Posted on 04/29/2011 9:41:04 AM PDT by jazusamo
The New Black Panther Party threatened Philadelphia voters with billy clubs and Eric Holder’s justice department couldn’t be bothered. CAIR was accused of fundraising for Hamas, and Eric Holder shrugged.
But back when Fidel Castro demanded the return of an escaped slave, Eric Holder snapped to attention, clicked his heels, and sprung to action. It is scrupulous legality, we’re given to understand by Mr. Holder, that prevents his Department from prosecutions against the New Black Panthers and CAIR.
But regarding scrupulous legality, Fox News Andrew Napolitano had (then Deputy) Attorney General Eric Holder’s number way back in April 23rd , 2000. Here it is thanks to The Media Research Center:
Napolitano: Tell me, Mr. Holder, why did you not get a court order authorizing you to go in and get the boy (Elian Gonzalez)?
Holder: Because we didn’t need a court order. INS can do this on its own.
Napolitano: You know that a court order would have given you the cloak of respectability to have seized the boy.
Holder: We didn’t need an order.
Napolitano: Then why did you ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for such an order if you didn’t need one?
Holder: [Silence]
Napolitano: The fact is, for the first time in history you have taken a child from his residence at gunpoint to enforce your custody position, even though you did not have an order authorizing it. When is the last time a boy, a child, was taken at the point of a gun without an order of a judge…Unprecedented in American history.”
Holder: “He was not taken at the point of a gun.”
Napolitano: “We have a photograph showing he was taken at the point of a gun.”
Holder: “They were armed agents who went in there who acted very sensitively…”
Thanks to the ritual MSM-Castroite collusion most people forget (or missed) the crucial legal and ethical details of this circus/tragedy — which were mostly established during the first week after Elian’s rescue at sea, after his heroic mother’s drowning. The “son-belongs-with-his-father” crowd, for instance, “missed” (with the help of the MSM-Democratic complex) that Elian’s father was initially delighted that his motherless son was in the U.S. and in the loving arms of his uncles and cousins.
The evidence — frantically buried by the MSM-Democratic complex) — was overwhelming. Mauricio Vincent, a reporter for Madrid newspaper El Pais, wrote that during that first week he’d visited Elian’s home town of Cardenas and talked with Elian’s father, Juan Miguel, along with other family members and friends. All confirmed that Juan Miguel had always longed for his son Elian to flee to the United States. Shortly after Elian’s rescue, his father had even applied for a U.S. visa!
Elian’s Miami uncle, Lazaro, explained it repeatedly and best: “I always said I would turn over Elian to his father, when Juan Miguel would come here and claim him. But I (along with practically everyone with experience under communism from Cambodians to Hungarians and from Lithuanians to Cubans) knew such a thing was impossible. He couldn’t do that. I knew it wasn’t Juan Miguel requesting Elian–it was Fidel.”
The legal-weasels forgot (or missed) that on Dec, 1st 1999 the INS asserted that Miami-based uncle Lazaro was indeed Elian’s legal custodian and Florida’s family court indeed the place to arbitrate further issues.
Then on Dec 5th, 1999, Castro clapped his hands and his MSM minions snapped to attention. Within weeks Clinton’s INS had turned its initial decision on its head. Within months this same INS was kicking down Lazaro’s door, pummeling camera men and elderly ladies to the ground with jackboots and wrenching a screaming Elian from his legal custodians in a blaze of pepper gas and machine guns. When asked for the legal authority for this, they brandished either a search warrant to seize evidence that didn’t exist (and would not have been hidden anyway) or an arrest warrant to seize someone who no one claimed was a criminal or even a lawbreaker.
“They never made it clear just what kind of warrant” it was. And neither would it have been legal,” patiently explained Alan Dershowitz (no less)
So why did Elian’s father change his tune?
Remember Godfather II? Remember the Senate hearings where Frankie Pentangeli, under FBI protection, was prepared to testify against Michael Corleone? The stage was set. Looked like a done-deal for the Feds. Then Frankie looks up and sees his bewildered brother Vincenzo from Sicily, sitting next to Mikey.
Whoops! Frankie sure changed his tune, didn’t he?
Think of Juan Miguel as Frankie Pentangeli. The gun Fidel Castro held to Juan Miguel’s head was as invisible (to those without experience with Communism) as the one Mikey held to Pentangeli’s head was to most spectators at those hearings.
Recently Uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, who suffered ten years in Castro’s dungeons and torture-chambers provided an update: “The Castro regime won’t allow us to contact the boy “and the entire family is forbidden to speak to us. Every time they detect a call from us in Miami, the line drops. I’d love to go and see Elián, talk to him. But they’ll never let us.”
