Eric Holder – praag.org

2014: The year of living racially

My man Richard Sherman said something that kicked off the 2014, year-round, banal, racial back-and-forth that parades as debate in the U.S.

Other than that the Seattle Seahawks are my team, on account that they’re from my neck of the woods; what I know about American football is dangerous. So naturally, I was rooting for, if not watching, the Hawks, when, following their victory over the San Francisco 49ers, Sherman said That Thing. And from their citadels of stupidity, U.S. mainstream media—conservatives, liberals and libertarians—went into full St. Vitus mode

“I’m the best corner in the game. When you try me with a sorry receiver like [Michael] Crabtree, that’s the result you gonna get. Don’t you ever talk about me!”

Sherman sounded good to me. Still does. The man was pumped, as men ought to be in a testosterone-infused game. The Seahawks’ cornerback was correct to point out that his “outburst,” following the “defensive play that sealed his team’s trip to the Super Bowl,” was an extension of “his game-time competitiveness.”

“Let’s not make thug the new N-word,” pleaded John McWhorter, a scholar of color, whose intellectual and moral authority in the culture stems primarily from the concentration of melanin in his skin cells, not from the force of his argument.

Come again?

As in January of last year, I still don’t get the reason for the fuss over what Sherman said. His boisterous bit of theatre set in motion some racial, national free-association, which no man or woman with a brain cell to rub between them can follow.

Speaking of mindlessness, in February, the president of black America launched his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative. Barack Obama claimed “this initiative” as his “lifelong goal,” “even after he leaves office.”

If to go by Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” “rising inequality and declining mobility,” as well as “widespread decay in moral fiber”—these are as serious and widespread among “white, lower-status, less well-educated Americans,” as they are among the black and Hispanic communities. It was against this backdrop that Obama signaled his intention to deploy his signature initiative to keep at least $200 million belonging to “leading foundations and businesses,” for “programs aimed at minority youth of color.”

“Winning” means “spinning.” In April, the media-run, Barack Hussein Obama witness-protection program got a boost: a secretly recorded, racially charged private conversation between one Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, and his mistress du jour, a dark-haired Jenna Jamison look-alike. Joy! Here was another cover for a “news” media that had refused to cover the many outrages and scandals of the Obama presidency.

CNN took a break from its non-stop, no-news vigil for missing Malaysian Airline Flight 370 to ride the Sterling racism ass. Hard. And from abroad, the president who promised to see to it that ebony and ivory would live together in perfect harmony told the world that the U.S. “continues to wrestle with the legacy of race, slavery and segregation,” a lie he would repeat throughout the year.

August saw the start of Trayvon Martin round two. The shooting death, in Ferguson, Missouri, of Michael Brown (black) by police officer Darren Wilson (white), sparked country wide unrest among the perpetually restive, when the officer was vindicated by the grand jury. It transpired that prior to being gunned down; Brown had robbed a convenience store and tackled the cop.

In their shared hatred for white America, Attorney General Eric Holder and Mr. Obama were like two pimps in a pod. Both rushed to racialize what was strictly a law-and-order incident. “I am the attorney general of the United States, but I am also a black man,” declared the AG to his black constituents.

Hitherto, the president of black Americans had been mum about cops, soldiers or white kids coming under black attack. But he just couldn’t put a sock in it when it came to his personal affinity for Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. True to type, Obama saddled a “deeply rooted” racism plaguing the U.S. for the mishaps between cops and the communities of color they police.

One among many pig-ignorant panels on CNN—this one comprising Marc Lamont Hill and two interchangeable females—magically coalesced around a consensus parroted widely in pixels and print across the country: There was absolutely nothing racial whatsoever about the latest attack upon whites by blacks, this time of a store keeper in Memphis, Tennessee. Only a week back, the same sort of empaneled fools were intoning in unison about the ostensible racism behind the Ferguson killing ad nauseum.

Well, of course.

