Holder To Ban Religion In Terror Probes

Boy, isn't this a relief....for all of the hundreds and hundreds of Christian, Buddhist and Hindu terrorists in America who have been plotting attacks on army bases, recruiting centers and world trade buildings here, you don't have to worry about your religious background being used as part of the investigation of the terror plot....thanks to Attorney General Eric Holder.  I would have listed "Muslim" above as well but of course that would have meant some scrutiny upon me by the Justice Department and hell, we all know that Muslims don't spread terror based on their religion.  Right?

The story comes from Family Security Matters.

Holder To Ban Religion In Terror Probes


According to NBC News, the Justice Department will soon prohibit religious profiling in terror cases. The move, if true, would completely blind federal law enforcement to the threat from Islamic extremism.

Already, the department has forced the FBI to bleach references to "Islam" and "jihad" from its counterterrorism training materials. It's also made it harder for agents to infiltrate radical mosques.

But Attorney General Eric Holder reportedly now wants to make it illegal for agents to even consider religion in their investigations.

Democrats on the Hill are cheering the changes, along with the ACLU and radical Muslim Brotherhood front groups, who have all lobbied the administration for them. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has seen several of its officials jailed on terror-related charges, calls it "a step in the right direction."

Appearing before the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee in 2012, CAIR demanded the administration remove religion as a factor in terrorism investigations, even though just four years earlier Justice had named CAIR an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator.

The Islamic Society of North America, another designated co-conspirator, hailed the move as a civil-rights victory worthy of praise from "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

The timing couldn't be worse. Experts say that if anything, the U.S. should be expanding its terrorist profile to include radical Muslim women along with men. Russian intelligence warns female suicide bombers are threatening next month's Winter Olympics.

The FBI missed the Boston Marathon bombings because it failed to focus on radicalized local Muslims. The only way law enforcement can effectively head off future attacks — including possibly the upcoming Super Bowl in New Jersey — is by gathering predictive intelligence in the Muslim community — namely, inside mosques.

However, the attorney general is threatening to cut off these investigative avenues for the FBI, as well as for border agents charged with protecting the nation from Islamic extremists at airports and land crossings.

After 9/11, the Bush administration allowed agents to profile at U.S. borders and in cases related to national security and terrorism. "Federal law enforcement must use every legitimate tool to prevent future attacks," states the Justice Department's "Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies."

These guidelines, in force since 2003, have been effective in disrupting some 42 attacks by Muslim terrorists against the homeland since 2001. Now they will be amended to appease radical Muslim groups like CAIR.

After last year's horrific attack on a Kenyan shopping mall, in which Muslim terrorists shot people for failing to answer questions about Islam correctly, CAIR showed its typical callous indifference.

FOR OUR COUNTRY

By Findalis
Monkey in the Middle


Stolen From Texas Fred

Sent to Texas Fred (One of the finest patriots I have the pleasure to know.) this scared me.  It should scare you into action.  Feel free to pass it on.

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From: John Porter
To: Americans everywhere

I was sitting at my keyboard halfway through my writing a letter to you about how Barack Obama was fulfilling his pledge to “Transform America” by “Changing the fundamentals of America”, so that our government would become the plantation, he the owner, and we the slaves, when this article by Steve McCann appeared in my in box. After checking it for accuracy, and finding it so, I put my writing on hold and here present it to you, for I could not say it better.

…Is it already too late?

Obama’s Second Term Transformation Plans

The 2012 election has often been described as the most pivotal since 1860. This statement is not hyperbole. If Barack Obama is re-elected the United States will never be the same, nor will it be able to re-capture its once lofty status as the most dominant nation in the history of mankind.

The overwhelming majority of Americans do not understand that Obama’s first term was dedicated to putting in place executive power to enable him and the administration to fulfill the campaign promise of “transforming America ” in his second term regardless of which political party controls Congress. That is why his re-election team is virtually ignoring the plight of incumbent or prospective Democratic Party office holders.

The most significant accomplishment of Obama’s first term is to make Congress irrelevant. Under the myopic and blindly loyal leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have succeeded in creating an imperial and, in a second term, a potential dictatorial presidency.

During the first two years of the Obama administration when the Democrats overwhelmingly controlled both Houses of Congress and the media was in an Obama-worshiping stupor, a myriad of laws were passed and actions taken which transferred virtually unlimited power to the executive branch.

The birth of multi-thousand page laws was not an aberration. This tactic was adopted so the bureaucracy controlled by Obama appointees would have sole discretion in interpreting vaguely written laws and enforcing thousands of pages of regulations they and not Congress would subsequently write.

For example, in the 2,700 pages of ObamaCare there are more than 2,500 references to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. There are more than 700 instances when he or she is instructed that they “shall” do something and more than 200 times when they “may” take at their sole discretion some form of regulatory action. On 139 occasions, the law mentions that the “Secretary determines.” In essence one person, appointed by and reporting to the president, will be in charge of the health care of 310 million Americans once ObamaCare is fully operational in 2014.

The same is true in the 2,319 pages of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act which confers nearly unlimited power on various agencies to control by fiat the nation’s financial, banking and investment sectors. The bill also creates new agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not subject to any oversight by Congress. This overall process was repeated numerous times with other legislation all with the intent of granting unfettered power to the executive branch controlled Barack Obama and his radical associates.

Additionally, the Obama administration has, through its unilaterally determined rule making and regulatory powers, created laws out of whole cloth. The Environmental Protection Agency on a near daily basis issues new regulations clearly out of their purview in order to modify and change environmental laws previously passed and to impose a radical green agenda never approved by Congress. The same is true of the Energy and Interior Departments among many others.

None of these extra-constitutional actions have been challenged by Congress. The left in America knows this usurpation of power is nearly impossible to reverse unless stopped in its early stages.

It is clearly the mindset of this administration and its appointees that Congress is merely a nuisance and can be ignored after they were able to take full advantage of the useful idiots in the Democrat controlled House and Senate in 2009-2010 and the Democrat Senate in the current Congress.

Additionally, Barack Obama knows after his re-election a Republican controlled House and Senate will not be able to enact any legislation to roll back the power previously granted to the Executive Branch or usurped by them. His veto will not be overridden as there will always be at least 145 Democratic members of the House or 34 in the Senate in agreement with or intimidated by an administration more than willing to use Chicago- style political tactics.

The stalemate between the Executive and Legislative Branches will inure to the benefit of Barack Obama and his fellow leftists.

The most significant power Congress has is the control of the purse-strings as all spending must be approved by them. However, once re-elected, Barack Obama, as confirmed by his willingness to do or say anything and his unscrupulous re-election tactics, would not only threaten government shutdowns but would deliberately withhold payments to those dependent on government support as a means of intimidating and forcing a Republican controlled Congress to surrender to his demands, thus neutering their ability to control the administration through spending constraints.

Further, this administration has shown contempt for the courts by ignoring various court orders, e.g., the Gulf of Mexico oil drilling moratorium, as well as stonewalling subpoenas and requests issued by Congress. The Eric Holder Justice Department (DoJ) has become the epitome of corruption as part of the most dishonest and deceitful administration in American history. In a second term the arrogance of Barack Obama and his minions will become more blatant as he will not have to be concerned with re-election.

Who will be there to enforce the rule of law, a Supreme Court ruling or the Constitution? No one. Barack Obama and his fellow-travelers will be unchallenged as they run roughshod over the American people.

Many Republicans and conservatives dissatisfied with the prospect of Mitt Romney as the nominee for president are instead focused on re-taking the House and Senate. That goal, while worthy and necessary, is meaningless unless Barack Obama is defeated. The nation is not dealing with a person of character and integrity but someone of single-minded purpose and overwhelming narcissism. Judging by his actions, words and deeds during his first term, he does not intend to work with Congress either Republican or Democrat in his second term, but rather to force his radical agenda on the American people through the power he has usurped or been granted.

The governmental structure of the United States was set up by the Founders in the hope that over the years only those people of high moral character and integrity would assume the reins of power. However, knowing that was not always possible, they dispersed power over three distinct and independent branches as a check on each other.

What they could not imagine is the surrender and abdication of its constitutional duty by the preeminent governmental branch, the Congress, to a chief executive devoid of any character or integrity coupled with a judiciary essentially powerless to enforce the law when the chief executive ignores them.

