Will AG Holder be joining Rev Wright under the bus? We hear more and more bipartisan grumbling about AG Eric Holder’s decision to hold terror trials in NY City.

We read now that Chief of Staff Emmanuel was opposed to the trials, too. COS Emmanuel warned Pres BO that the KSM trial in NY City would turn into a PR disaster and open up the old wounds about Dems being soft on national security. It raises the question: How much longer will AG Holder be around? Not long! In fact, I don’t see him around by summer!

However, when will Pres BO take responsibility for the decision too? It’s hard to believe that Pres BO delegated such a huge decision to AG Holder. If he did then someone needs to remind Pres BO that he is the commander-in-chief. If he did not then someone needs to remind Pres BO that he has got an AG “going rogue” in his government.

No matter what, Pres BO looks weak and indecisive, exactly the kind of image that the Dems are fearful of as they face the voters in 2010. Since Vietnam and Pres Carter, the Dems have been fighting the perception that they are “soft” and won’t stand up to bad guys. AG Holder, and Pres BO’s silence, is making the Dems look “soft” again!

P.S. Check out Andy McCarthy’s critiicism of AG Holder’s decision:

The fundamental problem with the attorney general’s line of argument is that it unfolds as though there were no war and no president. Abdulmutallab, Holder believes, is just like any other person arrested in the United States: When an arrest happens, government officials automatically employ “long-established and publicly known policies and practices.” It does not matter who sent the person or what he was arrested trying to do. Miranda warnings are given, lawyers are interposed, charges are filed, and trials are conducted. Even if the nation is at war, we don’t inquire into whether the arrested person is an operative dispatched here by hostile forces to commit mass murder. We don’t concern ourselves with whether he knows about other people plotting the same thing. All that matters to Holder is that we have our procedures, and they must be followed.

Obama’s minions facilitate the crimes of ACORN and the New Black Panthers, but throw the book at young people who want to expose the dishonesty of Democrat Pols & their supporters.

The crusading young conservative investigative journalist James O’Keefe has been arrested in New Orleans, charged with a federal felony. Writing in The American Spectator, Ben Stein compares O’Keefe’s prank to voter intimidation by Democratic activists:

During the last Presidential election, a gang of men calling themselves Black Panthers showed up at a polling place in Michigan. They threatened any voter who did not vote for Barack Obama. This was witnessed and documented….

The bullying was barely reported in the media. Even though it is an unequivocal violation of voting rights laws, it was decided by Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, not to prosecute the case at all….

A few days ago, four young conservatives posed as telephone repairmen and entered the branch office of Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana in New Orleans. Their goal was to check to see if the phone system in the office was working. The men, under the leadership of a young media impresario named James O’Keefe, were querying why constituents of Sen. Landrieu had been unable to register negative feelings about Obamacare on the Senator’s phone line. They had been told that perhaps the phones were out of order….

Back at Sen. Landrieu’s office, someone was suspicious of the O’Keefe group and called police. The men were arrested and are now charged with a federal felony of something called tampering with a federal phone line….

But the differential justice gets much worse, as it turns out. The Christmas panty bomber was afforded more rights than this young American, according to a FOXNews report:

….the man who first published James O’Keefe’s explosive videos exposing wrongdoing at community organizer ACORN came to the filmmaker’s defense, claiming he “sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney” while the prosecutor made his case to the media.

“James O’Keefe sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney, while the U.S. attorney leaked the information about his arrest, helping the media frame it as ‘Watergate Junior,’” Breitbart said.

“The panty bomber on Christmas was given — you know, this guy’s from Al Qaeda, and he’s not even an American citizen, and he’s given access to an attorney right away,” Breitbart said….

The DC Trawler suspects a clever journalistic strategy here — Andrew Breitbart, master of the rope-a-dope:

If you’re too young to remember Ali vs. Foreman — which most of the people I work with are, damn them — Ali used something he called the rope-a-dope to win. Basically, he let Foreman beat the hell out of him until Foreman got tired, and then Ali swabbed the canvas with him. “Rope-a-dope” has now become shorthand for any strategy where you let your opponent think he’s winning, as you bide your time until you’re ready to strike back.

Breitbart used this technique to great effect during the ACORN sting. He predicted exactly what his opponent was going to do — make statements of fact that they knew not to be true — and allowed it. Then he made his countermove by proving them wrong with hard evidence. He did this over and over, and they fell for it every time.