Read Ilana Mercer’s book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa:

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Memorable to a majority marginalized was Martha MacCallum’s plainspoken, Fox News column about Brendan Tevlin. The blond, blue-eyed anchor’s words reached deeper than the convoluted fare of most: “A 19-year-old, suburban boy. Strawberry blond, athletic, bright and smiley. … When I look at this picture of Brendan Tevlin, I think, he could have been my son.” Brendan Tevlin of New Jersey was murdered by Ali Muhammad Brown, an African-American. A precious boy’s death at the hands of the detritus of humanity did not rate a mention by Big Media and its protégé.

Alas, white commentators—liberals, conservatives, even libertarians—and their fans converge on matters racial. All are constitutionally primed to convulse hysterically over race.

Take Judge Andrew Napolitano. A left-leaning, highly principled libertarian, the judge wrote a hot mess of a column, asserting that in Ferguson we saw “the error and perversion of the grand jury,” not to mention a “toxic mixture of a black underclass and a white power structure and the corrupt advantages people on the make and people on the take can exploit from it.” That’s left-libertarianism for you: In-thrall to postmodern constructs like “power structure,” “white privilege,” the left-libertarian’s tinny, rigid adherence to bogus theory is often foisted on facts that don’t fit. Thus did John Stossel mar a perfectly reasonable column on Ferguson,” with a nod to the endemic racism meme.

As far as promoting the demonstrably false racism meme—what speech is racist, which feelings are bigoted; the kind of humor that is off-color; the fears of The Other that are forbidden—conservatives too are indistinguishable from liberals. Consider the witty email exchange between a Sony executive and a producer concerning Obama and his racial proclivities. Leaked as it was by hackers, these emails were ruled by Megyn Kelly of Fox News to be wrong, racist and racially insensitive: all the dumb things liberals say about risqué expression.

Lesson no. 1: When they rabbit on about race, America’s chattering classes—blacks, whites, Democrats, Republicans and libertarians alike—exhibit an unthinking habit of mind. These are individuals (for they are not individualists) who’ve been trained by their political and intellectual masters to respond in certain, politically pleasing ways.

Don’t listen to them! Americans are not racist.

Despite the mindless racial merry-go-round manufactured by American media and cognoscenti, I suspect even liberals may have internalized another important lesson of survival: Never elect a black liberal president again.

That’s lesson no. 2.

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Torture: CIA officials will walk free

From Russian roulette to power drills, shackling and other painful and humiliating “enhanced interrogation techniques”, the CIA crossed all lines. Yet despite evidence incriminating the officials, it is highly likely that the perpetrators will walk free.

Although a scandalizing U.S. Senate report over CIA practices has sparked calls for prosecution from human rights groups, chances of affiliated officials being brought to justice seem little as President Barack Obama stated that it is ‘time to move on’.

After the U.S. Senate released a detailed intelligence report criminalizing the Central Intelligence Agency, the UN and several human rights groups called for the prosecution of U.S. officials involved in torture practices.

However, with a black president and the justice department saying it will not press charges, the agents responsible for the violence are likely to go unpunished.

Obama’s top officials, as WikiLeaks cables revealed, secretly worked with GOP operatives to coerce other countries, such as Spain and Germany, to quash their investigations into the US torture of their citizens, and issued extraordinary threats to prevent British courts from disclosing any of what was done.

The Obama administration aggressively shielded Bush officials even from being held accountable in civil cases brought by torture victims, by invoking radical secrecy powers and immunity doctrines to prevent courts even from hearing those claims.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the closing without charges of the only two cases under investigation relating to the US torture program in 2012.

This decision, the New York Times noted “eliminat[es] the last possibility that any criminal charges will be brought as a result of the brutal interrogations carried out by the CIA”.

White House spokesperson Josh Earnest announced on Wednesday that US President Barack Obama shares the US Department of Justice decision that no prosecutable crime had been committed by the CIA officers.

“The president [Obama] has confidence both in this [US] justice system and in the way it was deployed in this particular situation [CIA officers investigation],” Earnest said when asked if Obama accepts DOJ conclusion that there are no prosecutable crimes committed by the CIA.

