Eric Holder

Obama Justice Department Sued Over Stonewalling and Cover-Up in Black Panther Case

by Hans Bader on May 26, 2010 · 2 comments

in Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Judicial Watch is suing the Obama administration over its stonewalling in the Black-Panther voter intimidation case, where the administration has flouted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in order to hide how it protected members of the racist, anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party. Although FOIA requires that documents be released within 20 days, the administration has withheld for over a year the records Judicial Watch requested about how the administration dismissed a lawsuit that career Justice Department lawyers had won against Black Panthers who used a nightstick and racial epithets to drive white voters away from a polling place.

Earlier, a career Justice Department lawyer resigned after the Obama administration illegally defied a subpoena from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The Civil Rights Commission is investigating the administration’s politicization of the Justice Department and its selective refusal to enforce the Voting Rights Act against the Black Panthers and black political bosses.

A former Justice Department lawyer describes the Obama administration’s stonewalling, cover-up, and deceit at this link. The Black Panthers that the Obama administration sought to protect by dropping the lawsuit included a local Democratic official and Obama poll-watcher.

One of the Panthers, who has been videotaped saying “that he wanted to kill white people,” is shown in a recent documentary talking about “how much he hates and wants to kill white people, including white babies.” He called a terrified black poll watcher a “race traitor,” and told him there would be “hell to pay” if he interfered with the Panthers’ campaign of voter intimidation.

In their campaign of voter intimidation, the Panthers told a white former civil-rights lawyer and former publisher of the liberal Village Voice, “Now you are going to find out what it is to be ruled by the black man, cracker.” They called a white poll watcher who lives nine blocks from the polling place a “white devil” and a “cracker,” telling him he would be ruled by the black man the next day, and he would have to get used to “living under his boot.”

The New Black Panther Party, which has a venomous hatred for what it refers to as “bloodsucking Jews,” is designated as a hate-group even by the liberal SPLC, because of its anti-Semitism.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that discrimination against whites is prohibited under federal law (including voting discrimination). The Obama administration seemingly disagrees with those rulings (which include a 9-to-0 Supreme Court decision).

Purpose of Hate-Crimes Bill Is To Promote Double Jeopardy and Shred Civil Liberties

by Hans Bader on May 9, 2009 · 1 comment

in Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

On April 29, the House voted 249-to-175 to pass the federal hate crimes bill, which the bill’s supporters explicitly want to use to prosecute people already found innocent in state court all over again in federal court. Such reprosecutions are, sadly, allowed under a Constitutional loophole known as the “dual sovereignty” doctrine, which says that state and federal governments are different sovereigns, and that double jeopardy only applies when you are prosecuted twice by the same sovereign. (This loophole was established in the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 Bartkus decision, over a stinging dissent by Justice Black).

In the past, the possibility of reprosecutions was viewed as a vice, not a virtue, and civil-rights advocates and lawmakers alike have sometimes cited this risk in opposing bills broadening the reach of federal criminal laws. But civil-rights groups now view double jeopardy as a virtue when it comes to people accused of hate crimes. They consider hate crimes so terrible that not even innocence should be a defense.

The latest example of this comes from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (a coalition of hundreds of liberal civil-rights groups including the ACLU), and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in a May 5 blog commentary entitled, “Pennsylvania Teenagers Acquitted of Hate Crime; Federal Law Needed.” It approvingly quotes the General Counsel of MALDEF arguing that the federal hate-crimes bill is needed based on the acquittal in state court of teenagers accused of a hate crime against an illegal alien from Mexico: “Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act, which will . . . give federal government jurisdiction over prosecuting hate crimes in states where the current law is inadequate. ‘[T] his verdict underscores the importance of the passage of this Act,’ said Henry Solano, MALDEF interim president and general counsel. ‘It is time for the Department of Justice to step in and bring justice to the Ramirez family and send a strong message that violence targeting immigrants will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.’ The Justice Department is currently investigating whether to prosecute the two teenagers under federal civil rights statutes.”

By contrast, four Independent and Republican members of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission opposed the federal hate-crimes bill in an April 29 letter, calling it a “menace to civil liberties,” since its “most important effect” will be to circumvent double-jeopardy guarantees.

