Thread: RNC Slams Secretive Progressive Donors for ‘Court Packing’ Scheme

Eric Holder is a member of the American Constitution Society.

RNC Slams Secretive Progressive Donors for ‘Court Packing’ Scheme

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
August 28, 2014 4:31 pm

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus slammed a dark-money network of wealthy left-wing donors on Wednesday for helping to fund an effort to pack one of the nation’s most influential courts with progressive judges.

Priebus was responding to a recen tWashington Free Beacon report that revealed the American Constitution Society boasted about its leading role in filibuster reform during an April meeting with its donors in the secretive Democracy Alliance.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) used the “nuclear option” to push through filibuster reform last year, which allowed the Democratic majority to confirm several controversial progressive judge nominees over the objections of Senate Republicans.

Priebus called the Democracy Alliance’s financial involvement “reprehensible.”

“The actions of this administration, Sen. Reid, and secret organizations like the Democracy Alliance and the ACS with which they partner, are reprehensible and have no place in our country,” said Priebus in a statement. “The administration and Sen. Reid have hijacked the D.C. Circuit and have threatened the sanctity of the independent federal judiciary.”

The RNC added that the D.C. circuit court, which could influence whether a consequential challenge to Obamacare subsidies will make it to the U.S. Supreme Court, is “now packed with a majority of liberal judges, who will make rulings on the constitutionality of key issues such as Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, EPA regulations, immigration, and a host of other issues.”

“The American people, Congress, and the media need to hold this administration, Sen. Reid, the Senate Democrats, and their ‘dark money’ allies accountable for playing politics with the American judiciary,” said Priebus.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/rnc-slams-secretive-progressive-donors-for-court-packing-scheme/

Democracy Alliance Bankrolled Court-Packing Scheme

Influx of progressive judges to D.C. Court of Appeals could lead to en banc reversal of Halbig decision

Supreme Court / AP

BY: Alana Goodman
August 25, 2014 9:00 am

A shadowy network of wealthy liberal donors bankrolled an operation to pack one of America’s most powerful courts with progressive judges, according to documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

Now the effort could prevent an Obamacare challenge from reaching the Supreme Court, legal experts say.

The strategy to fill the D.C. Court of Appeals with left-leaning judges was aided by the American Constitution Society, a non-profit group that “promotes a progressive vision of the law.” The ACS is funded in part by the Democracy Alliance, a liberal donor network that funnels millions to a web of dark-money member groups.

During a fundraising presentation at the Democracy Alliance’s meeting in Chicago this spring, the American Constitution Society boasted about meeting its “performance goals,” which included helping to secure the Senate filibuster reform that paved the way for reshaping the D.C. circuit court.

The group said it “advanced filibuster reform” by “highlighting [the] issue in national media” and “successfully leveraging attention to create outcry for confirmation of long-stalled D.C. circuit nominees,” according to its presentation.

The ACS also said it drafted and supplied materials that were used by Senate Democrats to advance the rule change.
Experts argued these activities appeared to cross the line from education to lobbying.

“It bills itself as a tax-exempt educational organization, but obviously the American Constitution Society is engaging in policy-making activities,” said Daniel Epstein, the executive director of Cause of Action and an expert at the conservative Federalist Society. “They created the intellectual arsenal behind filibuster reform.”

“[The Democracy Alliance is] investing a lot of money to get the American Constitution Society to do things that are going to benefit the Democratic Party politically,” he said.

In an historic move, Senate Democrats used the “nuclear option” last year to eliminate filibuster rules that allowed the Republican minority to hold up executive and judicial nominees.

Republicans had been blocking several nominees to the D.C. Court of Appeals who they argued were radical judicial activists.

The D.C. circuit court hears some of the most consequential appeals cases on issues ranging from health care reform to federal agency regulations.

Prior to the filibuster reform, the court was evenly divided between liberal-leaning and conservative-leaning judges. After the nuclear option, additional progressive judges were added to the D.C. circuit.

Three of the judges were ACS members, the group noted in its Democracy Alliance presentation.

The organization said it “met [its] goal to deepen ACS’ influence within the legal community” by getting “five members of ACS network confirmed to federal bench, including three of four new D.C. Circuit members.”

In the case Halbig v. Burwell, the D.C. circuit court rejected an Obamacare provision that provided taxpayer-funded subsidies to individuals in states that had set up state health care exchanges. Residents of states that declined to establish exchanges were not eligible for the tax credits.