America: Your benefactor is NEVER the state

The marketplace brings plenty; the state does the opposite. Yet not a day goes by when consumers, ignorant of the forces that feed, clothe, cure, employ, entertain them and innovate for them, don’t demand that those who’ve done nothing of the kind – the McCains, Obamas, Bushes, Clintons, Keith Alexanders, Lois Lerners, Eric Holders of the world – proceed with force against those who do nothing but.

Expect the anti-Wal-Mart jousting to begin, because Wal-Mart has done it again. To fill the need created by the Obamacare wrecking ball, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., is venturing into the business of providing primary health care. For $40, the price of a copay (in an Obama-mandated, sub-par health-care plan), “you can walk into a Wal-Mart clinic and see a doctor.” It’s “just $4 for Wal-Mart U.S. employees and family members.”

Rejoice, Sandra Fluke! You can have a pregnancy test at Wal-Mart for … $3.

Via Market Watch:

On Friday, a Wal-Mart Care Clinic opened in Dalton, Ga., six months after Wal-Mart U.S., the retailer’s biggest unit, entered the business of providing primary health care. It now operates a dozen clinics in rural Texas, South Carolina and Georgia and has increased its target for openings this year to 17. … A typical retail clinic offers acute care only. But a Wal-Mart Care Clinic also treats chronic conditions such as diabetes. (Wal-Mart U.S. also leases space in its stores to 94 clinics owned by others that set their own pricing.) “It was very important to us that we establish a retail price in the health-care industry because price leadership matters to us,” said Jennifer LaPerre, a Wal-Mart U.S. senior director responsible for health and wellness, in an interview.

Hear, hear!

The argument against Wal-Mart presses its case with an impressive array of economic fallacies. Typically, the critic – an example is “The High Cost of Low Prices,” in The American Conservative – does nothing to trace the mysterious mechanism by which Wal-Mart is said to impoverish. By offering “the lowest possible prices all the time, not just during sales”? What precisely is the economic process that accounts for Wal-Mart’s ability to “expel jobs and technology from our own country”? Competition? Offering a product people choose to buy?

“Protecting the home market,” which is what The American Conservative’s writer advocates, is to the detriment of consumers. It forces them to subsidize less efficient local industries, making them the poorer for it. To keep inefficient industries in the lap of luxury, hundreds of others are doomed to shrink or go under.

The writer also froths at the mouth over “the teenage girl in Bangladesh … forced to sew pocket flaps onto 120 pairs of pants per hour for 13 cents per hour.” It sounds dreadful. However, the economic reality is this: Wal-Mart is either offering higher, the same or lower wages than the wages workers were earning before its arrival in Bangladesh. The company would find it hard to attract workers if it were paying less or the same as other companies. Ergo, Wal-Mart is a benefactor that pays the kind of wage unavailable prior to its arrival. More materially, if the entrepreneur were forced to pay workers in excess of their productivity, he would eventually have to disinvest. What will the Bangladeshi teenage girl do once Wal-Mart departs?

Even the Hollywood “Idiocracy” is hip to the spontaneously synchronized order that is the free market. Just for a change, the menstruation lobby is moaning about the movies and its members’ representation therein. By Variety Magazine’s telling, “[Female] characters are still significantly under-represented on the big screen. … The numbers for minority females are even lower. African-American female representation on screen [has] climbed to 14 percent, from 8 percent in 2011, but [is] down from 15 percent in 2012.”

The presence of minorities in movies often signals a two-hour long, oppressive racial lecture. Most movie-goers are no more inclined to turn to “12 Years A Slave” for fun, than they are to subject themselves to Oprah Winfrey and her M.O.P.E. (Most Oppressed Person Ever) “Butler.”

Anti-man moaning notwithstanding, the general public must be on to this, because it is quite clear that Hollywood is giving viewers what they want to see: men in lead roles. If film executives listened to the loathsome Lena Dunham, rather than to the demands of consumers – the industry would go under.

Alas, most liberals (and that includes “conservatives” aplenty) are foolish enough to lump business with government as an eternal source of disappointment to Americans. Noodles Ron Fournier of National Journal:

“Steadily, over the past four decades, the nation has lost faith in virtually every American institution: banks, schools, colleges, charities, unions, police departments, organized religion, big businesses, small businesses and, of course, politics and government.”

