My [qualified] endorsement of Attorney General Eric Holder’s (D) new limits on asset forfeitures.

On the one hand: this is a smart thing to do. “Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without evidence that a crime occurred.” Asset forfeiture is one of those things that happens mostly under the public’s radar, but it’s a situation that concerns people across the ideological spectrum. Having asset forfeiture put under constraints is something that I’d like the Attorney General to do, actually. Continue reading My [qualified] endorsement of Attorney General Eric Holder’s (D) new limits on asset forfeitures.

Eric Holder’s resignation indicates that the White House expects the Senate to flip.

It’s the only reason to do this now.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will announce his resignation on Thursday after heading the Justice Department for six years, according to the White House.

Citing two sources “familiar with the situation,” NPR first reported that Holder will exit the U.S. Department of Justice as soon as his replacement is confirmed, though the process could potentially drag out into 2015.

…actually, I expect it to be the other way around: Harry Reid will ram the nomination for Holder’s replacement through the Senate while he still can. If it drags on until 2015, it’ll probably continue to drag on even further under the new Senate.  And possibly not get resolved until after Eric Holder comes clean about all the things he’s been doing to the country for the last six years. Continue reading Eric Holder’s resignation indicates that the White House expects the Senate to flip.

House formalizes contempt for Lois Lerner.

We knew already that she should be held in contempt: the House just merely made it official tonight.  Please note this, too:

Federal law says that if the House or Senate votes to hold someone in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena, the matter is referred to the local U.S. attorney, a Justice Department official. It is then the “duty” of the U.S. attorney to bring the matter before a grand jury. But that doesn’t guarantee an indictment. Justice officials didn’t respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

Oh, man, speaking as a partisan political hack it’d be a real shame if Eric Holder’s Justice Department tried to do a whitewash of political corruption in an election year. An absolute shame.  I mean, I can’t see at all how we could take advantage of that move…

Moe Lane

PS: The statute of limitations on all of this will extend past January of 2017, ye Beltway denizens.  Have a nice day!

[UPDATE: Dagnabbit, I think Ace got in that particular snark first.]

Eric Holder tries to justify using DoJ planes for personal use.

Oh, Eric.

Attorney General Eric Holder disputed a Government Accountability Office report on his use of Justice Department airplanes for personal trips, saying it overstated the number of trips he took and failed to recognize that some trips were job-related.

“My staff keeps telling me to take it easy, you know, well, this is one that gets me,” Holder told Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing. “There was this notion that we’ve taken — I think it was described as hundreds of personal trips. That was wrong. GAO counted flights, not round trips. And we looked at it and figured out from the time period that they were looking, we took not hundreds, but 27 personal, four combined — official and nonpersonal trips — and none of the trips that I took or that the [FBI] director took ever had an impact on the mission capability of those airplanes.”

Continue reading Eric Holder tries to justify using DoJ planes for personal use.

Eric Holder to be pardoned later this year?

Well, that’s the report:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will step down this year, he said in an interview with the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin in the magazine’s Feb. 17 edition.

In a feature article, Mr. Holder said he plans on staying in his position “well into” the year.

Yeah, I probably wouldn’t want to be a Democratic executive branch official right now, either. More accurately: I wouldn’t want to be a Democratic executive branch official next year. Senate investigating committees traditionally have very little in the way of senses of humor when it comes to incompetent bureaucrats getting our law enforcement personnel killed; and it’s highly likely that the next Senate Majority Leader will find it, ah, convenient to revive that particular tradition.  Best to bail now.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Yeah, I figure that Eric Holder and Valerie Jarrett are both on the Presidential pardon short list.  I also figure that it’s a short list, mostly because I don’t really think that Barack Obama really ‘gets’ this entire loyalty thing…

Eric Holder goes to judicial war over school choice using documents that he… can’t find now.

I am going to break a rule and simply reproduce this entire post from the Louisiana Governor’s office.  If Bobby Jindal has a problem with that – and I don’t think that the Governor will – I am sure that he will tell me so fairly quickly.  It really cannot be excerpted; the idiocy of the federal government here is too stunning to do anything except appreciate in all of its, ah, glory.

Prepare to marvel at the l33t legal skills of Eric Holder’s Justice Department:

Continue reading Eric Holder goes to judicial war over school choice using documents that he… can’t find now.

Excuse me while I descend into cynicism. #zimmerman

(Via Hot Air Headlines) This would be very, very stupid of Eric Holder:

Attorney General Eric Holder faces a crucial decision on whether to press federal civil rights charges against George Zimmerman, after the neighborhood watchman was acquitted Saturday in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.

The NAACP and other leading civil rights groups are pressing for Holder to open a federal case against Zimmerman, after he was found not guilty on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges by a Florida jury.

…so I figure that he’s going to do it. Continue reading Excuse me while I descend into cynicism. #zimmerman

Eric Holder’s permanent seat in the barrel.

This is going to be Eric Holder’s life, now.

Attorney General Eric Holder has agreed to meet with House Republicans as part of their probe into whether he misled Congress or acted inappropriately in the Justice Department’s investigation of two separate leaks to media outlets.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) made the announcement late Friday after exchanging several weeks worth of testy letters with the nation’s top cop.

In agreeing to meet with the lawmakers, Holder staved off the threat of a subpoena from Goodlatte for a second time in as many weeks.

Continue reading Eric Holder’s permanent seat in the barrel.

Mark Kirk backhands Eric Holder over the executive branch’s spying on Congress.

Short version: Eric Holder got to be testifying before the Senate on a day where the big news was that the NSA was having Verizon pull its phone logs and hand them over to the federal government.  Mark Kirk had an opportunity to ask questions.

Hi-jinks, as they say, ensued.

For those of you who don’t have video, here’s a rough translation/summary of what Holder and Kirk said: Continue reading Mark Kirk backhands Eric Holder over the executive branch’s spying on Congress.