Driven While Black

Today's lexicon contains a surfeit of acronyms, for example: SOP (standard operating procedure), MIA (missing in action), POW (prisoner of war), EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), POTUS (President of the United States), DWI (driving while intoxicated). And then there's the one coined in recent years by radical members of a minority: DWB, standing for "Driving While Black," and meant to convey the alleged practice of police stopping black drivers simply because they're black.

Well, there's another DWB that no one has ever heard of--because I just coined it. My DWB stands for "Driven While Black." Meaning to convey the conduct of black radicals and others of the Race Movement to throw away all sense of fairness, objectivity, civility, and law in the driven pursuit of  distinctly, often illegal and/or unconstitutional, peculiarly black goals. 

Chief among those America-hating race mongers is the current Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, and no one has proved better that he has been "Driven While Black" than the eminent essayist Victor Davis Hanson........

- Works and Days - http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson -

The Moral Failures of Eric Holder

Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On September 28, 2014 @ 4:06 pm In 9/11,Culture,Politics,Terrorism | 

Eric Holder’s left many baleful legacies: being censured by the House of Representatives; withholding subpoenaed documents, proving untruthful about a failed gun-walking caper in Mexico; failing to enforce laws on the books, from immigration to the elements of the Affordable Care Act; illegally billing the government for his own private use of a government Gulfstream jet; snooping on Associated Press reporters; giving de facto exemptions to renegade IRS politicos; and trying to create civilian trials for terrorist killers like KSM, one of the architects of the 9/11 attacks. But he will be known mostly for re-teaching Americans to think of race as essential, not incidental, to our characters.

He accomplished that unfortunate legacy in a number of ways. Holder waded into the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown fatal shootings before all the facts were known in a manner no local public prosecutor would dare do so. He claimed that the unpopularity of Barack Obama was due to racial animosity, apparently forgetful that not long ago, in the era of Bush Derangement Syndrome, novels and movies were published and produced fantasizing about the assassination of George W. Bush, who was compared to Nazis and fascists, by everyone ^[1] from Al Gore ^[2] to John Glenn ^[3]. I assume Holder was then quiet about such alarming disparagement of his president; and also I assume that when Obama in 2009 had near 70% approval ratings, for Holder the nation was anything but cowardly.

Of course, Holder infamously called Americans “cowards” ^[4] for not being as obsessed in the same way with race as he was. He referred to African-Americans as “my people,” ^[5] a sloppy aside that might have gotten any other attorney general fired for such cheap ethnic chauvinism — except that his own boss had once called for Latinos to punish “our enemies” ^[6] and on the campaign trail had talked of “typical white person.” ^[7] Holder chose to drop the New Black Panther case ^[8] in a way that highlighted racial matters — apparently coming armed with clubs to a voting precinct is hardly unusual — in the same way that he suggested that those states that might require an ID to vote (in the manner we produce IDs to write a check or use a credit card) were racist, in the same way that he suggested that states like Arizona that wanted federal immigration law enforced were acting out of racialist motives.
In other words, in the reprehensible vision of Eric Holder, how we look governs who we are. He either believes in the desirability of such racialist exceptionalism out of cultural and historic ignorance — given the contemporary evidence of where bumper-sticker racial, ethnic and religious jingoism inevitably leads (cf. e.g., Iraq, Rwanda, the Congo, Serbia, Bosnia, etc.) — or he cynically assumes that the more the country is polarized racially, the more elites like himself are called on to adjudicate differences, and thus advance to positions that they might otherwise not have earned either by their prior record or their present display of minimal competence.

I do not say that lightly. Holder, remember, prior to his ascension as attorney general, was largely known for two things, both bad: one, he navigated Bill Clinton’s disgraceful 11^th hour pardon of the late felon Mark Rich ^[9] (Rich was in theory facing a possible 300 years in prison for dozens of felonies [including trading with arch-enemy Iran, then holding U.S. hostages] when he bolted, escaped arrest and fled to Switzerland). Then-Deputy Attorney General Holder sidestepped a number of normal Justice Department procedures and failed to disclose that Rich’s wife (later divorced) had already given or would be likely to give $1 million to the Democratic Party, $100,000 to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign, and nearly a half-million dollars to the Clinton presidential library. So much for social justice and the deplorable privilege of the elite.