Conservatives, Libertarians, the Republican Party and Mitt Romney must come to grips with this moment in time and their historical role in denying Barack Obama and his minions their ultimate goal. All resources must be directed at that end-game and not merely controlling Congress and the various committee chairmanships

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This election is too important to ignore, to be complacent, to "forget" to vote.  We need everyone to go out to the polls.  If you know of a person who needs a ride to the polls, give it to him or her.

Feel free to "Steal" this from me.  Pass this warning along.

The Beginning of the End of Eric Holder?

Holger has a birthday coming up and instead of thinking of my birthday wish as I blow out my candles, I'll just share that wish with you all....that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is served with a Contempt of Congress citation, that the press jumps on it, that the public finally overwhelms the media and Congress with outrage at the actions of the radical revolutionary and Eric Holder is forced to resign his position as Attorney General by the end of June.

That's all I want or need for my birthday.

The story comes from Family Security Matters.

Contempt resolution drafted on Attorney General Eric H. Holder


The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee gave panel members a draft of a contempt of Congress resolution against Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., citing the "refusal" of the nation's top prosecutor to cooperate in an investigation of the botched Fast and Furious gunrunning operation.

The 64-page draft resolution and an accompanying 17-page staff briefing paper explain what Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and committee chairman, called the "reckless conduct" of the Fast and Furious investigation and the "hardships" faced by the family of a U.S. Border Patrol agent killed with a weapon purchased in the probe.

The two documents also detail retaliation against agents who blew the whistle on the operation and the "carnage in Mexico" that Fast and Furious helped fuel.

"This briefing paper and draft contempt report explains the case to both members of the committee and the American people for holding Attorney General Holder in contempt of Congress," Mr. Issa said. "Operation Fast and Furious' outrageous tactics, the Justice Department's refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation and efforts to smear and retaliate against whistleblowers have tainted the institutional integrity of the Justice Department."

Fast and Furious was an attempt by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to allow "straw buyers" in Arizona to "walk" weapons into Mexico with a goal of tracking them to drug cartel leaders. But ATF lost track of hundreds of the weapons, nearly 600 of which have never been recovered.

Investigations by Mr. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, found that ATF had allowed more than 2,000 weapons - including AK-47 assault rifles - to be "walked" to Mexican drug smugglers.

Two Romanian-made AK-47s purchased during the probe were found at the site of the December 2010 fatal shooting of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry, 40, who was killed just north of the Arizona border town of Nogales.

A Justice Department official on Thursday, as the agency has for the past several months, denied being uncooperative in the congressional probe, noting that Mr. Holder has testified seven times before various committees. The official said the department has handed over hundreds of pages of Fast and Furious documents and that any unreleased information was withheld to avoid politicizing or jeopardizing an ongoing investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility.

Mr. Grassley noted Thursday that the Justice Department and Mr. Holder initially denied that gunwalking occurred, but they have since withdrawn the denials and admitted that ATF whistleblowers were right to complain about the tactic.

He said that despite the constitutional responsibility of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch, the Justice Department "stonewalled every step" of the Fast and Furious investigation. He said the department provided 80,000 pages of documents to its inspector general's office in connection with Fast and Furious, but only 6,000 pages of documents to Congress.

"The attorney general and the Justice Department are thumbing their nose at the constitutional authority provided to the legislative branch to conduct oversight," Mr. Grassley said, adding that Mr. Holder is facing a "real test of leadership."

"He can force the department to come clean, or he can force a high-stakes political conflict between the legislative and executive branches," he said.

Mr. Issa's committee held three hearings on Fast and Furious, conducted 24 transcribed interviews, sent the Justice Department more than 50 letters requesting information, and issued two subpoenas on the department for documents. But the chairman said the department continues to withhold documents he described as "critical" to understanding the decision-making and responsibility in Fast and Furious.

The draft resolution specifically charges that Mr. Holder has not properly complied with a subpoena issued Oct. 12 requesting documents in 22 categories.

"For over a year, the department has issued false denials, given answers intended to misdirect investigators, sought to intimidate witnesses, unlawfully withheld subpoenaed documents, and waited to be confronted with indisputable evidence before acknowledging uncomfortable facts," the resolution says.

The resolution says the committee wants to know who among the Justice Department's top brass should have known about the "reckless tactics" in Fast and Furious; how department leaders ended up figuring out the program was a bad idea; and how a special task force "failed" to share information that could have led to key gun-trafficking arrests.

It also notes that the "most damning assessments of the department's handling of the fallout" from Fast and Furious came from two Justice Department officials - Kenneth Melson, former acting ATF director, and Patrick Cunningham, who was tasked by Justice with investigating ATF whistleblower allegations of gunwalking.

It says Mr. Melson told Congress "it appears thoroughly to us that the department is really trying to figure out a way to push the information away from their political appointees at the department," and Mr. Cunningham invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions about his work.

Will "Fast and Furious" Topple Obama and Holder?

This article over at Family Security Matters does a good job of detailing just what the rogue operation of the Federal government called "Fast and Furious" could actually do to the top leadership - namely Barack Hussein Obama and Eric Holder. As time goes by, the evidence mounts as to just how deeply involved Holder was in this operation and in fact, he is now having trouble substantiating his testimonies from earlier.

From the article:

The story got much larger when it was revealed that the federal government apparently purchased weapons and sold them directly to criminals in Mexico. As Michael Walsh of the New York Post wrote, “the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel. Let that sink in: After months of pretending that ‘Fast and Furious’ was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US Attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.”

This revelation, along with the possibility that Holder may have perjured himself, could prove to be the game changer, and force the Obama administration to turn this over to an independent counsel. In May, Holder appeared before Congress. When asked when he first heard about Fast and Furious, Holder responded, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

But recently released documents reveal that Holder received memos referring to the program in July, 2010. One such memo said, “Operation Fast and Furious” involved a “firearms trafficking ring.”

Holder later said that he had misunderstood the question.

The article does a good job of revealing the background of Fast and Furious and shows how important the Congressional investigation is to the final truth.

I just can't shake that quote from Barack Hussein Obama last year when Mrs. Brady complained to him that nothing was being done for further firearms legislation and he assured her that indeed something WAS being done....and to quote him, the work was being done "under the radar."

Under the radar? Ahhhh....now it has become all too clear. Don't you think?

Will "Fast and Furious" Topple Obama and Holder?


As much as the media have tried shielding the Obama administration from responsibility for corruption and malfeasance, the combined weight of the fallout from the Solyndra fiasco and the Operation Fast and Furious scandal have begun taking a serious toll on the administration. I will address Solyndra, the so called green energy company that received federal loans of more than a half a billion dollars, and then went bankrupt, in an upcoming report. That is starting to look like the tip of an iceberg of a political payoff scandal. But with subpoenas having been issued on October 13th in the Fast and Furious scandal to Attorney General Eric Holder and a total of 16 Justice Department officials, a variant of the famous Watergate question is being asked: “What did Eric Holder and President Obama know, and when did they know it?”

The usual truism is that many politicians make the mistake of not coming completely clean when allegations of wrongdoing surface. The cover-up, it is said, is often worse than the underlying crime or ethical violation. This has often been cited as the mistake made by people including Richard Nixon (Watergate break-in), Bill Clinton (Lewinsky, not to mention Filegate and Travelgate), John Edwards (love child and cheating on his cancer-stricken wife), and more recently, Anthony Weiner. There is a long list.

But in some cases, the crime, or lapse in judgment, is definitely worse than the cover-up. That appears to be the case in the simmering scandal engulfing the Obama administration that the mainstream media have tried their best to ignore for many months—the above mentioned Operation Fast and Furious.

In a recent column, I laid out the basic outline of the story, and how a very few in the mainstream media were finally getting interested in it. It involves the Obama Justice Department and was carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). It involves, among other things, at least 2,000 weapons, about 1,000 of which ended up in Mexico, and a Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry, who was murdered with weapons found near the scene of the crime in Rio Rico, Arizona on December 14, 2010. Four suspects were arrested, who were linked to a Mexican drug smuggling operation. The weapons were among 57 linked to Fast and Furious which have been tied to at least 11 violent crimes in the U.S., including the Terry murder. The Justice Department, while largely stonewalling, has admitted this much to Congress, as reported by The Los Angeles Times. In addition, at least 200 people have been killed or wounded in Mexico with weapons linked to the operation. On February 15th of this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jaime Zapata was shot to death in Mexico, another apparent victim.

