Eric Holder's Animus Towards His Critics

COMMENTARY Progressivism

Eric Holder's Animus Towards His Critics

Jul 17, 2014 1 min read
COMMENTARY BY
Hans A. von Spakovsky

Election Law Reform Initiative Manager, Senior Legal Fellow

Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration.

Were you aware that  your opposition to Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama is due at least in part because of your “racial animus,” and not because you disagree with their policies and abuse of their constitutional authority?

That, anyway, is Holder’s latest claim, which shows how disconnected the attorney general is from reality. It is also more evidence of something John Fund and I outline in our book, Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department, that Holder views the world through a racial prism that distorts his judgment.

Holder on Sunday also repeated the false claims he has made before about voter-ID laws preventing “[y]oung people, African Americans, Hispanics, [and] older people” from voting despite the years of evidence from states like Georgia and Indiana that turnout — including of minority and other voters — has gone up, not down, after they implemented their voter-ID laws.

When the Justice Department made these same claims against South Carolina’s voter-ID law in 2012, a federal court threw that claim out of court. South Carolina’s law is in place today and has been implemented without any problems. Holder’s false claims about voter ID laws show one of his greatest failings as attorney general: an unwillingness to let the facts and evidence override his bias and ideological fervor.

Holder admitted that the country “has made lots of progress” but maintained we are still a nation of cowards on racial issues. This from an attorney general who has selectively enforced civil-rights laws on a racial basis, such as when the department dropped a case it had already won against New Black Panther Party members who intimidated voters in front of a Philadelphia polling place in 2008. A federal district court judge later concluded that internal Justice Department documents about the New Black Panther case contradicted sworn testimony that no political leadership at DOJ was involved in the decision to dismiss the case.

Unfortunately, as Fund and I outline in our book, the only “progress” Holder has made at the Justice Department is to politicize it to a degree not seen before under any prior administration. So much for the impartial pursuit of justice.

 - Hans A. von Spakovsky is the manager of The Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow.

Originally appeared in NRO's "The Corner"