dailycaller.com: Justice dept quiet as Holder charges critics with racism

[Thiebear]

http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/19/justice-dept-silent-as-holder-charges-critics-with-racism/

Attorney General Eric Holder accused his growing chorus of critics of racist motivations in a Sunday interview published in the New York Times. When reached by The Daily Caller Monday morning, the Department of Justice provided no evidence to support the attorney general’s claims.

Holder said some unspecified faction — what he refers to as the “more extreme segment” — is driven to criticize both him and President Barack Obama due to the color of their skin. Holder did not appear to elaborate on who he considered to make up the “more extreme segment.”

“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” Holder said,

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/19/justice-dept-silent-as-holder-charges-critics-with-racism/#ixzz1h0CxXXd8

Thiebears part:

From the last Congressional Hearing:

Issa said that not all documents had been provided to his committee as investigators and he wanted to know why no emails to or from Holder appeared in the thousands of pages of documents that the Justice Department had provided to Congress.

“There is not one email that is yours.” Issa said, surrounded by boxes of documents that Justice had provided to his staff.

Found out after the first documents:

“Documents demonstrate that department personnel relied on information provided by supervisors from the components in the best position to know the relevant facts. We now know that some information provided by those supervisors was inaccurate,” Holder testified today.

The congressional investigation and ATF agents who blew the whistle on the controversial tactics used in Fast and Furious have shown that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona and ATF officials knew that guns were allowed to walk into Mexico as part of the operation.

---------- Post added December-19th-2011 at 12:42 PM ----------

For my own personal opinion: This man took a failed program on guns the previous admin ahd to apologize for that HAD tracking devices and had people watching the guns.

Took out the tracking or retreival part and the consequences are Agents were murdered, And is now shocked when there are repercussions.

[Teller]

Woooooooollllllllfffffffff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

C'mon man......:doh::doh::doh:

[Teller]

For the record, mine was not the "he should be fired..." vote.

[Ellis]

So ****ing sick of the race card getting pulled.

Dear Holder,

The reason you have been criticized is largely due to your incompetence as AG.

[sacase]

Its sad to see someone who has achieved so much to go out like this. When you start to see these unfounded racism claims come out then you know the guy is at the end.

I mean really dude, you messed up and messed up bad and refuse to accept any responsibility for it. Its costs to be the boss and even if you didn't know (I think he fully knew), you are still in charge and it is still your fault. There have been a lot of shady things going on in the Justice Department since holder has taken over, I can honestly say I will be glad to see him go. I hope he just bows out with grace instead of flailing around.

[Mad Mike]

Idiot.

If you want to make yourself look like a moron that's your business. But dragging the president into your alternate reality bull**** spin machine is just a new level of stupid.

[NavyDave]

Tossing the race card out there is a great move (No, not really) to deflect attention away from the admin's failed attempt to create an atmosphere (via the Fast and Furious) where citizens would demand Gun Control in the USA which resulted in a Border agent being murdered as well as deaths in Mexico.

[NavyDave]

For the record, mine was not the "he should be fired..." vote.

I do not want him fired. I prefer that he hangs around so he can be used as the poster child for incompetence and corruption in the Justice dept during the election.

[Larry]

[Predicto]

Holder, you idiot.

[aREDSKIN]

Really, that's the best the AG can come up with?? Incompetence boob.

[HailGreen28]

I voted fired. Holder's evidently hyper-partisan at best, and racist at worst.

My google-fu is weak looking for details on the "Fast and Furious" operation.: Law enforcement identified US citizens buying weapons (guns, MGs, etc.) for Mexican criminals, and kept up with the serial numbers of the weapons they bought, so the authorities could build a case against the US citizens when the weapons turned up in Mexico. Is this correct?

Was there more going on than that? Other means used to track the weapons? Some way they were trying to stop those weapons from crossing the border?

[jpyaks3]

I voted fired. Holder's evidently hyper-partisan at best, and racist at worst.

My google-fu is weak looking for details on the "Fast and Furious" operation.: Law enforcement identified US citizens buying weapons (guns, MGs, etc.) for Mexican criminals, and kept up with the serial numbers of the weapons they bought, so the authorities could build a case against the US citizens when the weapons turned up in Mexico. Is this correct?

Was there more going on than that? Other means used to track the weapons? Some way they were trying to stop those weapons from crossing the border?

From what I understand is that ATF agents were selling weapons to drug runners and trying to figure out how to take down the higher ups in the cartel by tracing the guns. Now they lost some of the guns and one was used to kill a border patrol agent.

[daveakl]

racism is everywhere!!

[HailGreen28]

From what I understand is that ATF agents were selling weapons to drug runners and trying to figure out how to take down the higher ups in the cartel by tracing the guns. Now they lost some of the guns and one was used to kill a border patrol agent.

OK, I got the part about the guns ending up being used to kill a lot of people, including a border patrol agent, with a lot more guns including this side of the border still floating around.

So part of the sting was to prosecute Mexicans inside or associated with Mexican drug cartels with weapons trafficking, along with the "straw buyers". What else am I missing?

[Corcaigh]

While ATF has been involved in stupid programs well before the current administration, this debacle seems larger in scale.

Of course your political opponents are going to go after you with anything they can. Anyone in Holder's position should know that to make a claim like he did, he better have some evidence or he will look even more incompetent.

[Prosperity]

Wait, I don't understand what the ATF was trying to do by selling guns to cartels.

Little known fact: the ATF used to be the Prohibitions Bureau, no wonder they are so incompetent

[Corcaigh]

Yeah ... and if the AG thinks criticism of him is racism, I'd fire his ass today if I were his boss.

