3/22/2010

16 Responses to ““Embattled” AG Eric Holder”

1. I would prefer that Holder use that as cover for easing Obama out as soon as possible. /sarc

   I am eagerly awaiting my chance to vote on the Incumbent Reduction Elimination Act of 2010.

   Jim Finch (30d04c) — 3/22/2010 @ 11:27 am

   
   

2. What kind of idiot would agree to work for Obama now? they know when the going gets tough they will be consumed for the good of Obama. Even Rahm and Axelrod feel that heat.

   Dustin (b54cdc) — 3/22/2010 @ 12:02 pm

   
   

3. I guess we’ll get another report about the condition of the undercarriage of that bus.

   SPQR (26be8b) — 3/22/2010 @ 12:11 pm

   
   

4. “…reports suggest the White House will agree to prosecute the five men before a military court in return for Republican support for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.”

   WT..Heck? Didn’t Congress already pass a law to try terrorists in a military court? Why would a Republican agree to close Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Obama obeying the law?

   I mean, other than Lindsey Graham.

   Scott (8a1404) — 3/22/2010 @ 12:11 pm

   
   

5. Somewhere I read that an airstrike was ordered, to kill a terrorist,Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, specifically because our military has no idea what to do when they capture valuable terrorists. So instead of capturing, they decide to kill. This is exactly what Holder was talking about when he said we would never get to interrogate or mirandize or try OBL (who is dead anyway, but this matters).

   The ramifications of this lack of intelligence is going to bite us. We’ve had a hard war, Bush and Obama leading, but we’ve had a substantially higher number of successful attacks already.

   Obama doesn’t really care much about international affairs, generally, and I’m not sure he even realizes ‘it’s the economy, stupid’. He’s already well on his way to getting what he mainly wanted, to maybe he can lead our military and give them some way to capture terrorists. He’s a smart enough guy to work out a way to do that under his progressive vision, right? Killing everybody can’t be what he really wanted.

   Well, shit. It was in the Dog Trainer, so who knows it it’s the truth.

   Dustin (b54cdc) — 3/22/2010 @ 12:17 pm

   
   

6. The idea that a rampant ideologue like Holder is suddenly “far apart” from his biggest fan on security issues is laughable. He serves as a direct conduit from Obama to the rest of the country – pretending otherwise is fallacy.

   Dmac (ca1d8c) — 3/22/2010 @ 12:36 pm

   
   

7. Even the Los Angeles dogtrainer recognizes the stupidity of the Obama administration policies on detainees

   Without a location outside the United States for sending prisoners, the administration must resort to turning the suspects over to foreign governments, bringing them to the U.S. or even killing them.

   In one case last year, U.S. special operations forces killed an Al Qaeda-linked suspect named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter attack in southern Somalia rather than trying to capture him, a U.S. official said. Officials had debated trying to take him alive but decided against doing so in part because of uncertainty over where to hold him, the official added.

   This is stupid in two ways – (1) – we give up capturing people and gaining useful intelligence due to the policy’s consequences and (2) how is it more moral to kill people we could usefully capture?

   There are no adults in the administration – neither Obama nor Holder.

   SPQR (26be8b) — 3/22/2010 @ 12:50 pm

   
   

8. Wellllll.
   You never know what these folks know.
   Except some of the docs in Saddaam’s files made various folks in Europe and the US look a bit creepy.
   Hate to capture some jihadi and find a note of appreciation and a Starbuck’s gift card from Rep. Delahunt or Teddy Kennedy.

   Richard Aubrey (a9ba34) — 3/22/2010 @ 12:57 pm

   
   

9. Greetings:

   TIME magazine seems to have a different opinion. There was an article in this week’s edition about how close the Attorney General and the President are both professionally and personally.

   My evaluative criteria for our President goes like this; “As ye were abandoned, so shall ye abandon.”

   11B40 (6e105d) — 3/22/2010 @ 3:19 pm

   
   

10. WASHINGTON—A suspected al Qaeda organizer once called “the highest value detainee” at Guantánamo Bay was ordered released by a federal judge in an order issued Monday.
    Mohamedou Ould Slahi was accused in the 9/11 Commission report of helping recruit Mohammed Atta and other members of the al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, that took part in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
    Military prosecutors suspected Mr. Slahi of links to other al Qaeda operations, and considered seeking the death penalty against him while preparing possible charges in 2003 and 2004.

    Eric Holder should resign today .. now

    Neo (7830e6) — 3/22/2010 @ 3:21 pm

    
    

11. IMHO, everything you need to know about Eric Holder’s judgment — if not his intellect — was what he said in the waning moments of his infamous “Nation of Cowards” speech.

