RUTHFULLY YOURS

Eric Holder’s tenure in the Justice Department has been marked by scandal after scandal.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article is adapted from John Fund and Hans A. von Spakovsky’s new book, Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department gave bad advice to President Obama and the Pentagon in the controversial Bergdahl prisoner trade that the president could ignore federal law requiring prior notification to Congress. This is just the latest example of how Holder helps the administration ignore the rule of law and crafts his “legal” opinions based on the desired political outcome, not the actual state of the law.

Under Eric Holder, the Justice Department has stood the old Ronald Reagan maxim “trust but verify” on its head and adopted a “trust and we won’t let you verify” approach to its activities.

Even Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of the New York Times, has said that “the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.”

How much is the Justice Department’s uncooperative and secretive approach the product of Eric Holder’s management style and how much is in response to President Obama’s wishes? We would argue that the most likely explanation is that a president almost always appoints the attorney general he’s most comfortable with, someone who will watch his back on institutional issues and vigorously pursue his enforcement priorities. In Eric Holder, Barack Obama has found both a kindred spirit and a heat shield against criticism that would often be directed at the White House. And Holder has made it clear that he is “part of the president’s team.”

Eric Holder and Barack Obama first met in November 2004, at a small Washington dinner party celebrating Obama’s election to the Senate that month hosted by Ann Walker Marchant, a niece of Vernon Jordan and a former Clinton-administration White House aide. “Obama sat next to Eric Holder, a former Justice Department official in the Clinton administration. The two found they had much in common — they were lawyers, they had gone to Columbia University, and they were basketball enthusiasts. The party was the start of a continuing Holder-Obama relationship,” reported Newsday. “We just clicked,” said Holder.

For the Obama administration narrative to be accurate about the swap of five Taliban/al-Qaeda-related kingpins for Sgt. Bergdahl, we are asked to believe the following:

1. Sgt. Bergdahl was in ill health; thus the need for alacrity. Surely we will expect to see him in an enfeebled state on his return to the U.S.

2. Sgt. Bergdahl was in grave and sudden danger from his captors; thus the need for alacrity. We expect to see proof of that on his return to the U.S.

3. The five Taliban detainees will be under guard in Qatar for a year. We expect in June 2015 to know that they are still there in Qatar.

4. The five Taliban detainees don’t really pose a grave threat [2] to U.S. troops, given that we will be gone from Afghanistan in 2016. We expect not to hear that any of the five are reengaged in the war effort [3] to kill Americans between 2015-16.

5. Sgt. Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction.” We expect to have confirmation of that fact [4] once his intelligence file is released and more evidence is adduced that all of his platoon-mates were wrong (or perhaps vindictive and partisan [5]) in stating that he voluntarily left their unit — deserted — to meet up with the Taliban.

6. Sgt. Bergdahl was captured on the “field of battle”; we expect to have confirmation that he was taken unwillingly by the enemy amid a clash of arms.

7. Sgt. Bergdahl was not a collaborator. We expect to learn confirmation of the fact that he did not disclose information to his captors.

Egypt gave Anne Patterson the boot over her support for the Muslim Brotherhood and intimidation of Egyptian Christians.

Youm 7, a popular newspaper in Egypt (the sixth most accessed website in the nation according to Alexa), conducted a survey this morning asking its readers “Do you support the call to kick U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson out because she interfered in Egyptian affairs?”

A whopping 87.93% said yes, 10.54% said no, and 1.53% were indifferent.

El Fagr reported that, during their most recent phone conversation, Patterson demanded that Egypt’s recently appointed Supreme Commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, release all Muslim Brotherhood members currently being held for questioning.

Patterson called on Egyptians not to protest — including by meeting with the Coptic Pope and asking him specifically to urge the nation’s Christian minority not to oppose the Brotherhood, even though Christians were naturally the most to suffer under Morsi.

So Obama promoted her and she’s still continuing her Jihad on behalf of the Brotherhood.

The desire of some elements in the Middle East to “eliminate Islamists entirely from the political scene” was complicating the fight against violent extremists, a senior State Department official said on Monday, citing the tendency of some to “conflate Islamists with terrorists.”

