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During an appearance at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Holder praised the federal government’s aggressive enforcement efforts while vowing to defend a landmark voting rights law that is increasingly under attack in this presidential election year.

On Thursday, Holder said that nowhere is the Justice Department’s commitment to equal opportunity clearer than in efforts to expand access to voting nationwide.

It was the attorney general’s third speech in little more than a month focusing on voting rights, coming amid a flurry of activity by states, largely those controlled by Republicans, to redraw political boundaries and impose requirements that could reduce voting by minorities who enthusiastically supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election.

“The reality is that – in jurisdictions across the country – both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain all too common – and have not yet been relegated to the pages of history,” Holder told the audience.

Pointing to some of the Justice Department’s efforts, Holder cited as success stories the cases of two Ohio counties – Cuyahoga and Lorain – which agreed to ensure that bilingual ballots are available on county voting machines and that bilingual poll workers are on hand to help. In another positive outcome, said Holder, a northeast Ohio school board let a federal court determine how to structure elections to give blacks a greater chance of being elected.

In December in Austin, Texas, Holder urged the country to “call on our political parties to resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success.”

Earlier this month in Columbia, S.C., Holder told thousands of people commemorating the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday that in his travels “I’ve heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who – often for the first time in their lives – now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation’s most noble ideals.”

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires all or parts of 16 states to obtain advance approval from either the Justice Department’s civil rights division or a federal court in Washington before carrying out changes in elections. The states are mostly in the South and all the jurisdictions have a history of discriminating against blacks, American Indians, Asian-Americans, Alaskan Natives or Hispanics.

Despite congressional reauthorization in 2006 of Section 5 for 25 years, its future has come under constitutional challenges in federal courts by Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Shelby County, Ala., and some voters in Kinston, N.C.

As of last week, there were 833 Section 5 submissions for proposed electoral changes awaiting approval at the Justice Department from state, county and local units of government.

In one Section 5 action, the civil rights division in December rejected a new South Carolina law that requires voters to present a photo ID when they go to the polls. It was the first time in nearly two decades the Justice Department had reached such a conclusion about a voter ID law.

A pending Section 5 review involves Texas, where the Justice Department has raised questions over a new photo ID requirement. The state reacted by taking its case for the new law to a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., where lawyers from the Justice Department and the state will square off. The Justice Department’s civil rights division also is immersed in a court battle with Texas over allegedly discriminatory boundaries drawn by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Rick Perry.

The challenges to Section 5′s constitutionality followed a 2009 Supreme Court opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts which seemed to raise doubts about whether the provision was still needed.

Section 5 “imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs,” Roberts wrote. “Today, the registration gap between white and black voters is in single digits” in the states covered by the act’s preclearance provision and “in some of those states, blacks now register and vote at higher rates than whites.”

The stakes would be enormous if the Supreme Court got involved.

In 2006, Congress held hearings and created a 15,000-page record to justify renewing Section 5. Congress found that the Justice Department protected the interests of some 663,503 minority voters from 2000 to May 2006 by refusing to approve changes in political boundaries drawn by states, counties and local units of government. The Justice Department filed over 700 objections to proposed voting changes from 1982 to 2006 in states and counties covered by Section 5. From 1982 to 2003, states and local entities withdrew more than 200 proposed voting changes when the Justice Department started asking questions about them.

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Mr. Holder’s remarks come against the backdrop of a huge turnout of young and minority voters in the 2008 election that helped propel President Obama to victory. In the 2010 election, when voting by such groups dropped off and enthusiasm among Republican-leaning voters surged, Republicans won wider control of state legislatures and governorships and took control of the House of Representatives.

The political divide is obvious:

Proponents of such restrictions — mostly Republicans — say they are necessary to prevent voter fraud that could cancel out the choices of legitimate participants in an election. Opponents — mostly Democrats — say there is no evidence of meaningful levels of fraud and contend that the measures are a veiled effort to suppress participation by eligible voters who lean Democratic.

Who do you feel is right? Do you feel Republican legislators are correct when they impose laws requiring voters to present a photo I.D. or do you feel this is a ploy designed to dampen minority participation in the upcoming elections?

Give us your thoughts!

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At a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin said impeachment is an option if Holder does not “clean up this mess” quickly.

Sensenbrenner and other Republicans hold the attorney general responsible for the operation, in which federal agents failed to track hundreds of illicitly obtained weapons that were later recovered in Mexico and the U.S., many of them at crime scenes.

“If you don’t get to the bottom of this,” there is only one alternative, and “it’s called impeachment,” said Sensenbrenner, without specifying whom he had in mind.

“Why haven’t you terminated the people involved?” asked Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that is investigating the arms-tracking operation.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the Justice Department had given inconsistent statements about what Smith called “a reckless and dangerous law enforcement program.” Smith said many questions remain about who authorized the operation.

Holder, the sole witness at Thursday’s hearing, says it was inexcusable for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to use a controversial tactic known as “gun-walking” in its effort to identify and prosecute major arms trafficking networks along the Southwest border.

Amid probes by Republicans in Congress and the Justice Department’s inspector general, the department already has replaced U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Phoenix, acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson and the lead prosecutor in Operation Fast and Furious.

In that operation, two of the guns purchased at a Phoenix gun store were recovered from the scene of a shooting that killed border agent Brian Terry on the U.S. side of the border.

On Wednesday, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, whose inquiry brought the tactic used in Operation Fast and Furious to light, called for the resignation of one of Holder’s top aides, criminal division chief Lanny Breuer.

Breuer has said he made a mistake in not telling Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole that the controversial gun-walking tactic — letting guns “walk” across the border in an effort to identify higher-ups in gun networks — had been used in an earlier ATF probe called Operation Wide Receiver, which Breuer had known about since April 2010.

Grassley said that in addition to not informing his superiors, Breuer gave misleading answers when the senator asked whether Breuer had reviewed a Justice Department letter to Congress last February that said ATF makes every effort to intercept weapons that have been purchased illegally — an assertion that was incorrect in both Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious.

Breuer told Congress he cannot say for sure whether he saw a draft of the inaccurate letter and that he has no recollection of having done so. At the time the letter was drafted, Breuer told one of the letter’s main drafters, “As usual, great work.”

Breuer “needs to go immediately,” Grassley said.

In response, Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Breuer has acknowledged his mistake to Congress and to the attorney general and said Holder “continues to have confidence in assistant attorney general’s Breuer ability to lead the criminal division.”

Schmaler said Breuer’s division has led important prosecutions against high-ranking gang members, secured the extradition of dangerous fugitives and spearheaded efforts with Mexico to enhance that country’s law enforcement capacity.

