Americans celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday to honor his contributions to our Republic. His struggle against racial prejudice and discrimination brought the words of the Founders–“that all men are created equal”–to true fruition.

Dr. King used non-violent protest, and an appeal to universal principles, to bring Americans together. His birthday should be a holiday that unites us.

Instead, Democrats are using it to divide Americans.

Consider the sermon offered by White House adviser Valerie Jarrett yesterday, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Dr. King preached. She told the audience: “Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because Congress–well let me be specific–because [of] the Republicans in Congress.”

Those in the audience laughed and applauded at Jarret’s brazen–and false–partisan attack.

Democrats have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle to portray Republicans as the villains, when in fact most segregationists were Democrats. Republicans, in fact, voted for civil rights laws in greater proportions than Democrats. Moreover, Dr. King himself had been a Republican. Regardless, Dr. King was careful not to divide Americans along party lines in his struggle for justice–nor would he approve of it today.

Another Obama administration official who is exploiting Dr. King’s memory for political gain is Attorney General Eric Holder, who used the holiday to renew his attack on voter ID laws in South Carolina, falsely claiming they are racially discriminatory.

It is Holder, in fact, who practices racial discrimination by refusing to apply voting laws equally, notably in the New Black Panther Party case, an open-and-shut example of voter intimidation. (more…)

On January 3, Media Matters for America (MMfA) linked, among others, a Big Government item by J. Christian Adams to support its mischaracterization of a Fox News segment on South Carolina’s contested voter ID law.

MMfA cherry-picked a small portion of Adams’s post, while ignoring the bulk of Adams’s argument solidly refuting MMfA’s own weak defense of Attorney General Eric Holder, thereby obscuring his criticism from their readers.

Emphasis via MMfA:

In a January 3 segment on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, correspondent Jim Angle promoted a number of falsehoods and misleading claims about voter ID laws and the Department of Justice’s action preventing one such law from being implemented in South Carolina.

Even Vote Fraudster J. Christian Adams Calls The Analogy “Silly And Constitutionally Incorrect”

Adams: Arguments “Flimsy” Since “The 15^th Amendment Is In Play When It Comes To Voting.”In a BigGovernment.com piece attacking the DOJ’s letter, J. Christian Adams wrote:

What Adams did was provide several solid arguments as to why Holder’s DOJ appears to be contesting the South Carolina law based largely upon misperceptions and fuzzy math for political reasons. Media Matters neglects to point out that Holder’s DOJ used out-dated data, grossly inflating any potential problem in South Carolina. They also repeatedly highlighted a 20% number already exposed as a math gimmick aimed at making the issue appear to be far more significant than it may actually be.

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I just received an email update from Congressman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office, stating that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 2. The questions will center on the Department of Justice’s knowledge of, and response to, the gunwalking tactics that were used in Operation Fast and Furious. The A.G. will also be asked to address the DOJ’s   “steadfast refusal to disclose information following the February 4, 2011 letter to Senator Grassley, which the [DOJ] has withdrawn because it contained false information denying allegations made by whistleblowers about Operation Fast and Furious.”

Wrote Issa:

The Department of Justice’s conduct in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious has been nothing short of shameful. From its initial denials that nothing improper occurred, to efforts to silence whistleblowers who wanted to tell Congress what really happened, to its continuing refusal to discuss or share documents related to this cover-up, the Justice Department has fought tooth and nail to hide the full truth about what occurred and what senior officials knew.  Attorney General Holder must explain or reverse course on decisions that appear to put the careers of political appointees ahead of the need for accountability and the Department’s integrity.

The last portion of the letter provided me via Issa’s email highlights new (and startling) information on the DOJ’s refusal to cooperate with investigators to date.

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The Obama Department of Justice has used a mathematical trick in order to make its legal and public-relations case against South Carolina’s voter ID provisions. Officials of the DOJ intentionally created a false perception of the disparity between black and white voters in order to strike down the law that would haveve required photo ID or other proof for voters. Meanwhile, the media helped Eric Holder’s Department of Justice spin their intentionally misleading numbers to the general public.

This entire scam – there’s no better word for it – is based an interesting but totally irrelevant math quirk; when numbers are small, the difference between them is larger.

An Easy Math Trick

To understand the math behind this, let’s start simply and look at two very small numbers – 1 and 2.

If you had one dollar and I had two dollars, I have one dollar more than you. However, if I wanted to try to impress someone, just telling them that I was a dollar wealthier probably wouldn’t work. In an effort to sound more impressive, I could find a way to pump myself up by claiming that I had twice as much money as you. It’s true, of course – 2 is twice as much as 1 — but just knowing that I had twice as much money as someone else doesn’t really paint the whole picture.

