If President Obama is hoping to change the tone in Washington,
it’s hard to imagine how having Eric Holder onboard as his
attorney general will help accomplish that goal.
Much has been written about would-be Attorney General Holder’s
support for liberal positions, but little has been written about
his visceral contempt for conservatives.
His public utterances are chock full of the same old tiresome
liberal clichés about those on the right one might find on the
Daily Kos website.
The president’s bilious nominee told an American Constitution
Society gathering in 2004 that “conservatives have been defenders
of the status quo, afraid of the future, and content to allow to
continue to exist all but the most blatant inequalities.” They
have “made a mockery of the rule of law.” Conservatives try to
“put the environment at risk for the sake of unproven economic
theories, to play to the fears of our citizens, and not to their
hopes, and to return the nation to a time that in fact never
existed.”
Conservatives are “breathtaking” in their “arrogance,” Holder
claimed. “From redistricting schemes, to attacks on abortion
rights, to energy policies that are as shortsighted as they are
ineffective, to tax cuts that disproportionately favor those who
are well off and perpetuate many of the inequities in our nation,
the conservative movement has been unafraid to push the limits in
advancing this agenda.”
Holder denounced what he called “the conservative agenda of
social division, mindless tax cutting, and a defense posture that
does not really make us safer.”
Elsewhere in that ode to liberalism in which he gave credit to
leftists for all that is good in modern America, he seemed
sympathetic to the so-called Fairness Doctrine:
The nation must be reminded that the word liberal is more than
a conservative slur. The nation must be reminded that it was
the progressive, liberal tradition that brought about the
social and economic changes that were necessary many years ago.
The nation must be convinced that it is a progressive future
that holds the greatest promise for equality and the
continuation of those policies that serve to support the
greatest number of our people. In the short term this will not
be an easy task. With the mainstream media somewhat cowered by
conservative critics, and the conservative media disseminating
the news in anything but a fair and balanced manner, and you
know what I mean there, the means to reach the greatest number
of people is not easily accessible.
Holder also has a long history of involvement in charities and
nonprofits that seek to stick it to conservatives.
He has been a member of the board of directors of the American
Constitution Society, the mirror image of the Federalist Society.
The ACS believes in the myth of the “living” Constitution and
views the limits that great charter places on government power as
quaint anachronisms to be overcome through clever legal
sophistry.
ACS is, of course, funded by the big players in left-wing
political finance, including members of the billionaires’ club,
the Democracy Alliance. Reliably liberal benefactors of ACS
include George Soros’s Open Society Institute ($2,201,500 since
2002), Ford Foundation ($600,000 since 2003), Sandler Family
Supporting Foundation ($200,000 in 2003), Tides Foundation
($25,000 since 2002), Barbra Streisand Foundation ($20,000 since
2002).
Meanwhile, it has been exhaustively documented that Holder has
what could charitably be called a cavalier approach to a key
civil right, you know, that inconvenient, archaic one described
in the Second Amendment that the media wishes we would all forget
about.
As the Independent Institute’s Stephen P. Halbrook, author of
The Founder’s Second Amendment, told a Senate panel
considering the nomination, “many Americans have reason to be
uneasy about Mr. Holder’s nomination for attorney general. They
deserve to have a person in this role who is committed to
upholding all parts of the Constitution, including the Second
Amendment. Unfortunately, Mr. Holder has proven himself not to be
that person.”
As deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, Holder
pushed for federal licensing of handgun owners and federal
registration of guns, waiting periods for gun purchases, and
rationing of handgun sales. The former Janet Reno acolyte signed
on to a pro-gun prohibition amicus curiae brief in District
of Columbia v. Heller, last year’s groundbreaking Supreme
Court case in which justices struck down the District’s
oppressive handgun ban.
Holder played a role in securing a presidential pardon for a
fugitive (Marc Rich) and sentence commutations for Puerto Rican
terrorists. He served as apologist for the Clinton administration
after it defied a federal court order and seized 6-year-old Cuban
refugee Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in 2000.
Holder cares little about electoral fraud. “I think there is a
feeling among Republicans that there is a widespread amount of
voter fraud out there. I don’t think the statistics actually
would substantiate it,” he told Fox News in 2004.
Holder rarely misses an opportunity to advocate expanding the
size and scope of the federal government. He told the 2004 ACS
gathering, “Government has been the primary force for positive
social change in our country’s history. It can be again.”
Holder’s nomination was approved Jan. 28 by the Senate Judiciary
Committee on a 17 to 2 vote. Only Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and
Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) voted in the negative. After initial
grumbling about Holder’s role in the Marc Rich pardon, Sen. Arlen
Specter (R-Pennsylvania) flip-flopped, as is his wont, and
bipartisan euphoria broke out.
The full Senate could take up the nomination as soon as today
