The Wikileaks debacle is the latest proof that Eric Holder has no understanding of the dangerous times we live in. His ineptness, as head of the Department of Justice, is putting our nation in a vulnerable position.
Earlier this week, the Wikileaks website jeopardized our nation’s security and diplomacy by releasing hundreds of thousands of U.S. State Department documents. The same site put our troops at risk when it released thousands of classified U.S. military documents in July. As far back as March, the Pentagon declared Wikileaks to be a threat to national security. Meanwhile, the Attorney General, our nation’s chief law enforcement officer, has been busy cracking down on dozens of websites that sold things like counterfeit purses. Eric Holder simply has the wrong priorities.
During his tenure as Attorney General, Holder short-circuited the interrogation of the underwear bomber by ordering that the terror suspect be given Miranda rights within the first hour of questioning. Holder’s use of civilian trials for terror suspects proved to be a failure last month when a civilian jury acquitted a man on 284 of 285 counts. This was after a judge refused to allow the testimony of a key prosecution witness, even though our military had captured the suspect after a gunfight in Pakistan and linked him to deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Eric Holder has also had a slew of lesser problems, like his outspoken criticism of Arizona’s immigration law before he had even read the law, his dropping of charges in the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case, and his failure to investigate fraud allegations and the misuse of taxpayer dollars in the recent Pigford claims settlement.
The time has come for Eric Holder to step down as Attorney General of the United States. As a member of Congress and a mother of five children, I am concerned about the very real threats facing our country. We need a chief law enforcement officer who understands those dangers and knows how to respond.
A nice re-cap of the Obama administration’s lack of seriousness on national security and crime.
Here’s an excellent review of Liberty and Tyranny in the American Spectator. (H/T Ensign Taiga)
Excerpt:
It’s the book that changed America.
And it isn’t often that a book — any book, even a popular, bestselling book like Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto — can be said to have changed the course of American politics and history. The phenomenon is rare, extremely rare, usually taking both the country and even the author by surprise.
Yet Levin’s book has done just that, saluted by Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann in an exclusive talk with The American Spectator as “providing [the] intellectual balance and foundation” of the Tea Party movement. A movement that stands triumphant this week in the wake of the conservative landslide that Levin himself believes can revitalize the conservative cause that Ronald Reagan once led to the White House.
The results of the 2010 revolt against the Obama Era are staggering. The success of the Tea Party; the defeat of over 60 of Nancy Pelosi’s House Democrats; the election of a half dozen U.S. senators, ten governors and almost 700 state legislators. What startles even more is that one campaign after another focused on the issues Levin featured in his book — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, statism, the dangers of a powerful central government.
Campaigns “motivated and inspired” specifically, says Bachmann, by Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny.
[…]Liberty and Tyranny‘s red, white, and blue flag-and-flame cover bearing Levin’s bearded visage was waved aloft at Tea Party rallies. Bachmann marvels that “it’s difficult to educate a nation” but says Tea Partiers made a point to “take copies of the book to town hall meetings” to grill House and Senate members on their knowledge of the Constitution they had taken an oath to obey. The book’s cover itself appeared in poster form. One memorable photo captured former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin at a rally seated next to a soldier, the Levin book clearly visible in her lap. While the Palin photo was both real and un-staged, there was the inevitable humorous photo shopping. North Korea’s Communist dictator Kim Jong Il — aka “The Great Leader” — was pictured brandishing a copy of the book written by the man his friends and fans call “The Great One.” Another Liberty and Tyranny fan went to work mocking Obama’s famous 2008 campaign poster, replacing Obama’s image with an iconic rendering of Levin, the caption changed from “Hope and Change” to read simply: “The Great One.”
Why do people trust Levin so much?
LEVIN IS, FAMOUSLY, a considerable talk radio star, ranked number four in the nation with eight and a half million listeners. He is as well the longtime head of the conservative Landmark Legal Foundation. A former Reagan aide, Justice Department lawyer (serving as chief of staff to Reagan attorney general Edwin Meese III, among other positions in the government) and conservative activist who began his march on liberalism as a precocious 13-year old, Levin is no recent entry into discussions of law, politics, or conservative principles. His friend Rush Limbaugh calls him “F. Lee Levin” in humorous reference to the great trial lawyer, but the humor alludes to Levin’s significant legal abilities that doubtless played a role in his ability to write a book that has stirred such consequence.