“Elian’s father wanted him, and that’s where he belonged.”
Elian’s father’s evil overlord wanted him, too.
Castro was his father, the State trumps all father’s rights in Cuber.
I don't know. If he'd seen the pic he was flat out lying and if he hadn't he was still lying because the agents that entered were not acting very sensitively.
He stated a supposed fact that wasn't true, of course I'd bet that wasn't the first time and I know it wasn't the last time he hasn't been truthful.
He and his boss are two of a kind.
“I found it strange that they did not understand that the father was nothing more than a pawn used by Castro to force the U.S. to say ‘uncle’ in front of the world. Clinton pretended to offer for the father to move to the U.S., but it was rejected and, of course, not pursued (because Clinton didn’t really want to).’”
Yeah. I remember at the time wondering why, aside from the polarization, this was such a big story. What about all the other kids in Elian’s position? Surely there was some precedence.
The answer, of course, was that it was a story because Castro and Castro-sympathizers made it a story. It was the last meaningful throwback to the old Cold War PR fights (considering our deference to China). We lost.
So I guess Elian's mom disagreed with you. She must have had her reason(s). But we will never know.
How is Elian, politics4us. Do you happen to know how he is doing?
Holder never won his spurs for anything. He rode the pony at the fair once, but that was after-hours and cost him $200.
I agree that I was using that scale, but intentionally so, because that is the scale used by most people in favor of sending him back.
I agree with you. Even using “Their” scale, that would be the equivalent of sending him back to abusive parents.
I could assume you are a Clinton-Reno tool, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt of being sadly misinformed.
I followed the Elian story as closely as anyone could.
I know of the phone calls from the father to Uncle Lazaro in Miami in which he expressed his desire for Elian to live in the U.S.
It was only after Castro got involved that the father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez ( a member of the Cuban communist party) started to accuse the Miami relatives of kidnapping and even child abuse.
Outrageous charges - if one looks at how happy Elian was in Miami with his relatives.
I don’t fault the father. I know he was in an impossible coerced position, but to insist that the father wanted him returned to Cuba is an outright falsehood. Too many Freepers fell for that media and government line.
Or maybe you got sucked in by the Dan Rather 60Minutes interview with the father choking back tears. Well, it wasn’t the father on TV crying. That was the translator.
FYI: Elian’s mother and father were divorced.
Obviously, the mother didn’t want Elian to live with the father - else why try to escape? Sadly, she perished in her dream of freedom for Elian and herself.
You might also be interested in the Walter Polovchak case in which a 14 year old boy was granted religious asylyum by the Carter/Reagan administrations preventing his deportation to Russia in 1980. George Will called him ‘the littlest defector.” His case bounced around in the courts for 4 years until he attained the age of 18, and his Russian parents no longer could contest his choice of remaining in America.
“What about all the other kids in Elian’s position? Surely there was some precedence.”
There was precedence.
The Walter Polovchak case in 1980.
He wrote a book called “Freedom’s Child.”
“Polovchak’s Ukrainian parents, Anna and Michael, found themselves in a drawn-out court battle, fighting to take their son back to his homeland. Young Walter, at 4 feet and 82 pounds, said he would sooner die than return.”
The ACLU took the side of the parents - naturally.
His case dragged on in courts for six years (much thanks to the Reagan administration) at which point he turned 18yrs of age and could decide for himself.
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-04-03/news/vw-1068_1_american-dream/2
http://www.henrymarkholzer.com/how_robert_novak_helped_save_the_littlest_defector.html
As must you be, Gatun.
I can hear and feel the pain still in your heart.
It was and still remains so sad and needless.
Never have the corruption and coarseness of the governments involved been more exposed to the core.
Sacrificing an innocent boy who survived such a horrendous crossing for their ill gains.
A Ronald Reagan would have kept this case in the court systems until the boy was free, as he did with the boy, Walter Polovchak.
The only solace I have is that one day Cuba will be free, and Elian, having suffered hardships, will be the stronger for it. I cannot believe he has truly been indoctrinated.
Thank you for your reply.
“....But they’ll never let us.”
Communists fear freedom’s call even after years of brainwashing.
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"Surprisingly (to me), that is what the majority of Freepers thought, at the time, at least the ones who posted...."
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I feel it is necessary to correct this misconception. There were vastly more FReepers who saw the importance of Elian living in freedom with his extended family in Miami.
You are correct that a lot of FReepers wanted him to go back to Cuba. Their position was heavily influenced by bad experiences with divorce or child custody battles in their own lives.
Unfortunately, the fact remains (as it did then), Elian's father is the communist state and their advocacy for his return did Elian and them no favors.
Maybe you are great (maybe not), but I believe you are not a thinking individual.
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