On March 20, 2013, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the topic of “Building an Immigration System Worthy of American Values.” I concluded my prepared testimony for that hearing by saying,

Law enforcement is at its best when it creates a climate of deterrence to convince those who might be contemplating violating the law that such an effort is likely to be discovered and that if discovered, adverse consequences will result for the law violators. Current policies and statements by the administration, in my view, encourages aspiring illegal aliens around the world to head for the United States. In effect the starter’s pistol has been fired and for these folks, the finish line to this race is the border of the United States.

Back when I was an INS special agent I recall that Doris Meissner who was, at the time, the commissioner of the INS, said that the agency needed to be “customer oriented.” Unfortunately, while I agree about the need to be customer oriented what Ms. Meissner and too many politicians today seem to have forgotten is that the “customers” of the INS and of our government in general, are the citizens of the United States of America.

As bad as things were 15 months ago when I testified before that Senate hearing, things have gotten far worse. A human tidal wave of young illegal aliens is now crashing on America’s southern border each and every day. They have been spurred on by the clear messages being sent to aspiring illegal aliens from around the world that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an agency that is charged with protecting our homeland, has been reduced to providing concierge service for aliens who violate our borders and violate our immigration laws.

It has been said that we only get one opportunity to make a first impression. Generally speaking, the first laws foreign nationals encounter when they deal with the United States are our immigration laws. The statements of the president and high-ranking members of his administration could not provide more encouragement to people from around the world that our borders and our laws do not matter.

When Congress repeatedly refused to go along with the DREAM Act, the president acted unilaterally invoking what he deemed “prosecutorial discretion” to provide hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who may be as old as 31 years of age with temporary lawful status, including employment authorization, if they claim to have entered the United States before their 16th birthday. I purposely used the term “if they claim” because these hundreds of thousands of un-inspected aliens will most likely not be interviewed nor will agents be made available to conduct investigations into the applications that they file. This is a virtual open invitation to fraud.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Nick Adams, an internationally renowned Australian speaker, lecturer, author, and media commentator. He is best known for his work in the field of American exceptionalism. He is the author of the new book, The American Boomerang: How the World’s Greatest ‘Turnaround’ Nation Will Do It Again.

FP: Nick Adams, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Adams: Thank you Jamie, good to be here.

FP: Congratulations on your new book. Let’s begin with this question: Why does an Australian care what happens in America?

Adams: Jamie, what’s good for America is good for the world. A weak America is a weak world. A strong America is a strong world. The world becomes a much more dangerous place when America is weak. Everyone in the world should care about America staying number one.

FP: Tell us about your new book and why people should read it.

Adams: This book violates left-wing taboos in every chapter, if not in every line.

More than that, the most powerful case exists against anti-Americanism, and yet it has never been made. I’m making it, and people need to hear it. I’m trying to create a thirst among Americans for rediscovering and reaffirming American values. Some might say “You’re preaching to the choir,” I say: “Most of the choir has forgotten the melody!”

Also, I wanted a book written by an average guy with a love of the middle class. The America I love is the real, traditional one: entrepreneurial, family-oriented, churchgoing, Norman Rockwell-loving, flag waving etc. The only way America can get back is by believing in itself again. I want America to be relaxed and comfortable with its position in the world.

FP: Why do you love America so much?

Adams: I love America because it is confident, competitive, courageous, faithful, idealistic, innovative, inspirational, charitable, and optimistic. It is everything as a nation that I wish to be as a person.

FP: You are an expert on American exceptionalism. What makes America exceptional?

It didn’t take long. Exactly two days after the announcement of the Berghal/Taliban-Five deal, Cuba’s Terror-Sponsoring (official classification by U.S. State Dept.) regime started clamoring for an Alan Gross/Cuban-Five deal.

Alan Gross is a Jewish American held hostage by the Castro regime since December 2009 when he was arrested while distributing computers and satellite phones to Cuba’s microscopic ( and mostly regime-collaborationist) Jewish community while on assignment for USAID (United States Agency for International Development.) After a “trial,” the Castro regime formally sentenced Gross to fifteen years in prison.

“The Cuban Five” are Cuban terrorist/ spies nabbed in south Florida in 1998 and convicted in U.S. federal courts of 26 counts of espionage along with conspiracy to commit murder– of three U.S. citizens. Two of the five communist spies have already had their sentences reduced and been returned to heroes’ welcomes in Cuba.