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Holder said that he can only imagine the pain that the family of border agent Brian Terry feels. The attorney general added, however, that it is not fair to assume that mistakes in Operation Fast and Furious led to Terry’s death.

Two of the more than 2,000 guns involved in Operation Fast and Furious turned up at the scene of a shootout in Arizona that resulted in the death of Terry, a Customs and Border Protection agent.

In his most forceful criticism of Republicans during his time as attorney general, Holder says he cannot sit idly by while a congressman suggests that law enforcement and government employees be considered accessories to murder.

Key Republicans say the attorney general knew many months earlier than he has admitted that the gun-smuggling probe involved agents letting guns pass from small-time straw purchasers to arms traffickers.

Holder says he has no recollection of knowing about the operation, called “Fast and Furious”, or of hearing its name before the public controversy about it early this year.

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Eric Holder Defends Civilian Trials For Terrorism Suspects

WASHINGTON  — Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday defended the prosecution of terrorism suspects in civilian court after the top-ranking Senate Republican urged him to send two Iraqis to Guantanamo Bay rather than try them in Kentucky.

Holder criticized what he called a “rigid ideology” among political opponents working to prevent terror trials that have been successfully handled by civilian courts hundreds of times.

“Politics has no place — no place — in the impartial and effective administration of justice,” Holder said in remarks prepared for delivery to the American Constitution Society’s convention. “Decisions about how, where, and when to prosecute must be made by prosecutors, not politicians.”

Although Holder didn’t mention Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by name, his comments come two days after McConnell took to the Senate floor and urged Holder’s Justice Department to send terrorism suspects Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi to Navy-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He said a trial planned in his home state of Kentucky could risk retaliatory attacks against judges, jurors and the broader community.

The Justice Department says there have been more than 400 convictions of terrorism-related charges in civilian courts.

“Not one of these individuals has escaped custody,” Holder said. “Not one of the judicial districts involved has suffered retaliatory attacks. And not one of these terrorists arrested on American soil has been tried by a military commission.”

But members of Congress have successfully fought Holder over the prosecution of five other terrorism suspects planned for New York City, including alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Obama administration bowed to the political pressure and backed off the plan, saying it would instead prosecute them before a military commission.

McConnell issued a statement in response to Holder’s speech that said foreign terrorists belong at the secure detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

“There is wide, bipartisan opposition to giving the rights of U.S. citizens to men who tried to kill our troops on the battlefield,” McConnell said. “Unfortunately, this administration has been working since its first week in office to do just that, regardless of the opposition in those communities or their elected leaders in Congress.”

Holder insisted in his speech that civilian courts are “our most effective terror-fighting weapon.”

“Despite this reality, we continue to see overheated rhetoric that is detached from history — and from the facts,” Holder said. “We see crucial national security tools, once again, being put at risk by those who disparage the American criminal justice system and misguidedly claim that terror suspects cannot be tried safely in our civilian courts.”

Alwan and Hammadi were arrested in the United States after being admitted as refugees from Iraq in 2009. Homeland Security officials have said the men slipped through cracks in the system that have since been fixed.

They are charged in a 23-count indictment with conspiring to send weapons and money to al-Qaida in Iraq. Alwan is also charged with attacking American soldiers in Iraq. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said after their arrests, the two waived their rights to remain silent and appear quickly before a judge and were interrogated for several days to gather intelligence.

Authorities say the weapons and money from Alwan and Hammadi didn’t make it to Iraq because of a tightly controlled undercover investigation. The FBI said Alwan spoke of setting roadside bombs near Bayji, Iraq, from 2003 through 2006. The FBI said investigators found his fingerprints on an unexploded bomb.

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Eric Holder Begs “The Wire” For Another Season

“The Attorney-General’s kind remarks are noted and appreciated,” he wrote. “I’ve spoken to Ed Burns and we are prepared to go to work on season six of The Wire if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanising drug prohibition.”

Simon further claimed that the government’s current anti-drug policies are “nothing more or less than a war on our underclass.”

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“I want to speak directly to Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon: Do another season of ‘The Wire’,” Holder said, drawing laughter and applause from the audience. “That’s actually at a minimum. … If you don’t do a season, do a movie.  We’ve done HBO movies, this is a series that deserves a movie. I want another season or I want a movie. I have a lot of power Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon.”

Read the rest on Reuters.com.

Yes, major depression can hit when one’s favorite show goes off the air, but perhaps this was not quite the right venue for Attorney General Eric Holder to beg for the return of “The Wire.” It’s understandable that he really loved the show, but it was fictionalized.  He was meeting with “The Wire” stars to draw attention to real-life child victims of drug crimes, which is more important.

Hopefully, all the laughter Eric Holder has created over pleading for “The Wire” to return — some say ordering — will make more people think seriously about the concrete issue he sought to address. According to the Justice Department press release for this new program, “Children exposed to drug abuse are more than 50 percent more likely to be arrested as juveniles.” Attorney General Eric Holder beseeching for more seasons of “The Wire” was cute, but this is no laughing matter.

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This Tuesday, Holder will take part in a panel discussion with the head of the DEA, Pierce and Sohn to discuss the effects drug abuse has on families in Washington D.C.

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The (COICA) basically gives the Attorney General option to seize and shut down websites … if they suspect wrongdoing. Several bloggers are calling it the industry’s “nuclear option” in their attempt to combat digital piracy, because it bypasses already placed laws, the legal process of suing, and a fair trial.

It’s the latest attempt by Hollywood, the music biz, and big media companies to fight back against file sharing, after losing billions of dollars over the last decade.

In addition bigger file-sharing websites, a few hip-hop websites have become targets, including popular audio/video blog OnSmash.com and online hip-hop community RapGodFathers.com.

At press time, when visiting both websites, you are greeted with an image that reads: “This domain name has been seized by ICE – Homeland Security Investigations.”

Example of government seizure message:

The content companies have tried suing college students. They’ve tried suing internet startups. Now they want the federal government to act as their private security agents, policing the internet for suspected pirates before making them walk the digital plank.

Dajaz 1, aka Splash of OnSmash.com, wasn’t even aware of what was going on apparently. In a series of tweets (@Splash_Dajaz1), he expressed his outrage over the situation, following his first assumption that it was the work of hackers.

“Um hackers… Applaud yourselves. You’ve done good. At least it was your dumb asses & not them boys,” he wrote on Thanksgiving afternoon. “My site goes down & I get more followers today than I ever did. Hackers staying closer or the employees from the feds. FML either way..”

He later tried to rationalize the reasoning behind the seizure, breaking down the process of the site’s staff posting music. “Hackers steal music & sell it to certain sites then the sites tag it & post it. I then get the untagged & post it so becuz I post the untagged too quickly, I mess up the $ 4 the hackers & the sites that pay for music. So erase Splash! if that’s truly the case then why do that to onsmash & rapgodfather ?” Splash asked.

