Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) made the following statement regarding his decision to oppose President Obama’s nomination of Eric Holder for U.S. Attorney General: “The Attorney General is our nation’s top law enforcement official, and Americans deserve better than someone who helped pardon terrorists and tax cheats and who is hostile to Second Amendment rights,” said Senator DeMint. As assistant U.S. attorney general during the Clinton Administration, Holder recommended that Marc Rich, one of the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” at the time, receive a presidential pardon. Rich was indicted in 1983 for evading more...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) made this statement on his vote in support of Eric Holder to serve as U.S. Attorney General. “Mr. Holder understands the threat to our nation posed by terrorism. In the Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the nomination, Mr. Holder agreed with me the United States is undoubtedly at war with a vicious and shadowy enemy, and that the war began before the attacks of September 11, 2001. “Mr. Holder agreed with me as well that the battlefield in the War on Terror is the entire globe. It is not limited to the combat...

Holder confirmed as attorney general, 75-21

We should admit it. There was a breakdown in the balanced operation of the US government. Amid his first acts in office, President Obama set a timeline for the closure of Guantánamo Bay and secret detention facilities around the world, ended abusive interrogation techniques, and lifted secrecy restrictions ordered by President George W. Bush on the records of past presidents. These moves are welcome, but they do not change the fact that during the last administration, President Bush and Vice President Cheney were confronted with too few checks on their expansive interpretation of executive power. It's time for some rewiring....

If the issue weren’t so serious for our nation, the irony would be delicious. Eric Holder, President Obama’s choice for Attorney General is justly criticized for many things. But the fact that he recommended that President Clinton pardon and release from prison unrepentant FALN terrorists while at nearly the same time advocating that law-abiding gun owners be imprisoned if their registration papers are not in order reveals a hard core left wing agenda. Eric Holder’s agenda is to make exercise of Second Amendment rights a minefield where an innocent misstep will land you in the penitentiary. When I testified against...

No links to Bloomberg. Approved 17-2 with 6 of 8 Republicans going for him. It's over...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Senate committee voted to approve Eric Holder to be the first black attorney general, sending his nomination on Wednesday to the full Senate, which is expected to confirm him. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 17-2 to confirm President Barack Obama's nomination of Holder, a deputy attorney general under former President Bill Clinton. Holder had faced questions over his record, including his support for controversial pardons issued by Clinton, and Republicans had delayed the vote for a week until Wednesday. "Eric Holder is a good man. He's a decent man. He's a public servant committed to the...

The political wrangling surrounding the nomination of Eric H. Holder Jr. for attorney general appeared to end Tuesday with his most vociferous Republican critic pledging to back President Obama's choice to lead the Justice Department. Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, said he will support Mr. Holder, 58, when his nomination comes to a vote Wednesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which virtually ensures it will be approved by that committee. "I think that Mr. Holder is entitled to the benefit of the doubt in the context of the excellent record he has," said Mr. Specter, who is the top Republican...

Three times during his tenure as Deputy Attorney General, Eric Holder was made fully aware that intelligence sharing with the Criminal Division was not taking place. As the officer in charge of day-to-day operations at the Department of Justice, his lack of due diligence ensured that the 'Wall' between the intelligence and criminal divisions of the FBI that Jamie Gorelick had built would remain in place for the foreseeable future. The 'Wall' stood as the Clinton administration and intelligence community saw the rising threat of al Qaeda, Ramzi Yousef was prosecuted for making the bomb used in the 1993 attack...

One sector of the American economy that is booming is the absolute orgy of guns and ammunition sales. I am pretty certain President Obama will not say anything positive about this economic news. I have read more than one report that shows how the surge of civilian firepower sales began back when it appeared that Obama was likely to be elected. The already-brisk guns and ammo market blew up another 25% once he was elected. Reason: freedom lovers do not trust liberal President Obama. His nomination for Attorney General, Mr. Eric Holder, proves that distrust is justified. Both President Obama...

