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Secret Memo Reveals Obama Justification for US Drone Strikes

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Photo Credit: The TimesPresident Obama is using the British government’s Iraq war-era legal arguments as part of the secret justification for the United States drone programme.

A leaked memo drafted by the US Department of Justice cites a legal argument given by Lord Goldsmith, Tony Blair’s Attorney General in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.

The 16-page memo makes the case that America’s drone programme is legally justified in targeting US citizens as part of wide-ranging extra-judicial powers granted to the President.

The emergence of the document, which was obtained by NBC News, is the first time the Obama Administration’s secret legal justification for deadly drone strikes against US citizens has been published.

The Department of Justice argues that Mr Obama can order the killing of senior al-Qaeda operatives even if there is no evidence they are planning an attack against the United States.

Read more from this story HERE.

Emails Expose Southern Poverty Law Center Collaboration With DOJ

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Judicial Watch (JW), a Washington D.C. based non-partisan educational foundation, released some two dozen pages of emails it obtained on Tuesday revealing connections between the Department of Justice Civil Rights and Tax divisions and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

According to JW, the e-mails reveal “questionable behavior by agency personnel while negotiating for Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) co-founder Morris Dees to appear as the featured speaker at a July 31, 2012, “Diversity Training Event.” Judicial Watch obtained the records pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) submitted to the DOJ on September 10, 2012:

The Judicial Watch FOIA request was prompted by an apparently politically motivated shooting at the Family Research Council (FRC) headquarters in August, 2012. At the time of the shooting, FRC president Tony Perkins accused the SPLC of sparking the shooting, saying the shooter “was given a license to shoot… by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations as hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy.” On its website, the SPLC has depicted FRC as a hate group,” along with such mainstream conservative organizations as the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, and Coral Ridge Ministries.

The FOIA request specifically requested “any and all records concerning, regarding, or relating to the Sothern Poverty Law Center” between January 1 and August 31, 2012, including the Dees’ presentation sponsored by the Civil Rights and Tax divisions of the DOJ.

Read more from this story HERE.

Complaint of ‘Cronyism’ in Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department Goes Unanswered by Congress, DOJ

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photo credit: Jay TamboliA coalition of business executives and attorneys have been pressing unsuccessfully to get a Congressional review into whether Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department improperly quashed a criminal investigation related to a federal bankruptcy case.

Correspondence in March and May with the House Judiciary Committee, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section suggest that top Justice Department officials may have allowed cronyism to get in the way of an investigation related to the bankruptcy filing for the Yellowstone Club, a private resort in Montana.

So far, no action appears to have been taken to investigate the allegations. The Department of Justice, the House Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform did not respond to requests from TheBlaze Thursday regarding the status of the complaints.

The letters to the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, chaired by Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) respectively, state that a more than two-year investigation by FBI, IRS and Secret Service agents led to recommendations that criminal charges be filed.

“Days later, however, the Department of Justice abruptly terminated the investigation without explanation,” the letter to the Judiciary Committee states. “The mysterious and sudden change of heart raises serious questions about the impartiality of senior Justice Department officials.”

Read more from this story HERE.

As College Student, Eric Holder Participated in `Armed’ Takeover of Columbia ROTC Office

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As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned.

Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon.

Holder was then among the leaders of the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded that the former ROTC office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge.” The change, the group insisted, was to be made “in honor of a man who recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.”

Black radicals from the same group also occupied the office of Dean of Freshman Henry Coleman until their demands were met. Holder has publicly acknowledged being a part of that action.

The details of the student-led occupation, including the claim that the raiders were “armed,” come from a deleted Web page of the Black Students’ Organization (BSO) at Columbia, a successor group to the SAAS. Contemporary newspaper accounts in The Columbia Daily Spectator, a student newspaper, did not mention weapons.

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Attorney’s for DOJ’s anti-Gallup “Whistle-Blower” Lawsuit are Major Obama Donors

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The two law firms representing whistle-blower Michael Lindley in a case against The Gallup Organization supported by the Department of Justice are stacked with donors to President Barack Obama’s political campaigns, according to political donation records published by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The legal complaint against Gallup indicates that the DOJ is relying solely on Lindley’s allegations to back its claim that Gallup defrauded the federal government by allegedly overcharging for polling services it provided various federal agencies. Since Lindley left Gallup, two whistle-blower law firms have picked up his complaint. Each is filled with major Obama and Democratic Party donors.