Read entire article at BallerStatus.com

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Dan Froomkin at The Huffington Post is reporting that both conservative and liberal groups are pressuring Eric Holder to take action on the prison rape epidemic.

Focus on the Family, George Soros’s Open Society Policy Center, the American Conservative Union and the American Civil Liberties Union are all furious with Attorney General Eric Holder — and amazingly enough, it’s about the same thing.

The incitement for such an unusual alliance is the Justice Department’s failure to act in the face of a challenge to fundamental human dignity: The ongoing, almost commonplace rape of prisoners at the hands of other prisoners or prison guards.

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From The Root:

To his credit, the nation’s first black U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, has not shied away from discussing race and its impact on our criminal justice system. Shortly after he was confirmed, he famously said that ”in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards”–a statement for which he was roundly criticized, but for which he deserved praise.

Holder has done more than just talk about race. He has launched an examination of the criminal justice system, focusing on the effects of race and on ways to rid the system of racial bias.

The pervasive influence of race on the criminal justice system is well-documented and shocking. Earlier this year, in a case that challenged the systematic disenfranchisement of former felons in Washington State, Farrakhan v. Gregoire, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a watershed opinion that recognized ”compelling” evidence of racial bias in the state’s criminal justice system. The court found that, ”in the total population of potential ‘felons’[in Washington State]…, minorities are more likely than whites to be searched, arrested, detained, and ultimately prosecuted.” National statistical data bears that out: In 2007, African Americans represented 13 percent of the general population, but they comprised 39 percent of the nation’s federal prison population.

Click here to read more.

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(AP) – A Republican congressman suggested that President Barack Obama favors blacks over whites, prompting a GOP candidate to cancel a fundraiser headlined by the Iowa lawmaker.

Rep. Steve King, known for sometimes incendiary remarks about immigration, Abu Ghraib and other issues, criticized Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, who also is black, in an interview Monday on G. Gordon Liddy’s nationally syndicated radio talk show.

“I’m offended by Eric Holder and the president also, their posture,” King said. “It looks like Eric Holder said that white people in America are cowards when it comes to race.”

King continued: “The president has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race on the side that favors the black person in the case of professor Gates and officer Crowley.”

He was alluding to last year’s incident in which Obama commented on a white police officer’s arrest of a black professor from Harvard University.

As news of King’s remarks spread, Colorado Republican Cory Gardner canceled a planned $100 per-plate fundraiser where King was to speak.

King, a four-term lawmaker, made similar remarks about Obama in a speech last month.
“When he had an Irish cop and a black professor, who’d he side with?” King said. “He jumped to a conclusion without having heard the facts. And he ended up having to have a beer summit. The president of the United States has got to articulate a mission. And instead, he’s playing race-bait games to undermine the law enforcement in the state of Arizona and across the country.”

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From the Washington Post:

When Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. stepped up to the lectern at 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, it was more than an unusual middle-of-the-night appearance trumpeting the swift arrest of an alleged terrorist. It also marked a rare moment of glory for the attorney general.

Holder has been on rocky ground for months. His decision last November to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-declared mastermind behind the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in federal court in Manhattan was quickly opposed by New York lawmakers, then reversed by the White House. He was criticized for having the suspect in the failed Christmas Day bombing read his Miranda rights soon after his arrest — and then later for quipping that the same would not happen to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden because officials would be “reading Miranda rights to a corpse.”

Text continues after gallery …

A good week doesn’t necessarily make for a turnaround. But with the arrest of Faisal Shahzad in connection with Saturday’s attempted bombing in Times Square, Holder and the law enforcement agencies he oversees were able to claim a victory for the administration.

Holder was in Ohio on Wednesday for a judicial conference and spoke only briefly about the Times Square incident. But a Justice Department official acknowledged that this has been one of the attorney general’s better weeks in what has been a rough year.

Click here to read more.

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Attorney General Eric Holder said on Wednesday that his department remains committed to closing the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay and is still reviewing its decision to try the 9/11 plotters in the civilian court system.

But in speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee during a routine oversight hearing for Justice Department activities, Holder did give hints that on both of these controversial decisions, criticism has taken its toll and changes may be in the offing.

Asked about the closure of Gitmo, Holder said it remained “the intention of this administration to close the facility.”

Click here to view photos of Black Politicians:

“There was and I still think is… bipartisan support for the notion that the Guantanamo facility should be closed,” he said. “It serves as recruiting tool for those who want to harm this nation. Both of the men who ran for pres last year supported the closing of Guantanamo as did President Obama’s predecessor.”

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That said, Holder did recognized the challenges that both he and his department faced in achieving this long-sought objective. Money has not yet been appropriated for a replacement facility in upstate Illinois, and without a place to move the Gitmo detainees they simply couldn’t close Gitmo.

“One of the things we need is an alternative sight,” said Holder, of the facility at Thomson, Illinois. “We have to have an option and that will require congressional support for the funding requests we have made.”

Staying on the issue of detainees, Holder made a newsworthy admission that the Department of Justice had, indeed, identified 48 detainees who were “too dangerous to transfer but not feasible to prosecute.” These individuals would have to be imprisoned by the United States indefinitely. And there are serious legal arguments about whether that can be possible at a domestic facility.

Holder was pressed on another contentious topic confronting his administration: the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters at a civilian court in New York. The White House, in recent weeks and months, has floated the possibility that they want to backtrack on the decision, preferring a military setting instead. Costs, indeed, are prohibitive, and there is limited support among local officials in New York.

Asked about the pending decision, Holder did not rule out that the trial could still be held in Manhattan.

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“The administration is in the process of reviewing the decision of where KSM and his co-defendants should actually be tried,” he said. “New York is not off the table… though we have to take into consideration the concerns raised by both [local officials and security].”

A decision on this, he added would be made “in a number of weeks” — though the Justice Department has been operating off that time frame for well over a month now.

UPDATE: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) apparently is not pleased that Holder continues to float the possibility that KSM and others will be tried in Manhattan. In a statement from his office, the New York Democrat said the following:

“We know the administration is not going to hold the trial in New York. They should just say it already.”

For some reason, we live in a nation that has consistently avoided having an honest conversation about race and the criminal justice system.  While Attorney General Eric Holder is very quick to blame black men for the outcomes of their lives, he doesn’t seem nearly as confrontational when it comes to dealing with America’s commitment to mass incarceration.  Not only are black men being arrested, convicted and imprisoned at holocaust proportions, but many of them are being charged with crimes they did not commit.