MALDEF and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights are not alone in seeking to reprosecute people found innocent in state court. Many supporters of the hate crimes bill want to allow those found innocent to be reprosecuted in federal court. As one supporter put it, “the federal hate crimes bill serves as a vital safety valve in case a state hate-crimes prosecution fails.” The claim that the justice system has “failed” when a jury returns a not-guilty verdict is truly scary and contrary to the constitutional presumption of innocence and the right to trial by jury.

But it is a view widely shared among supporters of the hate-crimes bill. Syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum pointed out in 1998 that Janet Reno, Clinton’s Attorney General, backed the bill as a way of providing a federal “forum” for prosecution if prosecutors fail to obtain a conviction “in the state court.”

Supporters of the hate crimes bill also see it as a way to prosecute people even in cases where the evidence is so weak that state prosecutors have decided not to prosecute. Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed for the hate crimes bill as a way to prosecute people whom state prosecutors refuse to prosecute because of a lack of evidence. To justify broadening federal hate-crimes law, he cited three examples where state prosecutors refused to prosecute, citing a lack of evidence. In each, a federal jury acquitted the accused, finding them not guilty.

Advocates of a broader federal hate-crimes law have pointed to the Duke lacrosse case as an example of where federal prosecutors should have stepped in and prosecuted the accused players — even though the state prosecution in that case was dropped because the defendants were actually innocent, as North Carolina’s attorney general conceded, and were falsely accused of rape by a woman with a history of violence (including trying to run over someone with her car) and making false accusations.

Civil libertarians like Wendy Kaminer and law professors like Gail Heriot have criticized the federal hate-crimes bill for taking advantage of a loophole in constitutional double-jeopardy protections.

The hate-crimes bill also violates constitutional federalism safeguards, such as the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Morrison (2000).

Supporters of the hate-crimes bill have all sorts of lame rationalizations for disregarding not-guilty verdicts. Hate-crimes activist Brian Levin, who testified before Congress, claims reprosecutions are needed because local jury pools are biased. NOW Legal Defense Fund told Congress that reprosecutions are appropriate if local prosecutors had “inadequate resources” or were of “questionable effectiveness.” (These rationalizations make no sense and have no principled limits: there is no evidence that state juries are more biased than the federal juries that would hear federal hate-crimes cases, or that they are typically biased; and even well-funded prosecutors have complained of having inadequate resources).

Given the politically-charged nature of many hate-crimes trials, Kimberly Potter of New York University was probably right when she told Congress back in 1998 that if the federal hate crimes bill is enacted, “the acquittal of [hate-crimes] defendants in state court will frequently trigger demands for federal prosecution.”

The bill’s sponsors seldom talk about that controversial aspect of the bill, however, when addressing the general public. Instead, they trumpet the fact that the hate-crimes bill would include gays, lesbians, and transgendered people among the classes of people it covers (the existing federal hate-crimes law only covers race, but not gender, sexual orientation, or disability, and it does not reach most hate-crimes, but rather only those that involve federally-protected activities).

The bill’s supporters, such as the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the ACLU, claim the law is needed because of the case of Angie Zapata. Zapata is a transgender woman whose lover killed her when he found out she was biologically a man. But this argument makes little sense, given that Zapata’s killer was swiftly convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole by a Colorado state court, which found the killer guilty of both murder and hate crimes. (The federal hate crimes bill does not provide for the death penalty, and its maximum penalty is the same one that Zapata’s killer got: life without parole).

But precisely for that reason, a federal hate-crimes law is duplicative and unnecessary. Moreover, even the few states that don’t have hate-crimes laws, like Wyoming, still punish hate criminals under their laws against murder and assault. The killers of Matthew Shepard were given life sentences, which is the maximum penalty available under the federal hate-crimes bill. (Ironically, the Wyoming prosecutor wanted them to get the death penalty, while liberal groups like Lambda Legal, which supports the federal hate-crimes bill, oppose the death penalty in all cases). There is no evidence that any state gives people who commit hate crimes lesser sentences on average than people who commit similarly violent crimes not motivated by bias.