Holder was also known for his much-reported-on activism with the tony law firm Covington & Burling, which was suing the Bush administration on behalf of several terrorists being detained at Guantanamo ^[10]. That was an especially unfortunate moral failing, given that Holder was already under a cloud for another Clinton-era ethical and moral lapse for engineering the blanket commutation of prison sentences of 16 violent FALN terrorists ^[11] (murders, bombings, and terrorist acts) — against the advice of the FBI and the federal attorneys who prosecuted such criminals. The Puerto Rican community, it was apparently thought, would be especially thankful to the Clintons and might display such gratitude in the forthcoming Hillary Clinton New York Senate election. Holder, in other words, was a consigliore, a fixer of the sort that Robert Duvall played in the Godfather movies.

But Holder’s sin is not that he was just an ideologue, but rather than he is also an abject opportunist — the voice of social justice massaging a pardon for the Wall Street criminal who had endowed his boss so lavishly, the advocate preening about an unpopular Bush’s supposedly unjust Guantanamo who once had no problems with a popular Bush opening of the facility, or the man of the common people Gulfstreaming to a horse race on the public dime. So, too, Holder was always an entrepreneur about anti-terrorism: whatever the prevailing general consensus, then Holder was for it without regard for principle. In 2002, in the aftermath of 9/11, when George W. Bush was enjoying record popularity levels, Holder did not care a whit about the idea of holding terrorist suspects in Guantanamo without affording them prisoner of war status. In a 2002 interview with CNN’s Paula Zahn, he intoned of the Gitmo detainees ^[12]:

It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohammed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not….Yes, and I think in a lot of ways that makes sense. I think they clearly do not fit within the prescriptions of the Geneva Convention. You have to remember that after World War II, as these protocols were being developed, there seemed to be widespread agreement that members of the French Resistance would not be considered prisoners of war if they had been captured. That being the case, it’s hard for me to see how members of al Qaeda could be considered prisoners of war.

Before Holder, Al Sharpton was roundly derided ^[13] as a particularly venomous race hustler whose cheap activism had led to riot and mayhem, a tax-cheat and -delinquent, and a vicious slanderer forever branded by the Tawana Brawley caper. It was Holder who judged Sharpton not on his character, but on his race and what his racial fire and brimstone might do politically for Holder’s boss, and therefore on occasion brought him into the White House as a key advisor on racial tensions that Sharpton himself had helped stir up.

Before Holder, Americans were coming to the point that they did not automatically prejudge interracial violence as a direct consequence of racial bigotry. But thanks to Holder, not so much now. Trayvon Martin could not just be a troubled teen who had an unfortunate rendezvous with an edgy Hispanic George Zimmermann that led to the armed latter having his head pounded, and then shooting to death his unarmed assailant. Instead, it was a ripe occasion to condemn the police ^[14] and the establishment as intractably racist and in need of the sort of racial bromides Holder was so eager to prescribe.

Michael Brown could not just be a strong-arm robber, who manhandled a clerk, stormed out with stolen goods ^[15] high on marijuana, walked down the middle of a road, and then found himself in a violent and fatal encounter with a policeman, in which the unarmed suspect was killed and the armed policeman apparently battered — and the facts of the confused case still to be adjudicated.  Instead, the Brown case, too, was a fertile occasion to exploit ^[16], proof that early-1960s-era Bull Connors ^[17] still are with us — and proof we need elites like Eric Holder to shield us from them. Ferguson, after all, was cited by the president in an oration to the United Nations that Americans can hardly blame others for bigotry and violence.

Eric Holder did his best to polarize America and confuse it about race. Interracial violence was to Holder de facto proof of racism — but only sort of. There have been all sorts of depressing murders and disappearances in just the last month — each with the potential to reach the Martin-Brown level of national obsession.

Sometimes a reserve officer used his weapon to shoot the suspect who did not have a firearm; sometimes the killer for some strange reason had been treated far too leniently and was let out on early parole to kill an innocent woman; sometimes the killer had a prior record of murdering and was never apprehended; and sometimes the murder suspect had a prior record of criminal activity that for some strange reason was never or only inadequately prosecuted. In all these cases, there was no editorializing by Holder about  the police or the nature of the crime or the failure of the system to deal with such barbaric and violent men before they again committed violent acts.

So this month Holder stayed mum when a young African-American Jesse Matthew Jr., ^[18] with a past but apparently little scrutinized criminal record, was a prime suspect on the lam in the brutal killing of a University of Virginia white co-ed. So he was not interested in why a young African-American radical jihadist, Ali Brown, with a habit for prior killing, fatally shot an innocent white student in his Jeep on the way home. So he had no interest in why another African-American would-be jihadist and disaffected worker, Alton Nolen, let out early from parole, beheaded a white woman at work and tried to kill another victim.

