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It’s Eric Holder Day as we examine another appointment, which like Kerry and Hagel, is a perfect compliment to the president. John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky are first up.
A veteran Justice Department lawyer says that Attorney General Eric Holder has politicized the department in a way he hadn’t seen before. In short, “Holder is the worst person to hold the position of attorney general since the disgraced John Mitchell.”
Now in his sixth year as attorney general, Holder has increasingly tilted the department in an ideological direction. It’s one thing to emphasize President Obama’s legal priorities. It’s quite another to decide not to enforce certain federal laws — such as the ban on marijuana — or urge state attorney generals to refuse to defend local laws on same-sex marriage. Legal changes are achieved through legislation, not through a sudden whim not to enforce them. No other attorney general has acted in this manner. …
Victor Davis Hanson posts on the divisive attorney general.
… is this not the same Attorney General Holder who once called the nation collectively “cowards” and referred to African Americans as “my people” — not to mention a president who has called for some “to punish our enemies”? All that sounds pretty divisive and ugly.
And wasn’t Holder making his allegations of unprofessionalism while speaking before the demagogic Mr. Sharpton’s group? This is the same Al Sharpton who is on record inflaming the Crown Heights riots, provoking violence at the fatal Freddie Fashion Mart riot, helping to invent the Tawana Brawley caper, defaming and attempting to destroy the career of Duchess County prosecutor Steven Pagones, and with a long history of racist outbursts and threats (“white interloper,” “white folks was in caves . . .”, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house”), homophobic outbursts (“We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it”), …
Peter Wehner says Holder can, “Man up.”
Attorney General Eric Holder, in a speech to the National Action Network, accused his congressional critics of launching “unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive” attacks on him and the Obama administration.
“Forget about me [specifically]. Look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee,” Holder said. “What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?”
Let’s take these topics in reverse order. What president has been on the receiving end of such ugly and divisive attacks? Try George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, just for openers. For example, Senator Ted Kennedy declared, from the well of the United States Senate, that “before the [Iraq] war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie.” He also accused President Bush of hatching a phony war, “a fraud … made up in Texas” to boost his political career. Prominent Democrats made these kind of charges all the time against Bush. …
Corner post with more.
… Holder’s notion that past attorneys general have escaped widespread criticism, or that criticism directed toward him is solely race-based, overlooks incidents of those before him, including one of his most recent predecessors. As Mediaite’s Noah Rothman points out, Bush-era attorney general Alberto Gonzales faced calls for his impeachment during his time in the office.
In 2007, seven Democratic representatives, including some still in Congress, urged the House Judiciary Committee to investigate fully whether sufficient grounds existed for the House of Representatives to impeach Gonzales for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Additionally, Reagan-era attorney general Edwin Meese hardly escaped criticism while in office. Taking issue with his handling of the Iran-Contra investigation, among other issues, critics of Meese and the administration printed posters and t-shirts with the phrase “Meese is a Pig” in an effort to remove him.
NY Post Editors too.
… if General Holder checked the record, he’d see the chief reason he’s the first sitting Cabinet member held in contempt of Congress is that — unlike previous cabinet members who faced this sanction — he obstinately refused any accommodation.
Naomi Schaefer Riley says it’s not just athletes who get screwed by colleges.
In its recent ruling that athletes at Northwestern University have the right to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board cited the case of senior quarterback Kain Colter, who naively thought that he could pursue a pre-med degree while also playing on the school’s football team.
When he attempted to enroll in a required chemistry class during his sophomore year, “Colter testified that his coaches and advisors discouraged him from taking the class because it conflicted with morning football practices. Colter consequently had to take this class in the summer session, which caused him to fall behind his classmates who were pursuing the same pre-med major. Ultimately he decided to switch his major to psychology which he believed to be less demanding.”
In other words, despite the fact that Division I athletes are making oodles of money for their schools, their interests are not being served by coaches or administrators. Athletes’ academics and future career prospects are being sacrificed for a few more points on the field.
But athletes are not alone. Regular students are also contributing to the university’s bottom line through tuition payments and the spigot of federal financial aid — yet their interests are not being served, either.
In exchange for their eye-popping tuition checks, students are getting a dizzying array of pointless classes that don’t prepare them for the real world. Colleges have gotten more and more esoteric in what they teach, more specialized to the point of being useless to anything but . . . academia. …