There are plenty of reasons to oppose the federal hate crimes bill, which is known as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. But since it was used as a political wedge issue in the 2008 election by both the Democratic Party and President Obama, who support it, there is little doubt that it will pass Congress and be signed into law by the President.

The ACLU long opposed the loophole in Constitutional double-jeopardy protections that the bill is designed to exploit. But it switched its longstanding position in order to back the federal hate crimes bill, apparently believing that civil-liberties must be sacrificed in order to fight hate.

The ACLU’s support for the federal hate-crimes bill is hypocritical for another reason: the bill seeks to circumvent double-jeopardy protections recognized by a treaty called the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the U.S. ratified (albeit with a long series of reservations, understandings, and declarations — including one dealing with double jeopardy) in 1992. The ACLU has also long argued that the United States should not only comply with that treaty but give it a very expansive interpretation, and not seek to hide behind any reservations made by the U.S. in ratifying the treaty.

Article 14 of the treaty specifically prohibits double jeopardy, without any exception for the loophole relied on by supporters of the federal hate crimes bill, mandating that “No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence for which he has already been finally convicted or acquitted.”

But the ACLU conveniently ignores the treaty when it comes to the federal hate-crimes bill, even though the ACLU has sought to stretch the treaty’s language to achieve a host of liberal political goals, such as mandating “affirmative action” in the U.S. The ACLU also has argued for an expansive interpretation of the treaty to require benefits for illegal aliens. For example, the ACLU criticizes the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Hoffman Plastics case, which refused to award illegal aliens backpay against employers who fired them. The ACLU’s bizarre interpretations of the treaty conflict not only with its language, but also with the longstanding practices of most ICCPR signatory countries.

Federal Hate Crimes Bill Will Erode Civil Liberties and Undermine Constitutional Safeguards Against Double Jeopardy

by Hans Bader on April 26, 2009 · 4 comments

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

On April 23, the House Judiciary Committee voted 15-to-12 to approve a dramatic expansion of the federal hate-crimes law. The bill, H.R. 1913, would add gender, sexual orientation, and transgender characteristics to a law originally designed to protect racial minorities. It also greatly expands the law’s reach over local offenses typically handled by state prosecutors, by eliminating many jurisdictional limits.

The bill would allow people who have been found innocent of a hate crime in state court to be reprosecuted in federal court. Many supporters of the federal hate crimes bill want to allow people who have been found innocent of a hate crime in state court to be reprosecuted in federal court, citing the Pennsylvania teenagers who were recently acquitted of committing a hate crime against an illegal alien. As one supporter put it, “the federal hate crimes bill serves as a vital safety valve in case a state hate-crimes prosecution fails.” The claim that the justice system has “failed” when a jury returns a not-guilty verdict is truly scary and contrary to the constitutional presumption of innocence and the right to trial by jury.

But it is a view widely shared among supporters of the hate-crimes bill. Syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum pointed out in 1998 that Janet Reno, Clinton’s Attorney General, backed the bill as a way of providing a federal “forum” for prosecution if prosecutors fail to obtain a conviction “in the state court.”

As Sullum noted, the federal hate crimes bill exploits a loophole in constitutional protections against double jeopardy, known as the “dual sovereignty” doctrine. The Supreme Court created this loophole in its 5-to-4 Bartkus decision.

Supporters of the hate crimes bill also see it as a way to prosecute people even in cases where the evidence is so weak that state prosecutors have decided not to prosecute. Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed for the hate crimes bill as a way to prosecute people whom state prosecutors refuse to prosecute because of a lack of evidence. To justify broadening federal hate-crimes law, he cited three examples where state prosecutors refused to prosecute, citing a lack of evidence. In each, a federal jury acquitted the accused, finding them not guilty.

Advocates of a broader federal hate-crimes law have pointed to the Duke lacrosse case as an example of where federal prosecutors should have stepped in and prosecuted the accused players — even though the state prosecution in that case was dropped because the defendants were actually innocent, as North Carolina’s attorney general conceded, and were falsely accused of rape by a woman with a history of violence (including trying to run over someone with her car) and making false accusations.