The D.C. circuit’s decision in Halbig put it at odds with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which had ruled in favor of the federal government. The conflicting rulings made it more likely that the U.S. Supreme Court would take up the case.

However, the Obama administration is now pushing for the D.C. circuit to rehear the case en banc—meaning that it would go before a panel of all of the court’s active judges. Legal experts predict that such a hearing would favor the Obama administration, because a greater number of progressive judges sit on the bench.

If the D.C. circuit sides with the 4th circuit during a rehearing, it would be less likely the case would make it to the Supreme Court.

“You’d no longer have a circuit split, and therefore you’d have a less of a chance the Supreme Court will review,” said Epstein.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/democ...acking-scheme/

TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2014

Eric Holder: I'm an Activist Attorney General and Proud of It

Eric Holder: I'm an Activist Attorney General and Proud of It

by Wynton Hall 4 Aug 2014


http://cdn.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...nd-Proud-of-It

In an interview with Juan Williams, Attorney General Eric Holder said he is, indeed, an activist attorney general and proud of it.

"If you want to call me an activist attorney general, I will proudly accept that label," said Holder. "Any attorney general who is not an activist is not doing his or her job. The responsibility of the attorney general is to change things [and] bring us closer to the ideals expressed in our founding documents."

Holder added that those who claim he runs an "activist civil rights division" and that he is "an activist attorney general--I'd say I agree with you 1000 percent and [I am] proud of it."

Juan Williams
Juan Williams is a commentator for Fox News, and was a senior news analyst for the NPR.

Note: Media Matters monitors Fox News.

Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the NPR,Media Matters, and the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund.

George Soros was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, a benefactor for the NPR, and is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations.

Open Society Foundations was a funder for the American Constitution Society.

Eric H. Holder Jr. was an intern at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, a board member for the American Constitution Society, and is the attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice for the Barack Obama administration.

Janet Reno is a board of adviser’s member for the American Constitution Society, and was the attorney general for theU.S. Department of Justice.

Faith Elizabeth Gay is a director at the American Constitution Society, and was an attorney at Sidley Austin LLP.
Michelle Obama was a lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP.

Barack Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin LLP.

R. Eden Martin is counsel at Sidley Austin LLP, and the president of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Commercial Club of Chicago, Members Directory A-Z (Past Research)
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Newton N. Minow is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and a senior counsel at Sidley Austin LLP

http://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/20...-attorney.html

Sixteen Scandals: The Legacy of Eric Holder

By: Candice Lanier (Diary) | June 26th, 2013 at 08:32 AM |

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Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. was born on January 21, 1951 in the Bronx, New York and was raised in Elmhurst, Queens. His father (1905-1970) arrived in the U.S. from Barbados and worked as a real estate broker. Holder’s mother, Miriam, is American-born and the daughter of immigrants from Saint Philip, Barbados.

Holder attended Columbia University, enrolling in 1969. He was active in the Student Afro-American Society and according to Discover the Networks:

“Holder also took a leadership role with the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which at one point demandedthat the school’s abandoned ROTC (Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps) office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge” — “in honor of a man who recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.” In 1970, Holder was a participant in a five-day occupation of that office. And, according to some accounts, the occupiers were armed. In addition, Holder and SAAS also occupied the office of Henry Coleman, Dean of Freshmen, until their demands were met.”

And, it would appear the SAAS was an advocate of the Black Panthers because in March 1970 the SAAS released a statement supporting the Black Panthers who were charged with plotting to blow up a police station, department stores, railroad tracks and the New York Botanical Gardens.

Holder received a bachelor’s degree in American history from Columbia University in 1973 and went on to earn a J.D. from Columbia Law School.

• Eric Holder was employed by the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section from 1976 to 1988
• He was appointed as a Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 1988 by President Reagan
• In 1993, President Clinton appointed Holder as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
• In 1997 Clinton nominated Holder to Deputy Attorney General and he was confirmed by the Senate in a unanimous vote
• Holder was appointed U.S. Attorney General by President Obama

One – Discriminatory Hiring Practices

On August 8, 2011 documents were released by the DOJ, subsequent to a court battle, which revealedthe DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had been engaging in politicized hiring in the career civil service ranks. According to PJ Media, the politicized hiring practices of Holder’s DOJ are nearly unprecedented in scope.