The Bush administration had introduced Project Gunrunner in 2005 in an effort to reduce drug and firearms trafficking and the associated violence on both sides of the border with Mexico. Operation Fast and Furious began in September of 2009 and continued into early this year. What is known is that the federal government purposefully allowed gun smugglers, some with criminal records, to purchase guns at federally licensed firearms dealers in Arizona. In some cases the guns were taken across the Mexican border with the knowledge of U.S. government officials and delivered to major Mexican drug cartels.

According to CNS News, “The reported purpose of the operation was to track and uncover the entirety of the smuggling operations so they could be completely shut down. However, two rifles sold to a smuggler in the course of Operation Fast and Furious in January 2010 ended up at the scene of the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.”

The Murder of Agent Brian Terry

The murder of Agent Terry apparently was the last straw for some. A number of agents were sickened by what they knew was going on. CNS News also put together a timeline of known events regarding Fast and Furious. In the timeline it talks about “a January 8, 2010 briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Group VII” that says: ‘This investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers.’ It further says: ‘To date (September 2009 – present) this group has purchased in excess of 650 firearms (mainly AK-47 variants) for which they have paid cash totaling more than $350,000.’

“October 2009: The ATF’s Phoenix Field Division establishes a gun trafficking group called Group VII, which initially began using the strategy of ‘gunwalking,’ or allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns, according to a report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“‘The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case,’ the report says. It goes on to say: ‘Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”

“Jan. 5, 2010: ATF agents met with Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Emory Hurley, the lead prosecutor in the matter, according to the briefing paper. The briefing paper says: ‘a determination was made that there was minimal evidence at this time to support any type of prosecution; therefore, additional firearms purchases should be monitored and additional evidence continued to be gathered.’

“Further, US Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis Burke was briefed on this day. [Burke had been Sec. of Homeland Security’ Janet Napolitano’s chief of staff] Burke “concurs with the assessment of his line prosecutors and fully supports the continuation of the investigation,” the briefing paper says. The paper goes on to say that then head of the ATF Phoenix Field Division, Special Agent in Charge William Newell, “has repeatedly met with the US A[ttorney] Burke regarding the on-going status of this investigation and both are in full agreement with the current investigative strategy.”

“Jan. 8, 2010: The aforementioned briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division sheds further light on the operation:
—The paper makes clear: ‘Currently our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place, albeit at a much slower pace, in order to further the investigation and allow for the identification of additional co-conspirators who would continue to operate and illegally traffic firearms to Mexican DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations].’
—The ATF worked with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Phoenix Ariz.
—The ultimate goal is to secure [REDACTED] to identify and prosecute all co-conspirators of the DTO to include the 20 individual straw purchasers, the facilitators of the distribution cell centered here in Phoenix, the transportation cells taking firearms South, and ultimately to develop and provide prosecutable information to our Mexican law enforcement counterparts for actions.”

CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson later revealed that “ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell—who led Fast and Furious—and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly” were in close contact. “Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O’Reilly are longtime friends.”

“The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. [The emails were exchanged between late July and early September of 2010] They discuss ATF’s gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O’Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office’s gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as ‘letting guns walk.’

“A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: ‘none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to ‘walk.’”

“Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF’s Newell sent the White House’s O’Reilly an ‘arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up.’ The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.”

Attkisson reported in March 2011 on ATF agent John Dodson, a courageous whistleblower who had seen enough of letting these weapons move freely across the border. He had seen the consequences. You can see him tell part of his story to Attkisson in a March 2011 report on CBS.

In my article on Fast and Furious I credited some of those in the media who had been reporting on the story as information became known. They included Michelle Malkin, Andy McCarthy of National Review Online, Andrew Breitbart, Pajamas Media, American Thinker, WorldNetDaily, the Heritage Foundation. I then received several emails identifying others who had been the earliest to expose the details and the outline of this growing scandal. I heard from Dave Workman, Senior Editor of Gun Week, who wrote that the two men who uncovered the scandal last December were “National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea and independent blog journalist Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars. They broke this story, nobody else.” Workman has also contributed to the development of the story. Others include Mike Whipple of USActionnews.com and Bob Owens writing in Pajamas Media.

Sharyl Attkisson Steps Up Again

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has stood out as the one reporter in the mainstream media to take on this story, without fear or favor. She has stood strong in the past, and we have noted that as well. More than a decade ago, Attkisson was virtually alone when she began, during the Clinton administration, reporting on lax security at America’s leading nuclear weapons facility, Los Alamos. She stayed on that story for more than five years, and in doing so provided a great service to this country. She is doing so again on this story, and is paying a price. Recently Attkisson went on the Laura Ingraham radio show and “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News to describe how she was yelled and screamed at by officials both at the White House and DOJ for her pursuit of this story. She said she was yelled at by Tracy Schmaler at Justice and screamed at by Eric Schultz at the White House. She said she was told that she’s the only reporter who is not being “reasonable.” It is an outrage and other journalists should express that outrage.

Fox News has been all over the story. Sean Hannity had a one-hour special back in July devoted to this emerging scandal. William Lajeunesse of Fox News has also done some excellent reporting on this. CNN eventually carried some good stories on Fast and Furious, by Anderson Cooper and John King. But in general, the mainstream media have ignored the story and have gone to great lengths to be sure that it doesn’t implicate President Obama, much less Eric Holder, for anything other than being out of the loop.

The story got much larger when it was revealed that the federal government apparently purchased weapons and sold them directly to criminals in Mexico. As Michael Walsh of the New York Post wrote, “the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel. Let that sink in: After months of pretending that ‘Fast and Furious’ was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US Attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.”

This revelation, along with the possibility that Holder may have perjured himself, could prove to be the game changer, and force the Obama administration to turn this over to an independent counsel. In May, Holder appeared before Congress. When asked when he first heard about Fast and Furious, Holder responded, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

But recently released documents reveal that Holder received memos referring to the program in July, 2010. One such memo said, “Operation Fast and Furious” involved a “firearms trafficking ring.”

Holder later said that he had misunderstood the question.

Another key figure is Kenneth Melson, who was the Acting Director of ATF. Melson got a lawyer and voluntarily decided to meet with Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, on July 4th of this year. He said he was told by Justice Department officials to not respond to such requests from Congress. But he did it anyway. The next month he was transferred out of ATF and brought into the DOJ as an “advisor.”

After being challenged by Issa for his answer, Holder fired off a letter to Congress claiming that he had never read the memos, and that it was the responsibility of his staff to brief him on what they considered important.

Holder then went on to say that the reason the ATF was unable to prevent the weapons from being sold to the cartels was a lack of gun control and registration.

Issa responded to Holder, saying that “the American people have a right to know more, knowing that these guns were deliberately intended to end up in the hands of the drug cartels without any kind of traceability, except if you find a gun in the scene of the crime. That is the reason that it is felony and stupid—and I use the word ‘felony’ deliberately—program.”

He wrote that “Mexico’s Attorney General Marisela Morales, who stated that more than 200 Mexican citizens have been killed with Fast and Furious weapons, referred to the Obama administration plot as ‘an attack on Mexicans’ security.’”

Issa let Holder have it:

“Mr. Attorney General, you have made numerous statements about Fast and Furious that have eventually been proven to be untrue. Your lack of trustworthiness while speaking about Fast and Furious has called into question your overall credibility as Attorney General. The time for deflecting blame and obstructing our investigation is over. The time has come for you to come clean to the American public about what you knew about Fast and Furious, when you knew it, and who is going to be held accountable for failing to shut down a program that has already had deadly consequences, and will likely cause more casualties for years to come.”

“Operation Fast and Furious was the Department’s most significant gun trafficking case. It related to two of your major initiatives—destroying the Mexican cartels and reducing gun violence on both sides of the border. On your watch, it went spectacularly wrong. Whether you realize yet or not, you own Fast and Furious. It is your responsibility.”

Also, a group of ten Arizona sheriffs (5 Republican, 5 Democrat) have called for a special counsel to investigate the gunwalking operations, as has House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith.

The outcome of this scandal will have huge repercussions for years to come.

The Racial Prejudice of the Obama Administration

This article from Family Security Matters showcases the observations of the author of the book, "Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department" and it is startling. Now, I am not willing to just pin this racial agenda on the Justice Department but on the Obama administration in general. After all, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right?

