When Will It End?

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” — John Adams, 'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,' December 1770

The verdict was met by "mostly peaceful" demonstrations, as the media likes to call them, when they're not interested in discussing the demonstrators who weren't peaceful. The liveliest protests occurred not in Florida, where the Zimmerman-Martin incident and trial occurred, but in California and New York. Windows were broken, police were pelted with rocks, reporters were assaulted, American flags were burned, and roads were shut down.

It could have been a lot worse - many authorities feared it would be. Perhaps underplaying the violence helped to keep things from getting worse. But what was the point of even the entirely peaceful demonstrations? During the height of unrest in Sanford, Florida after Martin died, we were told the angry demonstrators just wanted a fair trial. Well, they got one, even though Florida law had to be bent out of shape to produce it. Outrageous charges were filed, less outrageous charges were introduced at the last minute, the prosecution withheld evidence from the defense, the judge sometimes seemed to conduct herself as an assistant to the prosecution... and Zimmerman still won a full acquittal.

Profiting from the death of a child is sick and disgusting. Unfortunately, this describes the circle of exploiters promoting the Trayvon Martin traveling show after his death in February 2012. And if you're Trayvon's parents, there's nothing like having the president, the attorney general, the state attorney general, several civil rights lawyers, and invested others to help you in your campaign.

Shame on Sybrina Fulton, Tracy Martin, the State of Florida, the lawyers, and all the vultures picking a dead kid's bones clean for a lousy buck and political points.

In his column "Race Hustlers" last Thursday, Mark Alexander wrote:

"Once the race hustlers and DoJ had plowed the Florida fields, Obama, the consummate racial agitator, nationalized the Zimmerman/Martin case by sowing this seed a month after the incident: 'This is a tragedy, uh ... uh and when I think about this boy, uh, I think about my own kids, uh ... I think that all of us need to do some soul searching to figure out how something like this happened. ... If I had a son he would look like Trayvon, and, uh, you know, I think [his parents] are right to expect that all of us as Americans, uh, are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves."

On the Zimmerman verdict, Alexander notes, "Now that Zimmerman has been rightfully exonerated, perhaps Obama can nationalize the race-based murder of a white man in Georgia by a group of black gangbangers. I suggest he start by declaring, 'If I had a son, he would look like those thugs'.. who murdered Josh Chellew last week."

"Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP is already lobbying Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Mr. Zimmerman on federal civil-rights charges. Millions of Americans would see such federal charges as an example of double jeopardy, and a politicized prosecution to boot. There is no doubt that many law-abiding black men are eyed suspiciously in some quarters because they are black. The motivation may sometimes be racial. But such a discussion also cannot exclude that the main victims of crimes committed by young black men are other blacks. Mr. Zimmerman made many mistakes that February evening, not least failing to heed police advice not to pursue Martin. Despite his acquittal, he will pay for those mistakes for years as he defends against a possible civil suit and must wear a bullet-proof vest to protect himself from threats of violent revenge that he has to take seriously. If there is any satisfaction in his acquittal, it is that the jurors followed the law's requirements that every defendant deserves a fair trial, even one who becomes a symbol of our polarized racial politics." — The Wall Street Journal

I have been reluctant to comment on the Zimmerman case while the trial was in progress or the jury was deliberating. I left that to the talking heads, legal experts, politicians, and race hustlers — they did a bang up job of obfuscating the truth and pushing their ideological prejudices and self-serving agendas. Yes. There were a few reporters and legal experts following the trial and they did a fair job of reporting on the evidence presented to the court and the jury along with speculating on what conclusions that evidence should bring. Most of the experts predicted a not guilty verdict and based on the law and the charge and hey were correct.

I will not comment on the case, the evidence presented, or the verdict but I will comment on three elements of the media circus surrounding the trial. Those three things are:

• The media coverage,
• The politics and misconduct surrounding the prosecution, and
• The racial politics that we are deluged with today

The Media Coverage.

From NBC doctoring the 911 operators tape to the AP calling George Zimmerman a “self-identified” Hispanic the mainstream media has been in the tank for a conviction of Zimmerman. A conviction would have fit their narrative of racism and the acquittal did the same. Even with the trial now behind us, and a verdict of not guilty, Trayvon's parents and their exploiters will no doubt get a maximum rate of return on a kid they hardly knew.