HOLDER:...I think you had asked me earlier about the regulations that I thought might still exist, post-Heller. And I had mentioned, I think, closing the gun show loophole, the banning of cop-killer bullets and I also think that making the assault weapons ban permanent would be something that would be permitted under Heller, and I also think would be good for my law enforcement perspective.

U.S. Attorney General-designate Eric Holder was prepared to be bombarded during his Senate confirmation hearings Thursday with a host of questions about a variety of topics, including his role as acting attorney general during a special investigation into the 1993 Branch Davidian debacle. While he fielded questions about waterboarding terrorist suspects and the 2001 pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, Senate Judiciary Committee members didn’t get around to asking about the Branch Davidian investigation. Former Attorney General Janet Reno recused herself from a special investigation that was conducted by former U.S. Sen. John Danforth into how the fire started in...

Eric Holder, President-elect Barack Obama's pick for attorney general, drew applause from liberal Democrats earlier this year when he denounced the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. A review of Holder's public statements, speeches, and testimony when he was a top Justice Department official in the Clinton administration, however, reveals a more nuanced record on privacy. His remarks indicate support for laws mandating Internet traceability, limits on domestic use of encryption, and more restrictions on free speech online. He also called for new powers for federal prosecutors, some of which became law under President Bush as part of the USA Patriot...

Republicans have delayed for one week a committee vote on Eric Holder Jr.'s nomination to be attorney general, giving them extra time to pore over Holder's long record and force him to answer questions in writing about policies he would pursue at the Department of Justice. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., ranking GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, requested the delay on behalf of the eight other GOP members. They met this morning, Specter said, and "there was a unanimous view that there has been insufficient time to question Mr. Holder." Under committee rules, the request for a delay was...

Eric Holder’s intercession on behalf of fugitive Marc Rich is so inexplicable that he has always viewed ignorance as his best defense. It’s as though Holder believes that a deputy attorney general looks better for having remained studiously unaware of critical facts in a criminal case before throwing his weight around. But that’s Holder’s story, and he’s sticking to it: even if it turns out not to be true. Holder is President Obama’s choice to become attorney general. That means the Rich case is a big problem for him today—just as it was in 2001, when an outraged Congress demanded...

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a brief meeting this afternoon in which Republicans forced a one-week delay in a committee vote on the nomination of Eric Holder to be attorney general. Chairman Patrick Leahy wanted to hold the vote today, but ranking Republican Arlen Specter complained that members had not had enough time to question Holder at hearings last week. Under the committee's rules, the minority can be granted a one-week delay in the vote. Specter said he had held a meeting of committee Republicans this morning, "and there was a unanimous view that there has been insufficient time to...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The initial confirmation vote for Eric Holder, President Barack Obama's pick for attorney general, was postponed for a week Wednesday after a rancorous meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Obama pick faces questions over bombers' clemencyBy PETE YOST Associated Press Writer Originally published Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 2:05 PM WASHINGTON — New York police detective Anthony S. Senft's life changed forever when a bomb set by Puerto Rican separatists exploded, blowing him 15 feet in the air and blinding him in one eye. Now, he's angry that Eric Holder, who played a key role in awarding clemency to the bombers, is in line to be attorney general. Holder, as President Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, worked closely with the Justice Department's pardon attorney to raise the possibility of...

Pattern or practice” police litigation did drop significantly under the Bush administration, though to its discredit Bush’s DOJ did not try to dismantle the existing consent decrees. Some criminologists are already calling for the Obama administration to revive Clinton-era tactics. This Thursday, during attorney general–designate Holder’s confirmation hearings, senators should ask him on what grounds he would inflict his civil-rights attorneys on police departments. They should also inquire whether he believes that a racially disparate stop rate provides prima facie evidence of police racism. As the economic recession deepens, the last thing cash-strapped police departments and municipalities need is more...