Has he done it again? We’ve just had a full week of what MSNBC has dubbed, in a masterpiece of understatement, “Watergate Jr.” Big win, right? Well…

Sense of Events expands on the “rope-a-dope” analogy:

In politics, the term has come to mean opening an apparent advantage to one’s opponents in the hope they won’t see the trap laid for them. Chess players, of course, use this ploy all time, sacrificing pieces to gain positional advantage or to capture more valuable pieces in return…. Rope-a-dope’s inherent risk is worth taking only if one’s opponent is highly predictable. And when it comes to the media, there’s no problem there.

Comments at Gateway Pundit add to the litany of differential justice:

lyle — Of course, we’ve seen US Attorneys trample the law and violate ethical standards in pursuit of political enemies like Ted Stevens and Lewis Libby. In both of those cases, US Attorneys conspired with the mainstream media to construct a false narrative against their victims, and used it to convict them.

Usually it works. The Texas prosecutor who harrassed Tom Delay never had any evidence, but drove his victim out of office. Martha Coakley kept a man she knew to be innocent in jail for three years, and became the political machine’s senatorial candidate. The Duke lacrosse prosecutor won reelection through his appalling misconduct.

It must be a coincidence that they’re all Democrats.

Lance — Sandy Berger, National Security Advisor under Clinton, stole and destroyed evidence from the National Archives. Evidence that someone didn’t want the 911 commission to see. He was charged with a misdemeanor….

For ambitious Democrat pols, these can be tricky waters to navigate. U.S. Attorney Jim Letten has recused himself from the case citing “various relevant factors” which remain unspecified. His first mate will have to be the sacrifice:

One of the arrested men, Robert Flanagan, 24, is the son of William Flanagan, who is the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana. The other three men include James O’Keefe, 25, a conservative filmaker who made hidden-camera videos at ACORN field offices, and two out-of-state conservative activists: Joseph Basel, 24, and Stan Dai, 24.

Despite Letten’s recusal, the case will not be removed to another jurisdiction… Instead, Letten’s first assistant U.S. attorney, veteran federal prosecutor Jan Mann, will act as the “Attorney for the United States in this matter”…

Flanagan’s attorney last week said that Basel, O’Keefe and his client went to Landrieu’s office in the Hale Boggs federal building in order to make a video showing that the senator’s staff was ignoring phone calls from angry constitutents. Basel and Flanagan were dressed as telephone repairmen, while O’Keefe reportedly filmed the other men’s interaction with his cell phone. Dai remained in a car parked on the street with some kind of listening device.

The four were arrested by U.S. marshals and face charges of entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony.

Bottom line: Embarrassing a Dem Senator can be twisted into a felony, but all sorts of egregious crimes committed by Dems are O.K.

Related coverage:

Hot Air — U.S. Attorney Recuses Himself from O’Keefe Case

Wake Up America — James O’Keefe And The U.S. Attorney

Judicial Watch, a non-partisan educational foundation that promotes integrity in government through research and legal action, has released its list of the “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2009. There are actually more than ten miscreants named, as two of the scandals were not solo efforts.

Not surprisingly to this author, the group includes mostly Democrats with only one Republican. They are in alphabetical, so don’t infer anything, but our first subject has made the list for the second year in a row!

1. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
2. Senator John Ensign (R-NV)
3. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)
4. Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner
5. Attorney General Eric Holder
6. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/ Senator Roland Burris (D-IL)
7. President Barack Obama
8. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
9. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven
10. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)

As you scan the list, you will most likely recall the influence peddling, sweetheart deals, financial misrepresentations, sexual shenanigans, tax-dodging and so on attached to each one, but for details you can visit the Judicial Watch website.

It’s hard to “shave or put on your makeup” in the morning, knowing that this kind of “trash” is out there. Like a cut that won’t heal … sooner or later, WE the people are going to have to “cut off the offending part.”

Victimization — the Reparations Bill, Eric Holder’s speech, the New York Post chimp cartoon — last week was all about RACE. Not that the majority of Americans wanted it that way. But a handful of grandstanding black Democratic politicians, including Julian Bond and the not-so-very-reverend Al Sharpton, did.