If I want to get extra-fancy, I could also say “I have 100% more money than that person.” This is saying the same (misleading) thing as “I have twice as much” in a slightly different way. There’s a simple equation for determining this percentage difference for any two numbers.

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Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2011 list of Washington’s “Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The members of the Obama Administration on the list, in alphabetical order, include:

• Attorney General Eric Holder
• President Barack Obama

Dishonorable Mentions for 2011 include:

• Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano
• Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius

Attorney General Eric Holder: Attorney General Eric Holder now operates the most politicized and ideological Department of Justice (DOJ) in recent history. And revelations from the Operation Fast and Furious scandal suggest that programs approved by the Holder DOJ may have resulted in the needless deaths of many, including a federal law enforcement officer.

Fast and Furious was a DOJ/Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “gun-running” operation in which guns were sold to Mexican drug cartels and others, apparently in hopes that the guns would end up at crime scenes. This reckless insanity seems to have resulted in, among other crimes, the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a shootout with Mexican criminals in December 2010. Fast and Furious guns were found at the scene of his death.

The Fast and Furious operation by itself should have resulted in Holder’s resignation, but it is the cover-up that has prompted serious calls for Holder’s ouster. (more…)

Eric Holder’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an all-out war on voter-ID laws and other measures to safeguard to the electoral process. Although Holder’s actions are purportedly to prevent African-Americans from being disenfranchised, the reality is that they serve the crass political purpose of ensuring that Holder’s boss gets reelected next year.

In the past several years states have increasingly focused on measures to protect the vote. After years of the federal government loosening voting regulations, such as through the Motor Voter Act and HAVA (Help America Vote Act), the pendulum started swinging back at the state level.

The clearest example of this trend is through voter-ID laws. In 2008 the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s landmark law requiring citizens to show that they are the person they claim to be by showing government-issued ID before casting a ballot. But to ensure that those without driver’s licenses or passports are not disenfranchised, Indiana provides free ID’s to everyone who applies for one. The Court upheld this law, with the primary opinion written by no one less than liberal lion Justice John Paul Stevens.

Such laws combat voter fraud that we see on Election Day, especially in certain parts of the nation. In Washington State, King County suddenly “discovered” enough previously “unnoticed” votes for Democrat Christine Gregoire to edge out Republican Dino Rossi for Washington’s governorship in 2004. There are also examples from Wisconsin, Missouri, and other states.

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In an interview published over the weekend by the New York Times, Attorney General Eric Holder reminded us he will go to any length to conceal his culpability in Fast and Furious. His latest ploy is to declare as “racist” everyone who’s hounding him about the illegal guns sales, the gun smuggling, and the death, cover-ups, and other examples of lawlessness connected with the operation.

In the Times piece, Holder intimated that President Obama is disliked because of his race, and that people are piling on the bandwagon against Holder as a means to get Obama. Holder’s exact words: “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him…both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

And who are the people going after Holder and Obama because of their race? Those rascally “conservative commentators and bloggers” of course. They are those who are part of what Holder describes as a “more extreme segment” of news reporting. (I suppose it’s extreme because it’s not news that’s run through a White House sensor or an MSNBC producer before being disseminated to the public.)

Besides informing us that we’re racists for making a big deal out of hundreds of deaths among Mexican citizens, thousands of weapons sold illegally (and over 1,000 still on the street), as well as the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, Holder also took a little time out to pat himself on the back during the Times interview. Said Holder: “I think that what I’m doing is right” and “I think the stands I have taken are totally consistent with a person who is looking at things realistically, factually.”

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“You know, comrades,” says Stalin, “that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.– Boris Bazhanov, Memoirs of Stalin’s Former Secretary

First the video, courtesy of Judy Chu’s YouTube channel:

That’s right. Judy Chu, my congresswoman, actually applauded Eric Holder on his enforcement of civil rights law. She must not be aware of the New Black Panthers intimidation of white voters in 2008, or the class-action lawsuit against Eric Holder’s Justice Department for denying non-Chamorro the right to vote in the plebiscite over Guam’s future status.

But when she praised Holder for trying to invalidate lawsuits that allegedly suppress voters (read: ask voters to prove that they are eligible to vote) she seems to think that voter fraud isn’t an issue, even though experience makes it clear that it is.  Eight states now require state-issued identification at the polls, but Mr. Holder has put them on notice, worried as he that these states might violate the Voting Rights Act. Debbie Wasserman Schultz actually compares the bills to modern-day Jim Crow.

