Holder Has Long Been Contemptible

While the House Oversight Committee has now recommended that Congress hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his conduct during the Fast and Furious scandal, one could make the case that Holder has long held the American public in contempt.

After all, how many cabinet secretaries begin their tenure by calling his fellow Americans “a nation of cowards” where it concerned the question of racism? Never mind that America has become a nation where racism is not only unacceptable but a nation where, outside of being called a murderer or a rapist, nothing is worse than being called a racist.

If anyone has behaved cowardly where it concerns racism, it is Holder. What can one say about a man who sees fit to drop a successfully prosecuted case of voter intimidation? If two members of the Ku Klux Klan had held a baton in front of polling station in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to intimidate black voters, Holder would have spared no effort to prosecute them. But when it comes to two members of the New Black Panthers holding a baton in front of polling station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to intimidate white voters, Holder could not care less. During testimony before a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in March 2011, Holder said:

“When you compare what people endured in the South in the ’60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, to compare what people subjected to that with what happened in Philadelphia… I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line for my people.”

No, the great disservice here is an Attorney General who does not comprehend the basic legal concept of “equal justice under law.” Eric Holder is the Attorney General of the United States, not the Attorney General of his people.

Yet what can we expect of a public official who does not have the courtesy to read legislation he contended would lead to increased racial profiling? Oh, pardon me. Holder did say he “glanced” at the Arizona immigration law. It would have been nice if Holder taken the copy of S.B. 1070 that Texas Congressman Ted Poe so generously offered him. Then again it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Holder’s Department of Injustice was going to sue Arizona whether he read the bill or not.

Read More at spectator.org. By Aaron Goldstein.

Photo Credit: The Aspen Institute (Creative Commons)