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Attorney General Eric Holder finally got fed up Tuesday with claims that the Justice Department went easy in a voting rights case against members of the New Black Panther Party because they are African American.

Holder's frustration over the criticism became evident during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing as Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) accused the Justice Department of failing to cooperate with a Civil Rights Commission investigation into the handling of the 2008 incident in which Black Panthers in intimidating outfits and wielding a club stood outside a polling place in Philadelphia.

The Attorney General seemed to take personaloffense at a comment Culberson read in which former Democratic activist Bartle Bull called the incident the most serious act of voter intimidation he had witnessed in his career.

"Think about that," Holder said. "When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphiawhich was inappropriate, certainly thatto describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people," said Holder, who is black.

Holder noted that his latesister-in-law, Vivian Malone Jones, helped integrate the University of Alabama.

"To compare that kind of courage, that kind of action, and to say that the Black Panther incident wrong thought it might be somehow is greater in magnitude or is of greater concern to us, historically, I think just flies in the face of history and the facts.," Holder said with evident exasperation.

In a series of questions and comments earlier in the hearing, Culbersoninsisted that race had infected the decision-making process."Theres clearly evidence, overwhelming evidence, that your Department of Justice refuses to protect the rights of anybody other than African Americans to vote," the Texas Republican said. "There's a pattern of a double standard here."

I would disagree very vehemently with the notion that theres overwhelming evidence that that is in fact true, Holder replied. This Department of Justice does not enforce the law in a race-conscious way.

Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Democrat from Philadelphia, said the Black Panthers "should not have been there." But he said the GOP was making too much out of a fleeting incident involving a couple of people.

"Themost unethical thing a personcan do is make allegations basedon absolutely nothing," Fattah said. "The only issue of race is singling out this particular decision...That this rises to national significance is bogus on its face."

UPDATE: This post has been updated with minor changes to the syntax of some quotes.

Josh Gerstein is a senior reporter for POLITICO.

Read the original post:
Eric Holder: Black Panther case focus demeans 'my people ...

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.

See original here:
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 ...

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