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Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech this week declaring that vote fraud is “uncommon.”  He also said in an interview to The Washington Post, “You constantly hear about voter fraud … but you don’t see huge amounts of vote fraud out there.” Eric Holder, along with others on the left, is worried that the truth will get out.  Vote fraud denial is a project of the radical left to associate voter ID and other electoral reforms with racism of the past like Jim Crow, poll taxes, the KKK. Even comparisons to torturing and killing children have been made.

At least, we have some reasonable people of the progressive persuasion, like former Alabama Congressman Artur Davis and current Rhode Island state Senator Harold Metts, who both recognize that vote fraud occurs and support voter ID.  There is not only fraud committed by one party against another.

Democrats have committed fraud against members of their own party in primaries.  While Holder is focusing on trying to explain how Fast and Furious could have happened, people like Senator Metts has said, “For decades many of us have heard complaints about voter fraud … There have been numerous anecdotal complaints that have spanned the last two decades that have been ignored.”

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For the better part of a year, I have been saying that the end goal of Fast and Furious was more gun control. Rush Limbaugh has said this, Sean Hannity and other FOX NEWS personalities have said this, and the NRA and Gun Owners of America have said this, among others. (I had a post on Big Government on July 13th dedicated to making this very point.)

Throughout this time, I have had a copy of an email that was sent to me back in March of 2011. It’s an July 2010 email from ATF Special Agent in Charge Mark R. Chait to ATF Supervisor William Newell. It is copied to a third ATF Supervisor, William McMahon. Newell and McMahon were assigned to the Phoenix area at the time (and Phoenix just so happened to be ground zero for Fast and Furious.) In it, Chait asks Newell if he can find enough “anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales.” In other words, Chait was asking whether, in the midst of the flood of new weapons hitting the streets via Fast and Furious, a means could be found to justify more gun control.

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Last night I was on the NRA’s Cam & Company with Cam Edwards, and talked about the way Attorney General Eric Holder and his associates have thus far been able to spin and twist their way out of the prosecution they deserve for Fast and Furious. As we talked and I thought of how Holder has vacillated on what he knew and when he knew it, I couldn’t help but think of how helpful it would be to provide somewhat of a timeline of when information on Fast and Furious was made available to Holder long before he admits. As you read it, keep in mind this is only a partial record.

On April 2, 2009 Holder gave a speech in Cuernavaca, Mexico in which he boasted about Operation “Gunrunner” and told Mexican authorities of everything he was doing to insure its success. In that speech he told the the audience:

Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels.  My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion.

Following that speech, Project Gunrunner began and was followed by Fast and Furious. During the earliest parts of Fast and Furious, there were three people in the White House who received email updates on Fast and Furious: Kevin O’Reilly, Dan Restrepo, and Greg Gatjanis. And for the purposes of this article, the important thing about those updates is that they came from the ATF’s William Newell, a supervisor who ultimately answers to Holder.

Then came March 2010, which is when the ATF briefed Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler on Fast and Furious. (The briefing was literally one in which the ATF briefed the DOJ on Fast and Furious using a slideshow that can be viewed here.) If you’re thinking it’s hard to believe all these things could have happened without Holder knowing about Fast and Furious then join the club. I would go further and say it seems almost impossible that he didn’t.

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On Tuesday, December 13 a rally was held near the LBJ Library at the University of Texas, Austin to highlight the attack on election reforms launched inside by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Holder went to Texas to denounce the Lone Star State’s voter ID laws and claimed that simple voter ID laws were somehow discriminatory. Holder ominously claimed that he would use the power of his office to “enforce civil rights protections” during the upcoming 2012 elections.

Outside the LBJ Library nearly 200 citizens gathered to hear a multi-racial panel of six speakers denounce Holder’s partisan attempts to push the administration’s agenda to turn a blind eye to continuing voter fraud that consistently favors candidates from the Democrat Party.

The rally was sponsored by the Houston-based True The Vote, a grass roots voter integrity project staffed by volunteers. True The Vote is a nation-wide organization that has affiliates across the country, every day citizens interested in the integrity of the elections in their home district.

True The Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said she was thrilled by the turnout that was arranged on only a few day’s notice.

We gathered for the purpose of setting the record straight and people came from all over Texas to hear a host of speakers all representing different sides of the issue. All were clearly saying that the thought that photo voter ID laws would in some way suppress the vote or would in some way disenfranchise voters is on its face a farce. This is only being done to advance a politically motivated agenda that has at its core the themes of victimization and race baiting.