As I type, I consume a plate of seven different fruits topped with nuts. Many of the ingredients on my plate are organic. These used to be exorbitantly priced; out of reach. But as demand for organic produce has grown, production has increased and prices have dropped dramatically.

Each day I give thanks to the businessmen who, against all odds, bring such abundance to market and provide such plenty. There is nothing in my home that comes courtesy of the blessings of bureaucrats. I guarantee that it’s the same in your home.

If you, like Fournier, fail to distinguish the blessings of the private economy from the blight of government – you deserve none of the former and all of the latter.

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US tries to keep blacks out of school-to-prison feed

The Obama administration is urging schools to abandon policies that civil rights advocates say “lead to a school-to-prison pipeline that discriminates against black students”.

The wide-ranging series of guidelines issued Wednesday in essence tells schools that they must back down or face strong action if they don’t. The American Civil Liberties Union called the recommendations “ground-breaking.”

“A routine school disciplinary infraction should land a student in the principal’s office, not in a police precinct,” Attorney General Eric Holder said.

Holder said the problem often stems from well intentioned “zero-tolerance” policies that too often inject the criminal justice system into the resolution of problems. Zero tolerance policies, a tool that became popular in the 1990s, often spell out uniform and swift punishment for offenses such as truancy, smoking or carrying a weapon. Violators can lose classroom time or become saddled with a criminal record.

Source: breitbart.com

Police have become a more common presence in American schools since the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999.

In American schools, black students without disabilities were more than three times as likely as whites to be expelled or suspended, according to government civil rights data collection from 2011-2012. Although black students made up 15 percent of students in the data collection, they made up more than a third of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once and more than a third of students expelled.

More than half of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement were Hispanic or black, according to the data.

The recommendations encourage schools to ensure that all school personnel are trained in classroom management, conflict resolution and approaches to de-escalate classroom disruptions.

Among the other recommendations:

_Ensure that school personnel understand that they are responsible for administering routine student discipline instead of security or police officers.

_Draw clear distinctions about the responsibilities of school security personnel.

_Provide opportunities for school security officers to develop relationships with students and parents.

The government advises schools to establish procedures on how to distinguish between disciplinary infractions appropriately handled by school officials compared with major threats to school safety. And, it encourages schools to collect and monitor data that security or police officers take to ensure nondiscrimination.

The recommendations are nonbinding.

Already, in March of last year, the Justice Department spearheaded a settlement with the Meridian, Miss., school district to end discriminatory disciplinary practices. The black students in the district were facing harsher punishment than whites for similar misbehavior.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has acknowledged the challenge is finding the balancing act to keep school safe and orderly. But, he said that, “we need to keep students in class where they can learn.”

Research suggests the racial disparities in how students are disciplined are not explained by more frequent or more serious misbehavior by students of color, according to a letter sent to schools with the recommendations by the departments.

“For example, in our investigations, we have found cases where African-American students were disciplined more harshly and more frequently because of their race than similarly situated white students,” the letter said. “In short, racial discrimination in school discipline is a real problem.”

Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go POOF

by Ilana Mercer

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While the nation fretted over the ouster of one Duckster from the parallel reality of a TV reality show, more of the protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution evaporated.

Just after Christmas, district-court Judge William Pauley ruled that the privacy protections afforded by the Constitution were relative freedoms, not absolute ones. As such, Fourth-Amendment rights had to be calibrated against a government’s need to maintain a database of records that would (putatively) prevent future terrorist attacks.

Paraphrased by The Guardian, “Pauley argued that al-Qaida’s ‘bold jujitsu’ strategy to marry seventh century ideology with 21st century technology made it imperative that government authorities be allowed to push privacy boundaries.”

You’d think that the purview of the justice elite is to “marry” American law with Islamist ideology, rather than uphold a timeless principle that states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

“The judgment,” continued The Guardian, “directly contradicts the result of a similar challenge in a Washington court [a week earlier] which ruled the NSA’s bulk collection program was likely to prove unconstitutional and was ‘almost Orwellian’ in scale.”