To add grotesque insult to Alan Gross’ injury, the very people he was attempting to help, “testified” against him in Castro’s kangaroo court almost en masse. You have to be very careful when entering a snake pit like Castro’s Cuba.

Alan Gross’ heart seemed in the right place, but the wisdom of his Cuban mission can be debated. The people he was trying to help—the few Jews who remained in Castro’s Cuba after over 90 per cent fled the communist revolution—were mostly old Bolsheviks who couldn’t bring themselves to break with the old time religion. As mentioned, they and their descendants did their duty to the Castro regime by ratting out Alan Gross during judicial procedures perfectly mimicking those presided over by Andrei Vishinsky during The Great Terror’s show trials.

“Et Tu Adela?” might have been gasped by the hapless Alan Gross during his trial. But we don’t know because his “trial” was closed to the (uncomplaining) press –from CNN to ABC from NBC to CBS from NPR to PBS– who infest Cuba. After all, these “gallant crusades for the truth!” (as Columbia school of Journalism hails it’s graduates) have plenty on their Cuban plates already, what with the vital tasks of transcribing the Stalinist regime’s steady flow of propaganda hand-outs and reporting such bombshell scoops as what Beyonce and Jay-Z wore on their Havana visit.

Two years ago the Southern Poverty Law Center named me, a bar sign and a brand of gun lubricant as hate groups. It wasn’t the punch line to a joke about a Minister, a Rabbi and a Priest. Instead it was another tribute to the research skills of the country’s wealthiest, dumbest and laziest civil rights group.

Morris Dees began in the mail order business and ended up in the mail order civil rights business. Every month elderly retirees receive envelopes covered with pictures of Klansmen burning crosses. Those photos are the SPLC brand the way that the “swoosh” is for Nike and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Dees had already trademarked the KKK.

Their checks bulk up the Southern Poverty Law Center’s $245 million endowment, a few pennies from which are used to hire DailyKos diarists who turn out poorly researched attacks on “hate groups.” That might explain why “Casa D’Ice Signs,” the signs outside a Pennsylvania bar, continues to be listed under “Active Anti-Muslim Groups” by the SPLC despite two solid years of internet ridicule and mockery.

Left-wing cultural revolutionists have a loose definition of “hate,” but they can usually get the “groups” part right. The Southern Poverty Law Center can’t even do that.

With solid research like that, the SPLC’s latest Intelligence Report has everything you expect from an organization that lists a brand of gun lubricant as a hate group. There are random attacks on celebrities like former Homicide star Richard Belzer and former Saturday Night Live star Victoria Jackson. Belzer is deemed guilty of promoting JFK conspiracy theories and Jackson called the TV show Glee “sickening.”

It’s not exactly the KKK, and Belzer, who is Jewish, was unhappy to be implicitly associated him with the Nazis. “As a Jewish person whose grandfather represented Israel at the United Nations before it was a state and an uncle, who as a member of the Resistance, fought the Nazis in World War Two, I am deeply hurt and offended,” he wrote.

A spy who funneled Stingers to the mujahedeen, helped hunt drug lord Pablo Escobar, and managed the turncoat Aldrich Ames.

Nearly two decades into Jack Devine’s career at the CIA, he was tasked with what was then the agency’s largest-ever covert program: the effort to aid the mujahedeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Should the agency take a huge risk by providing the Afghan fighters with sophisticated shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles? Mr. Devine and his colleagues decided that the answer was yes. He remembers walking into the CIA director’s office in 1986 with a report on the controversial introduction of hundreds of these Stingers. “Mr. Director,” he recalls saying, “we had a tremendous breakthrough yesterday. We deployed the Stinger and we shot down three helicopters.” Director William Casey, a passionate Cold Warrior, responded: “Jack, this changes it all, doesn’t it?”

“Good Hunting,” Mr. Devine’s memoir, is a refresher course on the breadth of America’s covert campaigns against the spread of Soviet influence and ideology, and Mr. Devine’s remarkable 32-year career is a microcosm of the secret thrust and counterthrust that defined those years. The son of a blue-collar, Irish-Catholic family from Philadelphia, Mr. Devine began at the CIA in the 1960s after reading a book about the agency and sending in a handwritten request for employment. He rose through the ranks, ultimately overseeing the entirety of the agency’s clandestine operations in the mid-1990s.