In his comments AG Holder cited one Republican in Maryland that was convicted of trying to trick black voters into staying home on Election Day, but what this single case has to do with voter ID laws was unclear. Holder’s intent, it seems, was to dismiss vote fraud from Democrats while shifting the blame to this one Republican. Holder did not mention such Democrat fraud as that seen in the 2008 Indiana primary, the New York Democrat that recently pleaded guilty to vote fraud, or any of the other such cases that can be easily found in the news.

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One year ago tonight—the night of December 14 / 15, 2010—Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down with weapons sold to a straw purchaser in Operation Fast and Furious. Originally, two Fast and Furious weapons were said to have been found at the murder scene, but there has since been evidence that a third weapon, also tied to Fast and Furious, was found there too. However, it’s very existence still being covered up by the FBI. So we’ll just say “at least two” Fast and Furious weapons were found at the murder scene the night that Terry was killed.

There are so many sad aspects to this story that I don’t know where to begin.

For starters, Terry was just days away from going home to see his parents and his siblings for Christmas. (In the days after Terry’s death, his father highlighted again and again the fact that his son had already purchased his plane tickets to come home for Christmas.)

Following his death, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke did everything he could to cover up the connection between Terry’s murder and Fast and Furious. He even went as far as to deny “victim of crime” status to the Terry family, in order to prevent government liability for what had taken place with Fast and Furious weapons.

But it must be noted that there is absolutely no doubt that Terry was killed with Fast and Furious weapons: no doubt whatsoever. The name of the straw purchaser who bought the weapons is known, Jamie Avila, and the name of the gun store from which he purchased the weapons is known as well: Lone Wolf Trading Company in Phoenix. (If the name “Lone Wolf Trading Company” rings a bell, that’s because it’s where the secret ATF recordings were made that indicate Attorney General Eric Holder had a thorough working knowledge of Fast and Furious at least as early as mid-March 2011.)

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Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech in Austin, Texas Tuesday in which he invoked the history of the civil rights movement in targeting state voter identification laws. His approach mirrors that of the NAACP, which considers such laws racist, and echoes Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who recently claimed that Republicans want to “literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws.”

Holder claimed that the Department of Justice would be “fair” in reviewing such laws, but also quoted a misleading charge made by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who claimed there was a “systematic attempt” to prevent minority voters from exercising their rights. Holder specifically singled out “new photo identification requirements” in Texas and South Carolina, and applauded Maine’s voters for preserving same-day registration.

The fact is that requiring voters to provide photo identification is standard practice in much of the democratic world–even, and especially, in poor countries with a history of struggle against racism and colonialism.

In South Africa, for example, where black people were denied the vote until 1994, the new democratic government requires every registered voter–black or white, rich or poor–to bring official photo ID to the polls.

Indians show photo ID to vote (Photo credit: AP/Biswaranjan Rout)

India’s election commission issues a special photo identification card to voters when they register, which they must present at the polls:

The Election Commission of India has made voter identification mandatory at the time of poll. The electors have to identify themselves with either Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) issued by the Commission or any other documentary proof as prescribed by the Commission.

In Europe, the official EU Handbook for Election Observation acknowledges that voters are required to show identification in many countries, and suggests that observers verify that all voters are subject to the same ID check (166). Even the Carter Center for Human Rights, which monitors democratic elections all over the world, identifies “a requirement for identification” as a “reasonable limitation” on universal suffrage.

(Update: That’s not to say international practice should govern American practice at the federal, state, or local level, but it certainly undermines the notion that photo identification is somehow motivated by a desire to keep people from exercising their rights. The opposite is true: voter ID laws are intended to protect voters’ rights against fraud and manipulation by those who would subvert their will.)

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On December 8th, the very day Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Oversight Committee to answer questions about Fast and Furious, I had a post on Big Government which highlighted Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner’s (R-WI) mention of impeachment. You’ll recall Sensenbrenner essentially told Holder he was sick and tired of the way the DOJ was dragging its feet in answering questions, and he was particularly weary of Holder’s habit of answering inquires with, “gees, somebody else did it.” And even if you haven’t followed Fast and Furious closely up till now, if you read the exchanges that took place between Sensenbrenner and Holder on Dec. 8th, it’s easy to see why the Congressman was pushed to his wits end.

But just in case you need a primer, as you read the transcript below, please keep two things in mind. First, on May 3rd, Holder gave testimony to Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) in which he claimed he had only learned of Fast and Furious in the past “few weeks.” This claim by Holder is demonstrably false—has been proven false—and Holder has since changed his answer. And secondly, on Feb. 4th, the DOJ submitted a letter to Congress in which they claimed no gun-walking had taken place in relation to Fast and Furious (in other words, they claimed that none of the 2,500 weapons sold to straw purchasers had been smuggled, or been allowed to “walk,” into Mexico). That letter, like Holder’s prior testimony, was recanted.