Friday’s ruling, surmised the vigilant British paper, “makes it more likely that the issue will be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, although it may be overtaken by the decision of Barack Obama on whether to accept the recommendations of a White House review panel to ban the NSA from directly collecting such data.”

Indeed, in August, media-enabled megalomaniac Obama told a rapt press corps that, in his magnanimity, he’d be prepared to “jiggle” his surveillance apparatus here and there to better allay unnecessary fears (“provide greater assurances,” as the president put it).

In his remarks, Big Daddy said—in defiance of the evidence—that he was comfortable “the NSA program [was] not being abused,” going on to promise that he’d outsource the matter to a new hire: A civil liberties officer. (CNN’s Jessica Yellin was in estrus.)

This is the inglorious history of American freedom and federalism. In the rare event that the Supreme Court refuses to play along (as nicely as plaything Justice John G. Roberts did for ObamaCare)—there is always a perfectly legal, extra-constitutional, quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, quasi-judicial, “independent” regulatory commission or executive agency to kill off or override constitutional protections.

A “civil liberties officer,” for example.

The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another. The idea of a judiciary that would police the executive as an arm of a self-correcting tripartite government was worse than naive.

Ditto the Duck detritus: they are the new wholesome in America.

As “luck” would have it, legislation that flouts the Fourth Amendment was previously in place to provide Pauley with all the positive-law backing the judge needed to justify an anti-constitutional ruling. To wit, the grounds upon which the New York jurist dismissed this ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) case against the NSA were, primarily, “that bulk collection was [already] authorized under existing laws allowing ‘relevant’ data collection to be authorized by secret US courts.”

Here you have the essence of modern-day, Managerial-State America. Natural law, common-law and Constitution have been nullified; buried under the rubble of legislation, statute, precedent, ad infinitum, rights having long-since been outsourced to the “better” judgment of bureaucrats and hired “experts.”

In this case, to Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.

Not only has Obama “the sinner” trusted Holder his “sin eater” with the expansion of surveillance-state USA; he has, it would appear, charged him with dealing a one-two Knockout punch to white America.

Eric Holder’s first arrest in the string of Knockout attacks across the country is a first in more than one way.

The arrest is unique in that it is of a white offender. Knockout attacks have been, almost exclusively, black-on-white hate crimes.

Were it not so disquieting for what it portends, this single arrest would be as comical as the specter of global-warming scientists marooned in Antarctic ice so densely packed that no man-made machinery can affect it.

Heeding Holder, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Texas has remanded Conrad Alvin Barrett (27 years old) to prison for breaking the jaw of a man (79 years old), while “laughing and saying; ‘Knockout’” as he beat it.

The question is not whether this is a good arrest. If he’s guilty, let Barrett rot. The question is, why have there been no arrests for the multiple killings and maiming of innocents by feral black thugs across the country?

Befitting a banana republic, Holder, who carries water for President Camacho, is likely attempting to deploy the law to frame the Knock-Out phenomenon as an equal-opportunity crime. This is the administration’s ultimate racial reprisal against white victims of hate crimes: “know thy place, Honky!”

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry will no doubt deem the “banana” usage here to be racist, “conceived by a group of wealthy white men who needed to . . . render [a black man] inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments.” This is what our unsharpened pencil thinks of the word “Obamacare.”

But Obama and his fans “can’t have their banana and eat it.” It is an incontrovertible fact that under Strong Man Obama, America’s banana-republic- and surveillance-state credentials are that much stronger.

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Blacks benefit most from self-defense law in Florida

African Americans benefit from Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law at a rate far out of proportion to their presence in the state’s population, despite an assertion by Attorney General Eric Holder that repealing “Stand Your Ground” would help African Americans.

Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total “Stand Your Ground” claims in homicide cases, a rate nearly double the black percentage of Florida’s population. The majority of those claims have been successful, a success rate that exceeds that for Florida whites.

