It’s Heinz all the way.
Is there anyone of sound mind who would volutarily choose any other ketchup?
Obama: holding onto Holder
Writing this post today made me realize once again (although I’ve never had even a moment’s doubt) how important Eric Holder is to Obama’s agenda, and how infinitesimal the chances of Obama asking Holder to leave.
For most of Obama’s administration people have been predicting Holder’s departure. Surely this disgrace or excess would do it, or that one, or the next. But it was always apparent that every action of Holder’s had either been cleared with Obama, had been done at Obama’s behest, or was already perfectly aligned with Obama’s own point of view.
It would be difficult to think of a more perfect instrument of Obama’s own agenda than Holder, other than Obama himself. And although no doubt Obama thinks he would be a better AG than Holder—just as he would be a better everything than anybody—short of Obama taking on the role himself in addition to being president, as far as Obama is concerned Holder is the next best thing.
[NOTE: See this for an old post of mine on Obama’s mind-meld with Holder.]
The DOJ/Obama war against the states
The Southern states, that is. Or any other state that has the temerity to tighten up its own voting regulations in ways that would appear to make perfect sense.
A mere month ago, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that Obama and the DOJ didn’t like when the Court struck down the part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that was used to identify which states were covered by that law. The president, Holder, and other Democrats have already voiced their dissatisfaction with that ruling, and now we have the administration’s tactical response:
:
In the coming weeks, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to announce that the Justice Department is using other sections of the Voting Rights Act to bring lawsuits or take other legal action to prevent states from implementing certain laws, including requirements to present certain kinds of identification in order to vote. The department is also expected to try to force certain states to get approval, or “pre-clearance,” before they can change their election laws.
[NOTE: Cross-posted at Legal Insurrection.]
“Even as Congress considers updates to the Voting Rights Act in light of the Court’s ruling, we plan, in the meantime, to fully utilize the law’s remaining sections to subject states to pre-clearance as necessary,” Holder said in a speech Thursday morning in Philadelphia. “My colleagues and I are determined to use every tool at our disposal to stand against such discrimination wherever it is found.”
There’s this action by the DOJ as well, directed for the moment at Texas but almost certainly, if successful, to be aimed at other states trying to implement similar rules (and maybe even if not successful, in order to harass them anyway and rev up the liberal/left base):
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced on Thursday that the Justice Department would ask a court to require Texas to get permission from the federal government before making voting changes in that state for the next decade. The move opens a new chapter in the political struggle over election rules after the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act last month…
In a statement, Gov. Rick Perry cast Mr. Holder’s remarks as an attempt by the Obama administration to weaken what he called the state’s voter-integrity laws and said the comments demonstrated the administration’s “utter contempt for our country’s system of checks and balances.”
“This end run around the Supreme Court undermines the will of the people of Texas, and casts unfair aspersions on our state’s common-sense efforts to preserve the integrity of our elections process,” Mr. Perry said.
Well, of course. Did anyone really think Obama and Holder would merely swallow the will of the Supreme Court, when they could get creative?
Will Obama/Holder win this battle? Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has his doubts:
Holder’s problem here, though, is that it’s the pre-clearance criteria in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down as irrational and outdated. The court left Section 5 in place, which has the enforcement mechanisms for the DoJ to use if Congress provides a rational formula for singling out states and other jurisdictions for the intrusive level of scrutiny pre-clearance imposes. However, with Section 4 invalidated, the DoJ literally has no jurisdiction at all to use Section 5 any longer anywhere, not until Congress provides it.
What Holder proposes to do is to tell Texas to get DoJ approval for its voting (and redistricting) laws before putting them in force, right after the Supreme Court told Texas and the other Section 4 states that they don’t need to do so. Holder can file a lawsuit to attempt to force compliance, but that’s just bluster. Texas isn’t going to comply, and it’s doubtful a federal court would do anything but laugh at the filing after the ruling last month. The DoJ has no more jurisdiction to tell Texas to get pre-approval for laws passed under its own sovereignty. This is grandstanding on a particularly demagogic scale.
Holder’s statement is nonsense on another level, too. The DoJ can enforce anti-discrimination laws under the Voting Rights Act, especially under Section 2 ”” but just like with the parts of the US that didn’t fall under Section 4 the last 50 years, the DoJ has to wait until actual discrimination takes place. That shifts the burden of proof to the DoJ to prove guilt, where it belongs, instead of onto the handful of jurisdictions to prove themselves innocent of discrimination before a law even gets applied.