Note how we cringe when I use freely now the distasteful buzzwords “white” and “African-American.” I emphasize the race of the victim and the assailant not because I believe that race was necessarily a prime motivation in any of these cases, much less that Holder should have commented on such lurid interracial crimes before they came to trial that made headlines, or that Americans should think race was necessarily vital in fathoming such barbarism, but because Eric Holder has set an example in this country to racially contextualize any interracial murder that might be massaged for his own political advantage, and to find some government or police agency, or society at large, as culpable for the violence. Race largely determines which interracial violent act the attorney general of the United States chooses to elevate to national political importance and to use for his larger political agendas.

The hypocrisy and demagogic manner in which Holder has done so may well teach other Americans to follow his reprehensible lead — and that will be unfortunate given that rare interracial violent crime is currently a mostly politically incorrect and taboo topic. Reasonable and educated people are not supposed to notice the disparate statistical rate in which blacks attack whites — at least until Eric Holder taught the country otherwise that race matters most in their lives and that they remain cowards should they not agree with him.

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Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-moral-failure-of-eric-holder/
URLs in this post:

[1] by everyone: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2009/11/06/godwin-weeps/

[2] Al Gore: http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/archive/archives/016176.php

[3] John Glenn: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1208264/posts

[4] called Americans “cowards”: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/19/holder.folo/

[5] “my people,”: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/03/01/holder-focus-on-black-panther-case-demeans-my-people/

[6] to punish “our enemies”: http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/25/obamas-turnout-pitch-to-latinos-get-out-there-and-punish-your-enemies/

[7] “typical white person.”: http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/10026/obama-helpfully-clarifies-his-grandmother-typical-white-person

[8] the New Black Panther case: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/18/new-black-panthers-conspire-to-violate-18-usc-245-holder-snoozes/

[9] the late felon Mark Rich: http://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-eric-holder-tragedy/88851/

[10] detained at Guantanamo: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/18/culture-of-corruption-holder-terrorists-covington-burling/

[11] 16 violent FALN terrorists: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/01/09/how-eric-holder-fixed-the-faln-pardons/

[12] he intoned of the Gitmo detainees: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0201/28/ltm.03.html

[13] was roundly derided: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/272473/al-sharpton-power-dem-jay-nordlinger

[14] condemn the police: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/listening-in-on-the-talk-what-eric-holder-told-his-son-about-trayvon/277861/

[15] stormed out with stolen goods: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/08/15/swisher-sweets-theft-may-be-key-detail-in-brown-shooting-case/

[16] a fertile occasion to exploit: http://hotair.com/archives/2014/08/17/eric-holder-orders-additional-autopsy-on-michael-brown-wait-what/

[17] Bull Connors: http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/?s=bull+connor+democrat

[18] Jesse Matthew Jr.,: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/25/man-charged-with-abduction-of-uva-student-was-expelled-from-christian-university-over-rape-allegation-report/

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Treason squared

The government has just announced it knows some 100 American citizens possessing United States passports have joined ISIL/ISIS/IS in Syria and Iraq. Apparently, there is an ongoing discussion about what to do about these people, who are presumably known to our intelligence and other agencies, if they return to this country.

There are two answers.

As enemy combatants, despite their American citizenship, they can and should be killed--if possible, after squeezing them for whatever intelligence they can provide.

On the other hand, if this gutless administration persists in treating them not as enemy combatants but instead as mere criminals,  right now, tomorrow, every one of them should be indicted for treason.

 There are three crimes expressly mentioned in the Constitution, only one of which is actually defined. Article I, Section 8, gives Congress power to punish counterfeiting, and to define and punish piracy, although neither is actually defined. 

However, Article III, Section 3, clearly provides that: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court." [My emphasis.] The federal treason statute tracks the constitutional provision.

As explained in the Holzers' book "Aid and Comfort":  Jane Fonda in North Vietnam (www.amazon.com), the Supreme Court of the United States, has interpreted the constitutional and statutory crime of treason to require four elements for indictment and conviction: (1) an intent to betray the United States by "levying" or "adhering," (2) an overt act, (3) proved by two witnesses, (4) "providing aid and comfort."

In Hanoi Jane's case, she traveled to North Vietnam during hostilities, made broadcasts (tapes of which were relentlessly played to our POWs), held press conferences, provided photo ops for the Communists, attacked the United States and its leaders on Radio Hanoi, exploited American prisoners of war with whom she met, fraternized with North Vietnamese military and civilian leaders — and was thanked for her efforts by grateful, top level Communist leaders. This is why "Aid and Comfort" concludes that, given the law of treason and given Fonda’s conduct, there was more than sufficient evidence to support an indictment and conviction for treason.