In June 2008, Holder admitted to the American Constitution Society (an organization started as a liberal counterweight to the Federalist Society) that the Justice Department was “going to be looking for people who share our values.”
The DOJ’s hiring records speak for themselves as this in depth study by PJ Media demonstrates.


Two – Fort Hood
Following the Fort Hood attack on November 5, 2009 not one of the post-attack reports issued by the DOJ mentioned Nidal Hasan’s Islamist ideology. And, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refused to call the attack an act of terrorism on its report on the attack. Instead it was labeled as “workplace violence.” The Gloria Center elaborates:

“This official “blindness” to Major Hasan’s motivations are unquestionably the consequences wrought by the Obama administration’s outreach policies. Not just content with not pursuing terror investigations, as in the case of Major Hasan and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Obama administration has taken a more proactive approach to shutting down terror investigations–especially when those investigations involved their Muslim outreach partners.”

Three – AP Surveillance
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of the telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press (AP). President and CEO Gary Pruitt has described the DOJ’s actions as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls of individual reporters’ work andpersonal phone numbers and AP office numbers in D.C., New York and Hartford, CT. Also listed was the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives’ press gallery, according to the AP’s lawyers.

Pruitt has commented that, “there can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

Four – DOJ Secretly Targets Fox News Reporter, James Rosen
In the James Rosen case, the Justice Department claimed it did not violate the press freedom of theFox News Correspondent as he isn’t press. Instead, the DOJ argued, he was an “aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in a spy ring, for having receiving classified information about North Korea from an intelligence analyst.

Evidence of Rosen’s spying consisted of an e-mail to Rosen’s source stating he wanted to break “news ahead of my competitors” and that they could “expose muddle-headed policy when we see it—or force the administration’s hand to go in the right direction, if possible.”

The Department of Justice knew Rosen had not committed a crime by simply asking Stephen Jin-Woo Kim for his opinion on the expected North Korean response to the then-pending U.N. condemnations of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests. By making the claim, however, to a federal judge, that Rosen was criminally complicit in the release of classified information, by the manner in which he posed questions to Kim, the DOJ deluded the judge into signing a search warrant. The warrant, when executed, allowed the feds to read Rosen’s private emails. By way of the emails, the feds were led to Fox News telephone numbers in New York City and in Washington, which they since have admitted to monitoring.

Five – Marc Rich Pardon
Eric Holder played an important role in what was arguably the most infamous of President Clinton’s 176 pardons. Marc Rich, a billionaire financier and fugitive oil broker, who illegally bought oil from Iran during the American trade embargo, attempted to hide more than $100 million in profits by using dummy transactions in off-shore corporations. Following that, he renounced his American citizenship and made a hasty retreat to Switzerland in order to avoid prosecution for 51 counts of racketeering, wire fraud, tax fraud, tax evasion, and the illegal oil transactions with Iran.

But, President Clinton signed the pardon, later crediting Holder’s recommendation as one of the factors that had convinced him to issue the pardon.

Six – Weather Underground Pardon
Holder, as Deputy Attorney General, “was the gatekeeper for presidential pardons.” Two of the recipients of Holder’s pardons were former Weather Underground members Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans.

The Weather Underground, a far-left organization, was founded in the late 1960′s. It’s main objective was to overthrow the American government. Several bombing attacks were initiated by the group and were mostly against government buildings and banks. There were also exhortations for white radicals to join with black radicals in the overthrow of the government. The Weather Underground opposed what they described as “American imperialism.” Former members of the group robbed a Brinks bank truck in 1981, resulting in the deaths of a Brinks security guard and two policemen. One of the killers, Kathy Boudin, is now an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work.

Seven – Holder’s DOJ Threatens Free Speech
The American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) of Tennessee sponsored an event on June 4, called “Public Disclosure in a Diverse Society.” The main speakers for the event were DOJ official Bill Killian, who is the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, and FBI Special Agent of the Knoxville Division, Kenneth Moore. What is troubling about the event is that Killian addressed how social media posts and documents deemed inflammatory toward Muslims can be considered a violation of civil rights laws. Killian described the event as, “an educational effort with civil rights laws as they play intofreedom of religion and exercising freedom of religion.” He also said that the event would serve, “to inform the public what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are.”