That’s the backdrop for the following exchange on December 8:

Sensenbrenner: There have been inconsistent submissions to Congress. You yourself testified that you’d only heard about [Fast and Furious] a few weeks earlier, and then in November you said it probably was a few months. [And] as late as October 7th, in response to allegations that you lied on May 3rd, you wrote to Congress that your statements on Fast and Furious have been “truthful and consistent.” [Yet] one of your underlings, on Feb. 4th, Assistant A.G. Ronald Weich, responded to Senator Grassley denying that the ATF had walked guns and that letter ended up being withdrawn.

Clearly, Sensenbrenner was incensed as he thought of the lies surrounding Fast and Furious. So much so, in fact, that as he spoke he took pains to try to be measured in his speech:

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Just when you thought Attorney General Eric Holder couldn’t get more sordid and arrogant, he has.  His testimony last week before the House Judiciary Committee took the scandal plagued Justice Department into territory not traveled since John Mitchell worked overtime to conceal administration wrongdoing nearly four decades ago.  Even Chairman Darrell Issa recognizes the comparison is appropriate.

On Tuesday, Americans will have a rare chance to voice their disdain of the corruption and lies flowing from this Justice Department.  They will have a chance to speak out against the radical and racialist law enforcement priorities of this Justice Department.  Eric Holder comes to Austin, Texas to make a major announcement about voting laws, probably to acquiesce to some loud demand of the NAACP to block state efforts to ensure voter integrity. But a counter-rally organized by Catherine Engelbrecht and True the Vote will greet Eric Holder’s appearance in Austin, Texas at the LBJ Library at 4 p.m.  America is invited, and here is a flier with details.

You have a First Amendment right to petition your government for redress of grievances.  Use it.  So rarely has so much been worth grieving.

As bad as Watergate was, it didn’t involve hundreds of murders, dead American law enforcement agents, and the illegal distribution of thousands of firearms.  How long has it been since an Attorney General appeared before Congress and words such as “contempt” and “impeachment” were used by members as they were last week?

The Fast and Furious scandal isn’t the only mess overseen by Eric Holder.  His entire tenure has been characterized by racialist radicalism, disguised to some critics as mere incompetence.  But it is far worse than incompetence, and to think otherwise is a mistake. From the dismissal of the voter intimidation case against racist anti-Semitic New Black Panther thugs, to the Mirandizing of battlefield captures in Afghanistan, Holder has presided over a systemic radicalization of the most powerful federal agency.  This isn’t incompetence.  It is radicalism.

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As Attorney General Eric Holder testified before Congress yesterday, two things were reinforced. One: Holder has a problem telling the truth. Two: Congressmen Darrell Issa (R-CA), Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), and Ted Poe (R-TX), have a problem with people who have a problem telling the truth. And they have a point. As a matter of fact, as I watched the hearings unfold I continually thought to myself: “If Bill Clinton had obstructed justice to this degree, even Senator Trent Lott would have manned up and removed him from office.”

Said Poe:

To believe you weren’t aware of Fast and Furious requires, to coin a phrase, a willing suspension of disbelief. It is hard for me to believe you were unaware of this operation. [So] my question is very simple, who is the person in the U.S. government that made the decision in Operation Fast and Furious to send guns to Mexico?

Although such a straightforward question seems simple enough, Holder’s answer was “we don’t know yet.”

How can the A.G. not know who started an operation that resulted in the sale of 2,500 weapons to straw purchasers—some of which were paid for with U.S. taxpayer money, the passing of those weapons to criminals, the smuggling of those weapons across the border, the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with at least two of those weapons, and the death of hundreds of Mexican citizens? (I bet Holder could tell you who authorized the raid on the Gibson Guitar factory with no problem.)

Anyway, Issa was relentless all day long. And during the late afternoon, he pressed Holder to release all the documents which had subpoenaed but not released. Holder gave a sloppy answer to this question: a combination of “yes” and “we’ll see.” In response to such non-clarity, Issa compared Holder to John Mitchell, Nixon’s Watergate A.G.

Holder replied by asking, “Have you no shame?” And Issa countered with, “Have YOU no shame?”

This is a teachable moment folks: Holder has grown so accustomed to the success of his own hypocrisy that he took offense to being called out on the carpet. He took offense to being compared to Mitchell when the truth is, Mitchell’s family should be offended that one of their own was compared to Holder.

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