Eric Holder

"Indefensible Marriage Act" blares the cover page headline for the Feb. 24 Express tabloid, a free publication of the Washington Post available around the D.C. metro area.

"In a major victory for gay rights, President Obama says the U.S. will no longer defend the federal law banning same-sex marriages," notes the caption for the photo depicting a hand holding both a miniature American flag and a miniature gay rights rainbow flag. On page 13 a subheading approvingly labels the move a "landmark call" by the Obama administration.

[see cover page image below page break]

Eric Holder recently had what he wants to be perceived as a really important interview about the domestic terror threat with Pierre Thomas of ABC News.

In the video at the ABC link, George Stephanopoulos's intro at Good Morning America describes Holder as "a pretty circumspect man," but that on the subject of domestic terror threats, "he doesn't seem to be pulling any punches."

Really? If that's the case, Holder must have said a lot of things which got left on ABC's cutting-room floor. That's because in the entire three-page story at ABC (it's easiest to prove the following by looking at the print version, which can only be obtained at the link), the following words never appear:

Ten years after the USS Cole bombing, the alleged mastermind of the attacks hasn't been tried in a military commission, angering survivors and families of the dead.

Yet for its coverage of the 10 year anniversary memorial service in today's paper, the Washington Post elected to go with an 11-paragraph article by Newport News [Va.] Daily Press's Hugh Lessig rather than assign a Post staffer to the story.

Here's how Lessig opened his story:

In a puff piece on Attorney General Eric Holder on CBS's Sunday Morning, correspondent Rita Braver praised his professionalism: "...ignoring political pressure is Holder's constant message as he talks to Justice Department lawyers....Though he was a key advisor to the Obama campaign and considers the President a friend, Holder says he now keeps it purely professional." [Audio available here]

Throughout the interview, Braver portrayed Holder as lacking any political agenda: "And when he took office last February, he got a hero's welcome. It was in part, he believes, a reaction to cronyism and questionable policies advocated in the Bush-era Justice Department." As Braver mentioned Bush "cronyism," a photo of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared on screen. Holder proclaimed: "Waterboarding, things like that, from my perspective, inconsistent with the great traditions of this department."

Braver began with some gentle criticism of Holder: "And with controversies over everything –  from his pushing to quickly close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo to his very public condemnation of the new Arizona law that cracks down on undocumented immigrants – even some Holder fans are saying, 'he's honest, he's smart but sometimes he can be a little tone deaf about how things play out in public.'" That gave Holder the opportunity to declare: "I don't have the same latitude that other politicians might have to put my finger up to the wind and figure out what's going to be popular....So it's not tone deafness. It's a commitment to justice and a commitment to the law." Braver then touted Holder "ignoring political pressure."

Our friends at BulletPeople.com have come out with another awesome Jack Webb parody video. This time the famed "Dragnet" detective Sgt. Joe Friday is taking on President Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder over his treatment of Arizona in their attempt to deal with illegal immigration:

Make sure you check out more videos from Bullet People on Eyeblast.

CBS's Bob Schieffer on Sunday said the reason he didn't ask Attorney General Eric Holder about the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case on last week's "Face the Nation" was because he didn't know about it. 

Chatting with Howard Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Schieffer said, "This all really became a story when the whistleblower came out and testified that he'd had to leave the Justice Department and so on. And, frankly, had I known about that, I would have asked the question."

His excuse?

"I was on vacation that week. This happened -- apparently, it got very little publicity. And, you know, I just didn't know about it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):  

In recent weeks, Fox News Channel has repeatedly updated viewers on the controversy behind the Obama administration Justice Department’s decision to drop civil action initiated during the Bush administration against New Black Panthers (NBP) members who were caught on video engaging in voter intimidation outside a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008. Even though DOJ won cases against three defendants by default when the NBP members refused to appear in court, punishment for two members was not pursued at all while the injunction against the third member was reduced to two years during which he can still visit polling stations in nearly all of country as long as it is outside Philadelphia.

But on Monday’s Countdown show, as he erroneously assumed that the FNC stories were based on the issue of criminal prosecution, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann absurdly claimed that FNC’s entire premise for its coverage had been debunked as he picked up on reports by the left-wing American Prospect magazine which recounted the Bush-era Justice Department decision not to pursue criminal charges.