According to the Innocence Project, of the 247 post-conviction DNA exoneration’s they reported, 148 were Black men, who served an average prison sentence of 13 years before being released; in addition, 18 of the men exonerated had confessed to crimes that they did not commit.  Elliot Millner, legal advisor for the Your Black World Coalition, states that we should “keep in mind that these are only the exoneration’s reported(the first DNA exoneration did not take place until 1989), and also that these are only DNA exoneration’s, not including other exoneration’s of innocent individuals not based on DNA.”

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There are over 2 million people in prison, nearly matching the population of Houston, the fourth largest city in the United States.  In 1980, there were three times more black men in college than in prison.  Now, there are more black men in prison than in college.   If you are somehow convinced that these disparate outcomes are due to the fact that black men are more likely to be criminals than the white kids who get crazy at campus fraternity parties, then you probably don’t need to be reading this article.

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As we talk about the issues faced by black men, there must be a consistent conversation about disparities in sentencing, marginalization after incarceration and horrifically high unemployment numbers.  If we can’t talk about these issues in an honest and forthright way, then speeches on personal responsibility by Eric Holder will have almost no impact.   The use of mass incarceration to exterminate African American families is not only counter productive, it is also an expensive remnant of our Jim Crow past.  America should try to be better than that.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit BoyceWatkins.com.

I was sickened today.  My stomach turned like a blender after reading the story of James Bain, a black man who was recently freed after 35-years of false incarceration for a crime he did not commit.  DNA evidence freed him, but only after he lost three decades of freedom, starting as a 19-year old boy and ending as a 54-year old man who should be preparing for retirement after a long career.

He was not able to have children.  He was not able to go to college.  He was not able to experience three decades of love and life, and was instead fed a daily helping of cold, miserable living in the state penitentiary, all served to him by a nation that has committed itself to mass incarceration of black men as a path toward solving society’s problems.

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Mr. Bain is a God-fearing man, and I respect that.  It is clearly the love of God that leads him to continuously state that he is not angry for the 35 years of life that the system stole from he and his family.  I think his approach is healthy, given that three decades of such psychological venom would have killed him or driven him insane.  But I must confess that I am angry for Mr. Bain, and we should all be angry for him.  This should never have happened, and the fact that it could have been prevented should be disturbing to us all.

James Bain is not Henry Louis Gates, so you will never hear Barack Obama mention his 35-year inconvenience at any press conference.   This says a great deal about class in America, since Obama was willing to do speak boldly and sloppily on behalf of a Harvard crony who spent an hour in jail.   I hope and pray for the day that Obama and others can feel as much empathy for a regular man on the street like Bain as they do for privileged Americans who spend their summers on Martha’s Vineyard.

Here is what we need now, and we should not stop asking for it until it’s done:

1) Adequate counsel: I am willing to bet that James Bain did not have good attorneys.  The overworked, underpaid and underskilled public defenders given to individuals caught in this system need to be given the resources that they need in order to ensure a fair trial.  The days of taking a guilty plea just to avoid additional prison time should be put to an end.  Justice should not be available only to those who can afford to buy it.

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2) There should be adequate recourse: I’ll be damned if we have the right to take 35 years of a person’s life and not give that person some opportunity to be compensated.  James Bain should be given $10 million dollars from the Federal government for the nightmare created by this system.  If we can bail out wealthy bankers, then we can afford to give $10 million dollars to every wrongly-convicted American in our criminal justice system.

3) Legality should not impede morality: I don’t care if the rules and procedures say that a person should not get another trial.  I don’t want to hear about legal precedent and attorney-client privilege as barriers to truth and justice.  The goal of the justice system should be simple:  If there is strong reason to believe the person is innocent, their case should be heard by appropriate authorities.  When there are cases such as that of Rodney Stanberry in Alabama, where even Stevie Wonder can see that the person did not commit the crime, we should be outraged that a pack of stodgy lawyers and judges are protecting their careers by letting innocent men and women lose their lives.

4) There should be accountability: I need a full investigation regarding how James Bain spent 35-years in prison for a crime he did not commit.  I don’t want to see hugs and smiles from judges and lawyers who feel that they’ve somehow done James a favor.  The image of the “eternally grateful negro” might create a feel good moment for some, but James Bain has a reason to demand that those responsible for his false incarceration be made to pay for their mistakes.  If there was a prosecutor, judge, witness or police officer responsible for sending this man to prison while knowing that he did not commit the crime, those individuals should be led to feel the same punishment that was inflicted upon James himself.  At the very least, they should be part of the financial compensation package given to Mr. Bain.

The case of James Bain still makes my stomach turn.  I am hopeful that Eric Holder, Barack Obama and other black men will love James Bain the same way they love their Harvard homeboys.  As I mentioned in a CNN special about what President Obama has done for black men, I am left wondering if he has spent a second wondering about men like James Bain.   I wonder if he would be willing to make a professional sacrifice in order to save their lives.  A life is a life and yours is not any more valuable than his own.  Fix this system Mr. Obama – we need you.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition.  For more information, please visit BoyceWatkins.com.

From MainJustice.com

Attorney General Eric Holder called on absentee black fathers yesterday to take an active role in their children’s lives, Newsday reported today.

Holder, a Queens native and the first black Attorney General, urged the 400 worshippers at the Memorial Presbyterian Church on Baldwin Turnpike in Queens, N.Y., to orchestrate a “spiritual awakening,” according to the New York newspaper. The Attorney General said a father’s involvement in a family can help combat poverty and crime in black neighborhoods, according to Newsday.

“Too many men in the black community have created children and left them to be raised by caring mothers. These women do a wonderful job, but we ask too much of them and too little of our men,” Holder told the congregation, which included members of his family, according to Newsday. “It should simply be unacceptable for a man to have a child and then not play an integral part in the raising and nurturing of the child.”

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New Black Panther Leader Defends Attorney General

Attorney General Holder Pledges To Fight Youth Violence

DALLAS — The U.S. Justice Department made the right call in dismissing a voter intimidation lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and recent questions about that ruling are a “political witch hunt” to discredit Attorney General Eric Holder, the party’s leader said this week.

Malik Zulu Shabazz, national chairman of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, told The Associated Press the civil lawsuit filed by the federal government had “no merit” because the party doesn’t condone voter intimidation.

Shabazz said he was speaking publicly about the issue for the first time because he wanted to set the record straight before the party began celebrating its 20th anniversary during a national three-day summit that started Friday in Dallas.

“I want everybody to take a second look,” Shabazz said. “I certainly would like black America and all the world to take a second look at the New Black Panther Party at this point and to understand that we’re sincerely trying to help our people.”

The Justice Department filed a civil complaint in January against the party, Shabazz and two other members, alleging the other men intimidated voters on Nov. 4, 2008, by standing outside a Philadelphia polling place in paramilitary uniforms.

A video widely distributed on the Internet showed one of the men holding a police-style baton. Shabazz, who was not present, said the member acted on his own and was later suspended for 60 days.

