Fire Holder - Don't Hold Your Fire

Eric Holder – The Obama Administration’s John Yoo

You got to hand it to this guy Holder – he’s put his foot in his mouth twice in two days – on serious issues.  And you thought the days of corrupt or incompetent legal counsel in the U.S. Attorney General’s office were over. 

It also goes to prove that the ‘ethnic’ or ‘gender’ litmus test sectoralist liberals like to put on high appointments is basically reactionary. Putting corporate women in office does not change corporatist government. Take three recent appointment by Obama of women.  One, Sylvia Burwell, is from the WalMart Foundation, now appointed as head of the OMB.  She used to be a Clintonite (from Arkansas, get it?) working with Wall Street’s Crown Snake, Robert Rubin.  Then there is Gina McCarthy, who was in Romney’s gubernatorial cabinet – I.E. a Republican - now selected to head the EPA. Former head of REI, an outdoor sporting supplies company, Sally Jewell, has been nominated for the Interior Department.  You know, sporting business women know the environment!   Oil-man Ken Salazar used to hold the Interior post, and was most notable here in Minnesota for removing wolves from the endangered species act, so that liberal millionaire Democrat Mark Dayton could get 500 shot.   (Commentary on the wolf hunt, “Crying Wolf,” below.)

I could go on, but the 2013 cabinet smells just like the 2008 cabinet. 

Back to the incompetence of Eric Holder.  He got his spurs, along with Obama Supreme Court appointee Elena Kagan, in winning a case in 2010 before the Supreme Court, “Holder v Humanitarian Law Project, 561 US.”  This case, based on the Bush Patriot Act, basically criminalizes speech about, to or for any organization on the U.S. government’s ‘terrorist watch list.’  (Maintained by Clinton’s, now Kerry’s State Department.)  In essence, it made talking to, interviewing, supporting in print, or otherwise verbally interacting with any group on the list possible ‘support of terrorism.’  Now, as you might be able to tell, this could apply to journalists, to political people, even to the well-meaning liberals at the Humanitarian Law Project.  The latter had talked to both the Kurdistan Workers Party and the Tigers of Tamil Eelam about using … non-violence instead of violence.  You got it.  This was branded ‘material support or assistance or expert advice’ to terrorism by a couple of lawyerly Democrats.

Now we won’t get into the names on this list, which of course are nearly all organizations that violently oppose U.S. interests.  We pick and choose our terrorists.  This ruling has now endangered members of the Freedom Road Socialist Party and anti-war activists, as they have been hauled before grand juries in attempts at prosecution.  (Commentary on the Grand Jury inquisition of the FSP, below, “Justice Department Brings Back Hoover.”)  Application of this act, of course, is optional, based on who the government wants to go after.  They did not put the Humanitarians in jail, they just ‘reserved the right’ to do so.  They ignored K-Street Beltway Republicans who campaigned for the anti-Iranian government MEK (‘Mujahideen e Khalq ) to be taken off the ‘terrorist watch list’ in 9/2012 after an expensive lobbying campaign. (Remember, expert advice…)  So one group of ‘terrorists’ supports U.S. interests, and that is OK.

Now, back to Eric Holder.  You can see how this guy has had an influence behind the scenes in increasing government police powers, contiguous with John Yoo, though a little diminished on the torture road. Torture-friendly James Petraeus was recently outed as continuing El Salvadorean Death Squad-style torture in Iraq, using some of the same people.  And then lauded by the Obamaites, only to be brought down by his own dick - nothing substantial.  We cannot forget Bradley Manning’s treatment, which was called torture by everyone but the Obama administration.  Black sites still exist, where the U.S. government shuttles people to torture – although now that Gaddafi is gone, we’ll have to make new connections in Libya. And then there is Guantanamo.

Yesterday Holder prompted a grand filibuster by Rand Paul on the issue of drones, and I have to say, about time someone addressed this question in a big way. Holder, in a March 6 speech at Northwestern “Law” School, said he is of the ‘opinion’ (no court has ruled, mind you) that drones can be used to kill American citizens abroad and … in the U.S. itself, without any due process.   I.E. if you are labelled a ‘terrorist’ or an ‘enemy combatant’ by the chief executive, you can be killed.  Constitution be damned.  You know what King George called the American revolutionaries?  Terrorists, among other things.

OK, to top this off, Holder just told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that large banks and their executives are too big to prosecute.  This was the rationale the execrable Lanny Breuer of the U.S. DOJ used to justify not one prosecution in 4 years, just before resigning.   Breur was nailed by Frontline a few weeks ago, and also by Matt Taibbi (who’s book, “Griftopia”, is reviewed below) for saying this very same thing.  So its official - justice stops at the big banks' gates.  If we can’t prosecute banks and bankers because that would ‘bring down the world economy’ does that mean that the world economy is dominated by criminals? 

HSBC, a bank which was deeply involved in money laundering for Mexican and Latin American criminal cartels, the mafia, Russian gangsters and just about anyone else who needed money to hide in the world, was recently slapped with a fine, and told to go about its business – of ignoring SARS reports or AML rules at all.  Taibbi took HSBC and Breur apart in a recent Rolling Stone.  That is enforcement in the age of Wall Street government.

Eric Holder deserves to go.  Fire Holder.  Fire the whole Bushite ‘war on terror’ to boot.  

P.S. - March 16, the FBI (and by extension, the U.S. Justice Department) recently lost a lawsuit against Working Assets / Credo phone company over "National Security Letters' - which are basically secret subpoenas without any court or public oversight issued at the whim of the FBI.  Holder, of course, completely supports these Bushite letters.   

Red Frog

March 7, 2013