When in doubt, pull the race card. Attorney General Eric Holder has been under a lot of pressure lately about his role in Operation Fast and Furious, the Department of Justice program that put 2000 high powered weapons into the hands of ruthless Mexican drug cartels. Two federal agents and more than 300 Mexican citizens have been killed as a result. Holder claims he didn't know about gunwalking techniques being used in the operation until the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, telling House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa on May 3, 2011 he had known about Fast and Furious for "a couple of weeks." However, five memos addressed directly to Holder, detailing Operation Fast and Furious, are dated July and August 2010, nearly a year before Holder admitted he knew under oath. The Justice Department continues to stonewall the investigation into the lethal operation and still hasn't given the Terry family details about their son's murder one year later.
Now, as the possibility of a Holder impeachment looms, he's pulling the race card as the New York Times' Charlie Savage adamantly defends him.
For nearly three years, Republicans have attacked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on national security and civil rights issues. For months, they have criticized him over a gun-trafficking investigation gone awry, with dozens of leaders calling for his resignation. Last week, more than 75 members of Congress co-sponsored a House resolution expressing “no confidence” in his leadership.
As Mr. Holder’s third year as attorney general draws to a close, no member of President Obama’s cabinet has drawn more partisan criticism. In an interview last week, Mr. Holder said he had no intention of resigning before the administration’s term was up, although he said he had made no decision about whether he would continue after 2012 should the president win re-election.
“I think that what I’m doing is right,” Mr. Holder said. “And election-year politics, which intensifies everything, is not going to drive me off that course.”
But Mr. Holder contended that many of his other critics — not only elected Republicans but also a broader universe of conservative commentators and bloggers — were instead playing “Washington gotcha” games, portraying them as frequently “conflating things, conveniently leaving some stuff out, construing things to make it seem not quite what it was” to paint him and other department figures in the worst possible light.
Of that group of critics, Mr. Holder said he believed that a few — the “more extreme segment” — were motivated by animus against Mr. Obama and that he served as a stand-in for him. “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” he said, “both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”
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There you have it folks. If you want answers to why the federal government under Barack Obama and Eric Holder's leadership would deliberately arm the most ruthless criminals in the Western Hemisphere, you're obviously a racist. I have a feeling I know which "bloggers" Charlie Savage is referring to and no, we aren't racists and we won't stop writing or talking about Fast and Furious/MurderGate until we get answers. It is convenient Savage, a journalist at the New York Times, fails to mention Brian Terry by name and blatantly leaves out the death toll of Fast and Furious in Mexico.
Mary Chastain at Big Journalism has more, pointing out the NYT's hypocrisy when it comes to defending Holder after chastizing President Bush's Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:
Charlie Savage’s newest piece at The New York Times is, as my friend Sean Arthur on Twitter says, a shameless PR drivel and allows Mr. Holder to make ludicrous statements without challenge and pulls the race card. The New York Times and Charlie Savage are really going to do this after all the articles they published during Attorney General Alberto Gonzales scandals? Give me a break.
The hypocrisy at The New York Times is too much to take. I’ve read The New York Times articles on Mr. Gonzales over and over. I never once saw an article that was sympathetic to Mr. Gonzales. My favorite piece is an editorial titled, “Why This Scandal Matters.” What a great title! The Times covered every single detail in the Gonzales “scandal” someone had to write an editorial to justify it.
This “scandal” involved the firing of eight US Attorneys. No one died. Not a single person. Three hundred-plus Mexicans have died because of Operation Fast and Furious. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered with a gun from the operation on American soil. I wonder if The New York Times and Mr. Savage could explain to me why Mr. Gonzales’s scandal mattered and Fast and Furious does not?
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