Putting aside the "levying" prong of the crime--though the beheading of two American citizens would qualify, as would terrorist use of force against American air and ground forces--and focusing solely on the "adhering" prong, it is clear that the recent two decapitations--overt acts--of American journalists conducted by co-fighters of the American terrorists constitute "adhering to the enemy, giving aid and comfort." Two witnesses? Thanks to social media, the whole world is witness.

That leaves the most essential element of the crime of treason, a question of fact for a jury in the Fonda situation and in the case of the American terrorists: intent.

Only in rare cases can criminal intent be proved through direct evidence (for example, from an admission by the defendant). Because intent is a state of mind, almost always it must be proved indirectly. In the crime of treason, the Supreme Court of the United States has consistently ruled that the requisite element of intent can be inferred from a defendant’s overt acts. In Fonda’s case, a jury could have concluded from all that she said and did that her intent was to betray (i.e., harm) the United States.

Let's look at Edward Snowden. As it was with Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally during World War II, Hanoi Jane in Vietnam, and now Snowden hiding out in Russia, the touchstone of a successful treason prosecution--under either the Constitution or federal statute--is "intent." Juries found that the two women had it, and one could have found that Fonda did. Also Snowden.

So, too, a jury could find the American terrorists in Syria and Iraq are traitors and sentence them to death. More likely, pending treason indictments would at least keep them out of the United States.

Of our two remedies, however, killing them is more appropriate, let alone satisfying. If an Obamadrone couldn't do the job, surely our clandestine forces would be happy to take a stab at it. 

Patronage and quid pro quo, defined and illustrated

According to Webster's Dictionary of the American Language, one definition of the word "patronage" is "the power to appoint to office or grant other favors, esp. political ones."

Quid pro quo is defined as "something for something; one thing in return for another."

Why, then, should anyone be surprised that the Most Powerful Politician in the World, a product of Chicago sleaze with the media in his pocket, has made the following appointments?

Susan Rice, former UN Ambassatrix  and current National Security Adviser--wife of ABC News producer Ian Cameron.

Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications--brother of CBS News President David Rhodes.

Jay Carney, former White House Press Secretary--husband of ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman
  
Katie Hogan, Obama 2012 reelection campaign Deputy Press Secretary-- wife of ABC News reporter Matthew Jaffe.

Elizabeth Sherwood, White House Special Adviser--sister of ABC News President Ben Sherwood.
  

Netanyahu, Roosevelt, and Truman

On July 14 (2014) Time magazine reported that "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will convene a meeting with his security cabinet on Tuesday to vote on a cease-fire proposal from Egypt      that he favors, a senior Israeli official told Haaretz."

I wonder what the result would have been if President Roosevelt had to take a vote of his cabinet to choose between a D-Day landing at Pas-de-Calais or Normandy, or if Truman needed an OK from his cabinet to drop two atomic bombs.

That's the difference between the Israeli form of government and the American Constitution's Article II, making the president commander-in-chief. Thanks be, again, to the Founders.

Tenth Amendment advice to my Republican, Conservative, and Libertarian friends

As many of the recipients of this blog know, I am a recovering constitutional law professor. Although I risk relapsing if I think, let alone write, about constitution law, now that current popular discourse is so permeated with the subject, there is an itch I have to scratch. 

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America provides in unambiguous language that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

To paraphrase, so no one can misunderstand. 

           If in the Constitution a specific power is not specifically delegated to Congress, principally in Article I, Section 8 (e.g., "lay taxes," "regulate commerce," "establish post offices," "borrow money" . . .

          And if that specific power is not expressly prohibited to the states in Article I, Section 10 (e.g., "enter into any treaty," "coin money," "pass any ... law impairing the obligation of contracts") . . . 

           That specific power (e.g., to enact criminal or marriage laws) is reserved to the states, which may legislate if authorized by its (the states') citizens.

In light of this unambiguous language and the equally incontestable intention that wrote it, why then do Republicans, Conservatives, and Libertarians when speaking of the Tenth Amendment invoke "states' rights"?

Not only was the Tenth Amendment not intended to safeguard rights, not only does it say nothing about states' rights, not only is it clear beyond rational argument that the Amendment speaks only to power expressly delegated to Congress and other power expressly reserved to the states, but states do not have rights. Only individuals have rights.