Civil libertarians like Wendy Kaminer have criticized the federal hate-crimes bill for taking advantage of a loophole in constitutional double-jeopardy protections. Law professor Gail Heriot, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, has also criticized the bill for circumventing protections against double-jeopardy. Three other Civil Rights Commissioners joined her in urging Congress not to pass the federal hate crimes bill in an April 29 letter.

I wrote earlier about how the federal hate-crimes bill backed by Obama and Congressional leaders would violate constitutional federalism safeguards, such as the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Morrison (2000), and how it would allow people found innocent in state court to be retried in federal court.

Supporters of the hate-crimes bill have all sorts of lame rationalizations for disregarding not-guilty verdicts. Hate-crimes activist Brian Levin, who testified before Congress, claims reprosecutions are needed because local jury pools are biased. NOW Legal Defense Fund told Congress that reprosecutions are appropriate if local prosecutors had “inadequate resources” or were of “questionable effectiveness.” (These rationalizations make no sense and have no principled limits: there is no evidence that state juries are more biased than the federal juries that would hear federal hate-crimes cases, or that they are typically biased; and even well-funded prosecutors have complained of having inadequate resources).

Given the politically-charged nature of many hate-crimes trials, Kimberly Potter of New York University was probably right when she told Congress back in 1998 that if the federal hate crimes bill is enacted, “the acquittal of [hate-crimes] defendants in state court will frequently trigger demands for federal prosecution.”

The bill’s sponsors seldom talk about that controversial aspect of the bill, however, when addressing the general public. Instead, they trumpet the fact that the hate-crimes bill would include gays, lesbians, and transgendered people among the classes of people it covers.

The bill’s supporters, such as the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the ACLU, claim the law is needed because of the case of Angie Zapata. Zapata is a transgender woman whose lover killed her when he found out she was biologically a man. But this argument makes little sense, given that Zapata’s killer was swiftly convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole by a Colorado state court, which found the killer guilty of both murder and hate crimes. (The federal hate crimes bill does not provide for the death penalty, and its maximum penalty is the same one that Zapata’s killer got: life without parole).

The bill’s Senate sponsors named the 2008 version of the bill after Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was killed in Wyoming. That was a cynically clever strategy. Hate-crimes laws are fairly popular: 45 states have hate crimes laws, and most of them ban hate-crimes based on sexual orientation.

But precisely for that reason, a federal hate-crimes law is duplicative and unnecessary. Moreover, even the few states that don’t have hate-crimes laws, like Wyoming, still punish hate criminals under their laws against murder and assault. The killers of Matthew Shepard were given life sentences, which is the maximum penalty available under the federal hate-crimes bill. (Ironically, the Wyoming prosecutor wanted them to get the death penalty, while liberal groups like Lambda Legal, which supports the federal hate-crimes bill, oppose the death penalty in all cases). There is no evidence that any state gives people who commit hate crimes lesser sentences on average than people who commit similarly violent crimes not motivated by bias.

There are plenty of reasons to oppose the federal hate crimes bill, which is known as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. But since it was used as a political wedge issue in the 2008 election by both the Democratic Party and President Obama, who support it, there is little doubt that it will pass Congress and be signed into law by the President.

The ACLU long opposed the loophole in Constitutional double-jeopardy protections that the bill is designed to exploit. But it switched its longstanding position in order to back the federal hate crimes bill, apparently believing that civil-liberties must be sacrificed in order to fight hate.

The ACLU’s support for the federal hate-crimes bill is hypocritical for another reason: the bill seeks to circumvent double-jeopardy protections recognized by a treaty called the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the U.S. ratified in 1992. The ACLU has also long argued that the United States should not only comply with that treaty but give it a very expansive interpretation.

Article 14 of the treaty specifically prohibits double jeopardy, without any exception for the loophole relied on by supporters of the federal hate crimes bill, mandating that “No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence for which he has already been finally convicted or acquitted.”

