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From left: House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) prepare for a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on June 25, 2015. The Democratic leaders called on congressional Republicans to halt their "reckless inaction on the Export-Import Bank and the Highway and Transit Trust Fund."

U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), right, holds hands with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), second from right, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), as they stand with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), second from left, and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), left, in front of the U.S. Capitol on June 18, 2015, during a moment of silence for the nine killed in a church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.

From left: Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) pray with other members of the U.S. Congress during a prayer circle on June 18, 2015, in front of the Capitol to honor those gunned down inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. leave meeting with House Democrats on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, June 12, 2015. The president made an 11th-hour appeal to dubious Democrats on Friday in a tense run-up to a House showdown on legislation to strengthen his hand in global trade talks. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Calif., left, walks with Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., toward the House Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, June 12, 2015. Earlier, President Barack Obama made an 11th-hour appeal to dubious Democrats on Friday in a tense run-up to a House showdown on legislation to strengthen his hand in global trade talks. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Senators arrive, from left, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., Sen Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., for a group photo for National Seersucker Day on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 11, 2015. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky, center, rear, waves during group photo of Senators for National Seersucker Day, Thursday, June 11, 2015, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Back row, from left are, Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., McConnell, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.. Front row, from left are, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., , Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (second from left) speaks during a meeting on Capitol Hill on June 10, 2015. Yatsenyuk met with Republican lawmakers while visiting Washington.

U.S. Capitol Police gather after a suspicious package was found forcing a partial evacuation of the Dirksen Senate Office Building and of a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill on June 9, 2015.

Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) arrives at a news conference June 3, 2015, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Congressional Democrats held a news conference to oppose fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Original post:
Eric Holder, Former U.S. Attorney General, To Return To ...

To think, what could have been ...

Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

On Thursday the families of Michael Brown and Eric Garner joined with the NAACP, the National Urban League, the National Action Network, the National Bar Association, and the Black Womens Roundtable to call for a full federal investigation in the police killings of the two young men.

Jamelle Bouie is a Slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race.

The Rev. Al Sharpton was part of the event, and he was about to take questions from those assembled when the news broke that Attorney General Eric Holder intended to resign from the administration. Naturally, Sharpton had a few words for the occasion.

There is no attorney general who has shown a commitment to civil rights like Eric Holder, said Sharpton, If he is resigning, the civil rights community is losing the most effective civil rights attorney general in American history.

That is high praise, but its hard to say its unreasonable or unjustified. When President Obama entered office, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department was in shambles, neglected by President Bush and staffed with a coterie of partisan operatives. Long-serving lawyers left the office, case files were closed with little explanation, political appointees sought to block liberals from career positions, and anti-discrimination efforts were few and far between.

At his confirmation hearing at the beginning of Obamas term, Holder made the Civil Rights Division his priority, telling the Senate, In the last eight years, vital federal laws designed to protect rights in the workplace, the housing market, and the voting booth have languished. Improper political hiring has undermined this important mission. That must change. And I intend to make this a priority as attorney general.

To that end, Holder took aggressive steps to repair the damage of the previous administration and restore the traditional priorities of the Civil Rights Division. On voting rights, Holder was a strong advocate against voter identification laws, attacking the 2012 Texas law as a political pretext to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right and comparing some practices to Jim Crow laws. Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get themand some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes, he said.

Holder was the anger translator for a president constrained from blunt talk on race.

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Eric Holder resigning as attorney general: His Justice ...

The nation's racial unrest can be blamed in part on former Attorney General Eric Holder and his embrace of rabble-rousers like the Rev. Al Sharpton, says GOP presidential candidate George Pataki, the former governor of New York.

"We have seen the country take a step backward in race relations over the course of the past seven years and it started when you have people like Eric Holder embracing Al Sharpton, who has been a divisive force forever," Pataki said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

Story continues below video.

Pataki cited Holder's trip to Ferguson, Missouri, last summer after unarmed black teen Michael Brown was shot dead by white Police Officer Darren Wilson, prompting riots and Holder's Justice Department probe of the shooting even after a Missouri grand jury vindicated Wilson. He said Holder ultimately had to issue a report "saying that police officer did nothing wrong."

Reflecting on the Charleston, South Carolina, tragedy in which nine African-Americans were shot dead during a prayer meeting last week, Pataki told Steve Malzberg:

"It was a white racist who committed this horrible, horrible act of criminal terrorism. He should face the consequence, but we all have to look at ourselves and say, 'What are we doing to unite people instead of divide us?'"

"I'm fortunate, I grew up in a very ethnically, racially, very diverse community and we all looked at each other as part of that town. Neighbors, friends, teammate soon the basketball team or the track team.

"That's what we have to get back to. We're all Americans and let's stop dividing so that we can gain some advantage."

Pataki also weighed in on the renewed call for more gun control laws.