Senate Republicans have invited the son of man killed in a 1975 Puerto Rican nationalist bombing as well as a former FBI agent who investigated two violent groups supporting Puerto Rican independence to appear at Eric Holder’s confirmation hearings. In particular, they question Holder’s role in President Clinton’s 2001 pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich as well as Holder’s involvement in Clinton’s 1999 decision to grant clemency to 16 violent Puerto Rican nationalists. To drive home those questions, Republicans have arranged for Joseph F. Connor, whose father was killed in the Jan. 24, 1975, bombing of Fraunces Tavern in New...

In two days, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) will begin the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Eric Holder, former Clinton deputy attorney general who is President-elect Barack Obama’s highly controversial nominee to the office of Attorney General. Holder, best known for playing a major role in the Clinton pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, will face skeptical Republicans, including ranking Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Specter has run into a Leahy roadblock in his attempts to get some of the background documents on the nomination. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy has refused to sign off on document requests by Republicans...

Eric H. Holder Jr. is facing increasing resistance to his bid to become the next attorney general, emerging from President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet nominees as the prime target of Senate Republicans, both because of troubling episodes during his service in the Clinton administration and because of the sensitivity of the post overseeing the Justice Department. With two days of confirmation hearings set to begin Thursday, Holder must demonstrate his independence from Obama to a vocal chorus of GOP lawmakers who want to warn the incoming president that he should not veer too far to the left on national security and...

Reporting from Washington — Attorney general nominee Eric H. Holder Jr. repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations, according to interviews and documents. Details of the role played by Holder, who was deputy attorney general at the time, had not been publicly known until now. The new disclosures are of particular interest because Republican senators have vowed to revisit Holder's role during his confirmation hearings next week. Holder had no comment for this article, but...

Holder omitted Blagojevich link from questionnaire Announced as a ‘special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board’ in 2004 December 17, 2008 BY CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporter/cfusco@suntimes.com Before Eric Holder was President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be attorney general, he was Gov. Blagojevich's pick to sort out a mess involving Illinois' long-dormant casino license. Blagojevich and Holder appeared together at a March 24, 2004, news conference to announce Holder's role as "special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board" -- a post that was to pay Holder and his Washington, D.C. law firm up to $300,000. Holder, however, omitted that event from...

A conservative senator would be a true American hero if he or she would put a hold on -- i.e., threaten to filibuster -- the nomination of Eric Holder to be the next attorney general. Let me be clear: I don’t believe that conservatives should use the filibuster to block Holder. But I do think the filibuster is an excellent procedural tool to force a needed debate. Senators should explore Holder’s views on the right to bear arms and the Elian Gonzales raid before they consent to his appointment. The Second Amendment is sacrosanct to all freedom-loving Americans. Yet Holder,...

Soon after Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, the former president and I had a brief telephone conversation. I had been downright heated about the pardon, a lot angrier than I had ever been about Monica Lewinsky. Clinton implied that I had things historically backward. Long after the Rich pardon had been forgotten, he said, the Lewinsky scandal would remain a vivid memory. That day is yet to come. The Rich pardon is back. The vehicle for this lingering echo from the year 2001 is the choice of Eric Holder as Barack Obama's attorney general. Holder was Clinton's deputy attorney general...

One of Barack Obama’s first acts as president should be to instruct his attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation of former Bush Administration officials who gave the green light to torture. At Obama’s press conference on Dec. 1, he spoke of upholding America’s highest values as he introduced Eric Holder as his choice for attorney general. Holder insisted there was no tension between protecting the people of the United States and adhering to our Constitution. A few months ago, Holder was even more explicit. “Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret...

WASHINGTON — In the much praised career of Eric H. Holder Jr., President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be attorney general, there is one notable blemish: Mr. Holder’s complicated role in the 2001 pardon of Marc Rich, a billionaire financier who had fled the country rather than face federal tax evasion charges. Mr. Holder’s supporters portray him as having been a relatively uninvolved bystander caught in a Clinton-era controversy, the remarkable granting of a last-minute pardon by President Bill Clinton to a fugitive from justice. But interviews and an examination of Congressional records show that Mr. Holder, who at the time...