Thus, it is doubly wrong for my Republican, Conservative, and Libertarian friends to speak of “states’ rights.” Doing so misunderstands the delegation/reservation intent and meaning of the Tenth Amendment, and in the process completely ignores the real source of rights expressly articulated in the Bill of Rights and Fourteenth Amendment. Especially in the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”1

Moreover, my friends who want to invoke the Tenth Amendment in legal and political argument today are missing the constitutional boat. At stake in the current battle over engorged federal power is not a meaningless two words. Obama and his not-so-merry band of progressives in Congress and the regulatory agencies are not violating “states’ rights.”

They are making war on state sovereignty: “A doctrine in political theory that government is created by and subject to the will of the people” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

They are warring against the “people,” whom the Tenth Amendment makes the repository of all power not expressly delegated to the federal government.

So please, Republicans, Conservatives, and Libertarians, get it right.2

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1 Another reason the phrase “states’ rights” should never be used is because of its connotation, if not denotation. During the thankfully bygone era of racial discrimination and segregation southern, states used the principle of “states’ rights” to justify first slavery and then Jim Crow laws.

2 The implications of this understanding for politics are substantial, because many voters can easily be made to grasp in concrete terms how a federal attack on their state and individual sovereignty affects them.

The final desecration of Atlas Shrugged

I am aware that among the hundreds of people who receive this blog not everyone is devoted to Ayn Rand’s ideas, or believes that her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged is a masterwork. Thus, what follows will probably be of no interest to them. 

However, for those who revere Rand’s 1957 novel as a superb example of romantic realism—let alone brilliantly predictive—the recently announced third motion picture installment of Atlas Shrugged must be considered the final desecration.

Of the many points I could make, here are only two of the major ones.

The feature film rights to Atlas Shrugged should never been sold (let alone several times over) because the scope, characters, plot, and ideas of Atlas are inherently impossible to dramatize in two hours. 

I say this because of two personal experiences. 

One is because in 1968 Erika Holzer and I found the missing Italian film of We the Living, a much shorter and easier story to tell than Atlas. In its original form, WTL was three-plus hours long. Only due to Rand’s personally suggested edits, a bit of her restructuring, and some 4,000 subtitles written by Erika Holzer and Duncan Scott, did the film become the international motion picture success it deserved to be. 

The second is because toward the end of Rand’s life she worked with a TV producer and writer to create a network miniseries which would have been at least seven hours long. The writer was Oscar-winner Stirling Silliphant, whose writing achievements included the TV series Route 66 and the feature film In the Heat of the Night. At dinner one night in Los Angeles Stirling told the Holzers that there was no way Atlas Shrugged could, with any fealty to the novel, be done as a typical two-hour feature film.

As further proof that it was folly to try, I submit that the eventual producers themselves realized that a standard feature was impossible. So they made three, somewhat connected, but still standard feature films.

I repeat, the feature film rights should never have been sold, and when it was clear the current producers intended to dissect Atlas into three standard feature films, they should have been stopped.

Instead, the producers’ “solution” to the unsolvable length and complexity problems—driven also by the need to begin principal photography before their rights-option expired—was to quickly make one-third of Rand’s magnum opus, with the other two-thirds to come along in two later installments.

As to Atlas I and II (and doubtless the forthcoming Atlas Shrugged III), not a single nationally or internationally household name was associated with the project. This failure was most egregious regarding the script. While it would have been too much to expect that the producers would hire a journeyman writer like William Goldman (All the President’s Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), there were some well-credentialed Hollywood writers who understood Rand’s novel and could have created a faithfully powerful script. I know one of them.

Worse than all this, by far, is that the well-intentioned producers apparently believed that even though they were making an “entertainment” not a documentary, it was incumbent on them to provide “philosophical oversight.” So they hired the equivalent of a philosophical commissar, to keep the production on the Objectivist straight-and-narrow.

(There’s more. For example: difficulties with distribution, changing actors from one of the parts to the others, miscasting, the impossibility of showing Atlas Shrugged I, II, and III together in a movie theater or even on television.)

The noise you hear is Ayn Rand spinning in her grave. The feature film rights should never have been sold.

In the days of the Italian version of We the Living (1940-1941) it was possible for the film’s negatives and prints to vanish, as nearly happened because of Nazi hostility to Rand’s story about the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution on a fiercely independent woman and the two men who loved her.

Unfortunately, in today’s world of the Internet, cloud storage, digital recorders, and DVDs, there is no way Atlas Shrugged I, II, and III, unlike We the Living, will ever be lost.

Pity.