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john ashcroft
Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder Leaves Office (Good Riddance)
Going, going, gone, but let’s not forget him
Sep 25, 2014
Good riddance!
Eric Holder has announced that he is leaving his post of Attorney General, which he has sullied and degraded for six years.
A corporate lawyer with the Wall Street law firm Covington & Burling, Holder will be remembered for his timid defense of civil rights; his overseeing and even encouragement of the massive militarization of the nation's police forces; his anti-First Amendment efforts to pursue not just whistleblowers but the journalists who use them; threatening both with jail and in fact jailing a number of them (particularly in the case of whistleblower extraordinaire Edward Snowden, and WikiLeaks journalist Julian Assange, both of whom reportedly face U.S. treason charges); and his weak enforcement of environmental protection laws.
But Holder, who came into his position as the nation's top law enforcement officer in early 2009 at the start of the Obama administration and at the height of the financial crisis, will be best remembered for his overt announcement that there would be no attempt to prosecute the criminals at the top of the nation's top banks, whose brazen crimes of theft, deceit, fraud and perjury during the Bush/Cheney years and beyond sank not just the U.S. but the global economy into a crisis which is still with us.
Holder not only did not make any effort to put Wall Street's banking titans behind bars for their epic crimes, he did not even make them step down from their exalted and absurdly highly compensated executive positions when his office reached negotiated settlements with the banks in civil cases involving those crimes--civil cases that almost always allowed the banks to settle without even having to admit their guilt. (His ludicrous excuse: punishing these criminal executive might jeopardize the banks' stocks and hurt "innocent" shareholders!)
Nor was this legal benevalence limited to purely financial crimes. Banks like Citicorp and HSBC, which were found to have knowingly laundered millions--even billions--of dollars in drug money for drug cartels, were also allowed by Holder to escape with petty fines, and no prosecution of a single bank executive.
It is being suggested that Holder may opt to go back to his old post as a partner at Covington & Burling, which would be the final, though hardly surprising, insult to the American people, providing a particularly galling example of Washington's revolving door between government regulators and enforcers and the industries that they were supposed to be regulating or keeping honest.
God, how far we have fallen from the days when Ramsey Clark was Attorney General, and left to become a leading critic of Washington's imperial government at home and abroad!
At this point the Obama administration is little more than a place holder until the next presidential election in 2016. President Obama, who campaigned as a fire-breathing liberal who would restore constitutional government, end the Bush/Cheney wars, re-open the government so that transparency instead of secrecy would be the default position, and take decisive action against climate change, has abandoned all those false promises.
The illegal and unconstitutional wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are now being expanded into Africa and Syria and, at least by proxy, but most dangerously, to Ukraine. Civil liberties are under attack at least as severely as they were back in the McCarthy period, with whistleblowers being jailed, the president asserting the unfettered right to order the killing without trial of American citizens, and a spying system in place run by the National Security Agency that is monitoring and storing, by its own admission, virtually all electronic communications of the American people. The government is also as closed and secret in its operation as it has been since 1974, when it was broadened following the Watergate and Cointelpro scandals, and is certainly less transparent and open than it was even under Bush/Cheney. The Obama administration has also done little to nothing about tackling carbon emissions despite the president's lies to the contrary in his address to the UN.
In all of this extraordinary list of treachery and cowardice, Holder has played his sycophantic role as a defender of corporate America, of white privilege, and of Washington power. He has been both the John Ashcroft and the Alberto Gonzalez of the Obama administration. (Actually, that comparison is unfair to John Ashcroft, who at least was a man of conviction--repellent as some of those convictions may have been. In Holder's case, we have a man not of principle, but who is simply a corporate lawyer, ready to do his clients' bidding, however sordid and corrupt.)
Given the depths of unpopularity to which President Obama has sunk after six years of selling out his own electoral base and catering to the interests of the rich and powerful, the military establishment and neo-con right-wing of the Washington policy elite, it is safe to say that Holder's replacement, still unknown, will be no better--though given Holder's tenure it's also hard to imagine his successor being much worse either.
So good riddance to Holder. But it will be worthwhile, and indeed important, to watch carefully this departing Obama official's behavior back in the private sector, from under which rock he emerged to be Attorney General six years ago.
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Why the War on Women?
Remember when John Ashcroft put a drape over the bared breast of the "Spirit of Justice" statue at the Justice Department? The Republicans are now busy trying to cover their own political private parts after flashing a core part of their agenda - their war on women -- at an inopportune time.
Mar 11, 2012
Remember when John Ashcroft put a drape over the bared breast of the "Spirit of Justice" statue at the Justice Department? The Republicans are now busy trying to cover their own political private parts after flashing a core part of their agenda - their war on women -- at an inopportune time.
It's a motley conservative crew that makes up the Misogynistic Army of the Right. There are those who both fear women and believe them inferior to men. Pining for patriarchy, they seek to subdue and oppress women. There are others carrying water for a health insurance industry eager to save money wherever it can. And others just play for any advantage over Democrats.
Birth control gives women more power over their bodies and their lives, making it harder to keep them in their place. Equal health care costs money. Insurance reimbursement rates (in both private and public sector plans) are intended to drive down utilization. Women are generally more responsible about their health than men, so there's pressure to reimburse physicians less for treating women than men. Then there's the anti-Washington, anti-Obama faction that simply condemns anything Democrats are for.
Conservatives have had great success at tuning their racist dog whistles. They've learned how to use code to appeal to racial bigots ("welfare Cadillacs," "Willie Horton," "Derek Bell," "voter I.D."). The conservative chorus is often out of tune when it comes to singing about the subjugation of women.