[Predicto]

OK, I got the part about the guns ending up being used to kill a lot of people, including a border patrol agent, with a lot more guns including this side of the border still floating around.

So part of the sting was to prosecute Mexicans inside or associated with Mexican drug cartels with weapons trafficking, along with the "straw buyers". What else am I missing?

Well, one thing that often is missing in the discussion is that the program started under the Bush Administration (where it was also a failure).

This fact was, not surprisingly, left out of the Daily Caller article.

Perhaps I better find out what Holder was actually asked and what he actually responded to the New York Times before I accept the Daily Caller spin on the interview.

Oh, and if you really want to be disgusted, read the comments to the Daily Caller article. There is at least some evidence in there of what Holder was alluding to.

[Larry]

Oh, I certainly assume that for some of the people who are attacking Holder, some of their motivation is racism.

But, is it the reason?

Is it a major reason?

Is it one of the top 10 reasons?

Come off it.

We all know that the major reason for the attacks, on Holder and Obama, is the Party label.

And probably the second reason, is because people object to the government selling truckloads of guns to Mexican drug lords.

Should Holder have mentioned racism? Nope.

Because if he mentions it, even if it's technically true, a little, in some cases, it still comes across as an attempted deflection. (Because it quite obviously is.)

[HailGreen28]

Well, one thing that often is missing in the discussion is that the program started under the Bush Administration (where it was also a failure).

This fact was, not surprisingly, left out of the Daily Caller article.

Perhaps I better find out what Holder was actually asked and what he actually responded to the New York Times before I accept the Daily Caller spin on the interview.

Oh, and if you really want to be disgusted, read the comments to the Daily Caller article. There is at least some evidence in there of what Holder was alluding to.

I read it started under Bush. Did anything change with new leadership?

I read some of the comments. Same trash talk you'll see on youtube. But what evidence is there that the people investigating Holder are as Holder said, driven to criticize both him and President Barack Obama due to the color of their skin?

[Predicto]

Oh, I certainly assume that for some of the people who are attacking Holder, some of their motivation is racism.

But, is it the reason?

Is it a major reason?

Is it one of the top 10 reasons?

Come off it.

We all know that the major reason for the attacks, on Holder and Obama, is the Party label.

And probably the second reason, is because people object to the government selling truckloads of guns to Mexican drug lords.

Should Holder have mentioned racism? Nope.

Because if he mentions it, even if it's technically true, a little, in some cases, it still comes across as an attempted deflection. (Because it quite obviously is.)

I agree with you. Totally.

---------- Post added December-19th-2011 at 05:56 PM ----------

I read it started under Bush. Did anything change with new leadership?

I read some of the comments. Same trash talk you'll see on youtube.

There is a lot of overt racism in there too. :whoknows:

But what evidence is there that the people investigating Holder are as Holder said, driven to criticize both him and President Barack Obama due to the color of their skin?

I wondered if he actually did that, or at least the context. That's why I went back to the NYT to see what he actually said.

At that moment, protesters were rallying outside the library, some in support of stricter voter identification laws and others holding signs urging Mr. Holder to resign over the disputed gun-trafficking investigation, known as Operation Fast and Furious. Several dozen jeered when his motorcade arrived.

In the interview, Mr. Holder offered a glimpse of how he viewed the criticism. He said he thought some critics — like Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who favors allowing the military to handle terrorism suspects over the criminal justice system — are expressing “good faith” arguments about their policy disagreements.

But Mr. Holder contended that many of his other critics — not only elected Republicans but also a broader universe of conservative commentators and bloggers — were instead playing “Washington gotcha” games, portraying them as frequently “conflating things, conveniently leaving some stuff out, construing things to make it seem not quite what it was” to paint him and other department figures in the worst possible light.

Of that group of critics, Mr. Holder said he believed that a few — the “more extreme segment” — were motivated by animus against Mr. Obama and that he served as a stand-in for him. “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” he said, “both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

Mr. Holder, however, attributed most of the hostility to underlying ideological differences. “I think that people, despite my law enforcement background, view me as taking these consistently progressive stands, and I think that, philosophically, there is a desire to get at that person,” he said. “But I think the stands I have taken are totally consistent with a person who is looking at things realistically, factually.”

......

Two Republicans, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Representative Darrell Issa of California, have led an inquiry into the operation. Mr. Holder has denounced the tactics used in the operation, known as “gunwalking,” but said he did not know about them or sanction their use.

No documents or testimony have shown otherwise, but Republicans have pummeled him at oversight hearings and in news media appearances. Some accused him of perjury; others floated theories that the operation was intended to go bad so as to build a case for stronger gun-control laws and called the Holder Justice Department an accessory to murder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/us/politics/under-partisan-fire-eric-holder-soldiers-on.html?pagewanted=all

It looks a little different there than the way the Daily Caller portrayed it, at least to me. But I still agree with Larry that the subject should never have been brought up at all.

[HailGreen28]

There is a lot of overt racism in there too. :whoknows:

None of which has to do with his critics on the Hill and the Bloggosphere. Or about the actual scandal over the sting operation I'm asking about.

I wondered if he actually did that, or at least the context. That's why I went back to the NYT to see what he actually said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/us/politics/under-partisan-fire-eric-holder-soldiers-on.html?pagewanted=all

It looks a little different there than the way the Daily Caller portrayed it, at least to me. But I still agree with Larry that the subject should never have been brought up at all.

Well, Holder did play the race card in your quote and the cited link. He shouldn't have.

So were the Mexicans ever informed about the sting operation, or did they find out from the news like the rest of us?

[visionary]

When's the last time we had an AG who actually went through their term without being massively disliked by one side or the other and getting into some sort of legal problems?

It seems like every one of them I can remember has had some major issues.