Showing posts with label Eric Holder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eric Holder. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

What good is a law degree if you refuse to read the law?

I believe it is fair to say that most Americans were outraged to learn that most of our elected representatives voted for the Obama "Health Care Reform" bill last year without having actually read and studied the bill. Instead, most of them simply relied on input the received from advisers, staff, and their peers. After all, the bill was over 2,000 pages long, who actually had time to read such a huge piece of legislation?

The irony was not lost on the American public. We elected hundreds of well-educated individuals, most of whom have fancy law degrees, so that they will go to Washington DC, represent our interests, and write laws that benefit us. And yet those legislators apparently did not see the value in actually reading the bill and just "trusted" that it would all work out. Even Speaker Pelosi went on the record making the asinine statement that she was in a hurry to pass the bill so everyone could "find out what's in it." Dammit, Nancy, this is a law, not a friggin' birthday present! When it comes to government, we don't want no stinkin' surprises!

Considering the incompetence and unprofessionalism of those representatives, no one is shocked to learn that there are, indeed, very unpleasant surprises as we find out "what was in that bill." We now are hearing that the government underestimated its costs, that health care costs will indeed increase as some critics had warned, and there are other unsavory results, such as a doctor shortage and a very probable need to ration care. All of which, we were assured, would never happen.

But let's take a moment to refocus attention on the Arizona immigration law, and the frenzy of attacks emanating from President Obama and his cadre of nincompoop cohorts. Obama appeared to be over eager to lead the charge against the law, stating on camera that Arizonans who took their children out for ice cream would be arrested and deported for looking like foreigners--an accusation that was patently false, because specific provisions in the law prohibited that kind of interaction with law enforcement. We soon learned that Obama had not yet read the law.

Then we heard the opinion of Attorney General Eric Holder, who proclaimed that he was extremely concerned about the possible unconstitutionality of the law and how it might very well lead to discrimination. Holder's credibility was cut to pieces in a painfully embarrassing exchange that occurred--sadly for him--on camera, in which he was forced to admit that he, too, had failed to read the law he was criticizing.

Next, we have buffoons from the State Department, such as Asst. Secretary of State PJ Crowley, who stumbled all over themselves to open negotiations with China over human rights violations by pointing out the Arizona law as an example of America's own human rights problems--only to discover that they had not read the law, either!

But wait, there's more. Secretary of Homeland Security, "Sherlock" Napolitano, recently made on-camera comments attacking the law, but slipped on a political banana peel when asked if she had read the law. Senator McCain asked her point blank if she had read the law, to which she responded that NO, she had not, but had been advised about it.

Doggon it, why should someone of her stature be expected to actually READ a law before criticizing it?

McCain pressed her, saying "Then you are not prepared to comment on it?"

Napolitano should have demurred, but that is just not the way of the Arrogant Elite. Instead, she said that it was "not the kind of law I would have signed. I believe it's a bad law enforcement law. I believe it mandates and requires local enforcement and puts them in a position many do not want to be placed in."

I'm sure many law enforcement officers don't really want to have to arrest people for minor drug infractions but they do anyway. Since when do we pass laws according to what the police would find enjoyable to enforce?

And besides, Sherlock, exactly how would you know that for sure, if you have not read the law?

This all points to an extremely disturbing trend we are seeing in Washington. Our elected representatives and the appointed officials who work for them must have somehow developed a gift of clairvoyance, since they repeatedly claim to know what is contained in laws they have not bothered to read.

Yet we, the lowly common people formerly known as citizens--but more recently relegated to the level of "subjects"--actually have to take the extraordinarily mundane steps of reading the laws manually! As a result, we discover facts that the omniscient ones somehow missed--or pretended did not exist.

And this last issue implies to me that our elected representatives can no longer be trusted with the business of running our government. They clearly hold the people in such disregard that they callously lie in public, and in so doing trample upon the trust that we people bestow upon them in the course of their duty.

Be ye warned: trust once betrayed is nearly impossible to recover. And when an entire nation arrives at the inevitable conclusion that their government cannot be trusted, or worse, the government is contemptuous of the people, then there are few peaceful options that remain to set it all right.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Eric Holder: most imcompetent AG in history

The “SMARTEST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY” can’t make a decision and gets too confused to run a war. "Victory"? Please don't use that word.

Obama gets nervous when we talk about "victory".

President Obama has put securing Afghanistan near the top of his foreign policy
agenda, but "victory" in the war-torn country isn't necessarily the United
States' goal, he said Thursday in a TV interview.
"I'm always worried about
using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor
Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur," Obama told ABC
News.
The enemy facing U.S. and Afghan forces isn't so clearly defined, he
explained.

Here, listen to him as he wiggles and wobbles and waffles all over the place. Please, "victory" is too scary a word to use.