Justice officials later got an injunction against the man with the baton and dropped the complaint against the party, Shabazz and the third member. Some conservatives charged the three got off lightly as a result of political interference from President Barack Obama’s administration.

Justice Department officials have said the case was decided by career staffers, not political appointees. But the agency’s ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility, has launched an internal inquiry into its handling of the case.

Shabazz, an attorney in Washington, said no insider influence played a role. The Panthers “were not active campaigners (for Obama) and he owes us no favors,” he said.

He described Holder as a “fair-minded” person.

“I think it’s a political witch hunt, part of the overall war that the Republicans are waging against Eric Holder in general,” Shabazz said. “This is all about politics, not necessarily about protecting persons.”

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This Thanksgiving, NewsOne would like to recognize those newsmakers who have made a positive impact in one way or another. Here are the top 5 people who deserve our gratitude this year:

Senior Sgt. Mark Todd – Though his partner was initially given the credit, Sgt. Todd fired the shot that took down the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nadal Hasan. Without his bravery and quick thinking, countless more lives could have been lost in the massacre.

RELATED: Black Officer, Not White Partner, May Have Shot Ft. Hood Shooter

Oprah Winfrey - Oprah is the ultimate rags-to-riches story. This multi-platform mogul has conquered television, magazines, and film, and her influence has been known to make and break book publishing careers. The most high-profile example of Black business savvy, for the past 25 years Oprah has shown millions that with enough hard work and talent, anything is possible.

RELATED: Tearful Oprah Confirms 2011 End Of Show

Attorney General Eric Holder - Though the symbolic value of a Black man being the nation’s highest representative of law and order is worth a great deal on its own, Holder’s words and actions thus far have done our community proud. He has been unafraid to take strong positions, speaking out without apology on race relations and condemning the use of torture. Holder is also working to rectify racial disparities in crack cocaine vs. powder sentencing, and has pushed for a war against hate crimes.

RELATED: Attorney General Holder Pledges To Fight Youth Violence

Michael Jackson - The loss of MJ this summer was a painful one, but it did have a small silver lining: It reminded us all of the amazing musical accomplishments he achieved during his life. This was the man who gave us “Billie Jean,” “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough,” “Remember the Time,” the moonwalk, and the modern music video as we know it — how could we be anything but grateful?

RELATED: Michael Jackson Wins 4 Awards At AMAs

Michelle Obama – Intelligent, successful, poised, fashion-forward, and happily married with children: The First Lady is singlehandedly turning every negative stereotype about Black women on its head. With her international exposure, Obama is showing the world that the caricatures peddled by the media don’t tell the real story about African-American women and families. Back at home in the states, she’s giving millions of little Black girls a high-profile role model who looks like the mothers and big sisters they already know – and that’s quite a gift.

RELATED: Michelle Obama Announces Mentoring Program For Girls

From the Associated Press:

U.S. Justice Department officials said Wednesday that most children in the United States are exposed to violence in their daily lives, which Attorney General Eric Holder called “staggering.”

A leading criminologist cautioned that the government-sponsored survey may be lumping serious and minor incidents together.

More than 60 percent of children surveyed were exposed to violence within the past year, either directly or indirectly, according to data compiled by the department. The survey’s compilers defined exposure to violence as being a victim, or having witnessed violence, or learning about violence against a relative, friend, or hearing about a threat to their school or home.

RELATED: Obama Sends Eric Holder To Chicago Over Derrion Albert’s Death

That approach raised questions for some.

“What concerns me when you hear numbers like this is that in their attempt to be inclusive, which is commendable, the definition of violence becomes so broad that the results lack real meaning,” said James Alan Fox, criminal justice professor at Northeastern University. “If you broaden the definition of violence so much, then most people will be included.”

Nearly half of all children surveyed were assaulted at least once in the past year, and about 6 percent were victimized sexually, the survey found.

One in five of those between the ages of 14 and 17 reported they had seen a shooting.

“Those numbers are astonishing, and they are unacceptable,” Holder said in Chicago, where he was meeting with local officials to discuss the disturbing beating death of a high school student by other teens.

“We simply cannot stand for an epidemic of violence that robs our youth of their childhood and perpetuates a cycle in which today’s victims become tomorrow’s criminals,” Holder said.

Among the survey’s other findings:

—Almost one in 10 children said they saw one family member assault another in the past year.

—More than one-half of the children, about 57 percent, reported having been assaulted at some point in their lives.

—Thirteen percent reported having been physically bullied in the last year.

The results were based on telephone interviews of 4,549 children and adolescents aged 17 and younger between January and May of 2008. For children ages 9 and younger, a parent or guardian answered the questions. The National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence was sponsored by the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, with help from the Centers for Disease Control. It was conducted by university researchers.

RELATED: OPINION: The Violence Must Stop!

The attorney general and Education Secretary Arne Duncan were in Chicago Wednesday to meet with local officials, parents, and students to discuss the vicious beating of a 16-year-old high school student whose killing last month was captured on a cell phone video.

Derrion Albert, an honor roll student at Christian Fenger Academy High School, was attacked when he got caught up in a mob of teens about six blocks from school. Video shows him curled up on the sidewalk as fellow teens kick him and hit him with splintered railroad ties. So far, four teens have been charged in his death.

President Barack Obama is sending Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to Chicago next week to discuss the recent beating death of a 16-year-old honors student.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says Holder and Duncan will meet Wednesday with school officials, students and residents and talk about school violence.

Earlier this week, Gibbs described as “chilling” a cell phone video showing the fatal beating of Derrion Albert.

Chicago prosecutors have charged four teenagers in the beating of the sophomore honor roll student. Officials say Albert was walking to a bus stop when he got caught up in street fighting.

RELATED:
16-Year-Old Honors Student Fatally Beaten In Chicago

2 Women Shot, 1 Killed In Chicago

From the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census.

As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly. President George W. Bush’s appointees had discouraged such tactics, preferring to focus on individual cases in which there is evidence of intentional discrimination.

To bolster a unit that has been battered by heavy turnover and a scandal over politically tinged hiring under the Bush administration, the Obama White House has also proposed a hiring spree that would swell the ranks of several hundred civil rights lawyers with more than 50 additional lawyers, a significant increase for a relatively small but powerful division of the government.

The division is “getting back to doing what it has traditionally done,” Mr. Holder said in an interview. “But it’s really only a start. I think the wounds that were inflicted on this division were deep, and it will take some time for them to fully heal.”

Few agencies are more engaged in the nation’s social and cultural debates than the Civil Rights Division, which was founded in 1957 to enforce anti-discrimination laws.

Click here to read more.

