Patterico's Pontifications

3/24/2014

Ted Cruz to DOJ: The American People Deserve Better

Filed under: General — Dana @ 12:48 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Senator Ted Cruz does not take things lying down. Most recently, we have seen him here , here, and here bluntly and forthrightly speaking his mind. Some might even call it rocking the boat. So, it should be no surprise that last week when the DOJ denied his request that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate an abuse of power by the IRS and their targeting of conservative groups, he came out swinging,

It is the height of hypocrisy for the Obama Administration to claim that the investigator leading the investigation into the IRS’s illegal program has no conflict of interest. The investigator is a partisan Democrat who has donated over six thousand dollars to President Obama and Democrat causes. Just as nobody would trust John Mitchell to investigate Richard Nixon, nobody should trust a partisan Obama donor to investigate the IRS’s political targeting of President Obama’s enemies. Sadly, “in the discretion of the Attorney General,” Eric Holder has chosen to reject the bipartisan tradition of the Department of Justice of putting rule of law above political allegiance.

Both Nixon Administration Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Clinton Administration Attorney General Janet Reno appointed special prosecutors whose integrity was beyond reproach; Eric Holder should do likewise. To date, nine months after a damning Inspector General report, nobody has been indicted, many of the victims have not even been interviewed, and Lois Lerner has twice pleaded the Fifth. And yet the Attorney General refuses to allow a genuine–and impartial–investigation.

The integrity of the Department of Justice deserves better. The American people deserve better.

Also, last week in a penned Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Republican congressman from Ohio, Jim Jordan, seconded the request for a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS. In a nice turn, he used Democratic Senator Elijah Cummings’ own words to fortify his request,

When Congress is thwarted in our attempts to get answers—as is clearly the case given Ms. Lerner’s willingness to speak with the Justice Department but not to the public’s elected representatives—we have an obligation to hold accountable those hiding the facts.

Additionally, it is necessary to appoint a special prosecutor. Mr. Holder called the IRS matter “outrageous and unacceptable” and ordered a Justice Department investigation to be conducted in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No one can have confidence in this investigation, started by a politically appointed attorney general and led by a campaign contributor to his boss.

As Elijah Cummings, my Democratic colleague on the Oversight Committee, said on May 22, 2013—the day of the committee’s first IRS hearing—getting the truth and restoring trust must be paramount. “This is more important than one election,” he explained. “The revelations that have come forward so far provides us with a moment pregnant for transformation; not transformation for a moment, but for generations to come and generations yet unborn.”

I hope Mr. Cummings and fellow members of his party will join me in acknowledging the time has come for the appointment of an independent and unbiased special prosecutor.

Most certainly, Jordan is not expecting a different response from the one Cruz received, yet it is heartening to see another elected official not let this go.

More boat rockers, please.

–Dana

Patterico Reader Schools Rutten

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:22 am



Found at the bottom of Rutten’s now-rewritten column that repeated myths about what astronauts can see from the moon with the naked eye:

Editor’s note: This column has been corrected to remove an incorrect reference to American astronauts being able to see the Great Wall of China and the California Aqueduct from the moon; they could not.

The headline now says “corrected” as well.

My post correcting Rutten, in which I was tipped by JVW, is here.

JVW 1, Rutten 0.


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