"As President, I will uphold the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun-owners, hunters, and sportsmen. I know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne." That was Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on June 26, 2008, responding to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down Washington, DC's draconian handgun ban and held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms—not a collective one. "I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals," Obama went on, "but I also identify with the need for...

Barack Obama’s nomination of Eric Holder for attorney general will not sit well with advocates of Second Amendment rights — Holder has consistently championed stronger gun-control measures. As deputy attorney general in the Bill Clinton administration from 1997 to 2001, Holder “was a strong supporter of restrictive gun control,” according to The Volokh Conspiracy, a Web site that focuses on the legal system and the courts. He advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three-day waiting period on handgun sales, rationing handgun sales to no more than one per month, banning possession of handguns and so-called "assault weapons" by anyone...

The Democrats have bleated for years about the detention of illegal combatants at Guantanamo, while the Left and the "international community" have demanded that captured terrorists be treated as prisoners of war. We read in the November 22-23 Wall Street Journal (page A13) that Barack Obama's selected Attorney General, Eric Holder, agrees with us that terrorists are not uniformed combatants who are entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention. Per an interview on CNN in January 2002, One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find...

"It's like Keystone Cops."

Earlier this year, Eric Holder--along with Janet Reno and several other former officials from the Clinton Department of Justice--co-signed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller. The brief was filed in support of DC's ban on all handguns, and ban on the use of any firearm for self-defense in the home. The brief argued that the Second Amendment is a "collective" right, not an individual one, and asserted that belief in the collective right had been the consistent policy of the U.S. Department of Justice since the FDR administration. A brief filed by some other former DOJ officials...

In the VIDEO below, Eric Holder testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the pardons extended by President Clinton to the 16 FALN terrorists. Then Judiciary Committee Chairman Orin Hatch grills Holder concerning the lack of screening in connection with the pardons. In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton's commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN terrorists who even Holder conceded had not expressed any remorse. The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife's impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York's substantial Puerto...

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=e4qGQuQuQu In a 07 radio interview Obama promises that one of his first acts as president is going to be to call in his new Attorney General to review every single executive order and if they can find that any laws were broken, accountability would be his Attorney General’s job. He also admits the democrats are currently documenting and investigating the Bush Administration Also in the Video Eric Holder is insulting Bush. Saying there was NO real leader of the free world for the last 6 years.

Danny Glover at Eyeblast reveals a nine-year-old NPR interview with Eric Holder regarding how the government needs to regulate Internet communications. The rumored front-runner for Attorney General told NPR that the Columbine killers may have found some of their venom through Internet access, as well as a bomb recipe or two. If the government can regulate pornography, Holder insisted while serving as Deputy AG during the Clinton administration, surely the government can restrict speech in general:

Here's the next Attorney General talking about curbing free speech on the internet:

New Year's Eve, 1982...New York Police Department's elite bomb squad rushed to headquarters at One Police Plaza, where minutes earlier an explosion had destroyed the entrance to the building. A total of four bombs exploded in a single hour on that night, including at FBI headquarters in Manhattan and the federal courthouse in Brooklyn. The perpetrators were members of ... FALN ... Its members waged war on America with bombings, arson, kidnappings, prison escapes, threats and intimidation. The most gruesome attack was the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan. Timed to go off during the lunch-hour rush... FALN bragged...

WASHINGTON - Eric Holder is in line for nomination by President-elect Barack Obama to the attorney general's job that Holder has long wanted, but the 2001 episode with fugitive financier Marc Rich is stirring partisan acrimony. The role of the former deputy attorney general in the pardon of Rich opened Holder to strong criticism from Capitol Hill in a political uproar that Republicans refuse to forget nearly eight years later. The Republican National Committee is resurrecting the episode, circulating an e-mail Wednesday that asks, "Why does Obama want to appoint an attorney general with a long history of controversial pardons?"...

The transition to a new administration is underway and people are naturally curious about what to expect at the Department of Justice. Asked to check into this, I called on friends inside and outside the Justice Department, on the Hill, and in think tanks. No one seems to have a very clear or full picture yet, although there are some hints in specific areas which I’ll deal with below.

