Tag Archives: Eric Holder

News

Al Qaeda defense attorney promoted to No. 3 at Department of Justice

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From Judicial Watch. (H/T Creeping Sharia)

Excerpt: (links removed)

In a scary development, a major Obama fundraiser who defended a convicted al Qaeda terrorist will become the third highest ranking official at the Department of Justice (DOJ), which, ironically, is charged with defending the interests of the United States.

Northern California lawyer Tony West has been named Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, making him the No. 3 guy at the agency. In 2009 West, who helped Obama raise tens of millions of dollars as finance co-chairman of his first presidential campaign, was appointed to help run the DOJ’s civil division which represents the government, Congress and presidential cabinet officers and handles cases dealing with significant policy issues.

In a statement announcing the promotion this week, Attorney General Eric Holder says West has served the department with “professionalism, integrity and dedication.” Holder also mentions West’s work before coming to the DOJ a few years ago, including a stint as a Special Assistant Attorney General in California and a lengthier career at a large San Francisco law firm.

Conveniently omitted in the press release is that West represented convicted al Qaeda terrorist John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Lindh was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 while fighting against the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance as a member of the Taliban army. He actually pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban and carrying explosives while fighting U.S. troops in the region.

Holder also knows a thing or two about defending terrorists. After all, he was a senior partner in a prestigious Washington D.C. law firm (Covington & Burling) that represented more than a dozen Yemeni terrorists held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba. While Holder was a senior partner the firm employed a number of radical attorneys to provide the Islamic extremists with thousands of hours of free legal representation, according to a news report.

Another highlight in Holder’s resume is that he orchestrated Bill Clinton’s shameful last-minute pardons, including that of a fugitive financier and a pair of jailed domestic terrorists. In fact, shortly after the pardon scandal, Holder predicted that his public career was over. Under his leadership the DOJ has been embroiled in a number of high-profile scandals, including a gun-running operation (Fast and Furious) in which weapons were sold to Mexican drug cartels. One was later used to murder a federal agent. Judicial Watch has sued the DOJ to obtain records involving the operation.

I feel compelled to contrast that story with this one from Fox News (April 2009).

Excerpt:

The government considers you a terrorist threat if you oppose abortion, own a gun or are a returning war veteran.

That’s what House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said Wednesday in response to a Department of Homeland Security report warning of the rise of right-wing extremist groups.

Smith, who said the report on “right-wing extremism” amounts to “political profiling,” said that DHS is “using people’s political views to assess an individual’s susceptibility to terror recruitment.” He joins a growing chorus of protest from irate conservative groups that are protesting the report’s findings.

The report, titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” released last week by DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis, said while there is no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are planning acts of violence, it suggests acts of violence could come from unnamed “rightwing extremists” concerned about illegal immigration, abortion, increasing federal power and restrictions on firearms — and it singles out returning war veterans as susceptible to recruitment.

[…]DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the report Wednesday, saying it is part of an ongoing series of assessments to provide information to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies on “violent radicalization” in the United States.

This story goes to show you steeped in moral relativism the Obama administration is – the good people are evil, the evil people are good.

News

Haitian man who could not be deported kills three people in Florida

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From the Miami Herald.

Excerpt:

When burglar Kesler Dufrene became a twice-convicted felon in 2006, a Bradenton judge shipped him to prison for five years. And because of his convictions, an immigration judge ordered Dufrene deported to his native Haiti.

That never happened.

Instead, when Dufrene’s state prison term was up, Miami immigration authorities in October 2010 released him from custody. Two months later, North Miami police say, he slaughtered three people, including a 15-year-old girl in a murder case that remains as baffling today as it did the afternoon the bodies were discovered.

DNA on a rifle found inside the house and cellphone tracking technology later linked Dufrene to the Jan. 2, 2011, slayings.

But North Miami detectives never got to interrogate him. Just 18 days after the murders, Dufrene shot and killed himself when he was cornered by Manatee County sheriff’s deputies in Bradenton after an unrelated break-in and shooting there.

The episode is a black eye for U.S. authorities, who by law could not detain Dufrene indefinitely after the Obama administration ordered a temporary halt of deportations to the island nation. 

[…]The failure to deport Dufrene infuriates the victims’ family members. “This guy shouldn’t have been in America,” said Audrey Hansack, 37, who moved back to her native Nicaragua after the murder of her daughter Ashley Chow. “I’m so upset with the whole situation. Because of immigration, my daughter is not alive.”

Just to be clear, the policy of the Obama administration is a backdoor amnesty.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration is taking steps to grant what amounts to amnesty to as many as 300,000 illegal aliens.

In a recent announcement on a sleepy August Friday in Washington, D.C., the Department of Homeland Security directed immigration enforcement officials to start dropping cases against as many deportable alien lawbreakers as possible.

The administration is clearing out removal cases wholesale.  Despite insisting that it will give them case-by-case treatment, an interagency committee is charged with finding all the cases it can to grant relief.

This backdoor amnesty broadens and encourages use of “prosecutorial discretion” on behalf of foreigners who face removal orders.  Not only will potentially thousands of illegals be allowed to remain in the United States, but the administration has also confirmed that those aliens can obtain work permits.

Democrats are soft on crime, and they favor amnesty for illegal immigrants. And this is the result of their views. Three dead people in Florida.

News

Obama appoints amnesty advocate to head his Domestic Policy Council

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From Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

In another move aimed at aiding his re-election, President Obama on Tuesday announced that Cecilia Munoz, a former senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), would replace Melody Barnes as head of his Domestic Policy Council.

[…]The NCLR, whose name translates as “the race,” is a tax-exempt nonprofit that describes itself as “the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States.” It most recently led in vocal opposition against Arizona SB 1070, a law attacked by Attorney General Eric Holder as a discriminatory incarnation of profiling that usurped federal authority over immigration policy.

When then-candidate Obama spoke to the NCLR national convention in 2008, he told the group what it wanted to hear — that Latino “communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids.” He also condemned those “communities taking immigration enforcement into their own hands,” such as those that have passed state laws or local ordinances to check that those who are here are in fact here legally.

At this year’s La Raza convention, Obama touted the federal Dream (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act, a thinly disguised amnesty program that is part of “comprehensive immigration reform” designed to pit those who have successfully eluded the border patrol on a path to citizenship.

Munoz has been serving since January 2009 as director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs at the time of that appointment. She was La Raza’s vice president for research, advocacy and legislation.

Since her entering the Obama administration, according to the watchdog group Judicial Watch, federal funding for La Raza has increased dramatically. In fiscal 2008, NCLR received $2.8 million in federal grants, and in fiscal 2009 it got $4.1 million. In 2010, the total rocketed to more than $11 million.

[…]La Raza has ties it refuses to condemn with groups such as MECHa, which has spent the last three decades indoctrinating Latino students on American campuses, claiming that California, Arizona, Mexico, Texas and southern Colorado were stolen and should be returned to their rightful owners, the people of Mexico.

MECHa’s slogan is derived from the rhetoric of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro: “Through the race, everything; outside the race, nothing.”

Here’s a good article summarizing all of the ways that the Obama administration has been pushing a backdoor amnesty since he was elected.