Debra Katz of the law firm Katz, Marshall & Banks LLP has donated thousands to Obama’s campaign efforts, records show. In 2008, she made three donations to then-Sen. Obama’s run for president, totaling $4,300. She also donated $1,000 to the Democratic firm DNC Services Corp. in 2008.

Records show also that over the course of the 2012 election cycle Katz has donated $1,250 to Obama’s presidential campaign, $250 to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and $2,000 to Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s U.S. Senate campaign.

Lisa Banks of the same firm originally supported now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, donating $2,500 to her campaign before Clinton dropped out of the race in recognition of Obama’s likely insurmountable delegate lead. In October 2008, she then donated $1,500 to Obama. Banks has donated $1,000 to Baldwin’s 2012 campaign.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama knows no shame: The Pathetic Attempt to Blame Fast and Furious on Bush

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Obama administration officials must remind each other daily that they will never have to accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong on their watch as long as they can find some way to blame their troubles on George W. Bush.

So it should surprise no one that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the administration’s surrogates are vociferously claiming that Operation Fast and Furious, the gun-walking scandal run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is all Mr. Bush’s fault. Fast and Furious was a program that resulted in Congress holding Mr. Holder in contempt for lying, put a couple thousand guns into the hands of Mexican drug gangs and led to the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent and as many as 200 Mexicans.

Obama spokesmen claim it all began under Mr. Bush and a little-known operation also run out of Phoenix, dubbed Operation Wide Receiver. The Bush-era program involved a few hundred guns and was designed and run by U.S. and Mexican agents who planted electronic tracking devices in the guns so the agents could follow the guns on both sides of the border. The idea was to compile evidence that could be used to prosecute gang kingpins.

A few of the guns vanished, however, as some of the batteries powering the implanted tracking devices failed, and in a few cases, gang members discovered and destroyed the devices. As soon as this was reported to Washington, the whole operation was canceled to prevent more guns from falling into the wrong hands. A vast majority of the guns involved were traced and retrieved; no one was killed; and the project was shelved as a bad idea.

Two years later, many of the same ATF and Justice Department officials in Phoenix came up with and launched a very different program they called Fast and Furious. Straw purchasers were allowed to buy more than 2,000 guns from dealers along our southern border who were pressured by government officials to look the other way. There was no attempt to trace or follow the guns; the Mexican government was not informed of the operation; and even ATF’s own agents in Mexico were kept in the dark.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: USDAgov

Attorney: Holder “played a key role in covering up the torture-murder death of my brother”

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Information provided to congressional committees by ATF whistle-blowers and leaks within the Department of Justice prove Eric Holder to be either criminally complicit in the Fast and Furious scheme and cover-up, or the most incompetent, congenitally comatose Attorney General in the nation’s history. Though Holder is many things, he is not incompetent, at least not in the willful “execution-upon-command” of illegal and despicable enterprises; especially when those enterprises involve Administration-generated murder.

“You need to know that Eric Holder…played a key role in covering up the torture-murder death of my brother, Kenneth Michael Trentadue.”

This is what Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue wrote in December of 2008 to prospective incoming chairman of the Senate Justice Committee, Patrick Leahy. The newly-elected Barack Obama had made Holder his choice for Attorney General, and Trentadue was going to do everything in his power to stop this shameful appointment going forward.

Kenneth Trentadue was killed in Oklahoma City on August 21st of 1995, four months after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building. He had been taken into custody by the FBI and placed in an isolation cell at a federal facility in El Reno, Oklahoma.

The official government report on the cause of death presented to Trentadue’s family stated that Kenneth hanged himself in his cell. But massive bruises and lacerations from head to toe compelled even the Oklahoma City medical examiner to state “very likely he was murdered.”

Read more HERE.

Photo credit:  DonkeyHotey