So what about Obama's decision to bring al Qaida terrorists caught on the battlefield to civilian trials? You'd think they would be able to defend their position on this. But did you see the exchange between Lindsey Graham and history's most incompetent Attorney General, Eric Holder?

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM, (R-S.C): Can you give me a case in United States history where a enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?
ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I don't know. I'd have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I've made --
GRAHAM: We're making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I'll answer it for you. The answer is no.
HOLDER: Well, I think --
GRAHAM: The Ghailani case -- he was indicted for the Cole bombing before 9/11. And I didn't object to it going into federal court. But I'm telling you right now. We're making history and we're making bad history. And let me tell you why.

...
GRAHAM: If bin Laden were caught tomorrow, would it be the position of this administration that he would be brought to justice?
HOLDER: He would certainly be brought to justice, absolutely.
GRAHAM: Where would you try him?
HOLDER: Well, we'd go through our protocol. And we'd make the determination about where he should appropriately be tried. [...]
GRAHAM: If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?
HOLDER: Again I'm not -- that all depends. I mean, the notion that we --
GRAHAM: Well, it does not depend. If you're going to prosecute anybody in civilian court, our law is clear that the moment custodial interrogation occurs the defendant, the criminal defendant, is entitled to a lawyer and to be informed of their right to remain silent.
The big problem I have is that you're criminalizing the war, that if we caught bin Laden tomorrow, we'd have mixed theories and we couldn't turn him over -- to the CIA, the FBI or military intelligence -- for an interrogation on the battlefield, because now we're saying that he is subject to criminal court in the United States. And you're confusing the people fighting this war.


They don’t understand the implications of criminalizing a war or politicizing the judicial process. DAMN but Democrats should be PROUD.

Holder got his ASS handed to him by Graham!

Friday, April 3, 2009

The tyrants fear our weapons

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

This right, enshrined in the constitution to prevent the government from infringing upon it, had its clear intention to maintain an armed populace to be able to maintain a free state, both from outside interlopers, and from the natural process that all governments display toward tyrannical usurpation of rights and powers. In other words, the framers of the constitution did not write the second amendment to allow people to keep guns for hunting: they intended the people to be able to defend themselves from criminals, or their own government, when it has become despotic.

Modern liberals think it totally barbaric that average citizens keep and bear arms, and consider the second amendment an inconvenient anachronism that must be eliminated. Unfortunately for them, the Supreme Court recently upheld the interpretation of the second amendment to mean that individual citizens shall be given the right to keep and bear arms, and not just “militias” (interpreted by some as National Guard and other state-run organizations).

But it is clear that liberals, also known as socialists, have every hope of finding a way of restricting citizens’ rights to their weapons, and President Obama is no exception. A liberal friend of mine naively stated that the guns are safe; the liberals cannot take them away. But this silly argument overlooks the historical fact that in the 1990’s, under the leadership of President Bill Clinton, the government did in fact place a temporary ban on what they called “assault weapons” (AW). They believed that this was a “reasonable” restriction, and that “reasonable” people would see that there was no real need for the people to keep and bear “assault weapons”. So if they did it before, why could they not do it again?

If there were NO comments by Obama administration leaders, then I’d agree that it’s just hype. But when the Attorney General E. Holder says he would like to reinstate the AW Ban, but make it permanent, and then Sec. of State Clinton blatantly distorts the statistics on weapons decommissioned in Mexico to make it sound like the weapons being used come from the USA, it sure sounds to me as if there is a clear intention of infringing on the rights of citizens to possess this class of weapons.

In order for this discussion to be more instructive, I’d like to clarify some terms.

“Assault Weapons”: Defined in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to include “certain semi-automatic so called "assault weapons" including military-style semiautomatic rifles, derived from assault rifles but with lesser capabilities. There was no legal definition of "assault weapons" prior to its enactment, but assault rifle is a technical term referring to rifles capable of semi-automatic and full-automatic fire…”

The first problem I have is with the term "military-style" weapons. Think about it: every rifle and pistol in use today had its origins in military designs. From the lever-action rifle, designed by Henry Firearms during the Civil war or the bolt-action hunting rifles that originated as infantry rifles and later became preferred as "sniper rifles", to revolvers and the semi-auto Colt 1911 .45 caliber pistols, from which the ubiquitous 9 mm semi autos evolved. The only difference between the lever-action or bolt-action rifles and the "assault rifles" is the self-loading nature of the newer designs, allowing more shots to be fired more quickly.

These are precisely the types of weapons that an armed populace would need in order to defend itself from the heavily armed gangs, such as the drug trafficking organizations that have spread around the country, or to combat a despotic government intent on oppressing the citizenry. In other words: these are just the latest evolution in firearms that the Founding Fathers wanted to defend, in order to keep a free people free!