Olbermann referred to FNC’s pursuit of the New Black Panther voter intimidation story as a "continuous fake ‘newsgasm’ over there at Fox, drumming up paranoia among their more racist viewers." The Countdown host proclaimed: "There is, as it proves, one huge flaw in this latest Fox-driven conspiracy. The decision not to prosecute was not made by Obama, nor the Obama administration, nor the Attorney General, Mr. Holder. It was made during the administration of President George W. Bush."

During the previous presidential administration, the liberal media were more than happy to promote the Left's allegations of improper political interference by Bush officials in the workings of the federal government. The Bushies improperly revised government scientists' conclusions, bullied CIA analysts over their interpretation of Iraq intelligence, and perhaps worst of all, politicized the Justice Department, the media insisted.

Yet when it comes to a serious charge of political interference by Obama appointees at the DOJ involving voter intimidation,  Newsweek's David Graham dismisses the charge as simply another effort by conservatives at "staging an effective piece of political theater that hurts the Obama administration." 

As Newsweek editors quipped in their headline for Graham's story, "The New Black Panther Party Is the New ACORN."

As we've noted here at NewsBusters, the liberal media virtually ignored the story about how a DOJ career attorney's case against a New Black Panther member was dropped in May 2009 under the okay of an Obama DOJ appointee.

Now with attention being cast by conservatives on the media's bias by omission, folks like Graham are coming to the defense of the media by painting the matter as a non-scandal, evidenced in part by the conservative media outlets that have been the ones at the forefront of reporting the story:

While devoting all of Sunday's Face the Nation to an interview with Attorney General Eric Holder, CBS host Bob Schieffer failed to ask a single question about the Obama Justice Department dropping a voter intimidation case against the Black Panthers or allegations that the department has adopted a policy of ignoring such cases.

Schieffer discussed a range of topics with Holder, from the federal lawsuit against Arizona's immigration law, to a potential criminal investigation into BP, to the trial of terrorist Khalid Shaik Muhammed and closing Guantanamo Bay. At the end of the interview, Schieffer even asked about Holder's infamous comment that the United States was a "nation of cowards" when it came to discussing race.

However, the Face the Nation host failed to use that comment as a transition to the Black Panthers case, despite the fact that former DOJ attorney Christian Adams recently testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, accusing the department of adopting a policy of refusing to pursue voter intimidation cases that involved black defendants and white victims.

Attorney General Eric Holder said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that if the suit filed last Tuesday -- on the grounds that immigration falls under the federal government's jurisdiction -- failed, the Justice Department could sue on the grounds of racial discrimination.

...Holder said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that the federal government was leading with its "strongest" argument in the suit filed Tuesday and would not rule out a second suit months down the road -- if the law ends up going into effect.

"It doesn't mean that if the law for whatever reason happened to go into effect, that six months from now, a year from now, we might not look at the impact the law has had ... and see whether or not there has been that racial profiling impact," Holder said. "If that was the case, we would have the tools and we would bring suit on that basis."

Will DOJ have a case if Holder pursues this angle?

The Obama/Holder Department of Justice closed down an investigation into voter intimidation on Election Day 2008 by the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia. Yet the broadcast news media have been virtually silent on the matter, making it the first item in last night's "Media Mash" segment on Fox News Channel's "Hannity."

Noted NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell:

Here you had a whistleblower from the Department of Justice saying how Eric Holder, the Attorney General, and his office stepped in and stopped the prosecution of these Black Panther people. He claimed it was the easiest prosecution in his career. He said everything was on video, everything was on tape.... It was a slam dunk.... Look, the media are refusing to cover just how radical this attorney general is...

"You have people in paramilitary uniforms, you know, spewing racial epithets at voters as they go into the polling place... obviously a case of voter intimidation. Still no coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, several major newspapers in this country," host Sean Hannity observed.

Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) discusses the Arizona Immigration Law and the Liddy interview fallout.

The American lawyers who flock to Guantanamo Bay to represent captured terrorists are simply fulfilling their duty to provide representation, it is often argued by those who seem to enjoy mucking up efforts to curtail future terrorism. But once representing the American beverage giant Coca Cola makes Attorney General Eric Holder a “corporatist” who’s going to “do the Devil’s work” and only “pretend” to go tough on BP after the oil spill, lefty talk radio host Mike Malloy (a onetime CNN news writer) argued Wednesday night. (Audio here.)