Nonetheless, prominent African Americans including Holder and “Ebony and Ivory” singer Stevie Wonder, who has vowed not to perform in the Sunshine State until the law is revoked, have made “Stand Your Ground” a central part of the Trayvon Martin controversy.

Holder, who was pressured by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other progressive groups to open a civil rights case against acquitted neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in the 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Martin, criticized Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law in a speech Tuesday before the NAACP.

The law was not invoked by Zimmerman’s defense team but was included in instructions to the jury.

“We must confront the underlying attitudes, the mistaken beliefs and the unfortunate stereotypes that serve too often as the basis for police action and private judgments. Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation’s attention, it’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhood,” Holder said to applause in his speech before the NAACP Tuesday.

“These laws try to fix something that was never broken. There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if — and the ‘if’ is important — if no safe retreat is available. But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common-sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat, outside their home, if they can do so safely. By allowing and perhaps encouraging violent situations to escalate in public, such laws undermine public safety,” Holder said.

“The list of resulting tragedies is long and, unfortunately, has victimized too many who are innocent. It is our collective obligation; we must stand OUR ground to ensure — (cheers, applause, music) — we must stand our ground to ensure that our laws reduce violence, and take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent,” Holder said.

But approximately one third of Florida “Stand Your Ground” claims in fatal cases have been made by black defendants, and they have used the defense successfully 55 percent of the time, at the same rate as the population at large and at a higher rate than white defendants, according to a Daily Caller analysis of a database maintained by the Tampa Bay Times. Additionally, the majority of victims in Florida “Stand Your Ground” cases have been white.

African Americans used “Stand Your Ground” defenses at nearly twice the rate of their presence in the Florida population, which was listed at 16.6 percent in 2012. – dailycaller.com

Obama’s the sinner; Holder his ‘sin eater’

Big media have been willing, even eager, to pass the buck for Barack for the past five years. But the Fourth Estate rose as one on its proverbial hind legs when the president made the mistake of going after their own: members of the media.

For doing their jobs, Associated Press journalists were spied on and had their telephone records and other personal information seized by the head of Barack Obama’s Justice Department, Attorney General Eric Holder. For doing his job, Fox News Channel’s James Rosen was framed by the same department for the crime of conspiracy to leak classified materials.

IRS bloodhounds Douglas Shulman and Steven Miller, likely in charge of hounding conservative organizations unsympathetic to Obama, had practically taken up residence at the Big Dog’s House. Yet, curiously, conservatives have largely avoided linking Barack Hussein Obama to this and to the other scandals reverberating throughout his administration.

Republicans have eddied around the issue, merely describing the president’s stance with respect to the Rosen, AP, Benghazi and the Internal Revenue Service affairs as “disconnected,” “lacking focus.” An “absentee presidency,” surmised the conservative bloggers at Powrline. “The Spectator President,” pronounced Patrick Buchanan. Judge Andrew Napolitano’s brief was equally narrow. He avoided so much as hinting that Holder had likely been carrying out the wishes of his bosom buddy.

Although it’s hard to know what to make of it here, Republican rigor mortis is par for the course. Fortunately, for every mealymouthed Eric Cantor—the House majority leader is responsible for the “disconnected” description—there are progressives like Salon’s Joan Walsh, who, spittle flying, are tying the president to the infractions liberals consider unforgivable. “If you want to know how Obama feels about the AP and Rosen controversies,” reasoned Walsh, “compare his reactions to the three different ‘scandals’ the GOP has been working overtime to conflate … .”

“On Benghazi, Obama has been uncharacteristically defiant,” noted Walsh. He defended the women involved and accused the GOP of staging a “sideshow.” “By contrast, he quickly called the IRS targeting Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny ‘outrageous’ and ‘unacceptable.'” “On the AP and Rosen controversies” the president equivocated. He tried “to have it both ways,” observed Walsh.

To the news that the president’s former senior legal advisor (Eric Holder), as The Huffington Post reported, “personally signed off on the warrant that allowed the Justice Department to search Rosen’s personal email,” Obama has responded by holding Holder still closer to him—he praised the AG and charged him with probing his own malfeasance.