Much of this has to do with the travesty of dismissing all of the charges against the New Black Panther Party and their role in voter intimidation in the 2008 elections. The fact of the matter is this - if those Black Panthers at the polling places in Philadelphia had been KKK members, the Holder Justice Department would have prosecuted them to the fullest and everyone involved would have been in federal prison serving very long terms. But according to the racial agenda of Holder and Obama, blacks in America are "hands off." It really is that simple.

INTERVIEW: J. Christian Adams, author of “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department”


On Election Day in 2008, armed members of the New Black Panther Party, King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson adopted a menacing and intimidating stance as they stood at the entrance to a polling center in Philadelphia shouting that America would be ruled by a black man. The event was captured on camera and posted on the internet. After the election, J.Christian Adams, then attorney for the Voting Rights Section of the Department of Justice and other DOJ lawyers brought a voter intimidation case against them.

The New Black Panther Party ignored the suit and in May of 2009 the lawyers were ordered to dismiss the case in spite of clear evidence that an outrageous violation of federal law had occurred. After continual stonewalling by the Justice Department, on May 14th, 2010 J.Christian Adams sent a letter of resignation to become effective on June 4th, 2010.

Adams stated in an editorial in the Washington Times of July 25, 2010 (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/25/inside-the-black-panther-case-anger-ignorance-and-/): “The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas investigating the dismissal, this month I resigned my position as a DOJ attorney”

The Justice Department went into full defense mode insisting that the case was properly handled by the civil rights division, which, in the words of then attorney general for civil rights, Tom Perez is: "firmly committed to the evenhanded application of the law, without regard to the race of the victims or perpetrators."

Many commentators determined to protect President Obama called the charges fantasies designed to belittle the President and diminish racial equality by using a minor example of partisan application of Federal law.

All these claims are totally demolished in J. Christian Adams’ book “Injustice-Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.”

Most Americans consider the right to vote and the protection of laws by the Justice Department to be the hallmarks of a democratic nation. Most will also readily acknowledge the sordid history of discrimination against Black Americans that led to the creation of laws protecting the civil and voting rights of an aggrieved minority. But, how many are aware of the endemic misapplications of those laws which are racially biased against white Americans?

In chapter after chapter, Adams presents startling, infuriating and meticulously documented examples of lawlessness and racially based and unequal enforcement of the law slanted against whites. Furthermore, although the Obama Department of Justice implements this blatant reverse discrimination in staffing of all its agencies much of it occurred during the two terms of President George Bush.

In 2003, Ike Brown, a law school dropout from Madison county Mississippi relocated to Noxubee County to secure total Black domination of the county’s local and state law enforcement officials and legislators. Brown instituted a lawless agenda against white voters and candidates with the use of so called “voter assistance” which was, in fact, voter coercion and illegal ballots as well as henchmen who threatened voters and candidates, and myriad examples of bias and disregard for the laws. Most appalling were the number of Voting Section lawyers, some of whom are in the current Justice Department who enabled Brown’s chicanery and still do.

The book includes many photographs, some taken by the author. One remarkable example is that of an uninhabited and decrepit shanty in Noxubee County which was registered as an address in several elections for a woman who had long left the county but continued to vote there.

Two telling photos show candidate Barack Obama flanked by members of the New Black Panther Party who gave him a black-power salute, and giving an address at the Selma-to-Montgomery commemoration in March 2007.

Adams reminds us that Obama did not hesitate to seek the support of this group which is virulently racist, anti-Semitic, and encourages violence against whites and police officers, but after journalist Juan Williams rather fevered report from the scene, the media ignored the issue and it was airbrushed from his campaign.

If the Justice Department is lax in protecting voters and white Americans, they are quite active in protecting the rights of young males to wear stiletto heels and pink wigs to high school and all “gender non-conforming” behavior, the rights of illegal aliens, and the rights of teachers to a paid vacation in Mecca.

It’s a mad, mad world, but J.Christian Adams ends this essential expose with a cogent list of steps designed to end the injustice and the racial agenda of the Obama Justice department.

Read it!

It is my pleasure to interview J.Christian Adams.

1.RK: Please tell us about the New Black Panthers as opposed to the old Black Panthers.

JCA:The New Black Panthers are an entirely different, and much more radical group. They seem to exclude whites, unlike the old black panthers. They are a rabid anti-Semitic organization. Their members repeatedly call for the murder of whites. They have been associated with shake downs of Asian merchants in New York and Washington D.C. The old Black Panthers are tame kitty cats compared to this bunch.

2.RK: on October 3, Andrew Breitbart published photographs of Barack Obama marching with the members of the New Black Panther Party. He states that your book originally had more of these photographs but they were removed. Can you explain this?

JCA:Andrew published the photos that the photographer would not allow Regenery to publish. The photographer was in Selma at the event and took photos of Obama speaking from the same stage as Malik Zulu Shabazz and his panthers. Injustice does have a photo of Obama and the panthers, but Andrew published the others.

3.RK: You state in the book that Presidents Clinton and Bush deployed experienced lawyers to the polls as election observers. And yet many of the cases you site occurred during the Bush administration. Can you explain?

JCA:Election observers are not at every poll in the country. They are only at a few hundred. There are tens of thousands of precincts around the country on election day. But as I detail in Injustice, even locations where they were deployed, lawlessness still occurred. The culture of voting fraud lawlessness is so automatic, many don’t know how to shut it off even when federal observers are present.

4.RK: What has happened to Ike Brown? How has the Eric Holder Justice Department dealt with him?

JCA: The Holder Justice Department should have objected to his county redistricting plan in 2011 as violating Section 5 of the voting rights act because it has the effect of discrimination as well as the intent. But the DOJ refuses to protect any white minority under the effects test of Section 5. Perhaps it will take the Supreme Court striking down Section 5 because it is unequally enforced before the DOJ will start to protect everybody. Despite being found liable for discrimination against white voters, the Mississippi Democratic Party kept Ike Brown in the statewide executive committee.

5.RK: Abigail Thernstrom is a respected conservative. How do you account for her opposition to the case and her bizarre claim that it was just an effort to topple Obama?

JCA: I address her position in Injustice. At first, she was critical of the dismissal of the case and wrote letters to the Justice Department saying so, then she reversed course. It was a gamble that I would be the only person to come out and speak the truth about what was happening inside DOJ. But then Chris Coates, the former Voting Section chief, corroborated me, then multiple people inside DOJ corroborated me to the Washington Post, and then the OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) report by DOJ revealed that many people don’t think the law should be enforced equally inside DOJ.

In the end it was unfortunate. But Abigail has always been against enforcement of several portions of the Voting Rights Act, including Section 2 sometimes and Section 5.

6.RK: Please tell us about Tarell Campbell.

JCA:In the fall of 2008, Tarrell Campbell was a student at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. With his three separate master’s degrees, he had been on a college campus, somewhere, for more than a decade. He was so interested in the outcome of the 2008 presidential election that he cast a ballot in Illinois, then drove across a Mississippi River bridge to his hometown of St. Louis and voted again.

Mr. Campbell entered a guilty plea to federal voter fraud charges for illegally casting two votes in a federal election. Make no mistake, Mr. Campbell wasn’t the only person who voted illegally in the last few elections.

7.RK: What can you tell us about Marilyn Buck and Harvard Professor and Obama mentor Charles Ogletree?

JCA:Buck helped bomb the U.S. Capitol and was involved in the deaths of multiple people. She was a left wing domestic terrorist. She had been sentenced to life in prison and tried to get out during the Bush administration, but the DOJ wouldn’t release her. When Eric Holder became Attorney General, he sprang her loose. People like to note she was dying of cancer, but there is no rule against dying in prison. The people who were murdered didn’t get the luxury of dying at home.

Professor Charles Ogletree is one of President Obama’s old law professors. One of the letters seeking Bucks release came from a Harvard Law School staffer and had Ogletree’s name on the letterhead.

8.RK: Andrew Breitbart asks who is a Malik Shabazz who visited the White House residence on July 25th, 2009 after the DOJ dismissed the voter intimidation case? Do you have any idea?

JCA: None. Not a terribly common name, is it?

9.RK: Finally, what would you recommend as a first step to righting this injustice if a new administration is elected in 2012?

JCA: I deal with that in the last chapter of Injustice. The next administration has to have the courage to advance a civil rights vision of their own, and not just a diluted version of the racialists. The next administration also needs to realize almost the entire career ranks will work against their agenda, even sometimes being untruthful about the facts or law – something I encountered all the time. They also need to prioritize military voting, and ensure that ballots go out on time. 2010 was a disaster for military voters. The next administration must bring in former servicemember lawyers to enforce military voting rights.