The recent Supreme Court decision makes it much more difficult to ban the weapons outright. But there are other ways of making it difficult or impossible for citizens to acquire these weapons. One sneaky way is to tax them so heavily that the average citizen cannot afford to possess or fire them.

Some liberals claim that it is a myth that Obama is trying to tax guns and ammo. A Washington Post article supports that idea, and tries to debunk the “myth”. But there are some interesting misstatements. Obama was accused by the NRA of voting
…"to ban virtually all deer-hunting ammunition" and supporting "a ban on shotguns and rifles most of us use for hunting." The deer-hunting claim is based on Obama's support for an unsuccessful Senate amendment by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that would have expanded the definition of "armor-piercing" ammunition. The other claim refers to semiautomatic rifles and pistols covered by the assault weapons ban, which expired in March 2004.
Contrary to Rusch's claim, the Kennedy proposal of July 2005, SA 1615, was not aimed at "virtually all deer-hunting ammunition." Instead, it would have authorized the attorney general to define types of illegal ammunition capable of penetrating body armor commonly used by law enforcement officials. During the Senate debate, Kennedy said that his amendment would "not apply to ammunition that is now routinely used in hunting rifles," a point contested by the NRA.
However, what’s wrong about this article is that any common “assault rifle” ammunition defeats the most common law enforcement body armor because it does NOT contain metal plates (see info on the North Hollywood shootout). The 7.62x39 (AK round), as well as the common US military round (.223) both defeat their armor. The police armor is only rated to stop handgun rounds, such as the 9mm, .32, .38, and I think the .40 Colt and .45 ACP. “Deer hunting” rounds start at .243, .270, and up to the .308 (which just also happens to be the NATO military round). My 1944 Mosin Nagant bolt action 7.62x54 (equivalent to .308 round) would easily defeat their armor, especially in full metal jacket (FMJ).

There are many semi-auto big-game and varmint hunting guns that are used in the legal and sporting taking of game, but which could be banned if they reinstate the previous “assault weapon” ban. AR-15s, SKS, and AK-47 are used nowadays to hunt varmints (such as coyotes) and deer in some states. They are not full-auto, just semi-auto. Ballistically, they are less powerful than other semi-auto rifles used regularly for hunting such as the Remington 760. Even the US M-1 Garand, which uses a 30-06 round and was the standard issue battle rifle of the military in WWII, would be legal and can be found for about $900. There are 9 mm carbines that would bypass the ban but would be just as deadly in a killing spree. So banning AKs and SKS or AR rifles makes NO sense!

Further study shows that FactCheck also tries to contradict the “myth”:
FactCheck appears not to have studied Obama’s words carefully. For example, one NRA claim is that Obama wants to “Ban the Manufacture, Sale and Possession of Handguns.” FactCheck accurately reports that Obama did endorse such a position in his 1996 Illinois State Senate race. (FactCheck also supplies the details of Obama’s 2008 claim that the questionnaire was filled out by an aide without Obama’s knowledge, even though Obama’s handwriting is on the cover of the questionnaire.) But FactCheck asserts that the NRA is lying because of Obama’s response to the same question in 2003: “While a complete ban on handguns is not politically practicable, I believe reasonable restrictions on the sale and possession of handguns are necessary to protect the public safety.”

However, note that Obama DID try to support a handgun ban before the Supreme Court knocked those kinds of laws down. That shows his intentions. His 2003 statement suggests that he still supports “reasonable restrictions” on handguns, such as the Washington DC ban on guns. Gun owners can’t trust the “reasonable restrictions” suggested by a dude that had suggested their complete ban only 4 years before.
· 1994 to 2001 - Obama was on the board of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation. This foundation is the largest funding source for radical anti-gun groups in the country.
· 1996 - Obama supported a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.
· 1999 - Obama proposed a 500 percent increase in the excise taxes on firearms and ammunition. This tax would effectively punish gun owners for buying guns and ammunition.
· 2003 - Obama voted in support of legislation that would have banned privately owned hunting shotguns, target rifles and black powder rifles in Illinois.
· 2004 - Obama voted against legislation intended to protect homeowners from prosecution in cases where they used a firearm to halt a home invasion.
As was stated by Rights Pundits:
It’s hard to trust a man will uphold the Constitution {who} stated that the Constitution is fundamentally flawed.
In 2009, his AG and Sec. of State renewed their talks about reinstating the gun bans.

According to statistical reports, “assault weapons are used in about one-fifth of one percent (.20%) of all violent crimes and about one percent in gun crimes.” If this is true, then what is the logical explanation for all this talk of banning “assault weapons”? It surely cannot be to keep America safe from guns.

So, could it be intended to keep the tyrants safe from us?