This is a blatant attempt at subverting First Amendment rights, but the DOJ’s Killian is espousing views that apparently have the support of President Obama who has said: ”The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”
Killian went on to quote the law, showing a slide of Title 18, U.S. Federal Code, Section 241, which states: ”If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States…they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both…”

Eight – Hostility Towards Conservatives
At an American Constitution Society gathering in 2004, Holder made the following comments:

• “Conservatives have been defenders of the status quo, afraid of the future, and content to allow to continue to exist all but the most blatant inequalities.”
• Conservatives have “made a mockery of the rule of law.”
• Conservatives try to “put the environment at risk for the sake of unproven economic theories, to play to the fears of our citizens, and not to their hopes, and to return the nation to a time that in fact never existed.”
• Conservatives are “breathtaking” in their “arrogance,” which manifests itself in such things as “attacks on abortion rights,” “energy policies that are as shortsighted as they are ineffective,” and “tax cuts that disproportionately favor those who are well off and perpetuate many of the inequities in our nation.”
• The hallmarks of the “conservative agenda” include “social division, mindless tax cutting, and a defense posture that does not really make us safer.”
• “The nation must be convinced that it is a progressive future that holds the greatest promise for equality and the continuation of those policies that serve to support the greatest number of our people. In the short term this will not be an easy task. With the mainstream media somewhat cowered by conservative critics, and the conservative media disseminating the news in anything but a fair and balanced manner, and you know what I mean there, the means to reach the greatest number of people is not easily accessible.”

Nine – Opposition to Second Amendent Rights
In 2008, Eric Holder claimed that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, but only applied to government militias. Political commentator and scholar, John Lott, was unable to “find even one gun control law that Holder has opposed.” Lott remarked that, “on every gun control regulation [Holder] has discussed, he has been supportive, including: bans, raising the age that someone can possess a gun, registration and licensing, one-gun-a-month limit on purchases, and mandatory waiting periods.”

On top of that, in a 1995 address to the Woman’s National Democratic Club, Holder apprised the crowd of the launch of a public campaign to “really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.” “What we need to do,” Holder explained, “is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes.”

Ten – Treatment of Terrorists as Criminal Defendants Instead of Enemy Combatants
In 2004, Holder filed an amicus brief on behalf of al Qaeda terrorist Jose Padilla, who had been commissioned by Osama bin Laden and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to carry out a post-9/11, second wave of terrorist attacks in the US. In the brief, Holder held that President Bush lacked the constitutional authority to determine the parameters of the battlefield in the war on terror. Padilla was arrested in the U.S., upon his return from Pakistan where he met with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to make plans for the attack on U.S. interests. In Holder’s opinion, Islamic terrorists had a right to betreated as criminal defendants and not enemy combatants. The only exception, according to Holder, is if the capture of the terrorist occurs on a traditional battlefield.

Upon analysis, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy reported that Holder’s Padilla brief was “a comprehensive attack on Bush counterterrorism, an enthusiastic endorsement of the law-enforcement approach in vogue during the Clinton era (when Holder was deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, who also signed on to the Padilla brief).”

Similarly, according to Discover the Networks:

“In May 2009, Holder announced that Ahmed Ghailani—who had been indicted by a federal grand jury for the 1998 bombings (which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans) of two U.S. embassies in Africa—would be transferred from the Guantanamo Bay detention center to New York City for trial. This would make Ghailani the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S. and the first to face trial in a civilian criminal court. Said Holder:

‘By prosecuting Ahmed Ghailani in federal court, we will ensure that he finally answers for his alleged role in the bombing of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya….This administration is committed to keeping the American people safe and upholding the rule of law, and by closing Guantanamo and bringing terrorists housed there to justice we will make our nation stronger and safer.’

On November 13, 2009, Holder announced that his Justice Department would likewise try five Guantanamo Bay detainees with alleged ties to the 9/11 conspiracy, in a civilian court—the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The defendants were Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and 9/11 mastermindKhalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM).”

Eleven – Arizona Immigration Law
On April 23, 2010, Arizona’s GOP governor, Jan Brewer, signed into law a bill authorizing state police to check with federal authorities on the immigration status of any individuals they stop for a legitimate reason–if the behavior of those individuals, or the circumstances of the stop, cause the officers to suspect they might be in the U.S. illegally. But, following the bill being signed into law, Holder vehemently spoke out against the bill and suggested the federal government might challenge it. He also warned that the law could lead to racial profiling and might cause Latinos to stop cooperating with police.