RK: Thank you for your time and for your excellent and informative book.

Why Does Eric Holder Want To Cut the Prison Term For an Al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood Linked Terrorist?

What in the sam hell is the link between appeasement of radical islamic terrorists and the Department of Justice? Or perhaps more specifically, why is it that Attorney General Eric Holder seems hellbent on letting every radical islamic terrorist in this country go?

The latest in a long litany of appeasing radical elements of Islam by Holder and the DOJ is found at this article at Family Security Matters.

From the article:

Just when you thought it was not possible for the Holder Justice Department to become any more hostile to the national and homeland security interests of the American people, along comes yet another travesty. This one threatens both, as it apparently would involve turning loose in America a convicted terrorist known to be a top Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic) operative and al Qaeda financier: Abdurahman Alamoudi.

According to a short Associated Press report on July 8th:

Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to cut the 23-year prison term being served by an American Muslim activist who admitted participation in a Libyan plot to assassinate King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Alamoudi – who famously declared his support for Hamas and Hezbollah at a rally in Lafayette Square in October 2000 and was recognized by the Justice Department as a Muslim Brother – has been incarcerated with other top terrorists in the Supermax facility in Colorado. As an American citizen, he would presumably be allowed to stay in this country upon his release.

So what possible justification could the Holder Justice Department have for releasing such an individual just nine years into a twenty-three year sentence? The AP story notes that, “The documents explaining why prosecutors want to cut Alamoudi’s sentence are under seal, but such reductions are allowed only when a defendant provides substantial assistance to the government.”

Let's get to the crux of all of this - at a time when we are risking the lives of our servicemen and servicewomen all over this world in the battle against radical islamic terrorism, we have the highest legal office in America doing their best to see that those captured are set free. Why the focus of the DOJ on islamists? I mean, seriously, why is there such a drive at the DOJ to see that islamic terrorists are given EVERY chance to be released from our custody?

I've said it dozens of times...that we need a House investigation of Eric Holder and we need it now. If Alberto Gonzalez was forced to resign for not handling some firings correctly, then shouldn't Eric Holder be investigated for coddling the enemies of our very country?

Freeing Al Qaeda?

DOJ Moves to Cut Prison Term for Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist


Just when you thought it was not possible for the Holder Justice Department to become any more hostile to the national and homeland security interests of the American people, along comes yet another travesty. This one threatens both, as it apparently would involve turning loose in America a convicted terrorist known to be a top Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic) operative and al Qaeda financier: Abdurahman Alamoudi.

According to a short Associated Press report on July 8th:

Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to cut the 23-year prison term being served by an American Muslim activist who admitted participation in a Libyan plot to assassinate King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Alamoudi – who famously declared his support for Hamas and Hezbollah at a rally in Lafayette Square in October 2000 and was recognized by the Justice Department as a Muslim Brother – has been incarcerated with other top terrorists in the Supermax facility in Colorado. As an American citizen, he would presumably be allowed to stay in this country upon his release.

Alamoudi at Large

Can it be precluded that, once he is freed, Alamoudi would take up again with those he did so much to help sponsor, foster and run as one of the leading Muslim Brothers in the country? Lest we forget, as a driving force behind many of the myriad MB front organizations in the United States, he previously was deeply involved with the fulfillment of the Ikhwan’s mission here as described in its 1991 strategic plan.

That plan, which was found by the FBI in 2004 when they discovered the secret archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in Annandale, Virginia, is entitled An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America. (It is reprinted in its entirety as Appendix 2 of Shariah: The Threat to America, ShariahtheThreat.com.) According to this memorandum, the Brotherhood’s mission in America is “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within…by their [read, our] hands and the hands of the believers.”

This objective is, of course, identical to that of al Qaeda, the other jihadist enterprise for whom Alamoudi previously worked. Who knows, if freed, could he rejoin its ranks, too?
At the very least, one has to assume that Abdurahman Alamoudi would be able to reconnect with the Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military and prison systems whom the Clinton administration allowed him to recruit, train and credential. As no evident effort has been made to relieve his hand-picked folks from their clerical responsibilities ministering to such exceedingly sensitive populations, putting Alamoudi back in business – or at least back in touch – with them could intensify the grave security threat they might pose even now.

Why Would Alamoudi be Freed?

So what possible justification could the Holder Justice Department have for releasing such an individual just nine years into a twenty-three year sentence? The AP story notes that, “The documents explaining why prosecutors want to cut Alamoudi’s sentence are under seal, but such reductions are allowed only when a defendant provides substantial assistance to the government.”

We can only speculate about what such “assistance” might be. Could Alamoudi be telling the feds insights about his former paymaster, Qaddafi, that could be helpful in removing the latter from power? As it is not entirely clear whether such an outcome is actually the goal of the United States, France or NATO in Libya at this point, it is hard to see that possible help as justification for running the serious risks associated with springing so dangerous an individual.
Perhaps, alternatively, Alamoudi might have spilled the beans about his friends in the Brotherhood’s vast North American infrastructure. Did he provide further confirmation of the subversive role being played as part of what the Ikhwan calls its “civilization jihad” by, for example, organizations and members of: the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Muslim Community Association (MCA), the Islamic Council of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Fiqh Council?

Such insights seem unlikely to have been valued by the Obama administration, though, since it continues to have extensive dealings with such groups and individuals associated with them. If anything, such ties with MB fronts and operatives will be intensifying, now that Team Obama has decided formally to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood’s mother ship in Egypt.

Unfortunately, given this trend – to say nothing of the mindlessness of the Holder Justice Department when it comes to matters of national security – a more probable explanation for its willingness to give Alamoudi a get-out-of-jail-free pass is that the Obama administration is anxious to remove an irritant in relations with its friends in the Muslim Brotherhood and to demonstrate that a new day is dawning in those ties.

Alamoudi’s GOP Influence Operation

As it happens, in the aftermath of the Alamoudi announcement, one of his most successful pre-incarceration influence operations bore fresh fruit. In 1998, Alamoudi personally provided seed money to enable libertarian anti-tax activist Grover Norquist to establish the Islamic Free Market Institute (better known as the Islamic Institute or II). The Institute served the purpose of credentialing Muslim Brotherhood operatives like Khalid Saffuri, Alamoudi’s longtime deputy at the American Muslim Council (AMC), who became II’s founding executive director – as “conservatives” and enabling them to infiltrate the George W. Bush 2000 campaign and administration.

After the incarceration of his sponsor on terrorism charges, Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, has continued to promote Muslim Brotherhood personnel and agendas inside Republican circles. For instance, just this week, at the July 13th meeting of his so-called “Center-Right Coalition” in Washington, Norquist staged a denunciation of legislation now being debated in state legislatures across the country: the American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) legislation.

MB Priority: Stopping American Laws from Governing in American Courts

The Muslim Brotherhood is outraged that three states have already enacted one version or another of the ALAC bill designed to preclude foreign laws (including, but not limited to, shariah) from being used in that state’s courts if doing so would deny constitutional rights or otherwise conflict with state public policy. It has been introduced in some twenty others states and, to date, has passed in one house or another of four of them.

Such successes have been achieved by Americans all over the country because there simply is no good argument for opposing this affirmation of our civil liberties for all Americans – including American Muslim women and children whose rights are frequently being impinged upon by the application of shariah. (See ShariahinAmericanCourts.com, a study of twenty-seven cases in twenty-three states where shariah was allowed to trump American laws.)
Last Wednesday, Norquist arranged for three speakers – self-described Jews or Christians – to promote the Muslim Brotherhood line that free practice of religion, including that of non-Muslims, would be denied were ALAC to be adopted. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as the legislation itself makes clear (See PublicPolicyAlliance.org). But it is instructive that the GOP influence operation Alamoudi spawned continues to serve his intended purpose: dividing and suborning conservatives in the best tradition of the stealth jihad at which he and his Brothers have long excelled.

Perhaps another venue in which we can expect to see Abdurahman Alamoudi should the Obama administration actually get away with freeing this al Qaeda terrorist will be as a featured speaker at Grover Norquist’s Wednesday meeting?

How Does An American Attorney General Who Has Defended the Rights of Terrorists Now Deal With Bin Laden's Assassination?

