While the House Oversight Committee has now recommended that
Congress hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his
conduct during the Fast and Furious scandal, one could make the
case that Holder has long held the American public in contempt.
After all, how many cabinet secretaries begin their tenure by
calling
his fellow Americans “a nation of cowards” where it concerned the
question of racism? Never mind that America has become a nation
where racism is not only unacceptable but a nation where, outside
of being called a murderer or a rapist, nothing is worse than being
called a racist.
If anyone has behaved cowardly where it concerns racism, it is
Holder. What can one say about a man who sees fit to drop a
successfully prosecuted case of voter intimidation? If two members
of the Ku Klux Klan had held a baton in front of polling station in
Philadelphia, Mississippi, to intimidate black voters, Holder would
have spared no effort to prosecute them. But when it comes to two
members of the New Black Panthers holding a baton in front of
polling station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to intimidate white
voters, Holder could not care less. During testimony before a House
Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in March 2011, Holder
said:
When you compare what people endured in the South in the '60s to
try to get the right to vote for African Americans, to compare what
people subjected to that with what happened in Philadelphia… I
think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the
line for my people.
No, the great disservice here is an Attorney General who does
not comprehend the basic legal concept of “equal justice under
law.” Eric Holder is the Attorney General of the United States, not
the Attorney General of his people.
Yet what can we expect of a public official who does not have
the courtesy to read legislation he contended would lead to
increased racial profiling? Oh, pardon me. Holder did say he
“glanced” at the Arizona immigration law. It would have been nice
if Holder taken the copy of S.B. 1070 that Texas Congressman Ted
Poe so generously offered him. Then
again it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Holder’s
Department of Injustice was going to sue Arizona whether he read
the bill or not.
After all, what can we expect of a public official who wanted to
try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York? Holder
looked like a first-year law student back in November 2009 when
Senator Lindsey Graham asked him if he
could cite a case where an enemy combatant caught on a battlefield
was tried in civilian court. His embarrassing reply is probably the
reason why the Obama Administration chose to kill Osama bin Laden
rather than capture him. Like other members of the Obama
Administration, Holder cannot bring
himself to utter the words “radical Islam.”
But for all of Holder’s trespasses during his tenure as Attorney
General, Fast and Furious is his most serious transgression. An
ill-advised scheme to ship arms to Mexican drug lords has resulted
in the deaths of two law enforcement officers. Liberals like Alan
Colmes can
argue that Holder stopped “Fast and Furious” and blame the Bush
Administration until he is blue in the face. But how could Holder
have stopped something he
claimed to have no knowledge of in the first place? Besides if
Holder had stopped Fast and Furious dead in its tracks, wouldn’t
someone in the Obama Administration have seen fit to leak such
information?
Alas, no. Instead we have an Attorney General who uses the race
card to immunize himself from criticism. In December 2011, Holder
told the New York Times, “This is a way to get at the
president because of the way I can be identified with him both due
to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that
we’re both African-American.”
Ah yes, from the Janeane Garofalo School of Government which
states that all Republican criticism of President Obama and, by
extension, Eric Holder is motivated solely by race. It looks like
Chris Matthews is
giving the valedictory address. If Holder is suggesting that
Republicans would not have called a white Attorney General in a
Democrat administration to account for something like Fast and
Furious” is patently absurd. But President Obama rewards Holder’s
loyalty by invoking executive privilege.
Last week, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Texas
Senator John Cornyn
called on Holder to resign to his face.
I humbly disagree. I say Holder should remain as Attorney
General. The longer Holder remains in office and the angrier
Americans become about Fast and Furious, the bigger an albatross
Holder remains around the neck of President Obama. All of which
reflects poorly on President Obama’s judgment or lack thereof in
appointing Holder as his Attorney General in the first place. If
the American public should now hold Eric Holder in contempt, the
American public may do the same with President Obama in
November.