Regrettably, Democrats have failed to take advantage of the dissonance. Roe v. Wade marked a moment similar to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Oddly, after securing those victories, Democrats began running away from them. In their pursuit of the so-called "swing voters," Democrats tried to avoid "polarizing" issues, that is, the important ones.
Republicans have been able to hide their antagonism toward women behind the abortion issue, an issue that scares many Democrats and their consultants. I'm not certain why. In Texas, for instance, one hears constantly that pro-choice candidates won't do well with Catholic Hispanic voters, but I've never seen the issue have any influence on election outcomes.
Last year, a Republican state representative in Texas, Wayne Christian, confessed that he was engaged in a war on birth control. My colleagues and I clipped the interview and posted it to YouTube, where it has received a good number of hits at one source or another.
I tried to convince many Democratic insiders that Republicans were more vulnerable than ever on the issues of women's health. I didn't get very far. Of course, I was making the argument at a time when the economy dominated voters' attention.
Still, state and national polls over the months show that women voters are increasingly uneasy with Republicans. Many women who voted Republican in 2010 seem to be moving back to Democrats.
If Democrats are to take advantage of this momentum, they are going to have to keep talking - shouting - about the issues surrounding women's health care. Typically, we think that our arguments are so powerful that if we just make them once or twice the reasoning world will accept our views automatically. We can move on to other things.
It doesn't work that way. The Right is going to keep up its attack on women. There are many Republicans who wish they wouldn't. They can see they are losing the argument with women voters. But their right wing won't stop. And if Democrats don't overwhelm them with progressive voices, sooner or later the right wing arguments will so dominate the media sphere that their views will begin to seem like common sense.
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Supreme Court Ends Pro-Business Term With Important First Amendment Rulings
The Supreme Court today ended a 2010 Term marked by big victories for big business with two important free speech decisions reflecting the Court's expansive view of the First Amendment.
Jun 27, 2011
The Supreme Court today ended a 2010 Term marked by big victories for big business with two important free speech decisions reflecting the Court's expansive view of the First Amendment.
Once again wading into the roiled waters of campaign finance reform, the Court struck down Arizona's public financing system, which provides matching funds to publicly financed candidates to ensure that they are not outspent by privately financed opponents and to encourage candidates to participate in the public financing scheme. The decision in Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett is certain to reignite the heated debate that followed last year's ruling in Citizens United upholding corporate campaign expenditures.
In addition, the Court struck down a California law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association. Stressing that minors have First Amendment rights as well as adults, the Court rejected calls to treat violence like obscenity and carve out a new exception to the First Amendment for violent speech directed at children.
"This is a Court that takes an expansive view of the First Amendment. It is particularly sensitive to any claim that the government is using its power to censor unpopular speakers or unpopular speech," Shapiro said.
That view was evident earlier this year in Snyder v. Phelps when the Supreme Court overturned a jury verdict against members of the Westboro Baptist Church who had picketed the funeral of an Iraqi war veteran with signs proclaiming their view that the death of U.S soldiers was a punishment by God for America's tolerance of homosexuality.
"This Term also highlighted the Court's pro-business reflex," Shapiro added. "Unfortunately, the instinct to protect business interests often comes at the expense of ordinary citizens looking for justice."
Of course, to say that the Roberts Court is pro-business does not mean that business always wins. In Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, a case where the ACLU served as co-counsel, the Court held that federal law did not bar Arizona from imposing its own severe sanctions on employers in the state who hire undocumented workers.
But, more typically, the Court held in Wal-Mart v. Dukes that a sex discrimination lawsuit against America's largest employer could not proceed as a class action. It did so, moreover, by reinterpreting the class action rules so that it will now be harder for other class actions to go forward as well, leaving many employees with grievances that they can no longer afford to pursue.
Similarly, in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, the Court held that companies can effectively shield themselves from consumer class actions simply by including a clause in the standard consumer contract that all claims must be resolved through individual arbitrations. When the amount at stake is less than $40, as it was in this case, most consumers will simply give up.
"The Roberts Court is undeniably conservative, but it is a particular kind of conservatism," Shapiro explained. "This is not a libertarian court. It is not a state's rights court. It is a pro-business court."
Employees and consumers were not, however, the only ones denied their day in court this Term.
In Connick v. Thompson, the Court ruled that an individual who spent 14 years on death row after being wrongfully convicted of murder could not sue the prosecutor's office that unconstitutionally withheld critical evidence from his defense lawyers.
In Arizona School Tuition Organization v. Winn, an ACLU case, the Court held that Arizona taxpayers could not challenge the use of state tax credits to subsidize religious education because tax credits involve funds diverted from the state treasury as opposed to funds spent out of the state treasury. The majority decision provoked Justice Kagan's first dissent as the newest member of the Court.
In Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, another ACLU case, the Court held that former Attorney General John Ashcroft was immune from damages even assuming that he had authorized the use of the material witness statute as a pretext after 9/11 to detain terrorism suspects without probable cause.
Still, there were several notable criminal justice victories this Term in a Court where such victories are often few and far between.
In Brown v. Plata, the Court upheld an order requiring California to reduce its prison population significantly after the state had failed to correct the unconstitutional conditions resulting from prison overcrowding for more than a decade.
And, in J.D.B. v. North Carolina, the Court ruled that the age of a child being questioned by the police is a relevant factor in deciding whether the child is "in custody," thus triggering the need for Miranda warnings.
Shapiro is available for television interviews using the ACLU's in-house studio facility, which has an outbound fiber line for standard definition (SD) video.
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