Eric Holder. I've said it once, I've said it dozens of times...the WORST Attorney General to ever hold the position in this country of ours. The man is simply tainted - this is a man in the highest legal prosecutorial position in our country yet his past has been marked with constant appeasements and bail outs of the baddest of the bad among us.

This article at Family Security Matters looks into the rock and a hard place scenario that Eric Holder finds himself in with trying to justify the killing of Osama bin Laden when his past court appearances and directives have always been in defense of the rights of islamic terrorists.

I'm serious...putting this man in charge of the Justice Department would be like making an abortion doctor the head of a new Pediatrics wing.

From the article:

Why does the Obama Justice Department seem to have trouble mounting a full-throated, compelling legal defense of Osama bin Laden’s killing? The problem for Eric Holder the attorney general could be Eric Holder the private attorney.

In 2004, Mr. Holder chose to file an amicus brief on behalf of Jose Padilla, the al-Qaeda terrorist sent to our country by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to carry out a post-9/11 second wave of attacks. In the brief, Holder argued that a commander-in-chief lacks the constitutional authority to do what his boss, the current commander-in-chief, has just done: determine the parameters of the battlefield. By Holder’s lights — at least when the president is not named Obama — an al-Qaeda terrorist must be treated as a criminal defendant, not an enemy combatant, unless he is encountered on a traditional battlefield.

It would be useful if staffers at congressional oversight hearings passed around copies of Holder’s Padilla brief. It is a comprehensive attack on Bush counterterrorism, an enthusiastic endorsement of the law-enforcement approach in vogue during the Clinton era (when Holder was deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, who also signed on to the Padilla brief). This might explain why Holder sometimes has difficulty answering seemingly easy questions. That’s what happened this week, when the Senate Judiciary Committee quizzed the attorney general on the lawfulness of the U.S. military’s targeted killing of bin Laden.

You know, when you have an Attorney General who simply refuses to acknowledge the "good of the people" and instead, focuses on the "oppressed" in this world, you have a recipe for disaster. I wonder what will happen in the 2012 elections if a few white skinheads show up at a Philadelphia polling center with billy clubs...you think Eric Holder will see that they are brought to justice?

I am amazed that this man's resignation hasn't been called for by a GOP Congressman or Senator. Shocked, I guess, is more like it.

Holder vs. Holder


Why does the Obama Justice Department seem to have trouble mounting a full-throated, compelling legal defense of Osama bin Laden’s killing? The problem for Eric Holder the attorney general could be Eric Holder the private attorney.

In 2004, Mr. Holder chose to file an amicus brief on behalf of Jose Padilla, the al-Qaeda terrorist sent to our country by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to carry out a post-9/11 second wave of attacks. In the brief, Holder argued that a commander-in-chief lacks the constitutional authority to do what his boss, the current commander-in-chief, has just done: determine the parameters of the battlefield. By Holder’s lights — at least when the president is not named Obama — an al-Qaeda terrorist must be treated as a criminal defendant, not an enemy combatant, unless he is encountered on a traditional battlefield.

It would be useful if staffers at congressional oversight hearings passed around copies of Holder’s Padilla brief. It is a comprehensive attack on Bush counterterrorism, an enthusiastic endorsement of the law-enforcement approach in vogue during the Clinton era (when Holder was deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, who also signed on to the Padilla brief). This might explain why Holder sometimes has difficulty answering seemingly easy questions. That’s what happened this week, when the Senate Judiciary Committee quizzed the attorney general on the lawfulness of the U.S. military’s targeted killing of bin Laden.

This should be a no-brainer, unless you are a transnational progressive, such as those in the Human Rights Watch crowd, which does not concede the primacy of American law when it comes to American government action; or a pedant such as Fox’s Andrew Napolitano, who seems to think the Constitution’s words “declare war” have a talismanic quality, as if Congress were powerless to authorize warfare without uttering them.

A few days after the 9/11 atrocities, Congress — by huge bipartisan margins — enacted a sweeping authorization of the use of military force (AUMF). The AUMF, which was promptly signed by President Bush and has been reaffirmed repeatedly in congressional appropriations signed by Presidents Bush and Obama, states in pertinent part:

The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Congress could not more clearly have empowered the president to launch military operations against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. No one was more responsible than bin Laden, who — to use the crystal clear AUMF terminology — planned and authorized the suicide-hijackings.

Not only did the AUMF put our nation on a firm war footing, Congress imposed no geographical or situational limitations on combat operations against those determined by the commander-in-chief either to have carried out 9/11 or to have harbored those terrorists. Manifestly, either Pakistan is our ally — as its government and ours both profess — in which case killing bin Laden on its soil is routine (there having been many U.S. strikes against the enemy in Pakistan), or Pakistan was harboring bin Laden in Abbottabad, in which case the AUMF expressly authorizes not only attacks against al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan but against Pakistan itself. Q.E.D.

Except it’s not that simple for Eric Holder the attorney general, because Eric Holder the private lawyer advocated greater legal protections for terrorists.

The attorney general told the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the killing of bin Laden “was justified as an act of national self-defense.” But self-defense has nothing to do with it. True, the war is a defensive war in response to an atrocious terrorist attack; that, however, does not make each individual operation by which the war is waged an exercise in self-defense. In fact, had such a suggestion been made by a Bush-administration official, Holder would likely have been outraged: In effect, the self-defense rationale would give wartime presidents exactly the “blank check” the Lawyer Left insists they do not have. No, the operation in which bin Laden was killed was offensive, and rightly so.

As Fox news elaborated, the attorney general also trotted out a second theory:

Holder said it’s lawful to “target an enemy commander in the field,” just as U.S. forces did during World War II when it [sic] shot down a plane carrying Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto. Bin Laden was “by my estimation, and the estimation of the Justice Department, a lawful military target, and the operation was conducted consistent with our law [and] with our values.” Bin Laden made no attempts to surrender and there was “no indication he wanted to do that,” Holder said.

Notice that Holder’s defense here rests on the premise that bin Laden was targeted in the field, meaning, on a battlefield. If an enemy combatant is encountered on the battlefield and he does not surrender, he may be killed or captured — it makes no difference whether he was armed, as bin Laden apparently was not.

But hold on: Bin Laden was not confronted on a battlefield. Nor was he, like Admiral Yamamoto, in an aircraft, which theoretically can be a military asset — or even used as a missile, as al-Qaeda has demonstrated. To the contrary, al-Qaeda’s emir was targeted in a residential neighborhood. Though he had some bodyguards, he was in the company of noncombatant women and children.

For most Americans, that does not detract at all from the legitimacy of bin Laden’s killing. This enemy has declared a global jihad against the United States. Al-Qaeda reserves to itself the prerogative to turn any place of its choosing into a battlefield. In fact, it would be perilous not to assume, when encountering al-Qaeda operatives, that this is exactly what they are up to. Their m.o., after all, is to target civilians for mass murder and to hide among civilians in order to frustrate retaliatory strikes. Consequently, it should make no difference that bin Laden was not found on a traditional battlefield — that he was in a residential compound inside a country with which the United States is not at war.

Nevertheless, what is not a problem for most Americans is a problem for Mr. Holder — at least if we’re talking about Eric Holder the prominent Democratic lawyer who filed the Padilla amicus brief, an action that he failed to disclose to the Senate during his confirmation process.

Padilla was apprehended coming off a plane in Chicago. He was unarmed and in an airport, not on a traditional battlefield. Though not an enemy commander like bin Laden or Yamamoto, he was clearly an enemy combatant, and a quite deadly one, given the nature of his mission. Yet President Bush did not authorize his killing. Padilla was taken into custody by law-enforcement agents and later transferred to military custody after being designated an enemy combatant — for which the Lawyer Left lustily rebuked the president.

Plainly, there are some distinctions between the Padilla and bin Laden situations. Not only was Padilla encountered inside our territory (after arriving on a flight from — where else? — Pakistan), he is also an American citizen. But Holder did not limit his argument on behalf of the terrorist to these circumstances. He also forcefully argued that the Bush administration did not have the power to treat Padilla as an enemy combatant because he was not found on a battlefield:

Amici do not question the power of the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to detain persons, even citizens, seized on an active field of battle. We recognize that the President has broad authority as Commander-in-Chief during a time of war or threat to the security of our Nation. . . . But the exigencies of the battlefield present a vastly different circumstance than even the bustle of O’Hare Airport. . . . While the government suggests that Padilla was arrested on a “battlefield,” . . . under its standards the “battlefield” against terrorism could extend throughout the world and the “hostilities” could be of indefinite and perhaps undefinable duration. Legal standards developed to deal with traditional wars cannot be imported wholesale into this very different context.

