Monday, January 05, 2009

Eric Holder for AG? Not if I Can Help it

President Elect Obama has chosen Eric Holder to be his Attorney General of these United States. This nomination must be stopped. Eric Holder is not the man for this position.

As Mike has stated:

...of all the people BHO seeks to surround himself with in DC, Eric Holder as the nominee for Attorney General has to be the most offensive stench in the nostrils of free men and women.
As Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration, Eric Holder was directly involved with the abduction of Elian Gonzalez at gun point, then had to audacity to state "He was not taken at the point of a gun."

When a federal prosecutor raised questions about a possible Justice Department cover-up in the Waco standoff , Deputy Attorney General Holder abruptly removed him from the case along with his boss.

Eric Holder signed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller case before the Supreme Court of the United States. The brief was filed in support of DC's ban on all handguns, and ban on the use of any firearm for self-defense in the home.

The power is out at the house and I am sitting in a Starbucks posting this before V gets off of work. There is much more to despise about Eric Holder that can be found with the most cursory of web searches, but this small list should be enough to show the mans mettle.

Eric Holder must not become our next Attorney General.

David illustrates what we can do to help stop this confirmation in Holder: 'To-be' or not to be.

When it comes to the efforts of the antis, Jeff Knox states that:
To battle this we need to pound Congress hard to let them know "We ain't dead yet!" That's why it's important that you act on the information below immediately!

Congress is planning to hit the ground running in a few days. The new Congress will be sworn in on January 6 and the Senate Judiciary Committee has set a date of January 15 for confirmation hearings on Barack Obama's pick for Attorney General, Eric Holder. Gunowners need to be pushing members of the committee very hard to delay and block the confirmation.
Jeff has the basic contact information for the committee here.

With some effort, we can Block Holder Today!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am here as an ally, seeking allies against lock step selection of any bureaucrat just because he or she is nominated by a President of the United States. I am neutral about gun control, yet not about having someone as Attorney General whose affiliation in academe and occurences on that campus during his tenure as a board member mean nothing in improving the poor state of safety or justice there. I not only have written all of the Judiciary Committee members, but I called Senator Hatcch's Washington and Utah offices when I found out at the 11th hour about the 1/15/09 hearing. This is lengthy, yet worth the read. After writing it, I found that Columbia University has far less influence with FDNY, having five criminal court summonses for "noncompliance" already for 2009.
Greetings Senators,

This is an appeal for you to not approve Mr. Holder as the next Attorney General of the United States. My detailed, yet succinct appeal is because of his ties to Columbia University, a place where many abuses of justice and labor are allowed to persist. Eric Holder is a member of the Board of Trustees there, thus having administration over the
institutional president, Lee C. Bollinger, and the top officials there. Heretofore, the Bollinger legacy, with Robert Kasdin was the affirmative action case at the University of Michigan. (It is a matter that I am neutral about, although I believe the litigation cost contributed to public education tuition increases there, sending many Michiganites elsewhere.) Lee Bollinger and Columbia seek undue influence everywhere it can have that benefit.

Far from being a beacon of tolerance and fairness, Columbia University is a cesspool of injustice. The travesties we have experienced are not isolated to my own child, a recent alumna, and myself. We are a fifth-generation Columbia family, but I matriculated in North Carolina schools and colleges. We are registered as Independents. During my daughter's freshman year there, she, a Jewish student, and a hallmate from China were among the few supporters of Mr. Bush's second candidacy on their floor. She is also morally and socially conservative, despite living on a coed dormitory campus. This led to each of them being heckled, and anti-Bush graffiti appeared on the door of the foreign student. She was too young to vote and the foreign student could not vote. Recently, she voted for Mr.Obama. True to free speech, it was alright for all sides to have a viewpoint until the "big man on campus" types began to oppose them. The Jewish student got an apology in the Spectator. The Chinese student moved to another dormitory. My daughter stayed on, with every slightest opportunity to harass her increased. When the hierarchy of officials was contacted, it was resented and correspondence utlimately to administration (i.e., Mr. Bollinger et al.) was ignored, with a surge in the pettiness. Because security reports disappeared, we attempted to get NYPD involved. Even there, we were stonewalled by the precinct that serves Columbia University.

