Free Republic

The House Wednesday evening voted overwhelmingly to prevent the Justice Department from using taxpayer funds to lie to Congress. The vote came in a Wednesday evening series of amendments to a bill, H.R. 5326, funding the Justice Department for 2013. Members approved the language in a 381-41 vote; all 41 "no" votes came from Democrats, although 142 Democrats voted with Republicans in support of the amendment. The vote reflects the ongoing frustration Republicans — and apparently some Democrats — have with Attorney General Eric Holder. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) offered the novel funding limitation amendment earlier in the day. The amendment...

Following through on a threat made to this column and to Fox News, South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy on Tuesday introduced an amendment — passed by voice vote in the House of Representatives — cutting $1 million from the Justice Department’s appropriation for FY 2013. Gowdy told this column that he would pursue that avenue because of Attorney General Eric Holder’s continual stalling and failures to provide tens of thousands of document pages requested and subpoenaed by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of which Gowdy is a member. In his freshman term, Gowdy — a former federal...

Federal authorities say they intend to file a lawsuit against Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and his department over allegations of civil rights violations.

In a dangerous power grab that will jeopardize government transparency, the Obama Justice Department wants to redefine federal public record law so that it becomes the sole arbiter in disputes between agencies and individuals who submit requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The unprecedented move would give the Department of Justice (DOJ), an extension of the executive branch, scary authority to determine if and how public records are disseminated throughout government. It would also strip those duties from the agency— Office of Government Information Services (OGIS)—that was created by Congress as a neutral party to mediate FOIA...

Late Friday afternoon, Free Beacon reporter CJ Ciaramella requested a comment from the Justice Department about my new book Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Coverup. This was the response he received.   That's right folks. Media Matters, the far Left website funded by George Soros, is now serving as a mouth piece for the United States Department of Justice. Not only did DOJ refer Ciaramella to Media Matters for information about Operation Fast and Furious, but didn't even refer him to material that had anything to do with his original question about the FBI covering...

Americans must ask themselves whether Eric Holder and black leaders indeed fear the New Black Panther Party, as they all refuse to condemn their rhetoric and tactics in the last few weeks. The Trayvon Martin Case is the latest in a long list of incidents into which the New Black Panther Party has injected itself, but nothing has measured up to its latest tactics, which include placing a bounty on George Zimmerman’s head with the qualifier "dead or alive." It would seems to the most independent of observers that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in his refusal to condemn this...

The U.S. Department of Justice had no comment on the $10,000 bounty the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) was offering for a "citizen's arrest" of George Zimmerman, the 28 year old man who told Sanford, Florida Police he shot and killed 17 year old Trayvon Martin on February 26 in an act of self-defense. According to a number of reports, the NBPP  "called for the mobilization of 10,000 black men" to do the "arrest." Zimmerman and his family have received death threats since the case became a national issue. Mr. Zimmerman has not been arrested by local authorities. Federal, state, and...

“A federal judge acquitted seven members of the Hutaree militia Tuesday of the most serious charges following six weeks of testimony in a high-profile terror case,” The Detroit News reported yesterday. On the second anniversary of the Hutaree arrests, U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts granted a defense motion to acquit the militia members on seven charges, including seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. Still open are some weapons charges “against Hutaree leader David Stone Sr. and his son.” It’s a stunning defeat for Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department, which made great media hay of the...

In one heck of an analogy, then U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. – Eric Holder – likened guns to cigarettes, saying that perceptions about guns needed to become more stigmatized. He said this during a speech in 1995 and suggested an aggressive advertising campaign to convince the public that this was true. At one point, he literally said that he wanted the advertising to be so pervasive that it would “brainwash” people. To Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America (GOA), such advocacy on the part of Holder flies in the face of his Constitutional oath. “As...

At this point, anyone who does not see that we are living under a communist dictatorship of the current administration in Washington is woefully ignorant or willfully blind. One of the latest outrages against America’s free and sovereign states has—no surprise—come at the hands of the lawless Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ, under the racist Eric Holder, has made a mockery of its own name, because there is no justice in that department. It has become nothing more than a strong-arm, thug tool for Barack Obama (or whatever his name is). This week, the DOJ blocked Texas’ voter identification...