This arises out of the Elian Gonzalez mess back in the Clinton years when the boy was forcibly removed from his home at gunpoint by federal agents. Then Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder flatly denied in an interview with Fox News that the child was taken at gunpoint. Judge Andrew Napolitano nails him. More . . .

Most notable among the petitions for clemency granted during Holder’s tenure is the request from 16 members of a Puerto Rican Marxist terrorist group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation, known by its Spanish acronym FALN, which engaged in a robbery and terror campaign in both the U.S. and Puerto Rico during the 1970s and 1980s. The clemency petition, which was supported by Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-N.Y.), Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) and Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), became the subject of fiery controversy after it was revealed that none of the convicted terrorists had renounced violence and that their victims had not been...

As we observed throughout the campaign, Barack Obama gave indications that his election would mean a return to the September 10 mentality, a national-security outlook marked prominently by its lack of seriousness about the terrorist threat. In choosing Eric Holder to be his attorney general, President-Elect Obama has taken a step toward confirming those misgivings. [...] Holder is a conventional, check-the-boxes creature of the Left. He is convinced justice in America needs to be “established” rather than enforced; he’s excited about hate crimes and enthusiastic about the constitutionally dubious Violence Against Women Act; he’s a supporter of affirmative action and...

Last night, Larry King had four guests on his show to discuss the nomination of Eric Holder to become Attorney General. Even though Holder's role in the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich by Bill Clinton was highly controversial, not one of the guests had any real problem with that. Somehow Larry King couldn't find a single guest who would offer arguments against the appointment of Eric Holder. To get you up to speed on Holder's role in the Marc Rich pardon, here is an Associated Press story on this subject from last June: The last time Washington attorney Eric Holder...

As we wrote yesterday, Obama has apparently picked Eric Holder, one of his veep vetters and a former deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton, for attorney general. Holder is black, which would be a first for the Cabinet position, and rocks a mustache, which isn't a historical first, but certainly can't hurt his prospects. But what could harm him are the concerns coming from both the right and the left — most notably, Holder's role in facilitating the infamous Marc Rich pardon. Of course, anyone who's spent more than twenty minutes in the halls of Washington has done something they...

Here is a video report on the news that Eric Holder is likely to become the Attorney General of the United States. Holder has reportedly been offered the job by Barack Obama, and has accepted. One possible hitch: Holder was involved in the Clinton pardon of Mark Rich just as Bill Clinton was leaving office. . . . (Watch Video)

President-elect Barack Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder, a Washington lawyer who served as the No. 2 official in the Clinton Justice Department, as his next attorney general.

Specifically, in our ongoing efforts to establish justice in our country, we must constantly strive to ensure that the ideal of equality is the guiding principle of all governmental action. For without equality of opportunity, there can be no justice. It is a fundamental responsibility of government to insure that everyone be given an equal chance to succeed, unencumbered by discrimination. This is the "equality of opportunity" and not the "equality of result" to which we, as a society, must aspire. But theory is not adequate; we must put that platitude into practice. The only way that we can expect...

A forthcoming Congressional report on the last-minute pardons by President Bill Clinton says Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was a ''willing participant in the plan to keep the Justice Department from knowing about and opposing'' a pardon for Marc Rich, the financier. The 476-page report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, harshly criticizes the Clinton White House for its handling of the 177 pardons and commutations granted on its last day... < snip > The most controversial pardon went to Mr. Rich, a commodities trader who fled the country in 1983 rather than...

President-elect Barack Obama's aides have privately asked senators whether Washington attorney Eric Holder would be confirmed as the next attorney general, according to a person involved in the talks. The talks suggest that Obama is deeply interested in Holder, who served as the No. 2 official in the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton. A former U.S. attorney, Holder is among Washington's most prominent defense attorneys. He would be the first black attorney general in U.S. history. In the past week, Obama aides have asked Senate Republicans whether they would support Holder. In particular, the aides questioned whether Holder's confirmation...