Television sets come with a V-chip that allows parents to control what programs their children see. These hypocritical politicians have a big V-chip on their shoulders, and would like to control what their constituents are allowed to think.

Reparations

The idea of reparations for black slaves was first introduced in 1867 by Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. He proposed that the federal government should seize the public lands of the ten Confederate States, and give forty acres to the “head of household” of each black family. The land could not be sold, just worked. Then the idea would have made a lot of sense. It would have given each family, not a hand-out, but the means to make a living, similar to the homesteading that settled the mid-west.

This year, as he has every year for about nineteen years, Representative John Conyers (D, MI-14) introduced a bill in the House to address reparations for slavery. By now it is a bit old. The text:

To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.

And he wants to fund it to the tune of $8 million. Note that this bill doesn’t actually make reparation, it is just another study. This after our former top soldier (Colin Powell), our former secretary of state (Condi Rice), and even our current president and attorney general (Eric Holder) are black. Enough already!

[Note to John Conyers: Blacks got the right to vote (15th Amendment) in 1870. Women didn't get suffrage (19th Amendment) until 1920. That's fifty whole years. How about we pay some reparations to all the women in the United States?]

Holder’s Speech

On Wednesday, February 18, newly minted Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech criticizing the American people. It made him a hero with black folk who carry the V-chip, but angered middle America with these words:

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with…

[Note to Eric Holder: We don't talk about race because most of us have long since gotten past it. We're not cowards, we're just good mannered folk who enjoy our common humanity and let go of our individual differences.]

The Chimp Cartoon

Also on Wednesday, February 18, the New York Post published an editorial cartoon by Sean Delonas, referencing a recent news event in which a pet chimp had to be shot because it was mauling a woman. The double entendre here was complex because the two elements are not parallel. First, hard-working Americans will be mauled by the stimulus bill, which robs the prudent to bail out the profligate. Also, the stimulus bill is so ill-conceived that sensible folk feel it was fabricated by less-than-human intelligence.

Those with the V-chip on their shoulders saw it differently. They asserted a racist characterization of Obama as a monkey, and demanded that the Post editor and the cartoonist be fired. NAACP Chairman Julian Bond raged:

“This was an invitation to assassination of the president of the United States and anyone who was not offended by it doesn’t have any sensibilities.”

Civil rights activist Al Sharpton weighed in:

“The cartoon in today’s New York Post is troubling at best, given the racist attacks throughout history that have made African-Americans synonymous with monkeys.”

Col Allan, the Post’s editor-in-chief, hit the nail on the head:

“Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.”

How do we know that Julian Bond and Al Sharpton are pure hypocrites? The website Bush or Chimp? has been online since November 2000, getting over 5 million hits. No Democrat ever complained about that.

[Note to Julian Bond and Al Sharpton: In my opinion, suggesting that the stimulus bill was written by chimps is insulting to their intelligence.]

…a lot of Florida, actually. In November 1999, Elián González’ mother sacrificed her own life in an attempt to bring her son from Cuba to freedom in the United States via a leaky boat. The child survived floating on an inner tube, and was rescued by fishermen. His relatives already living in Florida took the now motherless lad into their own home. He began to enjoy the life of an American youngster, happily playing in the yard with new friends.

But this was during the Clinton administration, and under the aegis of Attorney General Janet Reno (who was also responsible for children being burned to death in Waco) the child was ripped from his family’s arms and returned to Cuba. Eric Holder, then Deputy Attorney General, and Gregory Craig, Assistant to the President and Special Counsel in the White House, were principals in this cruel drama. Lawyer Craig actually represented the Cuban father in his battle with the American relatives to regain custody of Elián.

The transaction was NOT handled with finesse. The “jack-booted thugs” of the federal government crashed into the private residence of the American relatives in the dead of night and confronted the startled sleeping family with drawn guns. They forciby siezed the child and deported him to Cuba, where it was reported this past Monday that he has become a member of Cuba’s Young Communist Union.

Four years ago, the Kerry campaign was also criticized for being clueless about Florida when they hired Gregory Craig:

…during the months-long custody battle over the shipwrecked boy, Craig antagonized Miami’s Cuban exile community by keeping his client [Elián González' father] in Washington, surrounded by Cuban government advocates and operatives. Hired by church groups interested in seeing the boy reunited with his father, the exile community accused him of doing Castro’s bidding.

