Holder--Dont let the door hit you! Eric Holder, the most incompetent Attorney General and the most dangerous to the rule of law, says he is leaving. Good riddance I say. As most of you know, since 2011 I have been riding Holder like a rented mule. His hyper-partisanship, race baiting, and disregard for the constitution render him unqualified for public office much less nations lead lawyer. Holders decision is curious in light of the court order on documents for Fast and Furious. Here is a good take I agree with from Robert Romano: Holder resigns as judge orders Fast and Furious documents released By Robert Romano Eric Holder will be stepping down as Attorney General later this year, ending a six year term that has been highlighted by the Fast and Furious and Associated Press wiretapping scandals. The announcement came on the same day a federal judge ordered documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal — the so-called Vaughn index — be released that Barack Obama and Holder had sealed under the Nixonian doctrine of executive privilege against a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch and a Congressional subpoena. The governments arguments for even more time are unconvincing, U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates said in his ruling. [S]eventy-five days — plus another twenty-one, based in part on Judiciary Watchs consent — is enough time for the government to prepare the index that this Court has ordered, given that this matter has been pending for over two years. The Court will therefore extend the Departments Vaughn index submission deadline to October 22, 2014 — and no further. The Justice Department is expected to appeal the ruling. By any standard, this was a dramatic expansion of the executive privilege doctrine, which was only supposed to extend to the Presidents top advisors — not low-level Justice Department officials whose actions got a Border Patrol agent and hundreds of Mexicans killed. Ultimately, the House of Representatives found Holder in contempt for defying the subpoena. Executive privilege was originally cited by the Nixon administration to keep the infamous White House tapes out of the hands of special prosecutors in the Watergate scandal cover-up. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ordered the tapes turned over in the monumental decision, U.S. v. Nixon (1974). On one tape, eighteen minutes were missing — the White House claimed that Nixons secretary Rose Mary Woods accidentally deleted it. Well never learn what was contained. But fifteen days later, facing an imminent impeachment, Nixon resigned. If applied to its logical extreme, one imagines a scenario where a president could pick and choose what documents to seal under the guise of executive privilege, no matter how low in the bureaucracy they originate. In the process, he could rob Congress of its constitutional oversight role of the executive branch, or circumvent legitimate requests made under the Freedom of Information Act.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 16:01:38 +0000