July cannot be counted as the warmest of months for Eric H. Holder Jr. The attorney general clashed with Congress over national security policy, fielded complaints from federal judges upset with bungled evidence and, in the most painful indignity, cracked his tooth. Then came a bombshell three days ago that has sent Washington political circles reeling: Holder’s inclination to appoint a prosecutor to examine whether interrogators tortured terrorism suspects during the Bush years. The disclosure has exposed him to new scrutiny even among colleagues in the Obama administration, where views about unearthing divisive episodes from the past are hardly uniform.

All of that took a back seat yesterday when Holder, 58, arrived in his home town of New York for a rousing speech to the NAACP, where he had served as an intern decades ago. Seated between civil rights icon Julian Bond and the group’s president, Benjamin Todd Jealous, at a luncheon during the organization’s centennial convention, Holder was lauded by the crowd as a symbol of pride and progress in his ascent to becoming the nation’s first black attorney general.

Before he took the stage, a woman shouted, “I got your back.”

“That’s a good thing to hear today,” Holder replied.

Read more here: Washington Post

Check out more about the NAACP’s centennial:

Eight participants in a federal program aimed at helping ex-convicts stay off drugs will be honored by their friends and families at a graduation ceremony with a special guest: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.

Holder is scheduled to speak to graduates of the Court Assisted Recovery Effort at a ceremony Thursday in U.S. District Court.

The yearlong program is for inmates who have completed federal prison terms and are on supervised release. It requires participants to meet with a judge weekly to talk about their efforts to find jobs and stay out of trouble. Participants also are referred for treatment, job training and counseling.

Boston was one of the first federal court districts to have such a program. There are now more than a dozen other districts running similar programs.

Citing recent killings in Arkansas, Kansas and the nation’s capital, Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday said new hate crimes law were needed to stop what he called “violence masquerading as political activism.”

The attorney general’s call for Congress to act came as a civil rights coalition said there has been a surge in white supremacist activity since the election of the first African-American president and the economic downturn.

“Over the last several weeks, we have witnessed brazen acts of violence committed in places that many would have considered unthinkable,” Holder told the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.

He cited separate attacks over a two-week period that killed a young soldier in Little Rock, an abortion provider in Wichita and a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Federal agents and prosecutors already are involved in the local investigations of each attack.

The violence, Holder said, “reminds us of the potential threat posed by violent extremists and the tragedy that ensues when reasoned discourse is replaced by armed confrontation.”

“We will not tolerate murder, or the threat of violence, masquerading as political activism,” he said. “So let me be clear. The Justice Department will use every tool at its disposal to protect the rights ensured under our Constitution.”

Holder said that to stop such violence, Congress should pass an updated version of hate crimes legislation in order to more effectively prosecute those who commit violent attacks based on gender, disability or sexual orientation.

The growing number of hate crimes against Latinos also shows the need for tougher laws, Holder said.

In recent years Republicans, including then-President George W. Bush, have opposed Democratic efforts to expand the hate crimes law, saying it was unnecessary because current laws on the books provide for effective punishment and prosecution.

Separately Tuesday, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund issued a report saying white supremacist activity online spiked after Barack Obama’s election victory in November, and hate groups now use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to spread their message.

The report reviewed hate crimes over nearly two decades.

“In the nearly twenty years since the 1990 enactment of the Hate Crime Statistics Act, the number of hate crimes reported has consistently ranged around 7,500 or more annually — that’s nearly one every hour of every day,” the report said.

Hate crime statistics are compiled by the FBI.

The Center reported in February that the number of hate groups had risen by more than 50 percent since 2000, from 602 to 926. It attributed the growth mainly to fears about nonwhite immigration, but said Obama’s election and the downward economy also were factors by early this year.

The report found:

— African-Americans remain by far the most frequent victims of hate crimes. Of the 7,624 hate crime incidents reported nationwide in 2007, the most recent year available, 34 percent were perpetrated against African-Americans.

— In the five years from 2003-2007, the number of hate crimes reported against Hispanics increased nearly 40 percent, from 426 in 2003 to 595 in 2007. Of all hate crimes reported in the United States in 2007, 7.8 percent were committed against Hispanics.

— In 2007, there were 969 reported hate crimes committed against Jews, constituting 12.7 percent of all hate crimes reported and 69 percent of religious bias hate crimes reported.

— Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 2001, the number of hate crimes directed against Arab-Americans, Muslims and Sikhs escalated dramatically. In 2001, those groups were victimized in nearly 5 percent of the total number of hate crimes reported that year, 481 out of 9,730. While the number of reported hate crimes against the groups declined from thepeak of 2001, it remains substantially above pre-2001 levels.

— Reported hate crimes committed against individuals because of their sexual orientation increased in 2007 to 1,265, the highest level in five years. Of all hate crimes reported in 2007, the proportion committed against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals rose to 16.6 percent, also the highest level in five years.

In a wide-ranging dialogue hosted by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund at the National Press Club this afternoon, Gwen Ifill, the moderator and editor of PBS’s Washington Week, questioned Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. on a number of issues facing the Justice Department, including the Supreme Court, torture memos, and what he thinks of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent media blitz.

“I respect the man for his service to the country and the fact that he’s a patriot, but he’s dead wrong,” says Holder, referring to Cheney’s assertion that releasing previously classified torture memos put the country in danger.

Read the Whole Story

Attorney General Eric Holder signaled a change on medical marijuana policy Wednesday, saying federal agents will target marijuana distributors only when they violate both federal and state law.

That would be a departure from the policy of the Bush administration, which targeted medical marijuana dispensaries in California even if they complied with that state’s law.

“The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law,” Holder said in a question-and-answer session with reporters at the Justice Department.

Medical marijuana advocates in California welcomed the news, but said they still worried about the pending cases of those already in court on drug charges.

California law permits the sale of marijuana for medical purposes, though it still is against federal law.

Holder did not spell out exactly who no longer would face the prospect of raids by the Drug Enforcement Administration. But he was quick to add that law enforcement officers will target anyone who tries to “use medical marijuana laws as a shield” for other illegal activity.

“Given the limited resources that we have, our focus will be on people, organizations that are growing, cultivating substantial amounts of marijuana and doing so in a way that’s inconsistent with federal and state law,” the attorney general said.

Advocates and government officials had been waiting since President Barack Obama was sworn into office for a clear signal on what the new president’s drug policy would be toward medical marijuana. As a candidate, he repeatedly promised a change in policy in situations in which state laws allow the use of medical marijuana.
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Yet shortly after Obama took office, DEA agents raided four dispensaries in Los Angeles, prompting confusion about the government’s plans.

Thirteen states have laws permitting medicinal use of marijuana. California is unique among them for the presence of dispensaries, which are businesses that sell marijuana and even advertise their services. Legal under California law, such dispensaries are still illegal under federal law.

