Mar 15 2010
Hiding Holder’s True Intentions
One Obama cabinet member I think is in serious trouble, though he seems to be flying under the radar of the Health Care debate at the moment, is Attorney General Eric Holder. The fact he held back key amicus briefs from his Senate review is very disturbing, and just another sign the Obama administration is anything but ‘transparent’:
During his confirmation more than a year ago, Attorney General Eric Holder failed to notify lawmakers he had contributed to a legal brief dealing with the use of federal courts in fighting terrorism, the Justice Department acknowledged on Wednesday.
…
Still, the “amicus brief,†filed with the Supreme Court in 2004, resonates years later as Holder finds himself defending the handling of some recent terrorism cases, particularly the interrogation of alleged “Christmas Day bomber†Umar F. Abdulmutallab.
The brief – filed by Holder, then a private attorney, former Attorney General Janet Reno and two other Clinton-era officials – argued that the President lacks authority to hold Jose Padilla, a U.S citizen declared an “enemy combatant,†indefinitely without charge.
In making their case, Holder and the others argued that using federal courts to fight terrorism, which includes providing Miranda rights to terror suspects, would not “impair†the government’s ability to obtain intelligence, which they called “the primary tool for preventing terrorist attacks.â€
Clearly this is subterfuge, an effort to hide Holder’s risky and dangerous views from public scrutiny. This was a brief which exposes Holder’s (and Obama’s and John Brennan’s) views that they could dial back our reaction to terrorist threats used under the Bush admininstration. It explains completely why the terrorist investigations into Major Hasan were suspiciously and abruptly shut down before the true nature of the man was discovered. After all, he was an American citizen talking about Jihad and killing soldiers with another American citizen now in Yemen and tied to al Qaeda and 9-11.
In the twisted and limited views of liberals that is called free speech. I guess bombing civilians is also an admirable expression of political views.
The brief also explains the totally bizarre and reckless act of suspending interrogations of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and providing him the right to remain silent and a lawyer – even though he is not an American citizen! An act that could have allowed other al Qaeda killers to sneak by our defenses. It was this same extension of American rights to foreign threats inside our borders that allowed the 9-11 high jackers to ‘disappear’ from intelligence monitoring and kill 3,000 people.
I have written extensively about Hasan and Abdulmutallab, including the on-the-record comments of Eric Holder and John Brennan on how they planned to dial back our reactions to threats. Apparently they defined a new class of threat, the lone wolf, who they could apply new, less reactionary rules to. This is how, in my opinion, Â Abdulmutallab’s actions and connections to known terrorist sympathizers slipped by our formally hair trigger defenses. After all, he too communicated with that American traitor in Yemen.
And it is now coming out this was not just one amicus brief, but a whole suite of them:
As a nominee, Holder had “a duty of candor to provide all information requested by the Senate Judiciary Committee in connection with his nomination,” said Stephen Boyd, communications director for Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the committee. “It is simply unacceptable that briefs in such significant cases were not provided to the Committee so that they could be discussed during his confirmation hearings.”
“We will review the documents carefully,” said Boyd, “and see how they shed light on the Attorney General’s terrorism policies, including his treatment of the Christmas Day Bomber and his decision to prosecute KSM in domestic criminal court in New York City. This will be a significant issue at his hearing in 10 days.”
Holder has a big problem – he was wrong. He can play games all day long, but his premise that we can fight a suicidal enemy through the courts instead of on the battlefield is mind numbingly stupid. And al Qaeda knows it has an opening. It is crafting its attacks very carefully and using new recruits in order to trigger the Obama civil rights blinders. These blinders have been shown many times now to provide sufficient cover to allow the attacker to get in place for an attack, and also provide time for others to go to ground if the attacker is caught.
Obama and Holder have been lucky, but they are also now distracted and back on their heels. The intelligence folks are not sure how far to go in pursuing leads, especially if the lead is an American. I look at the recent arrests of Jihad cheer leaders and I see a new pattern. Either they finally started taking the threat seriously (doubtful) or they are running around in a panic pulling in even the most marginal characters.
Time will tell, but the liberals were wrong. You cannot use the courts and miranda rights to protect Americans from al Qaeda suicide attackers. That is how 9-11 was allowed to happen. It is not a question of if the Obama-Holder-Brennan axis of stupidity will cause deaths (it already has in the case of Hasan), it is only a matter of when al Qaeda will be lucky enough to exploit our now relaxed defenses.
According to the University of Missouri at Kansas City’s website (http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/firstaminto.htm), Justice Blackstone heavily influenced the Founders’ notion of Freedom of Speech and the Press. When I looked at what Blackstone’s writings (Laws of England (1769) http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs4.html), I found that he articulates devastating commentary on the fallacies of Holder’s claim of Freedom of Speech in this context:
“In this, and the other instances which we have lately considered, where blasphemous, immoral, treasonable, schismatical, seditious, or scandalous libels are punished by the English law, some with a greater, others with a less degree of severity; the liberty of the press, properly understood, is by no means infringed or violated. The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state: but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity. To subject the press to the restrictive power of a licenser, as was formerly done, both before and since the revolution, is to subject all freedom of sentiment to the prejudices of one man, and make him the arbitrary and infallible judge of all controverted points in learning, religion, and government. But to punish (as the law does at present) any dangerous or offensive writings, which, when published, shall on a fair and impartial trial be adjudged of a pernicious tendency, is necessary for the preservation of peace and good order, of government and religion, the only solid foundations of civil liberty. Thus the will of individuals is still left free; the abuse only of that free will is the object of legal punishment. Neither is any restraint hereby laid upon freedom of thought or enquiry: liberty of private sentiment is still left; the disseminating, or making public, of bad sentiments, destructive of the ends of society, is the crime which society corrects. A man (says a fine writer on this subject) may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not publicly to vend them as cordials. And to this we may add, that the only plausible argument heretofore used for restraining the just freedom of the press, “that it was necessary to prevent the daily abuse of it,” will entirely lose it’s force, when it is shewn (by a seasonable exertion of the laws) that the press cannot be abused to any bad purpose, without incurring a suitable punishment: whereas it never can be used to any good one, when under the control of an inspector. So true will it be found, that to censure the licentiousness, is to maintain the liberty, of the press.”
Holder has NEVER been an honest public servant. Remember what he was willing to do for Bill Clinton. Obama’s hands are not clean either. They are birds of a feather.
Found at “Freerepublic”, please read, these are the very same people in Holders justice department. Now I know why Liz Cheney was so upset.
Gitmo’s Indefensible Lawyers
03/15/2010 6:54:11 AM PDT · by Titus-Maximus · 116+ views
WSJ ^ | 3/15/10 | Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn
Legal counsel to some of the detainees went far beyond vigorous representation of their clients. Doesn’t the public have a right to know? On the evening of Jan. 26, 2006, military guards at Guantanamo Bay made an alarming discovery during a routine cell check. Lying on the bed of a Saudi detainee was an 18-page color brochure. The cover consisted of the now famous photograph of newly-arrived detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits—masked, bound and kneeling on the ground at Camp X-Ray—just four months after 9/11. Written entirely in Arabic, it also included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations…
[…] More here: Tell the truth, the whole Truth […]
[…] the charge of ‘the liberal lemmings’ was Attorney General Eric Holder, who actually hid his true intentions from Congress during his confirmation hearings. The brief – filed by Holder, then a private attorney, former […]