Nobody should celebrate the announcement that Attorney General Eric Holder will be leaving the administration this year. Whoever replaces Holder will be just as radical and ideological. What the replacement will enjoy, however, is a clean slate. Some will naively assume a new attorney general means a fresh start and an attorney general better than Holder.
Don’t fool yourself. The best thing that could happen for President Obama is for Holder to go and be replaced by someone just like him. He’ll get the good without the bad.
Holder’s replacement will be just as radical as Holder. We’ve seen it over and over. Replace the radical and lawless Hilda Solis at Labor with the even more radical and lawless Tom Perez. Replace Leon Panetta with the certifiable Chuck Hagel.
If the Senate Republicans were willing to go to war over any replacement, and if the House was willing to defund the most radical decisions of DOJ, it might be different.
But we know that isn’t going to happen.
So even after Eric Holder is gone, the Civil Rights Division will be just as racialist and lawless. The Criminal Division will still refuse to prosecute election gangsters like Melowese Richardson in Ohio who proudly said on camera she voted six times for President Obama in 2012. It will still refuse to prosecute large banks for criminal conspiracy because they are “too big” to prosecute.
Holder’s replacement will still refuse to do anything about IRS employees who gave confidential tax information of pro-family groups to ProPublica, in naked violation of criminal laws.
The solicitor general under Obama will still argue that laws on the books may be ignored by an imperial presidency and that religious liberty is not so important.
The Civil Rights Division will still attack peaceful abortion protesters and voter ID laws in court.
The Tribal Justice unit at DOJ will still argue that sovereign oppressed Indian nations should be given more power at the expense of the United States.
Radicals overseeing the prosecution of Gitmo terrorists will still tell line lawyers that the most important criteria in their work is how history and European nations view them.
The Civil Rights Division will still sue schools to allow boys to dress in drag.
New and creative ways to allow illegal aliens to remain in the country will be forwarded to front-line officers.
I could go on and on. The point is that nothing is going to change.
People who think Holder’s departure will mark a moment of sanity don’t understand the radical ideological virus that has raced through the DOJ bureaucracy. Holder’s thousands of underlings are on autopilot. They don’t need orders. There are hundreds of political overseers who will hold the radical course.
Pam Karlan, the deputy assistant attorney general overseeing American elections, will still be an unrepentant liar, yet praised by all her fellow travelers.
United States attorneys will still instruct assistant United States attorneys to disregard sentencing standards and various federal laws when charging drug defendants.
It will all continue.
Worse, Obama could appoint an acting attorney general under the Vacancies Reform Act that need not obtain Senate confirmation. Just imagine that circus – an unconfirmed attorney general for a year, unaccountable to anyone except the West Wing.
So keep the champagne corked. Don’t toast Holder’s pending departure. As the Who sang, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
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