Kris Hermes, a spokesman for national medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, said he welcomed Holder’s perspective.

“It signals a new direction and a more reasonable and sensible direction on medical marijuana policy,” he said.

Still, Hermes said his Oakland-based organization was concerned about the fate of more than two dozen California medical marijuana cases currently pending in federal court.

“There remains a big question as to what the federal government’s position is on those cases,” Hermes said. He pointed specifically to the case of Charles Lynch, who was federally convicted for running a medical marijuana dispensary collective in San Luis Obispo County last year.

Hermes said Lynch could face decades in prison when he is sentenced Monday even though his clinic had been compliant with state law.

According to the government’s sentencing recommendation for Lynch, which says the five-year mandatory minimum prison term is an appropriate one, Lynch had violated California state law because his “operation was rife with activities having more to do with business and casual drug distribution than anything medical.”

U.S. attorney’s office spokesman Thom Mrozek declined to comment on what would happen to the outstanding marijuana cases in the Los Angeles area.

The 13 states that permit medical use of marijuana are Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

SELMA, Ala. – The nation’s first black attorney general and Gov. George C. Wallace’s daughter celebrated the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march Sunday — 44 years after state troopers from her father’s administration beat marchers as they started the landmark journey.

Peggy Wallace Kennedy introduced Attorney General Eric Holder at a historic Selma church filled to overflowing.

“It’s reconciliation and redemption,” Wallace’s daughter said.

Selma’s annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee, commemorating the 1965 voting rights march, brought together civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Joseph Lowery in addition to the attorney general and several members of Congress, including Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who was beaten in the original Selma march. More than a thousand people took part in recreating the march Sunday.

Holder and Kennedy embraced at Brown Chapel AME Church, where marchers organized on March 7, 1965, to begin their 50-mile trek to Montgomery.

A few blocks into the march, they were beaten by state troopers on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge_an event that became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

The march to Montgomery was later completed under federal protection, with Martin Luther King Jr., leading it. It prompted passage of the Voting Rights Act, which opened Southern polling places to blacks and ended all-white government.

“I am a beneficiary of Selma,” Holder said.

Wallace’s daughter endorsed Barack Obama for president last fall, but she and Holder had never met until Sunday. But the ties between them go back decades.

Her father stood in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in 1963 in an unsuccessful attempt to keep Holder’s future sister-in-law, Vivian Malone Jones, from integrating the university.

“I so wish Vivian had lived to see this moment,” Holder said after hugging Wallace’s daughter.

Kennedy said that as a child watching the Selma-to-Montgomery march, “I knew their cause was just.” But she said she never spoke out politically until she endorsed Obama, who appointed Holder.

Selma’s black mayor said Obama’s election was the fulfillment of marchers’ dreams.

“What happened in Selma 44 years ago set in motion events that led to the election of our 44th president, Barack Obama,” Mayor George Evans said.

Holder said no one dreamed on “Bloody Sunday” that George Wallace would later apologize for his segregationist views or that his daughter would one day support a black man for president.

But he said it’s no time to rest.

In an earlier speech at Wallace Community College, Holder said it’s vital to protect a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in January to review a lower court ruling that upheld a portion of the law that requires all or part of 16 states, including Alabama, to get federal approval before implementing any changes in the way elections are held.

“We must commit ourselves to continuing to defend the Voting Rights Act, which is under attack,” Holder said.

A hilarious clip of Stephen Colbert responding to Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim that we are a “nation of cowards” when it comes to race.

WATCH the video here.

Attorney General Eric Holder described the United States Wednesday as a nation of cowards on matters of race, saying most Americans avoid discussing unresolved racial issues.

In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” said Holder, nation’s first black attorney general.

Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, Holder said, but “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”

He urged people of all races to use Black History Month as a chance for frank talk about racial matters.

“It is an issue we have never been at ease with and, given our nation’s history, this is in some ways understandable,” Holder said. “If we are to make progress in this area, we must feel comfortable enough with one another and tolerant enough of each other to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”

He told Justice Department employees they have a special responsibility to advance racial understanding.

Eric Holder, sworn in Tuesday as attorney general, promised a clean break with the past policies of the Bush administration, saying the Justice Department will be “no place for political favoritism.”

“I am determined to ensure that this shall be a new day for the dedicated career professionals that I am so honored to call my colleagues,” Holder told various employees and dignitaries gathered for the ceremony. He said he was committed to remaking the department “into what it once was and what is always should be.”

Vice President Joe Biden administered the oath to President Barack Obama’s pick for the nation’s top law enforcement officer, the first African-American to hold the post.

Biden said the department, under Holder, would return to a past standard of “no politics, no ideology. Only a clear assessment of facts and law.”

Hundreds of department employees packed the hallways and stairways to welcome Holder. To loud cheers and applause, he pledged to remake the department by “taking it back to what it once was and always has to be.”

Holder was confirmed Monday evening by a 75-21 Senate vote, with all the opposition coming from Republicans.

Holder takes over a department wracked by Bush administration scandals over politically motivated hirings and firings. He has pledged to restore its reputation.

For starters, the new attorney general will learn the secrets of the Office of Legal Counsel, whose lawyers justified the use of controversial interrogation tactics and even declined to provide Bush administration documents to internal Justice Department investigators.
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Holder also will play a major role in the future of terrorism detainees.

Obama, in a major policy shift, signed an executive order to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. He also created a special task force to review detainee policy; Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will serve as co-chairs.

That panel will look at options for apprehension, detention, trial, transfer or release of detainees and report to the president within 180 days.

Holder promised senators he would review why career prosecutors in Washington decided not to prosecute the former head of the department’s Civil Rights Division. An inspector general’s report last month found that Bradley Schlozman, the former head of the division, misled lawmakers about whether he politicized hiring decisions.

Another key question facing Holder is whether to reverse former President George W. Bush’s order that three of his former top aides _ Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten _ should not testify before Congress about firings of U.S. attorneys. Rove and Miers were former aides when Bush gave his order.

If Obama reverses Bush’s policy, it would create a new legal issue: whether a former president’s order against testifying would still be valid.

The Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program is certain to come under Holder’s scrutiny.

After a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks, Congress last year eased the rules under which the government could wiretap American phone and computer lines to listen for terrorists and spies.

Holder promised one senator that he would re-examine a ruling by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey that immigrants facing deportation do not have a right to government-provided lawyers. Holder said he understands the desire to expedite immigration court proceedings, but added that the Constitution also requires that proceedings be fair.

Holder’s chief supporter, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the confirmation was a fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream that everyone would be judged by the content of their character.

“Come on the right s

In fact, the “water cure” as it was then called, was widely acknowledged as torture a century ago when, during the vicious American campaign in the Phillipines at the beginning of the twentieth century, reports of the use of the water cure against Filipino insurgents were common.