"It's part of our Constitution and our constitutional rights to have the right to bear arms and whenever there's an incident like this, too many try to use it to gain a political advantage and advance an ideological agenda," Pataki said.

Continued here:
George Pataki: Eric Holder a Factor for America's Racial ...

By Mary Theroux | Monday October 6, 2014 at 8:44 AM PDT | Comments Off on NSA Mission Creep: Its for the Children

In the aftermath of Edward Snowdens, and numerous other credible whistleblowers irrefutable revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies are capturing and indefinitely storing millions of innocent Americans phone calls, emails, internet transactions, and even movements and whereabouts at any given timeApple and other tech companies are rightfully responding to Read More

Tags: Children, Civil Liberties, Eric Holder, FBI, NSA, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Surveillance, Terrorism, The State

By Melancton Smith | Friday April 6, 2012 at 5:11 AM PDT | 1 Comment

As noted on Wednesday here at The Beacon, Judge Jerry Smith of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Administration to address whether the federal courts have the power to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. Here is the response from the Attorney General. No surprises found in the letter, other than a Read More

Tags: Constitution, Eric Holder, Jerry Smith, judicial review, Law, Power, The State

By David J. Theroux | Wednesday December 30, 2009 at 9:55 PM PDT | 0 Comments

Syndicated columnist and bestselling author Dave Barrys provides an incisive and hilarious, month-by-month review of the year 2009, Dave Barrys year in review: 2009. As he begins: It was a year of Hopeat first in the sense of I feel hopeful! and later in the sense of I hope this year ends soon! It Read More

Tags: ACORN, Afghanistan, Agriculture, Al Franken, Angelina Jolie, bailout, Bailouts, Barack Obama, Bernard Madoff, Budget and Tax Policy, Cash for Clunkers, China, Chrysler, Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Constitution, Copenhagen, Corruption, Criminal Justice, Employment, Energy, England, Environment, Eric Holder, Europe, General Motors, Global Warming, Government subsidies, Great Depression, health care, Henry Louis Gates, Housing, Immigration, Iraq, Japan, Joseph Biden, Large Hadron Collider, Michael Jackson, Money and Banking, Monopoly and Antitrust, Nancy Pelosi, Natural Law, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, Presidential Power, Privatization, Property Rights, Religion, Rod Blagojevich, Roman Polanski, Sarah Pailn, Sonia Sotomayor, Surveillance, Taxation, Technology, The State, Tiger Woods, Timothy Geithner, Torture, Transportation, Unemployment, unions, War, Welfare

By Anthony Gregory | Monday March 30, 2009 at 8:37 AM PDT | 27 Comments

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Eric Holder | The Beacon

Eric Holder Photo: Randy Shulman

This is indeed, I think, a very hopeful time, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at the Capital Pride Heroes Gala on June 3. But we should not kid ourselves. Much work really remains to be done. The fight is larger than the one solely for marriage equality. Discrimination against the LGBT community is still very real. It is still the basis for wrong-headed policies and dangerous attitudes. And so the fight for true LGBT equality must go on. The struggle must continue.

Holder was presented by Capital Pride with the 2015 Paving the Way Award for his courage and leadership in helping to advance LGBT rights as the Obama administrations top law enforcement official. It was Holder who refused to defend the congressionally-approved Defense of Marriage Act better known as DOMA on the basis that he believed the federal law to be unconstitutional. Holder also instituted guidelines outlining how the federal government would treat and recognize same-sex couples with respect to federal spousal benefits and legal rights after DOMA was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Wednesday nightswell-attened gala, held at the statelyCarnegie Auditorium on K Street NW, served as the kickoff to this years Capital Pride celebration.

If only one person or one group is denied the full measure of our Constitution, all of us are diminished, Holder told the crowd. All those who are committed to making real the promise of our democracy must engage on all of these fronts, on all of these fronts. And all lives, all lives matter.

Progress is indeed possible, he continued. But it is not a gift. It is the result of hard work, organization, and perseverance. Workingtogether, I am fully confident we can make this great nation great.

Speaking exclusively with Metro Weekly earlier in the evening,Holdernoted that the honor meant agreat deal to him and called the fight for full LGBT equality the civil rights issue of our time.

Holder also struck a personal note, explaining that his support for LGBT rights was inspired in his youth by a gay relative.

Uncle Sonny. He was gay. He was always the coolest guy I knew.He was the firstguy I knew who had a sports car, let me ridein it, let me drive it when I shouldnt have been able to drive it I was too young and I always saw the gay community through him.

And for me, it is one of the reasons why Im so passionate about this. I think about him, and the closeted life that he had to lead, and kind of thought, in my own mind, that it was just fundamentally unfair. And coming from a civil rights background, this seems to me just a logical extension of the things we have done in the past.

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Former Attorney General Eric Holder honored at Capital ...