Holder was dangerously wrong. Put aside that no war comes with an expiration date. It was not the Bush administration that extended the battlefield “throughout the world.” The standards in question were set by al-Qaeda. That is no doubt why Congress prudently did not attempt to circumscribe the commander-in-chief’s discretion to determine what the battlefield is. We don’t want terrorists to have any sanctuaries.

This is also precisely why President Obama has “imported wholesale” into his command the traditional concept that a battlefield can be any location where the enemy can conduct operations — which, in al-Qaeda’s case, is any place where its operatives are found. That is the risk a terrorist runs — being an unlawful combatant who flouts laws of war designed to protect civilians, the terrorist must be denied the privileges that reward lawful combatants for conducting warfare honorably.

Contrary to Mr. Holder’s rationalizations about self-defense and “traditional” battlefields, President Obama was well within his power, under the Constitution and Congress’s AUMF, to order bin Laden’s killing in an offensive raid on a residential Pakistani compound. Only an unambiguous surrender by the al-Qaeda leader might have rendered the killing problematic.

It was thus curious to find, in the Fox report, Holder’s supposition that, even if bin Laden had surrendered, there would have been a “good basis” for “those very brave Navy SEALs” to shoot bin Laden — “in order to protect themselves and the other people who were in that building,” including “substantial numbers of women and children.”

Protections granted to honorable combatants under the laws of war — many of which the Lawyer Left and the Obama administration have pushed to extend to terrorists — generally hold that when quarter is sought, it must be given. It is “especially forbidden,” instructs Article 23 of the 1907 Hague Convention, “to kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion.” It is, moreover, deemed an egregious violation of international law for a country at war to indicate that no quarter will be given, that it will take no prisoners.

But who knows? Maybe Mr. Holder is evolving.

Group of Intelligence and Law Enforcement Experts Send Letter To Congress Demanding Investigation of Muslim Brotherhood Subversion In America

This is awesome. Since Eric Holder and his band of islamic terrorist appeasers in the Justice Department are content to sit on their hands and allow every tom, dick and harry jihadi group infiltrate America, a think tank type group of defense, intelligence and law enforcement experts have sent a very detailed letter and report to Congressional leaders demanding a thorough investigation of the Muslim Brotherhood's activities in America and a look at the case of creeping Sharia in our land. Bravo!

From the article at Family Security Matters:

In a letter sent yesterday to congressional leaders, the authors of a groundbreaking report entitled Shariah: The Threat to America called on the legislative branch to do something the executive branch seems determined not to undertake: A rigorous investigation of the extent to which the Muslim Brotherhood’s stealthy “civilization jihad” has gained access to and influence over the United States government, with grave implications for the national security.

Team B II’s letter cited recent revelations by one of its members, counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole, who published over the past fortnight a series of explosive quotes provided by an unnamed senior Justice Department official in the course of a six-hour interview. Particularly worrying is the allegation that a federal criminal prosecution of Muslim Brotherhood-associated individuals and organizations was “scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice – and possibly even the White House.”

At issue is the intended second phase of prosecutions arising from the evidence introduced in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial – the largest terrorism funding trial in U.S. history. The first phase resulted in five convictions based substantially on Muslim Brotherhood documents that established the Brotherhood is explicitly engaged in a “civilization jihad” in the United States, a conspiracy to “destroy the Western civilization from within.” These documents also identified 29 prominent Muslim-American groups as “our organizations and organizations of our friends.” The planned second part of the Holy Land Foundation prosecution would have resulted in the indictment of some of those listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the first phase.

We have to understand something in all of this and that is the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder is a piece of shit. He has been derelict in his duties on many occasions. Most of you remember the Black Panther Party voter intimidation case in Philadelphia that was not investigated by Holder's people and the coverup of that decision. Well, we are looking at the same behavior in the arena of islamic terror inside of America. Let's face it, there is countless evidence of the reach of the Muslim Brotherhood inside of our country - they have splinter groups from coast to coast and there is evidence that they have ensured a flow of funding from America overseas to known terrorist groups. But Holder does nothing. Absolutely nothing.

During the Bush presidency, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was forced to resign because of his letting some U.S. attorneys go...yet Eric Holder has endangered the people of America on numerous occasions and I have YET to hear one Congressman or Senator ask for his resignation. Why is that?

Team B II Wants Islamist Penetration of U.S. Government Investigated


n a letter sent yesterday to congressional leaders, the authors of a groundbreaking report entitled Shariah: The Threat to America called on the legislative branch to do something the executive branch seems determined not to undertake: A rigorous investigation of the extent to which the Muslim Brotherhood’s stealthy “civilization jihad” has gained access to and influence over the United States government, with grave implications for the national security.

Team B II Letter to Congressional Leaders

The group known as “Team B II” includes experienced defense, intelligence and law enforcement practitioners – notably, former Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey; Lieutentant Generals Harry E. Soyster and William G. Boykin, the former Defense Intelligence Agency Director and former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, respectively; former Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet Admiral James A. Lyons; and former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy.

Their letter provides a powerful rejoinder to the public address given yesterday by Attorney General Eric Holder. While General Holder insisted that his department (and presumably other government agencies) will continue their “outreach to all communities,” Team B II warned leaders on Capitol Hill:

[There is] evidence that – thanks to misbegotten official “outreach” efforts to self-appointed “leaders” of the Muslim community – Brotherhood influence operations have been highly successful in penetrating and interfering with our law enforcement, homeland defense, military and intelligence communities’ performance of their vital missions. If that is the case, the implications could not be more serious, and the need for corrective action could not be more acute.

Team B II’s letter cited recent revelations by one of its members, counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole, who published over the past fortnight a series of explosive quotes provided by an unnamed senior Justice Department official in the course of a six-hour interview. Particularly worrying is the allegation that a federal criminal prosecution of Muslim Brotherhood-associated individuals and organizations was “scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice – and possibly even the White House.”

At issue is the intended second phase of prosecutions arising from the evidence introduced in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial – the largest terrorism funding trial in U.S. history. The first phase resulted in five convictions based substantially on Muslim Brotherhood documents that established the Brotherhood is explicitly engaged in a “civilization jihad” in the United States, a conspiracy to “destroy the Western civilization from within.” These documents also identified 29 prominent Muslim-American groups as “our organizations and organizations of our friends.” The planned second part of the Holy Land Foundation prosecution would have resulted in the indictment of some of those listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the first phase.

In a letter sent to General Holder last week, Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, confirmed the charges made by Mr. Poole’s source:

I have been reliably informed that the decision not to seek indictments of the Council on American Islamic Relations (“CAIR”) and its co-founder Omar Ahmad, the Islamic Society of North America (“ISNA”), and the North American Islamic Trust (“NAIT”), was usurped by high-ranking officials at Department of Justice headquarters over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case. Their opposition to this decision raises serious doubt that the decision not to prosecute was a valid exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

On the occasion of the release of the Team B II letter, co-author Frank J. Gaffney Jr., whose Center for Security Policy sponsored Shariah: The Threat to America, remarked:

The Attorney General’s efforts to deflect attention from apparently well-founded charges of official misconduct must not prevent Congress from engaging in an aggressive investigation of those charges and the larger context of Muslim Brotherhood activity in Washington and across America. It was heartening to hear Rep. Pete King declare last Sunday on Fox News that the House Homeland Security Committee and House Judiciary Committee may have to take further action to find out why the Justice Department dropped the terror finance prosecutions. We call on those and other congressional panels – on both sides of Capitol Hill – to take up as well and as a matter of the utmost urgency investigations of the nature and extent of the Brotherhood’s “civilization jihad” against our government, civil society and Constitution.

Corruption At the Top: Holder's Justice Department Stops Prosecution of CAIR and Other Islamic Groups

If I have said it once, I've said it a hundred times...the appointment of Eric Holder as Attorney General was absolutely the most flagrantly perverse of all of Barack Hussein Obama's appointments and any Senator that voted for this guy's taking the helm of the nation's Justice Dept. should be held to task for it. The evidence was there that Eric Holder is a terrorist sympathizer and what we see now is an appeasement of all terrorists by his department.

