More Mystery Over AP Subpoenas Process At Justice Department

Well another fine mess Mr Holder you have got yourself into … As I noted in a story Wednesday, Justice’s Director of Public Affairs is supposed to be consulted on all subpoenas to the media or for media-related phone records. In the past, that consultation has prompted the narrowing of subpoenas in some cases and their rejection in other cases, though the ultimate decision rests with more senior Justice Department officials.

 

Obama Eyes Gov. Deval Patrick to Replace Eric Holder at Justice

Tipsville . . .

Sneed is told that Attorney General Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder’s days are numbered.

Sneed hears President Barack Obama, who is this/close to Holder, has set his sights on Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as a possible replacement “when the heat dies down on the latest hot-button scandals to hit the U.S. Justice Department,” said a top White House source.

…

“The president will wait until the heat dies down — and a little time has passed beyond that — before he does anything to Holder because Holder is a close pal, and that’s a big deal in the White House,” said a top Dem source. “Holder is also a close buddy of Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett,” the source said. “Obama knows a change has to be made, but he wants Holder to leave with his reputation intact.”

Read more at suntimes.com …

And now the pruning begins … But Holder said he recused himself …

It’s A Pity

NEW YORK POST: Justice, Tea, and the AP.

At hearings yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, conservatives found themselves defending the press when they hammered away at Attorney General Eric Holder over the Justice Department’s secret gathering of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors.

Pity the AP didn’t show similar vigor when conservatives were hollering about their own mistreatment by overreaching government officials. That was roughly two years ago, when conservative groups complained the IRS was singling them out in its partisan treatment of their applications for tax-exempt status.

Now that the IRS has admitted guilt and the acting commissioner has resigned, the complaints are getting full coverage. But a Factiva search of news stories for the words “IRS” and “tea party” at the time the complaints were raised found only a handful of AP stories on the subject.

They were happy to be tools, until they found themselves treated with the respect that people who are happy to be tools tend to get.

Take a lesson from Venezuela, where the press was summarily executed by Chavez and his minions.

Carney Cites Fox News As Reason Not To Comment On AP Wiretapping [US has only 1 free press outlet]

“Imagine the story on Fox if that were to happen…”

Video at link … more at breitbart.com …

 

They Got Away With Fast And Furious

Like a bad bacteria, they learn. What would have happened, or not happened if they hadn’t gotten away with fast and furious.

Think about about it. Our border agent was killed with the guns from fast and furious, oh well … So Holder recuses himself from the AP phone records scandal. They learn.

Related: The US Dept of Justice is apparently the paramilitary wing of Media Matters.

The Atlantic: Why Eric Holder’s Excuse for Spying on Reporters Isn’t Enough.

JAMES BOVARD: A Brief History of IRS Political Targeting. “The IRS has usually done an excellent job of stifling investigations of its practices. A 1991 survey of 800 IRS executives and managers by the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics revealed that three out of four respondents felt entitled to deceive or lie when testifying before a congressional committee. The agency also has a long history of seeking to intimidate congressional critics.”

Don’t get impeachment talk ahead of the public …. there is manual for how to do this … Fortunately for people interested in these things Tip O’Neill included an informative chapter in his autobiography Man of the House that detailed not only the twists and turns that lead him as Democrat Majority Leader at the time, to suspect that the Nixon administration was up to no good in terms of political intimidation but of the right decisions made by the congress and the wrong decisions by the administration that led to their own downfall.

Dogs don’t bark at parked cars ….

SENATOR: HOLDER MUST COME CLEAN ON JOURNALIST PHONE RECORD SEIZURE

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to come clean about his role in the Department of Justice’s decision to seize phone records of the Associated Press secretly.

According to DOJ documents AG Holder must approve of all wiretaps, even of the AP.

GOVT TAPS PRESS PHONE RECORDS FOR MONTHS

This is bad, wants to make sure all it’s stooges are on the program — What to do, a tyrannical administration would just tap the phones of their own praetorian guard. Image that….

GOVT TAPS PRESS PHONE RECORDS FOR MONTHS

20 phone lines monitored…

AP: ‘Massive and unprecedented intrusion’…

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” Pruitt said.

The government would not say why it sought the records. Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

 

Kansas And The 2nd Amendment Protection Act

Kansas signed the Second Amendment Protection Act (SB 102) into law last month. The bill protects gun owners from from new federal gun control laws and would actually make it illegal to enforce those laws within the state of Kansas.

Eric Holder threatened Kansas last week calling the new state law unconstitutional.

In response Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, fired back. The general gist of the message was, “You’re wrong. You don’t understand the Constitution. Bring it on.”

Guns Save Lives has the full story. Kobach insisted the State of Kansas was determined to restore the Constitution to protect the right of its citizens to keep and bear arms.

 

Due Process

See how easy that was?

Rand Paul, Stands Tall

So I guess it wasn’t a waste of time after all???

Rand Stands!

After years in the shadows, the administration’s secret drone program burst  into very public view Wednesday with lawmakers grilling the attorney general  over legal justification for targeted killings and Sen. Rand Paul launching an old-style one-man  filibuster to demand answers from President Obama.

The Kentucky Republican held the floor for almost 13 hours, effectively  blocking a vote on the nomination of John O.  Brennan, whom Mr. Obama has tapped to be CIA director. He said he would relent only if the administration publicly vowed not  to target Americans on U.S. soil.