Now both Eric Holder and Gregory Craig are working with the Obama presidential campaign. Eric Holder serves on the vice-presidential search committee — you remember, the one that also boasted James Johnson. And Gregory Craig is a — get this — foreign-policy advisor. The problem? Obama is scheduled to addresses a conference in Miami tomorrow, and Florida is populated with Cuban exiles who have long memories.

The Miami Herald notes:

Elián saga might hound Obama visit

Some Cuban Americans are planning to protest Democrat Barack Obama’s visit to Miami on Saturday….

Summoning a time of political upheaval in Miami, a great-uncle of Elián González plans Friday to publicly denounce two Barack Obama campaign advisors who helped send the boy back to his father in Cuba eight years ago.

One day before the expected Democratic nominee addresses a conference of mayors in Miami, Delfín González will hold a 1 p.m. news conference outside the Little Havana home where Elián lived with relatives for several months in 2000….

‘We’re going to express opposition to Barack Obama’s visit to Miami, and explain how we’re opposed to him having individuals on his campaign who were associated with Elián’s seizure in 2000,” González said. “Some wounds are so deep that they do not heal over time, such as taking a child and sealing his fate to a communist dictatorship.”….

…Cuban Americans are also planning to protest Obama’s speech Saturday at the InterContinental Hotel at the nearby Torch of Friendship in Bayfront Park

The bloggers at Red State take note:

Hope and Change More Like Same Old, Same Old
Cuban Americans in Florida see through Obama’s Rhetoric
By Kevin Holtsberry

It will not come as news to RS readers, but Barack Obama, the supposed candidate of Hope and Change, has an awful lot of connections to the same old failed personalities and policies of the past. Jim Johnson went under the bus because his history clashed with Obama’s self-righteous denunciations on the mortgage crisis. But there are a number of suspect characters still left advising the presumptive Democratic nominee. Eric Holder and Greg Craig for example.

And it seems the Cuban American community in Florida doesn’t appreciate it….

But Obama has a handy way of dispensing with past mistakes:

Asked to respond to the concerns about Obama’s advisors, campaign spokesman Josh Earnest issued a statement that focused more on the candidate’s proposal to change U.S. policy toward Cuba.

”Senator Obama — like the vast majority of voters — is looking to the future, not the past, which is why he believes we should both: keep the embargo to pressure the Cuban government to respect human rights and lift travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban Americans so that families can visit and support one other,” he said.

So, you’ve made a mistake. No prob. No need to admit. No need to repair and regroup. Just look to the future! Keep focused on HOPE and CHANGE and … I have a bridge for sale.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE, Friday evening:  The Friday afternoon press conference announced by Delfín González was reported by the McClatchy Newspapers. From The Arizona Republic:

MIAMI – Standing in the front yard of the house where immigration agents seized Elian Gonzalez, the child rafter’s great-uncle and great-aunt detailed plans for a protest Saturday when Barack Obama will speak to a mayors’ conference.

Delfin Gonzalez, who called Friday’s news conference at the Elian Little Havana house, said he, his sister Caridad and other Gonzalez family members were upset that among the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee’s advisers are two men who helped return the child to Cuba eight years ago….

“My fear is that those who collaborated with the Cuba’s communist government and made a great mistake with a defenseless child will make the same mistake again against this nation that is facing danger from terrorism,” Delfin Gonzalez told reporters at the small one-story house that immigration agents raided April 22, 2000. It now also serves as a museum detailing the boy’s odyssey….

UPDATE, June 24, afternoon — Four days after we noted this trend here at ADMC, The Politico catches on:

Elian Gonzalez saga could haunt Obama

Eight years after the furor over the repatriation of Elian Gonzalez to Cuba possibly cost Al Gore the state of Florida in his 537-vote loss to George W. Bush, the international custody saga has returned to haunt another Democratic presidential nominee: Barack Obama.

Having two top advisers who played key roles in the episode — Greg Craig, who represented Gonzalez’s father in Cuba, and Eric Holder, then a Clinton administration deputy attorney general when federal agents stormed the Miami home of Gonzalez’s relatives to remove the then-6-year-old and return him to Cuba — Obama now finds himself on the wrong side of an emotional issue in a battleground state….