But the ACLU conveniently ignores the treaty when it comes to the federal hate-crimes bill, even though the ACLU has sought to stretch the treaty’s language to achieve a host of liberal political goals, such as mandating “affirmative action” in the U.S. The ACLU also has argued for an expansive interpretation of the treaty to require benefits for illegal aliens. For example, the ACLU criticizes the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Hoffman Plastics case, which refused to award illegal aliens backpay against employers who fired them. The ACLU’s bizarre interpretations of the treaty conflict not only with its language, but also with the longstanding practices of most ICCPR signatory countries, which neither practice affirmative action nor give benefits to illegal aliens.

Crucial Military Votes Excluded in New York Special Election

by Hans Bader on April 3, 2009 · 13 comments

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

The outcome of a special Congressional election in New York’s 20th Congressional District will likely turn on the illegal exclusion of up to 1,000 overseas military ballots, which otherwise would have tipped the race in favor of James Tedisco (R). Tedisco and Scott Murphy (D) are in a dead heat, with 77,225 votes each.

Democrats on the state elections board blocked GOP attempts to allow overseas military voting in the special election. Overseas ballots take weeks to reach voters and be returned unless special measures are taken to speed things up. But the elections officials refused to do anything to speed things up, or mail the ballots out early enough. The result is that perhaps 90 percent of the ballots will be tossed in the trash without ever being counted. (Military ballots are cast mostly for Republican candidates).

The exclusion of these ballots violates a federal law known as UOCAVA, but the Justice Department filed only a “Potemkin Village” lawsuit in response, seeking a brief, cosmetic extension of time for returning the ballots — an extension that will result in only a handful of the wrongfully-excluded military ballots being counted. The Justice Department could easily have sought and obtained broader, more meaningful relief, as it did on several occasions during the Bush Administration. But it didn’t want to, for partisan political reasons.

So much for Obama’s campaign promise to defend “the right of every American to vote.” (Obama’s Justice Department is also not interested in protecting the voting rights of white people denied the right to vote by black political bosses in predominantly-black counties).

This is just one facet of the continuing politicization of the Justice Department, which is now blessing unconstitutional bills that even liberal legal scholars admit violate the plain language of the Constitution.

And it is reflects just one broken promise in a long line of broken promises from Obama. Obama has violated his campaign pledge of a “net spending cut” through an unprecedentedly-large federal budget that will generate $4.8 trillion in increased deficits, a trillion-dollar toxic-asset program, and an $800 billion, economy-shrinking “stimulus” package.

And Obama’s promise not to raise taxes in “any form” on anyone making less than $250,000 per year has been broken by his SCHIP excise tax increase and his proposed $2 trillion cap-and-trade carbon tax.

Bill Giving D.C. a Congressman Is Unconstitutional

by Hans Bader on April 1, 2009 · 1 comment

in Bailout Watch, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere

A bill that would give residents of Washington, D.C. a Congressman is unconstitutional, lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded. But politics overrode law as Attorney General Eric Holder, who has a contempt for constitutional safeguards, ignored their conclusion and decided instead to declare it constitutional. The bill was passed in slightly different versions by both Houses of Congress on largely party-line votes, although differences between the two versions have to be ironed out before it can be signed by Obama, who supports the bill (the Senate added a provision protecting gun-rights in the District to the bill, enraging liberal House leaders).

The OLC lawyers who admitted that the bill is unconstitutional were liberal academics appointed by Obama himself. But not even they could argue with a straight face that it was constitutional. For decades, beginning with Robert F. Kennedy, the Justice Department, like the Congressional Research Service, has admitted that giving the District a Congressman is unconstitutional.

The bill is flagrantly, patently unconstitutional, since it violates the constitutional requirement of Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution that the “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.” Washington, D.C. is not a state. The Founding Fathers specifically intended to limit Washington, D.C.’s influence over Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment likewise states that “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States . . .”

