Carve-outs and Exceptions

For those who have followed the Obamacare saga, you know of the many carve-outs and exceptions and waivers that the White House has created to benefit their favored friends.  How the law has become a patchwork of selective application and enforcement at the whim of the administration.

The Obama administration has now taken that one step further.  In seeking to stay an injunction against Obama's executive amnesty, the Justice Department has now formally requested that the judge carve-out and exception for Texas and let the amnesty apply to the other 49 states.

Dear Constitutional Scholar In Chief:  Could you please explain how this can in any way be constitutional?

January 20th, 2017 can't come soon enough.

Hat tip to Breitbart.

The Old Double Standard

Reported by Hans von Spakovsky at Breitbart:

The Department of Justice is asserting that the governor of Texas, as well as state legislators, have no executive or deliberative process privilege to shield documents -- even as Eric Holder and President Obama assert executive and deliberative process privilege to shield documents from Congress in its investigation of Fast & Furious.

and

It’s clear, when one compares the Justice Department’s position on executive and deliberate process privilege in the Texas voter ID litigation with its position on the privilege in the congressional investigation of Operation Fast and Furious, that neither Eric Holder nor Barack Obama want the same rules applied to them that they would apply to the governor of Texas and members of the state legislature.

 Sauce for the goose??

Who'da thunk it??

Well, the House of Representatives finds Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.  But when it comes to actually prosecuting Holder, well....that's a different story.  From Fox News:

The Justice Department moved Friday to shield Attorney General Eric Holder from prosecution after the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.

The contempt vote technically opened the door for the House to call on the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to bring the case before a grand jury. But because U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen works for Holder and because President Obama has already asserted executive privilege over the documents in question, some expected Holder's Justice Department to balk.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole confirmed in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner that the department in fact would not pursue prosecution. The attorney general's withholding of documents pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious, he wrote, "does not constitute a crime."

"Therefore the department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the attorney general," Cole wrote, in the letter obtained by Fox News.

Yeah, let's go ahead and prosecute the boss.  All of which means that the calls for a special prosecutor were so important.  And, of course, so ignored by Obama.

Racist!!

Dana Loesch reports at Breitbart:

At a recent Obama rally in Ohio, prospective attendees were told to brandish their photo IDs if they expected admittance to the rally. No word yet on whether Attorney General Eric Holder plans to file suit against the Obama campaign for infringing upon Ohioans' right of peaceful assembly by way of a racist photo ID rule.

Where's Eric Holder?  Oh, yes, now I remember.  He's in the Justice Department building - where you have to show your photo ID to enter.

Fast and Furious Flashbacks

From The Right Scoop comes this video of a 2009 White House press conference.  Listen carefully.



Paging Woodward and Bernstein?  And from October 2011:



Thanks to The Last Refuge for the video links, and for this closing thought:

How can President Obama possibly assert executive privilege over internal deliberations he has previously claimed didn’t exist?

Good question.

Next up?

From Fox News:

WASHINGTON –  Roger Clemens was acquitted Monday on all charges that he obstructed and lied to Congress in denying he used performance-enhancing drugs to build his long and brilliant career as one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history.

Time now to prosecute the real offenders.  Defendant Holder has a nice ring to it.

The Justice Department stonewalls the American public but has the time and resources to pursue "drug users" in professional sports.  Just like Obama interjecting himself into the question of a college football championship, this too brings up one simple question:

Do you have so much time on your hands that you can be worried about this while the economy goes to hell??

Just where are the priorities of our leaders?

Why in the hell

Is Eric Holder still Attorney General.  E.T. Williams Jr. poses the question.



Smitty at The Other McCain has this answer:

To answer Mr. William’s question, Holder is still the AG because he is both a Reliable Tool and, also, he Knows Too Much. My guess is that Holder has a signed presidential pardon in his safe. Would you exhibit the sort of cheek that Eric Holder offers before Congress without a Get Out Of Jail Free card in hot standby?

Makes sense to me.  I'm thinking about starting a pool among my conservative friends.  Guess how many presidential pardons are issued for administration insiders between November and January 19, 2013.  Closest to the correct number wins the pot.

No, that's not what I meant

I guess that's what Attorney General Holder was trying to say to Congress.  Even though the plain language belies his contention.  From CNS:

(CNSNews.com) – Attorney General Eric Holder claimed during congressional testimony today that internal Justice Department emails that use the phrase “Fast and Furious” do not refer to the controversial gun-walking operation Fast and Furious.

Under questioning from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who read excerpts of the emails at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Justice Department oversight, Holder claimed that the phrase “Fast and Furious” did not refer to Fast and Furious but instead referred to another gun-walking operation known as “Wide Receiver.”

However, the emails refer to both programs -- "Fast and Furious" and the "Tucson case," from where Wide Receiver was launched -- and reveal Justice Department officials discussing how to handle media scrutiny when both operations become public.

Why yes....we used the term Fast & Furious, but it really didn't mean THAT Fast & Furious.

Does he really think we are that gullible?   Don't answer that....the country did elect Obama in 2008.

Photo ID requirement = Racist??

One of the great hypocrisies of the Obama administration (and there are so many to choose from ) is that the Department of Justice requires presentation of photo ID to enter their building in Washington DC, while at the same time declaring that laws requiring photo ID for voting are discriminatory.  Really?