I guess you know this by now, the, uh, Justice Department under Eric Holder who defended, uh, was it Coca-Cola, against murder charges in, uh, South America? Good old Eric Holder, another corporatist, who, uh, is going to do the Devil’s work now and pretend that he is conducting a criminal investigation into the events that led to the oil gush?

For their part, the big three network evening newscasts reported Holder’s announcement of a “criminal investigation” against BP during their Tuesday night broadcasts, but only CBS’s Chip Reid struck what could be called a skeptical note about the Obama administration’s motives in publicly touting the investigation after a week of criticism about the federal government’s less-than-effective handling of the matter.

On Saturday’s Fox News Watch, as the panel discussed revelations that Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano admitted to not having read the Arizona immigration law even as they criticized it publicly, FNC contributor Jim Pinkerton cited the Media Research Center, parent organization of NewsBusters, and passed on findings contained in the May 18 "Bozell Column," as he informed the panel that ABC, CBS and NBC had all ignored these embarrassing admissions by Obama administration cabinet members. Pinkerton:

And it was interesting, as Brent Bozell at the Media Research Center pointed out, not any of the big networks – ABC, CBS, or NBC – reported that Holder and Napolitano hadn't read it. And the major newspapers, the Post and Times, also didn't report it. By comparison, we could imagine what would have happened if a Democratic Congressman asked Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General under President Bush, if he hadn't read something. There would have been a typhoon of, "What a moron." And yet, stone silence from the mainstream media.

Panel member Rich Lowry of the National Review may also have picked up on a NewsBusters item when he recounted FNC veteran Brit Hume’s criticism of the inaccurate media coverage of the Arizona immigration law, and the mistake he admitted to making in initially believing the media misinformation. Lowry:

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on Friday posted a highly-humorous video on YouTube mocking members of the Obama administration that have voiced negative opinions about her state's new anti-illegal immigration law without even bothering to read it.

See if you can name them as you sing a long:

On Thursday's Situation Room, CNN's Jack Cafferty blasted President Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon for their criticism of Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law, stating that the two were "whining" about the law. Cafferty singled out Calderon for having "a lot of nerve...complaining" about the Arizona law and labeled Congress's standing ovation for the Mexican leader "disgusting."

The commentator devoted his Cafferty File segment 13 minutes into the 5 pm Eastern hour to slamming the two leaders' criticism of the Grand Canyon's State's newly-passed legislation. Cafferty wasted little time and targeted Calderon first for his criticism of the law on American soil: "Mexican President Felipe Calderon has a lot of nerve coming into this country and complaining about Arizona's immigration law, when all the state wants to do is protect itself against a flood of illegal immigrants from Calderon's country." He continued that "Calderon and President Obama are both whining about the Arizona law. Calderon, who also took the message to a joint meeting of Congress, is calling Arizona's law discriminatory."

Liberal reporters always think that the liberal politicians they’re covering are the smartest people in the room. In fact, when they’re opposing something, they’re so smart that they don’t have to read the policy they’re discussing. They have a clairvoyant sense of how wrong it is.

Congressman Ted Poe of Texas exposed this liberal arrogance on May 13 at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. He was questioning Attorney General Eric Holder on the “controversial” (to the media, that is) Arizona immigration law. He asked an elementary question, although to liberals, it was shocking in its insolence: “Have you read the Arizona law?”

Holder’s response: “I have not had a chance. I grant that I have not read it.”

An incredulous Poe shot back that it wasn’t exactly a night’s worth of reading: “It's 10 pages. It's a lot shorter than the health care bill, which was 2,000 pages long. I'll give you my copy of it, if you would like to have a copy.”

"Memo from 2002 could complicate challenge of Arizona immigration law," lamented the Washington Post in a Web site headline today.

Staffer Jerry Markon explained in his 11-paragraph story -- which ran on page A17 in the print edition* -- that the Obama/Holder Department of Justice (DOJ) has not rescinded a Bush administration memo that "concluded that state police officers have 'inherent power' to arrest undocumented immigrants for violating federal law."

Although the memo is not legally binding, it does "carry great weight within the executive branch" and is considered "to be the Justice Department's official position" on the issue. 