Skipping 12th grade to move on to Temple University, Levin graduated — at 19 — Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude, with membership in the university’s political science and history honor societies. By 22 he was already a lawyer, having graduated from Temple Law School — finding time along the way to get elected at 19 to his local suburban school board, making him the youngest elected school board member in the history of the state.
Says Bachmann simply: “Mark Levin is an intellectual powerhouse.”
How popular was the the book and what caused people to buy it?
Clearly, as with Paine, Stowe and Goldwater before him, Levin had struck a very American nerve. While the book manifested all the usual best seller symptoms (it was #1 on the New York Times list for three months, #1 on Amazon for all books for several months as well as #2 for all of 2009 on the Amazon hardcover non-fiction list etc.), there was obviously something else going on.
A very, very big something else.
IT’S REASONABLE TO ASK after all of this — why all the fuss over a book that defends the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence? What is it that drives over 1.2 million books to sell like glasses of cold lemonade in the Sahara Desert? What kind of book gets over 2,000 reviews on Amazon, the book rated with five stars by all but a handful of readers? What kind of book sends Americans into the streets waving copies as if they’d uncovered the Holy Grail?
Congresswoman Bachmann thinks she knows the answer. The book, she says simply, was a “gift to our nation.”
In a manner that Levin could not possibly have foreseen, his arguments defending individual freedoms and liberty from what Alexis de Tocqueville called “soft tyranny” — the supremacy of the state suddenly took on a vivid, personal meaning for Americans. As the new Obama administration and its allies on Capitol Hill began rapidly expanding the size and scope of the federal government almost exponentially, jamming a government takeover of health care through a Congress besieged by constituents shouting — sometimes literally — not to do this, millions of Americans were provoked from stunned amazement to outrage. On top of a staggering so-called stimulus plan that cost almost $1 trillion plus government takeovers and bailouts of everything from car companies to financial institutions, the realization dawned on many Americans that Levin was right: the long march of collectivism had suddenly turned into a sprint.
Americans’ agenda is simple. In broad terms, they want the government to spur job growth, but not by subsidizing more government jobs with taxpayer dollars. They want Washington to balance the budget and reverse the growing influence of government on daily life. They want the government to encourage success, allow failure, punish those who break the law – and then get out of the way. And above all, they want politicians to follow through on their promises, even if that means tempering those promises in the first place.
They also show clear support for the following five ideas:
Balance the budget as quickly as possible through meaningful spending reductions, a hard spending cap and a constitutional amendment so that it never gets unbalanced again.
Eliminate all earmarks until the budget is balanced, then require a two-thirds vote by Congress for future earmark legislation.
Keep taxes down by requiring supermajorities for increases, and eventually enact tax reform with a simple, low, fair rate that drastically reduces the length of the IRS code.
Create a blue-ribbon task force that engages in a complete, line-by-line forensic audit of federal agencies and programs to end waste and reduce red tape and bureaucracy.
And require Congress to provide specific constitutional authorization for every bill it passes so that the government stays within the boundaries imagined by the founders.
One more thing: Voters want their representatives home in their districts and holding monthly town halls. The worst strategic mistake House Democrats made this year was canceling scores of public meetings, denying their constituents the chance to be heard. Hell hath no fury like a voter silenced, so the voters spoke in unison on Election Day.
I’ve found that each of these policies has at least 60 percent public support, so if you agree with most of them, it means you’re in the American mainstream. It also means that – wait for it – you agree with the tea party.
These points come directly from the tea-party-backed “Contract From America,” a document compiled from and voted on by the various tea party organizations and promoted by FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group. This governing agenda is supported not only by conservatives, but also by largely nonideological, anti-political voters in the middle.
WINTERY KNIGHT 