Make no mistake about it, this is no side issue. It is one of the most important elements of the Obama administration’s agenda, because it affects future voting, and winning the battle would not only help the Democratic Party, but would represent an expansion of the power of the federal government to place a heavy hand on states whose actions it doesn’t like—and/or to get around SCOTUS rulings it doesn’t like.
[NOTE: Cross-posted at Legal Insurrection.]
Meanwhile, on the Obamacare front
Remember Obamacare? President Obama and Congress do:
It is not often that a president announces his decision not to enforce a law as written, the House of Representatives responds by offering to restore the rule of law by amending that law to permit the delay the president wishes .”‰”‰.”‰”‰. and then the president threatens to veto that legislation if it gets to his desk. But such is the pathbreaking and jaw-dropping spectacle of Obamacare.
The author of the piece, Jeffrey H. Anderson, reminds us also that Obama’s actions on this should act as a goad to the GOP to realize that they can’t trust him not to do the same on any immigration law they might pass, especially on enforcement of border control.
So, what are the House and Senate planning to do about Obamacare at this point? It’s hard to say (and of course only the House has a Republican majority, and not a huge one at that), although that doesn’t stop a lot of people from opining, and pundits from guessing. There’s this, for example (and it might even be true):
U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told TheBlaze Monday he has recruited more than a dozen Senate Republicans to help him defund President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law.
Fifteen Republican senators, including Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ted Cruz (Texas), John Cornyn (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.), James Inhofe (Okla.), David Vitter (La.), James Risch (Idaho), Roger Wicker (Miss.), Jeff Chiesa (N.J.), John Thune (S.D.), Mike Enzi (Wyo.), Deb Fischer (Neb.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), and Chuck Grassley (Iowa), will block a continuing resolution to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30 if it includes funding for Obamacare, Lee said.
Of course, it will take a lot more than fifteen Republican senators to do this. A lot.
[NOTE: Four ways to defunding, from the Heritage Foundation.]
Like a laser
A laser, I tell you.
The Weiner saga
The NY Times editors write:
At some point, the full story of Anthony Weiner and his sexual relationships and texting habits will finally be told.
I say “perish the thought.”
I do not want to know the full story. I do not want to hear about the man again. It is between him and his therapist, his wife, and the people of New York. And since I don’t plan to live there, I don’t have to care about the guy and his sexual proclivities, his penchant for internet thrills, and his lying. It’s an old old story anyway (Bill Clinton; Gary Hart for those of a certain age; etc., etc.).
The Weiner saga is not just about sex, or sexting, or sexual infidelity of the mental sort. It’s about the almost breathtaking capacity of some people to think they can get away with behavior that’s already been uncovered, and that they’ve already sworn to stop. Among other things, it’s about recklessness combined with stupidity, which I shouldn’t think would be a great recommendation for public office.
And even the Times editors seem to agree, saying (do I detect a note of extreme weariness?):
In the meantime, the serially evasive Mr. Weiner should take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye, away from cameras, off the Web and out of the race for mayor of New York City. ”¦
Yes.
Spambot of the day
This time it’s not a message. It’s the spambot’s name:
Catshit Coffee Provider In Singapore.
As a non-coffee drinker, I thought this was some sort of joke. But it turns out that it’s not:
New York’s crappiest cup of coffee is also its most expensive.
At $30 a cup, “Kopi Luwak” is made from beans collected from the droppings of a small, cat-like mammal called a civet…
The pricey coffee originated in Indonesia and the Philippines, where folks noticed the civets eating coffee berries, collected their droppings and picked out the beans.
Coffee consultant Michael Peter, 26, of Tamp Tamp Coffee Lab in New York, said the cats’ stomach acids produce a smooth-tasting brew…Because of its unique processing, a pound can cost from $340 to $400…
Ben Lieberman, 28, a coffee shop manager from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was turned off after the first sip.
“It has a dirty taste to it,” Lieberman said. “It’s heavy. It’s like, ‘Dude you just crapped in my coffee.'”
No, not the Onion. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
It’s all…
…in how you look at it:
That’s lil’ ole earth, right above the arrow. Saturn and its rings are at the top-left and top of the photo.