John Hinderaker at Powerline shares a new photo ID requirement:

Here is one more item to add to the list: you can’t get Michelle Obama to autograph her book without “an official photo ID (driver’s license, passport).” So I guess Michelle must be a racist.

Go to the embeded link in the quote for the whole story, via MRC.

Protecting the vote

Today's elections got some special attention from Holder's DoJ.  The Washington Times reports:

The Justice Department will be monitoring polling activities in Milwaukee during the recall election of Republican Governor Scott Walker on Tuesday. According to a DOJ press release:

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced today that it will monitor elections on June 5, 2012, in the following jurisdictions to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other federal voting rights statutes: Alameda, Fresno and Riverside Counties, Calif.; Cibola and Sandoval Counties, N.M.; Shannon County, S.D.; and the city of Milwaukee.

As reported in a previous Water Cooler post Obama Campaign strategist David Axelrod told reporters on Sunday that an "army of lawyers" will be in the Badger state "to protect" the vote during the recall election.

Yep...if you can't win at the ballot box, try the court house.

BTW, what ever happened with those Black Panthers who intimidated voters?  Hmmm.

Our apolitical DoJ

In one of the most shocking displays of prosecutorial abuse, the US government prosecuted and convicted sitting US Senator Ted Stevens of corruption.  The timing of the case was shortly before his re-election vote and Stevens lost his seat.  It turns out that Stevens was wrongfully convicted with the help of prosecutor's misconduct during the trial.  But it was still enough to turn over the Senate seat from Republican to Democrat, and to provide a crucial vote for Obamacare.

The judge in the case had appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the DoJ attorney and their behavior.  As the report on that investigation gave details on the case:

The judge who presided over the Stevens trial appointed Henry F. Schuelke to investigate the prosecutors who handled the case. Schuelke’s 524-page report, which was unsealed this week, paints a picture of a  prosecution team so hampered by infighting that disgruntled attorneys cut corners by assigning document-review duties to FBI and IRS agents who were left largely unsupervised. Crucial information — including the  fact that trial witness Bill Allen had once bribed a child prostitute, whom he’d had a relationship with, to commit perjury, and that the home repairs in question were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars less than originally alleged — was never given to Stevens’ defense team.

Now the DoJ has concluded their own investigation.

The Justice Department has found that two prosecutors involved in the botched 2008 corruption trial of Senator Ted Stevens engaged in “reckless professional misconduct,” but it stopped short of firing the men, saying their mistakes were not intentional.

In a cover letter to a 672-page report provided to Congress on Thursday, alongside additional attachments and findings, the Justice Department said the two prosecutors would be suspended without pay — Joseph Bottini for 40 days, and James Goeke for 15 days….

There was at least one major difference, however: the special prosecutor concluded that Mr. Bottini and Mr. Goeke had intentionally withheld evidence, while the Justice Department investigation found that their mistakes — while showing reckless disregard for their disclosure obligations — were not deliberate.

So there you have it.  You can show reckless disregard in the conduct of a trial, but that's OK to the Obama DoJ.  Because you got what was important....a Senate seat on the Democrat side of the aisle.

Details from The Lonely Conservative and from Legal Insurrection.

How things have changed

The Old Curmudgeon is, well, old.  Or at least old enough to remember the violence of the 60s.  Race riots, war protests and some out-and-out revolutionary activities.  I can remember Chicago in 1968, and even Judge Julius Hoffman and the Chicago Seven.  So this article from Robert Verbruggen at National Review Online brought back some memories.

Bernardine Dohrn has a history with the Justice Department. More specifically, in the early 1970s, she was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives because of her actions with the Weather Underground, a violent radical organization.

Times have changed. In 2010 and 2011, the Justice Department saw fit to give $400,000 in grants to an organization that lists Dohrn as a member of its board of directors: a $150,000 grant in September of 2010 and a $250,000 grant a year later.

And she and her husband are just passing acquaintances with Obama.  No long time political connections.  No personal relationships or mutual ideology.  Yeah, right.

Follow the money.  And it's oh too often the people's money.

Quote of the Day

"Eric Holder is the Chevy Volt of attorney generals."

-Greg Gutfeld

Reposted from Proof Positive.

Fast, Furious and Stupid

From the LA Times comes proof of the wisdom of those folks at the Justice Department.

Seven months after federal agents began the ill-fated Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation, they stumbled upon their main suspect in a remote Arizona outpost on the Mexican border, driving an old BMW with 74 rounds of ammunition and nine cellphones hidden inside.

Detained for questioning that day in May 2010, Manuel Fabian Celis-Acosta described to agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives his close association with a top Mexican drug cartel member, according to documents obtained this weekend by the Times/Tribune Washington Bureau.

The top Fast and Furious investigator, Special Agent Hope MacAllister, scribbled her phone number on a $10 bill after he pledged to cooperate and keep in touch with investigators.

Then Celis-Acosta disappeared into Mexico. He never called.

Of course, if you asked the government to trust you, I know they'd do just the same.  Right.  Besides, that $10 bill probably went on the agent's expense form, so Joe Taxpayer footed that as well.

Complete article can be found HERE.  Hat tip to Patterico for the pointer.