After accusing Arizona of trying to “second guess” the federal government and the Justice Department he filed a lawsuit, challenging the state’s immigration policy. This was done on the grounds that the “invalid” law interferes with federal immigration responsibilities and “must be struck down.” The lawsuit urged the U.S. District Court in Arizona to “preliminarily and permanently” prohibit the state from enforcing the law, but later on down the road, the law wasoverturned by the Supreme Court.

Twelve – New Black Panther Intimidation
On Election Day, 2008, a couple of members of the New Black Panther Party intimidated white voters with racial slurs and threats. This took place at a Philadelphia polling place and the two culprits were Jerry Jackson and King Samir Shabazz. Former civil rights attorney and campaign aide to the late Robert F. Kennedy, Bartle Bull, observed the Panthers’ antics and described them as “the most blatant form of voter intimidation” he had ever seen. Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits intimidation, coercion and threats to voters or those aiding voters, so the Bush Justice Department filed a civil-rights lawsuit against Jackson and Shabazz and against the New Black Panther Party and its national chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz.

However, in 2009 the Obama administration inherited that lawsuit and when the defendants failed to answer the lawsuit, a federal court in Philadelphia entered a default judgment against them. The Holder Justice Department responded by abruptly dropping the charges against the Panthers and two of the defendants. The third defendant was simply barred from displaying a weapon near a Philadelphia polling place for the next three years.

Thirteen – Opposition to Voter ID Laws
Eric Holder has consistently opposed efforts to pass voter ID laws, which are designed to minimize voter fraud. He believes these laws have the effect of disenfranchising nonwhite minorities. In a May 2012 meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus and black church leaders, Holder said that during the preceding two years, the Justice Department had challenged “two dozen state laws and executive orders from more than a dozen states that could make it significantly harder for many eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.″

Fourteen – Fast & Furious
The Heritage Foundation provides a summary of the Fast and Furious scandal:

“A U.S. government gun-trafficking investigation gone horribly wrong has resulted in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol officer, some 2,000 firearms in the hands of criminals, and the dismissal of a 24-year veteran law enforcement official. This is the story of Fast and Furious, and yesterday the latest chapter unfolded when two top officials associated with the operation were removed from their positions, while a third individual resigned.

The story begins in the fall of 2009, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) office in Phoenix, Arizona, began selling weapons to small-time gun buyers in the hopes of tracing them to major weapons traffickers along the southwestern border and into Mexico. Their efforts failed, the number of arms unaccounted for numbers around 1,500 as of late July, and about two-thirds of those guns ended up in Mexico, according to congressional testimony.

Tragically, the botched operation has had serious consequences. On the night of December 15, 2010, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot and killed during an effort to catch several bandits targeting illegal immigrants in Arizona near the border. When law enforcement rushed to the scene, they discovered two of the killers’ assault rifles that were among those sold as part of Operation Fast and Furious. Additionally, 57 Fast and Furious weapons have been connected to at least an additional11 violent crimes in the U.S.”

Fifteen – Holder Purges References to “Radical Islam”
In February 2012, Islamist groups in the United States were found to have repeatedly met with high-ranking Obama administration officials in order to voice their concerns regarding the use of the term “radical Islam” in FBI training materials. Because these groups felt the term was both “offensive” and “racist,” Holder, along with FBI director Robert Mueller, issued an order requiring all such language to be removed from the FBI training content. The Gloria Center reports that, “among the more than 1,000 items destroyed or removed by the FBI and the DOJ were PowerPoints and articles that defined jihad as ‘holy war,’ and presentations that portrayed the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization which seeks to establish Islam’s dominion over all the world — a goal the Brotherhood has candidly and publicly declared for decades.”

Sixteen – Islamist Outreach
Much of the recent Muslim outreach policy was developed at a June 2011 workshop at Georgetown University. The workshop was sponsored by the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding. In attendance were leaders from the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and other Islamic organizations. These groups, all of which are considered to be radical, met with senior Obama administration officials. Additionally, a workshop was held which included officials from the Department of Justice. The workshop was entitled “Workshop on Police-Community Engagement and Counter-Terrorism.” The Obama administration has a history of radical Muslim outreach. These outreach efforts have been employed by the highest levels of Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, resulting in decisions which significantly impact the potential prosecutions of terrorists and Islamist leaders.
http://www.redstate.com/diary/candic...f-eric-holder/