Supporters of the bill argue that the bill is constitutional under the District Clause in Article 1 of the Constitution, which says that Congress has the power of “exclusive Legislation” over the District. They say its language trumps other constitutional provisions. But that argument is frivolous. Allowing grants of power, like the District Clause, to override other provisions of the Constitution, such as the Fourteenth Amendment, is dangerous, since those other provisions also contain crucial civil liberties. Under this logic, Congress could legislatively authorize warrantless searches and seizures in the District, effectively overriding the Fourth Amendment. And it could summarily punish innocent people through “bills of attainder,” which are prohibited in the very same article of the Constitution — Article 1 — as the requirement that only “states” receive Congressman. If that requirement can be overridden by Congress under the District Clause, as bill supporters claim, then why can’t other requirements in the same article, like the ban on bills of attainders?

As George Will has noted, if “Congress’ legislative power trumps the Constitution, . . . Congress could establish religion, abridge freedom of speech and of the press and abolish the right of peaceful assembly in the District.” Obviously, that is not the case, since, as National Review points out, “The grant of exclusive jurisdiction does not permit Congress to do anything that the rest of the Constitution forbids, and the rest of the Constitution clearly forbids it to treat D.C. as a state.”

The courts have always assumed that grants of power to Congress are limited by other constitutional provisions. For example, although the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, the courts have struck down as free-speech violations Congressional laws regulating the publishing industry, interstate advertising, the internet, and other forms of interstate commerce, without anyone suggesting that Congress’s power overrides the First Amendment. Similarly, a federal appeals court struck down the Elizabeth Morgan Act as a bill of attainder in 2003, even though it was Congressional legislation regarding the D.C. courts enacted under the District Clause.

Attorney General Holder’s political meddling is a breach of his promise not to politicize DOJ’s legal positions, and to take legal positions based not on “a political process,” but rather “based solely on our interpretation of the law.” (It is also a breach of his oath of office).

But this shouldn’t be a big surprise, coming from an Administration that has routinely broken campaign promises, such as Obama’s promise of a “net spending cut,” which he broke in myriad ways, such as a budget that will increase projected deficits by $4.8 trillion, and bailouts amounting to $8 trillion (not counting another trillion dollars for the toxic-asset buy-up program and $800 billion for the economy-shrinking “stimulus” package).

LibertyWeek 35: Dodd Man Out?

by Richard Morrison on March 24, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist welcome back special guest co-host Michelle Minton for Episode 35 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We begin with a celebration of human achievement and a peek into the realm of secret government documents. We then investigate how the White House is going to waste another $1 trillion of your money and how the British beer tax has managed to kill off 20,000 jobs. Finally we focus on the history of the scandal-addled Sen. Dodd of Connecticut and the future of U.S. Olympic glory.

BONUS BOOK FEATURE: We congratulate our good friend Steve Milloy on the publication of his new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them. The book is a one-of-a-kind, comprehensive takedown of the entire environmental movement that will open your eyes to a looming threat to our economy, our civil liberties, and the entire American way of life.

Left-Wing Attorney General Ashamed of End to Discrimination

by Hans Bader on March 17, 2009 · 1 comment

in Legal, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

A federal appeals court recently upheld an injunction barring a county official from continuing to prevent people from voting based on their race. The unanimous ruling in United States v. Brown (5th Cir. 2009) was a victory for the Justice Department, which brought the case back during the Bush Administration.

But Eric Holder, Obama’s new attorney general, is ashamed of the decision, and his Justice Department is keeping mum about it. The Justice Department refused even to issue a press release announcing the decision, even though it is customary to issue press releases after all Justice Department wins.

Why the deafening silence? Because the victims of the blatant and massive voting discrimination in Noxubee County, Mississippi, were whites prevented from casting ballots in Democratic primaries by the black political boss who ran the county. (A few blacks also had their voting rights violated).

Holder’s attitude is so small-minded and parochial that it is an embarrassment to the Justice Department.

It has been more than 30 years since a unanimous Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Company (1976) that all races — including whites –are covered by the civil-rights laws. That ruling, which allowed white employees to challenge their race-based firing, was authored by the Supreme Court’s first black justice, Thurgood Marshall, who had earlier successfully argued the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down school segregation in 1954.