Concludes Ms. Walsh: “the DOJ’s media probes reflect administration policy.”

Obama’s feeble response to “the outcry over the AP and Fox scandals” Jonathan Turley has also taken as evidence “that these are Obama’s sins.” Writing in USA Today, professor Turley, a civil libertarian who is “neither a Republican nor conservative,” smarted over what he termed “the greatest attack on the free press in decades.” Turley goes well beyond other liberals in fingering Holder for supervising a “comprehensive erosion” of civil liberties, privacy rights, and press freedoms. Deftly drawn deductions have enabled this cool brain to elegantly connect the philosophical dots between The Boss and his underling’s pervasive and persistent assaults on due process.

“Holder is what we call a ‘sin eater’ inside the Beltway — high-ranking associates who shield presidents from responsibility for their actions,” posits the professor.

“Richard Nixon had H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Ronald Reagan had Oliver North and Robert ‘Bud’ McFarlane. George W. Bush had the ultimate sin eater: Dick Cheney, who seemed to have an insatiable appetite for sins to eat.”

Alas, having reasoned that, “feigned ignorance” notwithstanding, Obama is the original sinner, and Holder his “sin eater,” Prof. Turley stopped short of calling for the impeachment of the president for his many “mortal sins.”

From the expansion of surveillance-state USA, to the leveling of Libya, to forcing individual Americans to purchase healthcare and religious organizations to fund birth control; to the crafting of a Kill List featuring his chosen targets for extrajudicial elimination, to running guns to Mexico’s goons, while gunning for America’s guns—Barack Hussein Obama’s philosophical fingerprints are all over his administration.

While pitting a favored voting bloc against the rest of us, Obama told militant Latinos: “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.”

The link between President Obama and the policies his minions have pursued seems patent enough. Obama is the philosophical felon, the fulcrum on which everything pivots.

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Bipartisan drone wars errupt

After years in the shadows, the administration’s secret drone program burst into very public view Wednesday with lawmakers grilling the attorney general over legal justification for targeted killings and Sen. Rand Paul launching an old-style one-man filibuster to demand answers from President Obama.

The Kentucky Republican held the floor for hours, effectively blocking a vote on the nomination of John O. Brennan, whom Mr. Obama has tapped to be CIA director. He said he would relent only if the administration publicly vowed not to target Americans on U.S. soil.

“This is a long, drawn-out day, but it’s to try to get some answers,” Mr. Paul said after he crossed the eight-hour mark late Wednesday evening. “It’s to try to shame the president into doing the right thing.”

Democrats, who control the chamber, were forced to delay a vote on the Brennan nomination until at least Thursday, and it could go into the weekend, depending on what other blockades Republicans erect.

At issue is the administration’s argument that it can kill those it suspects have ties to terrorism, including U.S. citizens, without having to put them on trial.

The fulcrum of the debate is the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, which many lawmakers said gives too much power to the executive branch — and raises tricky questions about whether drones could be used to execute Americans in the United States.

The administration has only recently acknowledged the drone program and says it is seeking a public debate in order to find common ground on what Americans are ready to accept.

“I think there is going to be a greater effort at the transparency. A number of steps are going to be taken. I expect you will hear the president speaking about this,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.

But he faced bipartisan demands for more information and more clarity on what is and what isn’t allowed.

“You can hear almost unanimous concern about transparency and wrestling with how to move forward here in a way that protects both our constitutional liberties and our security as a nation,” Sen. Christopher A. Coons, Delaware Democrat, told Mr. Holder.

Under close questioning by Sen. Ted Cruz, Mr. Holder repeatedly said American citizens on U.S. soil were not “appropriate” targets for extrajudicial executions.

Mr. Cruz said that wasn’t good enough.

“You keep saying ‘appropriate.’ My question isn’t about propriety. My question is about whether something is constitutional or not,” the Texas Republican said.

“Let me be clear: Translate my ‘appropriate’ to ‘no.’ I thought I was saying no, all right? No,” Mr. Holder said.

Mr. Holder also said he is not sure Congress could ban the president from using drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil. – Washington Times