirit of the people is greater than the man's technology."

To these brothers the revolutionary people of racist America want to say, by your revolutionary deed you are heroes, and that you are always welcome to our camp."

Source: Maoist Internationist Movement
Article: REVOLUTIONARY HEROS (May 11, 1969):
http://web.archive.org/web/20041230150623/http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/bpp/index.html
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Hillary and the Black Panthers: The Real Story
Richard Poe
Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2003

I can't take it anymore. If one more person sends me that e-mail about Hillary and the Black Panthers, I'll have to be dragged away screaming in a straitjacket.

You know the e-mail I'm talking about. It accuses Hillary of helping the Black Panthers get away with torture and murder during the early 1970s. With the 2004 presidential race drawing near, the spam mills are creaking to life, flooding the Internet once more with this agitprop classic.

Unfortunately, the e-mail mingles good information with bad, sowing more confusion than enlightenment. Some versions, for instance, carry the byline of radio talk jock Paul Harvey, who says he did not write it. Such misrepresentations help Hillary defenders dismiss the e-mail as a hoax.

The story is no hoax, though. Its basic elements can be found in respected Hillary biographies and exposes such as Barbara Olson's "Hell to Pay," David Brock's "The Seduction of Hillary Rodham," Joyce Milton's "The First Partner" and Carl Limbacher's "Hillary's Scheme."

Here are the facts:

In May 1969, fishermen discovered the body of Black Panther Alex Rackley floating in Connecticut's Coginchaug River. Rackley's captors had clubbed him, burned him with cigarettes, scalded him with boiling water and stabbed him with an ice pick before finally shooting him in the head.

New Haven detectives learned that the Panthers suspected Rackley of being a police informer. Panther enforcers had tied him to a chair and tortured him for hours. Police arrested eight Panthers and later extradited Panther leader Bobby Seale from California, after a witness accused Seale of ordering Rackley's death. (1)

Campus radicals supported the Panthers. They organized mass protests in support of the so-called "New Haven Nine." Hillary was right in the thick of it.

By the time she entered Yale Law School in 1969, Hillary was already a radical celebrity on campus. Life magazine had featured Hillary in a piece titled, "The Class of '69," which showcased three student activists whom Life's editors deemed the best and brightest of the year. A line Hillary used in her Wellesley College commencement speech appeared under her photo: "Protest is an attempt to forge an identity." (2)

At Yale, Hillary helped edit the Yale Review of Law and Social Action – a left-wing journal which promoted cop-killing and featured cartoons of pig-faced police. (3)

A series of hard-Left mentors introduced Hillary to the brass-knuckle realities of revolutionary activism. As a Wellesley undergraduate, she met and interviewed radical organizer Saul Alinsky, whose Machiavellian tactics she admired. Hillary's senior thesis supported Alinsky's call for class warfare. (4)

At Yale, Hillary found a new Svengali in the form of left-wing law professor Thomas Emerson, known around campus as "Tommy the Commie." Emerson recruited Hillary and other students to help monitor the trial of the New Haven Nine for civil rights violations. Hillary took charge of the operation, scheduling the students in shifts, so that student monitors would always be present in the courtroom. She befriended and worked closely with Panther lawyer Charles Garry. (5)

Some believe that the enormous pressure exerted by the Left helped ensure light sentences for the New Haven Nine. Whether or not this is true, the punishments were mild.

"Only one of the killers was still in prison in 1977," reports John McCaslin in the Washington Times. "The gunman, Warren Kimbro, got a Harvard scholarship and became an assistant dean at Eastern Connecticut State College. Ericka Huggins, who boiled the water for Mr. Rackley's torture, got elected to a California school board." (6)

Hillary's defenders argue that she played no "significant" role in the New Haven Nine's defense. This is semantic hairsplitting. Obviously, Hillary was less "significant" than Charles Garry or "Tommy the Commie" Emerson. But Hillary served as a trusted lieutenant to these movers and shakers. Moreover, she had a national profile as a campus activist. Hillary was no rank-and-file student protester, as her apologists claim.