But while this certainly is a complication to any move by the Holder DOJ to file a lawsuit in federal court to toss out the Arizona anti-illegal immigration law as unconstitutional, it equally provides ammo to Arizona lawmakers and Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who can point to the memo as evidence that they acted well within constitutional bounds.

Of course, it doesn't fit the liberal media's favored storyline if the Post had placed this story on page A1 and headlined it, "Arizona immigration law may fall in line with DOJ  memo."

Attorney General Eric Holder maligned Arizona law enforcement, said publicly that the state's new immigration law is prone to racial profiling, and he hadn't even read the law.

(Background border footage used with permission of Border Invasion Pics)

Holder can't say radical Islam a possible reason for attempted bombing in Times Square, but CAN say that the AZ law is evil without even reading it.

Where does he rank on the "Inept Meter?"

This is one of those "you know the ending, but someone has to take note anyway" media bias posts.

On Thursday, NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard revealed that Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder had told an oversight hearing of the House Judiciary Committee the following about his knowledge of Arizona's recently pass immigration law-enforcement measure:

I have not had a chance to, I've glanced at it. I have not read it.

... I have not really, I have not been briefed yet.

... I've only made, made the comments that I've made on the basis of things that I've been able to glean by reading newspaper accounts, obviously, looking at television, talking to people who are on the review panel, on the review team that are looking at the law.

It will surprise almost no one who visits this site that Holder's admitted ignorance about a routinely misrepresented law -- misrepresentations that have led to calls for boycotts of Arizona, a PC-obsessed cancellation of a girls high school basketball team's hoop dreams, and hysterical hyperventilation at Holder's Justice Department as well as by the President of the United States himself -- has received very little establishment media attention.

Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday said that he hasn't read Arizona's recently adopted anti-illegal immigration law that has generated sharp criticism from the Administration he represents.

In a Department of Justice oversight hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.) said to Holder, "I understand that you may file a lawsuit against the law. Seems to me the Administration ought to be enforcing border security and immigration laws and not challenge them, and that the Administration is on the wrong side of the American people."

Poe then asked Holder point blank, "Have you read the Arizona law?"

Given the Administration's stated antipathy towards this legislation, the response from its Attorney General is sure to shock many Americans on both sides of the aisle (video follows with partial transcript and commentary): 

When it comes to Miranda, Rachel Maddow would do wise to remain silent.

On her MSNBC show Tuesday night, Maddow falsely implied that Times Square bomb plot suspect Faisal Shahzad spilled his guts to authorities only after he was read his Miranda rights. Here's Maddow's slippery take, preceded by remarks from Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Deputy Director John Pistole at a press conference after Shahzad was arrested --

HOLDER: He has been and continues to be questioned by federal agents. As a result of those communications, Shahzad has provided useful information to authorities.

PISTOLE: Joint terrorism task force agents and officers from NYPD interviewed Mr. Shahzad last night and early this morning under the public safety exception to the Miranda rule. He was, as the Attorney General noted, cooperative and provided valuable intelligence and evidence. He was eventually transported to another location, mirandized and continued talking.

"NY car bomb suspect cooperates, but motive mystery," an AOL News headline (see screencap at right) for an AP story published this morning.

Really?! 

Of course five paragraphs into the article, AP writers Tom Hays and John Christoffersen quote Attorney General Holder as saying:

Based on what we know so far, it is clear that this was a terrorist plot aimed at murdering Americans in one of the busiest places in our country...

Killing a large number of innocent civilians at once in a major American metropolis sounds like a motive in and of itself. It certainly was the motive for other radical Islamic terrorist operations, namely the 9/11 attacks.

The New York Times published a scathing editorial Sunday condemning Americans who have the audacity to request that attorneys who represented terrorists not set national legal policy. The Times smeared them and their elected representatives as McCarthyites, and criticized them for noting that colossal conflict of interest.

"It is not the first time that the right has tried to distract Americans from the real issues surrounding detention policy by attacking lawyers," the Times states of controversy over Attorney General Eric Holder's reluctance to inform Congress who in the Justice Department has represented alleged terrorists, and in what capacity are they now serving.

But the left has done just that -- use nominees' records as means to block their appointments -- and the Times hasn't complained. So why the sudden outrage? Well, the paper's liberal editorial board doesn't mind when the left attacks. But when conservatives demand answers, they are evil McCarthyites on a political witch hunt.