Relatedly, in an interview this week, Susan Crawford, the convening authority for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, has now said unequivocally that torture was used there to extract confessions from alleged 20^th Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani. Furthermore, Crawford said, the torture itself undermined the prosecution’s potential case, compelling her not to refer the case for further adjudication before a court.

As critics have been hammering home for years, not only is torture, as a legal matter, in categorical contravention of American law and our international commitments under the Geneva conventions and other agreements, but its application sullies our moral reputation and standing. Furthermore, it’s widely accepted by intelligence professionals themselves that torture is, as a practical matter, counter-productive, far more likely to extract false information than actionable intelligence.

America’s hands have, of course, been sullied by torture before the Bush administration came to power. It’s long been an unacknowledged part of American practice, both domestically and internationally. Even when American personnel have been barred from practicing it as a legal matter, we’ve long tolerated or facilitated such practices in our allies when it served our purposes. One should not be naive enough to think, therefore, that the Obama administration will completely rid itself of this particular stain. But it’s at least refreshing to see the next Attorney General of the United States reject the sickening moral relativism and linguistic slight of hand that has characterized the past eight years when it comes to this issue.

When President-elect Barack Obama began naming his Cabinet members, we paid much respect to his practical, middle-of-the-road choices. The wisdom of his choices was proven by his ability to look at rivals, old guard veterans, and unpopular figures. After exchanging unpleasant words with Hillary Clinton through the primary, he named her Secretary of State. Arne Duncan, who helped to reform Chicago schools, is accused of being too middling, hardly choosing sides in any debate. But on the other side, Susan E. Rice is viewed as a stubborn up and comer. She will only accept opposing views once she has set her terms. 

The interesting common theme among Barack Obama’s Cabinet members is their love of basketball. Duncan played overseas for a year after college. Susan E. Rice was the point guard of her high school basketball team. Barack Obama has shown his skills in various clips taped on the campaign trail. He and Duncan played one-on-one on Election Night. It begs the question: Does Obama’s basketball savvy help him to make balanced decisions? 

Spot by spot, we’ll analyze his strategy. 

• Susan Rice, Point Guard – The PG has to look at the whole court [the globe], and decide how to stake her claim against resistance. Rice’s unforgiving attitude is perfect for the player who begins with the ball. The United States has taken a strong moral stance in its foreign relations, sometimes for the worst. Rice must measure her tendency to grunt her way through disagreement, and find ways to give the ball up when it matters. She has to see the United Nations as teammates, not opponents.  
• Hillary Clinton, Shooting Guard – Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant play shooting guard because they can score. They make the defense bend to their best efforts. Hillary Clinton can make key decisions, command the attention of her enemy, and then surprise all with the outcome. Not capturing the presidency was a loss, but the battle was won. She scored the Secretary of State seat and remained one of the most powerful people in the world. These tactical wins define her in her career. 
• Barack Obama, Small Forward – Think of the small forward as the hinge on a door. The other players rotate around him as he maneuvers the center and sides of the court. Barack Obama is a small forward with dexterity, a killer jump shot, and the ability to finish difficult baskets in a crowd. He also knows how to move the ball around between his teammates, so that the whole gameplan revolves around unity of theme. He fits on any team because his individual talents make him a standout, but he’s never going to overlook open teammates. Barack Obama is like Grant Hill or Lebron James because he’s versatile, but still aggressive. 
• Arne Duncan, Power Forward – The power forward makes the plays easier for everyone else when he organizes from his position. By grabbing rebounds and defending the basket area, he sets the standard for strong shots versus weak ones. Arne Duncan will have to make responsible choices for the school system to maintain its recovery in the urban centers of the U.S. He will also have to do the dirty work of relieving people who are failing their students to indefinite dismissal. Duncan’s personality is a bit soft for the position, but education is a frontier that will be at the top of the Obama agenda. 
• Robert Gates, Center – Like the point guard, the center has to control the ball movement from the area near the basket. He also has to defend against attacks from the opposing team. Gates was one of the custodians of the Iraq War under President Bush. He demanded more troops when forces were stretched thin, and he advocated for more of the counter-insurgency work to be delegated on the outskirts of Baghdad, where many of the small brigades of rebels had caused carnage. Everything has to begin and end with the center on a good basketball team. If Obama wants to end the war as he said, “cautiously,” he will need to defer to Gates’s judgment, and Secretary Clinton’s recommendations. 

Bench Players: Eric Holder, Attorney General – Holder will have the fun job of restoring the Justice Department to form after the Patriot Act challenged many basic civil rights in order to pursue terrorists. Holder is a natural basketball player, with smooth moves to reach the goal. With the backing of the exec branch, he should have no problem repairing the damage done by crooked judges and an overzealous Dick Cheney and friends. Lisa Jackson is the Environmental Protection Agency chair and comes in with a specific mandate to reduce emissions, which is tricky because detractors claim her record in New Jersey was not one of reform. She’ll be pressed to come to the table with unique solutions for our ozone issues, and energy-saving vehicles.

The proposed team will not mesh all the time, with talent at every position vying for the number one label. Regardless of how egos will mesh, the player-coach we have as a President-elect will look to make the decisive shots in the clutch and overtime.

From The New Republic:

Omniscient reader EC notes something crucial about new appointees James Jones, Eric Holder and Timothy Geithner: They all play Obama’s favorite sport.

Jones played forward at Georgetown. Geithner reportedly likes himself a good pickup game. And the Times says Eric Holder was once known, impressively, for his “easy dunk.” (Cracks EC: “Not even Janet Reno could do that.”)

Update: Susan Rice, too! (Sez Ben).

Hey and come to think, Stephon Marbury also plays hoops but now mostly wears a suit and is looking for a new job. Maybe Obama can find something for him in, say… Iraq? (He’s not afraid of strong personalities, after all.) More: Marbury even maxed out for Obama in 2007….

Click here for the full story.

Even before there has been a single Cabinet selection announced, I’m already weary from all the gossip and chatter about potential appointees, but, at least for me, the position of Attorney General is different.  So much of the anti-constitutional abuses and radicalism of the last eight years emanated from the Justice Department, and few things will have more of an impact on what the Obama administration does about them than the views, integrity and independence of the new Attorney General, who looks to be Eric Holder, Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration and, very briefly, Acting Attorney General.

The bulk of what I’ve read about and from Holder suggests, with a couple of ultimately marginal exceptions, that this appointment would be a very positive step.

Find out why here.

Barack Obama has chosen Eric Holder to be his Attorney General according to Newsweek. This would make Holder the first African American attorney General. Holder had previously been a deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration.

Read About Eric Holder Here