Indeed, Hillary's work for the Panthers won her a summer internship at the Berkeley office of attorney Robert Treuhaft in 1972. A hardline Stalinist, Treuhaft had quit the Communist Party in 1958 only because it was losing members and no longer provided a good platform for his activism. (7) "Treuhaft is a man who dedicated his entire legal career to advancing the agenda of the Soviet Communist Party and the KGB," notes historian Stephen Schwartz. (8)

The defense of the New Haven Nine marked Hillary's initiation into the sinister underworld of the hard-core, revolutionary Left. To my knowledge, Hillary has never publicly renounced nor apologized for her role in that movement.

Richard Poe is a New York Times best-selling author and cyberjournalist. For more information on Poe and his writings, visit his Web site, RichardPoe.com. He may be reached at richardpoe@....

References
1. Joyce Milton, The First Partner: Hillary Rodham Clinton. William, Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1999, p. 35. Barbara Olson, Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C., 1999, p. 55.
2. Milton, 1999, p. 34; Olson, 1999, pp. 40-45.
3. Olson, 1999, p. 59-61; Evan Gahr, "Hillary and the Cop-Bashers: Will the Real Ms. Rodham Please Stand Up?" JewishWorldReview.com, June 20, 2000.
4. David Brock, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham. The Free Press, New York, 1996, pp. 14-17; Olson, 1999, pp. 46, 48, 50.
5. Milton, 1999, p. 17; Brock, 1996, pp. 31-32; Olson, 1999, p. 54-56.
6. John McCaslin, "Hillary for the Defense." Inside the Beltway, The Washington Times, June 12, 1998, p. A9.
7. Olson, 1999, pp. 56-57.
8. Brock, 1996, p. 33.

http://www.legaled.com/hillaryatyale.htm

[savedbygrace]

I doubt Reid would ever pull the trigger on the nuclear option.

[SueRae]

See that Arlen?? Being a “good” RINO and cooperating got you absolutely NOTHING now that the deranged Left is running the store.

[SueRae]

I won’t watch it for that reason.

Contrast the grilling and viciousness that Condoleeza Rice went through.

I am sick for my country.

[NordP]

Thank you for posting all that.

All I ever needed to see to loathe Kerry was the look in my brother's eyes when Kerry was running for President. This decorated 101st Airborne Ranger Vietnam Vet was livid at the thought of a Kerry presidency. He never spoke of his war experiences before that--except to our Dad (a 35 mission over Germany WWII Airforce Vet) in private. When Kerry paraded himself out there as a patriot, my brother went balistic.

[johncocktoasten]

“I doubt Reid would ever pull the trigger on the nuclear option.”

Reid would absolutely use the nuclear option. Then when the day comes that the Republicans control the Senate, they will relinquish the nuclear option and reinstate the filibuster, as an “olive branch of aisle crossing bi-partisanship”

[NordP]

That’s exACTly what I thought, too. YOU SHOULD HAVE HEARD DODD....FAWNING ALL OVER HILLARY...WE’RE SO EXCITED TO HAVE YOU HERE....like they would EVER say that to Rice!!!!!!!

[NordP]

That’s exACTly what I thought, too. YOU SHOULD HAVE HEARD DODD....FAWNING ALL OVER HILLARY...WE’RE SO EXCITED TO HAVE YOU HERE....like they would EVER say that to Rice!!!!!!!

[Red Badger]

I wouldn’t bet on it. The Dems in charge now are not the Dems of yesteryear. They are as partisan and socialistic as Daniel Ortega. To them, it’s just another tool in the bag...........

[NordP]

Sorry, evidently my computer is pi$$ed off too.

[johncocktoasten]

Can’t Specter just place a “hold” on Holder’s nomination until he gets what he wants?

I know that a ton of Bush nominees have had “holds” placed on them. Supposedly for being rasssists. Pickering comes to mind

[savedbygrace]

If the pubbies go for the filibuster, we’ll see, won’t we?