The ruling against the new Texas voting requirements law by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder comes as no surprise to any who have been following the behavior of the Department of Justice's top official. A Monday (3/12/2012) report from The Washington Post, "DoJ Bars Texas Voter ID Law," is thoroughly consistent with a similar decree issued by the Department of Justice against a state law in South Carolina. In both states, their respective legislatures and governors had passed laws which required voters to present a state-recognized picture voter identification card in advance of voting. The card could be in the...

For Attorney General Eric Holder, life must present a hellish vista of pervasive racist practices. Wherever he goes, people are required to show identification. When cashing a check. When signing up for a library card. When boarding a plane. When entering certain office buildings. When checking into hotels. When (in the case of the youthful-looking) buying a beer or cigarettes, or entering a bar. The tyranny of the photo ID is so all-encompassing that people can’t enter Holder’s own Justice Department without showing one. Holder is outraged that in a nation where requests for photo ID are ubiquitous, more and...

The Justice Department is objecting to a new photo ID law in Texas for voters, saying the state has failed to demonstrate that the the law is not discriminatory by design against Hispanic voters. The department's head of the civil rights division, Tom Perez, wrote a a six-page letter to Texas' director of elections saying that Texas has not "sustained its burden" under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to show that the new law will not have a discriminatory effect on minority voters. About 11 percent of Hispanic voters reportedly lack state-issued identification. Perez wrote that while the...

Seeking to overturn a DOJ judgment that its voter photo identification law, passed in May 2011, violates the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA), the state of South Carolina recently announced that it is suing the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder in federal court. The decision by South Carolina comes as the DOJ is vigorously working to stop the spread of states enacting or implementing voter photo ID laws, prompting fears that the Obama administration is undermining the integrity of the upcoming 2012 elections. In December 2011, the DOJ blocked South Carolina’s new voter ID law from taking effect...

Last Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to answer questions about his role in the deadly “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal. However, instead of answers, Congress got more defiance, more arrogance, and more wasted time with an attorney general who clearly feels no sense of obligation to the American people or our rule of law. But for all the stonewalling, there was at least one telling moment at this hearing, and it should concern law-abiding gun owners and all Americans who expect accountability from our government. In a rash attempt to...

The mother of murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry had harsh words for Attorney General Eric Holder after Thursday’s House oversight committee hearing on Operation Fast and Furious. “THIS IS FOR YOU SON,” Mrs. Terry posted on Facebook at about 3:30 p.m. “Mr. Holder. How come you can never say my sons name. You never have. All i ever hear you say is ‘i didnt find out or I cant say’ Im actually tired of hearing your double talk in answering questions. What a joke you are. You know my son was a real AMERICAN, a WARRIOR, and a HERO,...

Attorney General Eric Holder used his testimony before a House committee on Thursday to tout the supposed need for new gun control laws to prevent “gun walking,” or the transportation of firearms across the Southern border. But he – and members of the committee – ignored existing laws that already accomplish Holder’s ostensible goals. “That is why we need a stronger gun trafficking law,” Holder said in response to questions about recourse against officials who signed off on the gun walking tactic. The tactic was integral to Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed the transportation of roughly 2,500 firearms into...

A U.S. Justice Department source has told The Daily Caller that at least two DOJ prosecutors accepted cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted under court seal within the past 13 months, but never arrested or prosecuted. (snip) The bribed officials, an attorney with knowledge of the investigation told TheDC, remain on the taxpayers’ payroll at the Justice Department without any accountability. The DOJ source said Holder does not want to admit public officials accepted bribes while under his leadership.

Scandal: For incompetence alone, Attorney General Eric Holder should resign in the wake of the illegal "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal. But fresh news that he knew of it and is covering it up warrants impeachment. In the latest Friday night document dump — news released as to minimize its scandalous impact on the White House — congressional investigators learned that Attorney General Holder knew all along that a gun his Justice Department intentionally let fall into the hands of Mexico's cartels was used to murder U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry on Dec. 15, 2010. Holder must have known...

WASHINGTON — Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday are expected to publish a report on the disputed gun trafficking investigation called Operation Fast and Furious, concluding that agents in Arizona — not Obama administration officials — were responsible for the tactics used in the inquiry and for providing misleading information relayed to Congress. In an 89-page report, titled “Fatally Flawed: Five Years of Gun-walking in Arizona,” the Democratic staff portrays Fast and Furious as the fourth investigation, dating back to 2006, in which Arizona-based agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives employed...