It seems that he was present at every major CIA operation. He served as a junior case officer in Chile during the 1973 coup that overthrew Salvador Allende’s government. Mr. Devine was active during the CIA’s operations against the Medellín cartel, chasing down the notorious Pablo Escobar at a time when drug violence appeared to be taking over Latin America. During the multiyear tug of war after the 1991 Haitian coup, Mr. Devine traveled to Port-au-Prince to meet the head of Haiti’s secret police. In a classic story of how behind-the-scenes intelligence relationships sometimes complement more public diplomatic efforts, Mr. Devine writes that he was sent by the White House to tell the police chief “to get out of town or the U.S. Government would be visiting him in full force.”

By 2024 there will be more than 40 million uninsured, roughly 10% more than today.

President Obama claims the debate over the Affordable Care Act is “over,” but in coming weeks and months expect it to intensify. Health-insurance companies will soon begin releasing preliminary rate estimates for next year’s plans. Industry experts say consumers should once again brace for significantly higher premiums.

Fearing the political fallout before November’s elections, the administration last month quietly increased by billions of dollars the “risk corridor” funds that insurance companies can use to staunch their losses.

Yet since premium growth has averaged at least 5% over the past five years, it is unlikely the law’s federal subsidies will increase enough to make up the difference in out-of-pocket premium costs. As this happens, lower- and even middle-income consumers will be forced out of the private insurance market. As my colleague at the Medical Industry Leadership Institute, Michael Ramlet, and I show in a paper published last month, the law’s structural problems will take years to fully manifest.

Using the 2014 health-insurance exchange enrollment data and a micro-simulation model funded in part by the Department of Health and Human Services, we estimate the national and state impact of the Affordable Care Act on insurance prices and enrollment from 2015-24. The average premium for an individual exchange health plan (Silver) will increase by $1,375 by 2019 while the average family premium for the same plan will increase by $4,198—outpacing the average increases from 2008 to 2013. Consumers who saw spikes in their health premiums last year will experience the same trauma this year. But the steepest price increases will not occur until 2017 and after, when three things happen.

Hillary Clinton is making the rounds promoting her new book, or, as our colleague Bret Stephens describes it, her “artifact containing printed words.” In an interview that aired last night, ABC’s Diane Sawyer “wondered if Americans would understand why [Mrs.] Clinton needs a speaking fee of $200,000, ‘five times the median income in this country for one speech,’ ” as the Washington Free Beacon reports.

Mrs. Clinton’s reply: “I thought making speeches for money was a much better thing than getting connected with any one group or company as so many people who leave public life do.”

The former first lady pleaded poverty: “We came out of the White House not only dead broke but in debt. . . . We struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education, you know, it was not easy. . . . We had to make double the money, because of, obviously, taxes, and then pay off the debts and get us houses and take care of family members.”

There is some truth to this: According to the Associated Press: “[Mrs.] Clinton’s Senate financial disclosure forms, filed for 2000, show assets between $781,000 and almost $1.8 million. . . . The same form, however, showed that the Clintons owed between $2.3 million and $10.6 million in legal bills.”

In response, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus tells the AP: “Whether she was flat broke or not is not the issue. It’s tone deaf to average people.”

Yet there are some factual problems with Mrs. Clinton’s assertions. National Review’s Andrew Johnson notes a New York Times report from December 2000, more than a month before the end of Mr. Clinton’s term, that Mrs. Clinton had just inked a book contract with an $8 million advance.

That’s before agent fees and taxes, and even the gross amount is less than the upper estimate of the Clintons’ legal debt, so you can see why she might have felt it necessary to accept some speaking fees too. Only she couldn’t. By the time Mr. Clinton left office, Mrs. Clinton was already a U.S. senator, and Senate rules prohibit members from accepting honoraria (book fees are an exception). She didn’t start speaking for money until she left the secretary of state’s office. By that point the Clinton’s financial security was no longer in question.

Then again, who says the average American can’t relate to this sort of thing? Think of it this way: If somebody offered you $200,000 to give a speech, wouldn’t you take it? You may not be the average American, but we’ll bet she would too.