Shelby Steele: what the Zimmerman case says about today’s civil rights establishment
In an excellent article (please read the whole thing), Shelby Steele writes:
In the Zimmerman/Martin case the civil-rights establishment is fighting for the poetic truth that white animus toward blacks is still such that a black teenager””Skittles and ice tea in hand””can be shot dead simply for walking home. But actually this establishment is fighting to maintain its authority to wield poetic truth””the authority to tell the larger society how it must think about blacks, how it must respond to them, what it owes them and, then, to brook no argument.
The Zimmerman/Martin tragedy has been explosive because it triggered a fight over authority. Who gets to say what things mean””the supporters of George Zimmerman, who say he acted in self-defense, or the civil-rights establishment that says he profiled and murdered a black child? Here we are. And where is the authority to resolve this? The six-person Florida jury, looking carefully at the evidence, decided that Mr. Zimmerman pulled the trigger in self-defense and not in a fury of racial hatred.
And here, precisely at the point of this verdict, is where all of America begins to see this hollowed-out civil-rights establishment slip into pathos. Almost everyone saw this verdict coming. It is impossible to see how this jury could have applied the actual law to this body of evidence and come up with a different conclusion. The civil-rights establishment’s mistake was to get ahead of itself, to be seduced by its own poetic truth even when there was no evidence to support it. And even now its leaders call for a Justice Department investigation, and they long for civil lawsuits to be filed””hoping against hope that some leaf of actual racial victimization will be turned over for all to see. This is how a once-great social movement looks when it becomes infested with obsolescence.
And not just obsolescence, or even mediocrity. The civil rights movement today is infested with corruption and shameless mendacity in the pursuit of perpetuating its leaders’ own power. Voluntarily giving up power is hard and seldom done.
For those who don’t know who Shelby Steele is, here’s his bio. I’ve only read some of his articles, not his books, but he’s written quite a few, mostly on the subject of race relations, including this one entitled White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, which looks especially interesting right about now.
Note that a lot of my posts have either directly or indirectly dealt with issues of race ever since the Zimmerman trial. That’s not historically been one of my main topics on this blog, although I see from my “categories” list that so far I’ve written 157 posts on the topic (this one should be the 158th). Some people may think that writing so much about race right now is a distraction from the real issues: Benghazi, the IRS scandal, Obamacare, immigration, the economy, the Middle East, and all the rest. My answer? I’ve already written tons on those topics, and I have never neglected them nor do I plan to do so. The Zimmerman case has for the moment spotlighted a whole host of festering problems that trouble this country greatly, and which affect not just George Zimmerman or Trayvon Martin and their families, or even black people, but the nation as a whole: the law of self-defense, Second Amendment rights, the growing power of the liberal/left wing of the Democratic Party, the shameless manipulation of public opinion with the full cooperation of the MSM, the economy, and the social fabric that supports the family and child-rearing. And that’s just for starters; you can probably think of more.
J. Russell George…
…learns what a high-tech lynching feels like.
And to think he once went out with Michelle Obama. Well, not really; they were both members of Harvard Law’s Black Law Students Association while students there, and members of the group used to go out for pizza together.
But that was then. This is now, and he’s on the Other Side now. So his credibility must be destroyed by lies.
[Hat tip: Powerline.]
Who was…
…that masked man?:
George Zimmerman, who has been in hiding since he was acquitted of murder in the death of Trayvon Martin, emerged to help rescue a family who was trapped in an overturned vehicle, police said today.
Zimmerman was one of two men who came to the aid of Dana and Mark Gerstle and their two children, who were trapped inside a blue Ford Explorer SUV that had rolled over after traveling off the highway in Sanford, Fla. at approximately 5:45 p.m. Thursday, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Zimmerman did start wearing a mask, there have been so many death threats against him.
[ADDENDUM: My favorite comment to one of the articles about this Zimmerman rescue is someone who wrote that NBC has footage of the incident that it’s running backwards, so that Zimmerman is shown pushing the family back into the upside-down car.
Another:
Eric Holder probably has DOJ legal interns busily researching whether or not there are any federal crimes for unauthorized use of a fire extinguisher, or illegally parking on the shoulder of the road, or crossing against the traffic, etc.
And:
I heard angela corey was going to charge him with child abuse cause he pulled the adults out first.]
[ADDENDUM II: Althouse continues the theme.]
Moving right along…
Just a coincidence, no doubt:
The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 24, 2012, according to White House visitor logs.
On April 25, 2012, Wilkins’ office sent the exempt organizations determinations unit “additional comments on the draft guidance” for approving or denying tea party tax-exempt applications, according to the IRS inspector general’s report.
[Hat tip: Ace.]