But apparently, the principles of the liberal icon Thurgood Marshall are just too “right-wing” for this left-wing administration. (And for many left-wing “career” Justice Department employees in the Voting Rights Section and Civil Rights Division, who refused to work on the suit against voting discrimination in Noxubee County because the victims were white. Only because of the persistence of Bush appointees like Hans Von Spakovsky did this case ever see the light of day).

Holder is simply blind to reality. He can’t accept the reality of even blatant discrimination against white people. Meanwhile, he also refuses to accept the possibility of innocence when white people are accused of hate crimes, citing examples of white people being acquitted in state court as a justification for passing a broad new federal hate-crimes law, which would allow people found not guilty in state court to be retried in federal court.

Ironically, Holder claims that Americans are a “nation of cowards” on matters of race.

Incoming Attorney General Eric Holder Is Hostile to Civil Liberties

by Hans Bader on January 23, 2009 · 1 comment

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual

Eric Holder, Obama’s choice for attorney general, is hostile to civil liberties. He has previously expressed veiled support for using the misnamed “Fairness Doctrine” to squelch “conservative critiques” and “conservative media,” such as Fox News (which Holder believes is anything but “Fair and Balanced,” contrary to its slogan). The “Fairness Doctrine” is designed to shut down conservative Talk Radio.

Holder also has advocated hate-crimes legislation to prosecute people whom state prosecutors refuse to prosecute because of a lack of evidence. To justify broadening federal hate-crimes law, he cited three examples where state prosecutors refused to prosecute, citing a lack of evidence. In each, a federal jury acquitted the accused, finding them not guilty.

Advocates of a broad federal hate-crimes law have pointed to the Duke Lacrosse case as an example of where federal prosecutors should have stepped in and prosecuted the accused players — even though the state prosecution in that case was dropped because the defendants were actually innocent, as North Carolina’s attorney general conceded, and were falsely accused of rape by a woman with a history of violence (including trying to run over someone with her car) and making false accusations. Supporters of federal hate-crimes legislation like Janet Reno view it as a way of getting around constitutional protections against double jeopardy, by allowing reprosecution in federal court of people who have already been found innocent in state court.

Civil libertarians like Wendy Kaminer have criticized the federal hate-crimes bill for taking advantage of a loophole in constitutional double-jeopardy protections. So has Gail Heriot, a law professor and member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Holder has also been criticized by civil libertarians for seeking to undermine the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and by gun-rights advocates for seeking to eviscerate Second Amendment rights recognized by the Supreme Court.

Holder was also involved in the disgraceful pardon of fugitive millionaire Marc Rich,, whose ex-wife was a major Clinton donor, and the pardons of unrepentant Puerto Rican terrorists.

I wrote earlier about how the federal hate-crimes bill backed by Obama and Congressional leaders would violate constitutional federalism safeguards, and how it would allow people found innocent in state court to be retried in federal court. Supporters of the hate-crimes bill have all sorts of rationalizations for disregarding not-guilty verdicts. Hate-crimes activist Brian Levin, who testified before Congress, claims reprosecutions are needed because local jury pools are biased. NOW Legal Defense Fund told Congress that reprosecutions are appropriate if local prosecutors had “inadequate resources” or were of “questionable effectiveness.”

Given the politically-charged nature of many hate-crimes trials, Kimberly Potter of New York University was probably right when she told Congress back in 1998 that if the federal hate crimes bill is enacted, “the acquittal of [hate-crimes] defendants in state court will frequently trigger demands for federal prosecution.”

The defendants in the Duke lacrosse case, charged with an interracial rape, were vindicated by DNA evidence. But their detractors, such as former John Edwards staffer Amanda Marcotte (who has repeatedly smeared critics of the federal hate crimes bill as being bigots) and radical activist Alton Maddox (who was involved in the Tawana Brawley hate-crime hoax), continue to insist that they were guilty of hate crimes, and that more hate-crimes laws are needed.

For some people, it seems, hate crimes are so terrible that not even innocence should be a defense. Such people eagerly await passage of the federal hate-crimes bill.