From the article at Family Security Matters:

Well, today at Pajamas, Patrick Poole appears to provide an answer to that question in an explosive report. Relying on “a high-ranking source within the Department of Justice,” Pat relates that top Obama political appointees in Attorney General Eric Holder’s department have squashed the efforts of line prosecutors to file charges. They’ve done that, Poole explains, for political reasons — these Islamist groups (as I detail in my book) have extensive relationships with the government. Poole elaborates:

[A] number of leaders of Islamic organizations (all of whom publicly opposed the King hearings on Muslim radicalization) were about to be indicted on terror finance support charges by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, which had been investigating the case for most of the past decade. But those indictments were scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — and possibly even the White House.

Included in those indictments was at least one of the co-founders of CAIR, based on “Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad,” a March 31 DOJ legal memo from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. A second DOJ official familiar with the investigation independently confirmed these details. Omar Ahmad is one of CAIR’s co-founders and its chairman emeritus. He was personally named, along with CAIR itself, as an unindicted co-conspirator (pdf link) in the Holy Land Foundation terror finance trial in 2007 and 2008. During the trial FBI Agent Lara Burns testified (pdf link) that both Omar Ahmad and current CAIR executive director Nihad Awad were caught on FBI wiretaps attending a 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders in Philadelphia.

The corruptions is clear but more importantly the mission of the DOJ is even more clear - prop up the Islamic groups in America, insulate them, protect them and attack those that go after them.

Look at all of the islamic terror activity inside of America now compared to five years ago and ask yourself how many organized stings and prosecutions of groups have been brought forward by Holder's DOJ. Don't struggle with that...the number is ZERO.

You see, in Eric Holder's mind and the minds of his minions, the Islamic groups, the ones with blatant ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are all part of the "movement" - the struggle for new order in America, part of the tearing down of the U.S. and thus, the free pass.

Make no bones about it. We have a sinister man running the highest legal office in this land.

DOJ Source: Obama Political Appointees Squashed Indictment of CAIR Leader and Other Islamist Groups


My book, The Grand Jihad, is about the Muslim Brotherhood’s conspiracy to destroy America and the West and how Islamists work with Leftists in and out of government. When I speak about the book, and I point out that the Justice Department showed, in its terrorism financing prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation, that major Islamist organizations (e.g., CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, the North American Islamic Trust, etc.) were complicit in the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities (including its financing of its Palestinian branch, Hamas), the question I am frequently asked is: Why doesn’t the Justice Department make them indicted coconspirators instead of unindicted coconspirators — the evidence, after all, seems to be there, right?

Well, today at Pajamas, Patrick Poole appears to provide an answer to that question in an explosive report. Relying on “a high-ranking source within the Department of Justice,” Pat relates that top Obama political appointees in Attorney General Eric Holder’s department have squashed the efforts of line prosecutors to file charges. They’ve done that, Poole explains, for political reasons — these Islamist groups (as I detail in my book) have extensive relationships with the government. Poole elaborates:

[A] number of leaders of Islamic organizations (all of whom publicly opposed the King hearings on Muslim radicalization) were about to be indicted on terror finance support charges by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, which had been investigating the case for most of the past decade. But those indictments were scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — and possibly even the White House.

Included in those indictments was at least one of the co-founders of CAIR, based on “Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad,” a March 31 DOJ legal memo from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. A second DOJ official familiar with the investigation independently confirmed these details. Omar Ahmad is one of CAIR’s co-founders and its chairman emeritus. He was personally named, along with CAIR itself, as an unindicted co-conspirator (pdf link) in the Holy Land Foundation terror finance trial in 2007 and 2008. During the trial FBI Agent Lara Burns testified (pdf link) that both Omar Ahmad and current CAIR executive director Nihad Awad were caught on FBI wiretaps attending a 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders in Philadelphia.

Dean Boyd, public affairs representative for the DOJ National Security Division, declined to provide me a copy of the March 31, 2010, memo dropping the Omar Ahmad prosecution. Directing me to submit a FOIA request, Boyd did say that “as a general rule, internal DOJ deliberation memos spelling out arguments for or against potential prosecution of any particular suspect are not public.” Pajamas Media will be filing a FOIA request for all the related documents in this case.

According to my source, the chief reason outlined in the DOJ memo declining to prosecute CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad was the issue of potential jury nullification. The first Holy Land Foundation trial in 2007 ended in a hung jury. When the case was retried in 2008, all five defendants, former executives of the Holy Land Foundation, were convicted on all 108 counts. But, according to our DOJ source, possible jury nullification was hardly the primary issue in the DOJ’s scuttling of the terror finance prosecutions. “This was a political decision from the get-go,” the source said.

ACM Note: It is important to point out that, when prosecutors worry about jury nullification, it means the government has sufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on the relevant offenses — it’s just that prosecutors fear a jury would decide not to convict based on some atmospheric that makes the case smell bad. (Juries are not supposed to nullify — i.e., acquit in a case where guilt has been proved — but our system nonetheless permits them to do it). In this instance, the jury nullification fear is obvious, and, indeed, is the same one that plagued the Sami al-Arian terrorism prosecution: namely, if these people are promoting terrorism, why have they been allowed access to top government officials, and why are their organizations courted by government agencies? That is, there is good reason to fear juries won’t convict not because the suspects are innocent but because the government’s indulgent behavior toward these Islamist organizations — its vaunted “Muslim Outreach” — undermines its ability to demonstrate that these organizations are bad news.

Poole continues:

It was always the plan to initially go after the [Holy Land Foundation] leaders first and then go after the rest of the accomplices in a second round of prosecutions. From a purely legal point of view, the case was solid. Jim Jacks [the U.S. attorney in Dallas who prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation executives] and his team were ready to go. There’s a mountain of evidence against all of these groups that was never introduced during the Holy Land trial and it is damning. We’ve got them on wiretaps. That’s exactly why many of these leaders and groups were named unindicted co-conspirators in the first round of prosecutions.

But from a political perspective there was absolutely no way that they could move forward. That’s why this decision came from the top down. These individuals who were going to be prosecuted are still the administration’s interfaith allies. Not only would these Muslim groups and their friends in the media be screaming “Islamophobia” at the top of their lungs and that this is a war against Islam, but the administration would look like absolute fools. It’s kind of hard to prosecute someone on material support for terrorism when you have pictures of them getting handed awards from DOJ and FBI leaders for their supposed counter-terror efforts. How would Holder explain that when we’re carting off these prominent Islamic leaders in handcuffs for their role in a terror finance conspiracy we’ve been investigating for years? This is how bad the problem is. Why are we continuing to have anything to do with these groups knowing what we know?

“By closing down these prosecutions,” the source added, “the evidence we’ve collected over the past decade that implicates most of the major Islamic organizations will never see the light of day.”

The FBI still has boxes and boxes of stuff that has never even been translated[.]… But it’s already been made public that they have copies of money transfers sent by NAIT [the North American Islamic Trust, which holds the property titles of many of the mosques in America -- Ed.] directly to known Hamas entities and Hamas leaders. Those came out during the [Holy Land Foundation] trial. But what if we won the case against NAIT and its leaders and the U.S. government finds itself the landlord to hundreds of mosques across the country? How well do you think that would that play in the Muslim community?

Poole asked his source, why are you coming forward now? Here’s the source’s response:

This is a national security issue. We know that these Muslim leaders and groups are continuing to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts [ACM - another Islamic "charity."]. We shut them down too. Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief and Viva Palestina. Until we act decisively to cut off the financial pipeline to these terrorist groups by putting more of these people in prison, they are going to continue to raise money that will go into the hands of killers. And until Congress starts grilling the people inside DOJ and the FBI who are giving these groups cover, that is not going to change. My biggest fear is that Americans are going to die and it will be the very Muslim leaders we are working with who will be directly or indirectly responsible….

We tried to do what we could during the Bush administration. After 9/11, we had to do something and [the Holy Land Foundation] was the biggest target. If the mistrial hadn’t have happened [ACM -- there was a mistrial in the HLF case before the defendants were finally convicted in a second trial], we probably would have gone through the second round of prosecutions before the change in administrations. To say things are different under Obama and Holder would be an understatement. Many of the people I work with at Justice now see CAIR not just as political allies, but ideological allies. They believe they are fighting the same revolution. It’s scary. And Congress and the American people need to know this is going on.

Read the whole report. It’s predictable, infuriating, and scary.