    Read carefully:

    I stood, and stand, on the shoulders of many other black Americans. Admittedly, the identities of some of these people, through the passage of time, have become lost to us- the men, and women, who labored long in fields, who were later legally and systemically discriminated against, who were lynched by the hundreds in the century just past and those others who have been too long denied the fruits of our great American culture. The names of too many of these people, these heroes and heroines, are lost to us. But the names of others of these people should strike a resonant chord in the historical ear of all in our nation: Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Walter White, Langston Hughes, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Charles Drew, Paul Robeson, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Vivian Malone, Rosa Parks, Marion Anderson, Emmit Till (sic). These are just some of the people who should be generally recognized and are just some of the people to whom all of us, black and white, owe such a debt of gratitude. It is on their broad shoulders that I stand as I hope that others will some day stand on my more narrow ones.
    

    All right. Now, in the spirit of the Sesame Street feature “One Of These Things Is Not Like the Others,” which of those names in bold does NOT belong?

    If you answered “Emmett Till” (the proper spelling), you are correct. Your prize: a half-dollar with an Obama sticker pasted on it, sold by Montel Williams as a collectible (total value: 50 cents).

    Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy who was brutally beaten, shot, disfigured, tied with barbed wire to a 90-pound weight and dumped into a river on August 28, 1955. His “crime”? Reports vary, but at the very least, the Chicago-born teenager — while visiting with sharecropping relatives in Mississippi — directed a wolf whistle at a 21-year-old married white woman inside a general store owned by her parents. At the most (and of course, one must consider the sources), Till allegedly actually caressed the young woman, asked her for a date, and said to her “I’ve been with white girls before.” Two white men (the girl’s husband and his half-brother, a sharecropper boss) slaughtered Till after dragging him from his bed in the wee hours of the morning. It’s one of the landmarks of injustice in American jurisprudence, and sparked — but did not begin — the civil rights movement in America.

    As a reminder, I am African-American myself — twice as black as Barack Obama. I am glad to live in an American society in which I can feel free to flirt with not only white women, but women of every ethnicity without fear of ending up at the bottom of a river. But that doesn’t mean that hitting on a pretty girl is a smart thing to do when she is being guarded by someone with a screw loose. I would think most of you fellows would think twice about lingering too long on the decolletage of a mobster’s arm candy regardless of your God-given right to look at what she obviously wants to be seen. Similarly, Till’s whistling incident was shocking not only to the white family of the young woman, but also to Till’s friends and kinfolk, because they understood what the young city slicker apparently didn’t — he was in an entirely different world, and needed to watch his step. He didn’t, and paid with his life.

    Those who weren’t there in post-Plessy v. Ferguson/Pre-Rosa Parks/Dixiecrat Mississippi can scarcely imagine life for a black kid. I have never lived there, but I have a parent with Deep South roots. But the fact is indisputable: Till might still be alive today if he had been wise enough to keep big his mouth shut.

    Emmett Till is the victim of ignorance, intolerance, bigotry, brutality (partial list). But he is certainly not a “hero,” and I don’t know what “debt of gratitude” I owe him for doing something that is the equivalent of walking into a buzzsaw. The fact that Eric Holder mentioned Till (in his prepared speech) as notable among the likes of Douglass, Robinson, Parks, and Dr. King shows what a shallow thinker we have for our Attorney General (for now).

    L.N. Smithee (a0b21b) — 3/22/2010 @ 4:17 pm

    
    

12. Holder belongs where his heart is: defending America’s enemies from Americans.

    GeneralMalaise (20e943) — 3/22/2010 @ 6:18 pm

    
    

13. Holder belongs where his heart is: defending America’s enemies from Americans.

    Strike that, poorly phrased. One could easily argue that would allow Holder to remain where he is.

    GeneralMalaise (20e943) — 3/22/2010 @ 6:21 pm

    
    

14. Holder is a travesty, an embarrassment, a powerful but disastrously inept clown in way, way over his head.

    But I don’t see him leaving as AG anytime soon. I think it’s entirely likely that he’ll continue to be a punching bag, taking well deserved criticism that otherwise might (and mostly should) be directed at his principal. Obama already thinks that he himself is the be-all and end-all as a lawyer anyway, which is to say he doesn’t really value Holder or see himself as needing a strong Attorney General. Don’t forget that we’re anticipating at least one and possibly two SCOTUS vacancies for Obama to fill; odds are at least one of those will be contentious. Replacing Holder would be an unnecessary diversion of resources.

    Beldar (d1cbc5) — 3/22/2010 @ 6:30 pm

    
    

15. Who was the Congressman or Senator that famously said that even the mediocre had a right to a voice in DC?
    Holder fills that void.

    AD - RtR/OS! (d02306) — 3/22/2010 @ 6:43 pm

    
    

16. “have left Holder looking increasingly embattled.” Holder is not only embattled, he’s downright stupid and someone in the white house finally figured it out.
    Must have been a battle for 100+ stupid people to figure out who’s the most stupid. Holder got the short straw.

    Scrapiron (996c34) — 3/22/2010 @ 7:34 pm