Holder for Attorney General: Bad, But It Could Be Much Worse

by Hans Bader on November 25, 2008 · 5 comments

in Legal, Politics as Usual

President-elect Obama is poised to appoint Eric Holder as the next attorney general. I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, Holder blatantly lied during the Elian Gonzalez fiasco. And he schemed to bring about the infamous pardon by Bill Clinton of fugitive financier Marc Rich, to the dismay of federal prosecutors and disgust of even hard-core Clinton supporters and liberal lawmakers.

On the other hand, his being appointed reduces the likelihood that a wacko like Charles Ogletree, the Harvard law professor described in the press as Obama’s top advisor on criminal justice and racial issues, will be appointed attorney general. We wrote earlier about Ogletree’s claims that America is a racist country that brought on 9/11 through its stupidity.

Holder’s appointment would also forestall the appointment of Deval Patrick, an advocate of racial quotas, baseless lawsuits, and censorship, who some had predicted would be the next attorney general.

However, the Washington Post and Boston Globe have predicted that Patrick may be appointed by Obama to the Supreme Court. He could do far more harm on the Supreme Court than as attorney general.

Federal Hate-Crimes Bill Promotes Double Jeopardy

by Hans Bader on May 23, 2007

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Yesterday, I wrote about the fact that many supporters of the federal hate crimes bill want to allow people who have been found innocent of a hate crime in state court to be reprosecuted in federal court.

Apparently, this was true of the most prominent supporter of the bill when it was first introduced, the Clinton Administration. Syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum pointed out in 1998 that Janet Reno, Clinton’s Attorney General, backed the bill as a way of providing a federal “forum” for prosecution if prosecutors fail to obtain a conviction “in the state court.”

As Sullum notes, the hate crimes bill exploits a loophole in constitutional protections against double jeopardy, known as the “dual sovereignty” doctrine. The Supreme Court created this loophole in its 5-to-4 Bartkus decision.

UPDATE, April 29, 2009: Attorney General Eric Holder also has advocated hate-crimes legislation to prosecute people whom state prosecutors refuse to prosecute because of a lack of evidence. To justify broadening federal hate-crimes law, he cited three examples where state prosecutors refused to prosecute, citing a lack of evidence. In each, a federal jury acquitted the accused, finding them not guilty.

Advocates of a broad federal hate-crimes law have pointed to the Duke Lacrosse case as an example of where federal prosecutors should have stepped in and prosecuted the accused players — even though the state prosecution in that case was dropped because the defendants were actually innocent, as North Carolina’s attorney general conceded, and were falsely accused of rape by a woman with a history of violence (including trying to run over someone with her car) and making false accusations. Supporters of federal hate-crimes legislation like Janet Reno view it as a way of getting around constitutional protections against double jeopardy, by allowing reprosecution in federal court of people who have already been found innocent in state court. For example, MALDEF and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights cite the example of Pennsylvania teenagers who were found innocent of a hate crime against an illegal alien in state court as a reason for passing the bill.

Civil libertarians like Wendy Kaminer have criticized the federal hate-crimes bill for taking advantage of a loophole in constitutional double-jeopardy protections. (Attorney General Holder has also been criticized by civil libertarians for seeking to undermine the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.) U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Gail Heriot has also criticized the bill for circumventing protections against double-jeopardy. In an April 29 letter, she and three other Civil Rights Commissioners urged Congress not to pass the federal hate crimes bill.

I wrote earlier about how the federal hate-crimes bill backed by Obama and Congressional leaders would violate constitutional federalism safeguards, and how it would allow people found innocent in state court to be retried in federal court. Supporters of the hate-crimes bill have all sorts of rationalizations for disregarding not-guilty verdicts. Hate-crimes activist Brian Levin, who testified before Congress, claims reprosecutions are needed because local jury pools are biased. NOW Legal Defense Fund told Congress that reprosecutions are appropriate if local prosecutors had “inadequate resources” or were of “questionable effectiveness.”

Given the politically-charged nature of many hate-crimes trials, Kimberly Potter of New York University was probably right when she told Congress back in 1998 that if the federal hate crimes bill is enacted, “the acquittal of [hate-crimes] defendants in state court will frequently trigger demands for federal prosecution.”