The following summer, my daughter worked as a security aide on campus. When she went to the student union next door to deliver her scholarship check, she got trapped in the turnstile as an irate alumnus attempted to beat a staffer with his heavy wooden cane. Instead of his object being attacked, my child received blows about the face and head. The staffer did nothing to help her, and security refused to detain the man, who was not only a convicted felon on probation, but a recidivist offender with a string of misdemeanors in the Morningside area. When I called NYPD, the security office is where they went first and not the infirmary where I took my daughter after she contacted me. I was threatened with arrest by NYPD officers for insisting that a doctor see my daughter and that someone detain the attacker. Columbia has such influence that complaints to both the Civilian Complaint Review Board and Internal Affairs were never responded to. I had to request that the doctors prescribe X-rays at the nearby hospital. My child saw five doctors in less than a week, only to have us followed and hunted down by security after her visit to an opthalmologist. I wrote Rep. Rangel, and Senators Schumer and Clinton about this, also to no avail. Columbia has awarded so many from the ACLU to Al Sharpton that there are few civil rights or personal injury lawyers in NYC that will contest the university. The same runaround that we got on campus spread off-campus as well, not only with lawyers an NYPD, but even with the Manhattan District Attorney's office. I had to request through Mayor Bloomberg that the loby videotape of the crime be confiscated, but it disappeared by the time the criminal case wound down two years later. The felony was watered down to a string of meaningless misdemeanors by the DA's office. Judge Ferrara (a Columbia alumnus also) had issued an Order of Protection barring the attacker from campus, yet he was never arrested when reported being on campus and ultimately allowed by Columbia and the DA to go to the library and cafeteria while the order was still in force and my child was still a student there. The attacker's "poor person" provision in New York courts allowed him to avoid substantial fines, although he lives in the former mansion of a late Supreme Court Chief Justice on Riverside Drive (Columbia property). He got less than a week of jail time, after I complained to his probation judge about him violating the Order of Protection. (The subway strike caused his release, since not enough court staff could get to work for dockets to continue!) Bollinger and his Columbia hierarchy was aware of all of this. The attacker is also a champion fencer, and he was allowed to do community service less than a block from my child's dormitory. All of the physical complications of the attack and expenses have been borne solely by us.

Rather than keep track of the attacker, I could hardly visit my daughter in peace. Because we had seen a staffer stealing from student rooms the day before the attack, yet never reported it, the woman claimed she was "verbally harassed" to cover her tracks. I had merely asked her to not leave others' belongingds by the doors of my child and her neighbor during our embarassing discovery after we got off the elevator. This led to my child being summoned to a sham hearing (by policy, Columbia allows no due process via witnesses, supporting documents, etc.), with visible facial and head swelling from the injuries. She was threatened with expulsion if she ever signed me in to visit her again and I with arrest if I attempted to have her or anyone sign me into a dormitory during her remaining enrollment. We could meet elsewhere on campus or at the outer entrance. Ironically, my child was in training as an NYPD Auxiliary Officer when she as attacked as an innocent bystander. (They do not carry guns or handcuffs, only night sticks, when on patrol or barricade duty.) I had to scour Morningside to find out who had seriously injured and attacked my child, since campus security was no help. By the way, ex-NYPD officials head campus security, including some with dubious records like this former precinct head (J. Rosado) who was dismissed prior to his appointment at Columbia.
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2001/12/07/2001-12-07_pct__boss_is_suspended_slaps.html
True to these actions, Rosado personally came to my child's dormitory lobby after I met her there during winter break to give her supplies, with a warning that he could have me arrested. One of the security staffers who stalked us the day of an off-campus medical appointment, Franklin Espinal, was with him. Then-sergeant J. Umpierre (now lieutenant) was the same one on duty when the attack occurred, refusing to detain the assailant, and also stalking us continuously. Only two weeks before graduation was I able to be signed into the dormitory again, through the efforts of Mrs. L. Fountain and Mr. Scott Wright, neither of whom is part of student affairs or security that had barred me.

Moreover, Columbia University has "sweat shop" ownership of Milano Market, nearby on Broadway, where an illegal immigrant wrker was refused first aid or medical treatment after cutting his hand preparing food. Ms. Brooke Henson, has been missing from South Carolina for over seven years, yet Columbia admitted and housed an impostor who had stolen her identity, then refused to assist policemen from her state until a court order was issued - after the culprit disappeared.
http://seclists.org/isn/2007/Jan/0044.html
The current head of security at Columbia has glossed over all of these situations, including ours, despite being an ex-NYPD official and licensed to the state bar. His own daughter was allowed to attend Columbia tuition-free in a program (ASP aka OPUS) expressly for economically disadvantaged students, and his brother gets bid preference alledgedly for campus construction. James McShane, Esq., personally told me he had no reason to meet with me, shortly after my child's attack. Besides, our children were not social friends on campus. The transit union that security staff belongs to has no viable pension or benefits, and it is not germain to the work they do, according to actual union members in the industry, yet Columbia requires membership by security staff and dues. Sexual harassment and bias crimes are reportedly ignored among security ranks, not to mention campus dorm thefts, etc. No acknowledgement of our concerns, redress or apologies ever were made to my child and me. They would be empty, unacceptable and insufficient to repair the residual damage done by Columbia.

I had an RSVP invitation to hear former Attorney General John Ashcroft speak at Columbia a few years ago. Only because a student member stepped up to show the guards my name on the computer list and scort me to my seat did security relent about my attendance. Mr. Ahcroft was ready for the hecklers. WHen a speaker or guest is duly invited, free speech should not be allowed to degenerate and descend into disrespect or violence. Neither Mr. Bollinger nor Mr. Holder or others bothered to remind the students at the graduation of Senator McCain's daughter that he was on campus primarily as a parent, during all that ruckus. Then when the Minutemen came to speak (a group we do not support), the same crude an cowardly security management that tormented my child and me could not contain that turmoil any more than they cared to detain my child's attacker. A local Minutemen supporter with no ID or Columbia ties was admitted to the forum and kicked a student in the head, it was discovered later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNXmy0e5fc "Minutemen Protest Storming at Columbia University"

I have expressed concern on the www.change.gov website that the Holder appointment will result in scandal reminiscent of the President Grant era. To support Mr. Obama does not mean one must support all of his prospective appointments,

Sincerely,
Ms. W. Thomas, Mother and Retired Educator, MS, MA

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