Sybrina's and Tracy's fictionalized image as doting parents has been woven into the Trayvon narrative. How ironic that Martin's and Fulton's detached, aloof, and controlled affect so soon after their ordeal has managed to elicit such emotional responses from the public. Whoever was coaching these people deserves some kind of award -- but then again, money and fame are powerful motivators.

The famous pastor Jamal Bryant called Fulton the "mother of the new civil rights movement" when she addressed his Black Empowerment Temple in Baltimore in 2012. The Baltimore Sun went so far as to describe the "grey cocktail suit with sparkling buttons" Fulton was wearing for her debut. Fulton told the congregation she couldn't cry, because "she had work to do" and God was "using her."

The media also bears a real responsibility for sensationalism. After all, most people can’t spend their days reading police reports or listening to trials. But in Zimmerman’s case, "NBC Nightly News" and the "Today Show" went so far as doctoring tapes of Zimmerman’s 911 call to make it look as if he was fixated on Trayvon Martin’s race.

Even late in the trial, media coverage still showed pictures of a much younger 12-year-old Martin continually reinforcing the image in many minds that Zimmerman had shot a young child, not a six-foot, 17-year-old football player.

Many readers might be surprised to learn that 17-year-olds are almost 50 percent more likely to commit murders than 28-year-olds such as Zimmerman.

While the national media’s rush to judgment against George Zimmerman was going on they seemed to overlook a few cases that did not fit their racial narrative.

Let’s begin with the case of the 13-year old son of Melisa Coon of Kanas City, MO. On March 12, 2012 the New York Daily News:

“A 13-year-old boy who police say was doused with gasoline and lit on fire last week while walking home from school is recovering from first-degree burns to his face and head.

The boy was just two blocks from his home in Kansas City Tuesday when two teenagers began to follow him and then attacked him, his mother, Melissa Coon, said.

Police have described the suspects as black 16-year-olds, while the victim is white.

"We were told it's a hate crime," Coon told KTLA.

"They rushed him on the porch as he tried to get the door open, Coon told KMBC. "(One of them) poured the gasoline, then flicked the Bic, and said, 'This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy."

By lighting the gasoline, the second attacker "produced a large fireball burning the face and hair" of the boy, according to a Kansas City Police Department report obtained by KCTV.

"It was pretty bad stuff," Detective Stacey Taylor told the TV station, adding that police are concerned the boy may have suffered damage to his eyes and lungs.

Coon said her son put out the fire with his shirt and called 911 himself. He was rushed to the hospital and was treated for his injuries.

She believes the students also attend East High School with her son, and said he will not be returning to the school. She also told KMBC her traumatized family plans now plans to move.”

As you can see black on white is not considered a hate crime by the media.

Then there is the case of Sherry West in Georgia and her 13-month old baby. The woman was pushing the baby in her stroller when approached by two black youths. The youths wanted money and when the woman said she had none De'Marquise Elkins, 17, and Dominique Lang, 15 said they would shot here and her baby if she refused their demands Once again the woman stated she had no money so the De'Marquise shot the woman and the baby in the face. Fortunately the bullet on grazed Sherry West but the baby died instantly. According to CNN Justice:

“A Glynn County, Georgia, grand jury indicted two teenage defendants in the death of a 13-month-old boy, the district attorney announced Wednesday.

Because the defendants were younger than 18 when the killing took place on Thursday, they cannot face the death penalty if convicted.

De'Marquise Elkins, 17, and Dominique Lang, 15, were charged with murder last week and made their first court appearance Monday.

CNN is identifying Lang because he is charged as an adult and media in the community have been naming him since he was arrested.

Elkins faces malice and felony murder charges. Lang is accused of felony murder.

Among other charges, each teen is accused of aggravated assault, criminal attempt to commit armed robbery and first-degree cruelty to children. Elkins also is accused of attempted robbery on March 11.

According to the indictment, the gun used in each case was a .22-caliber revolver.

Last week, Sherry West told reporters she was pushing her baby, Antonio Santiago, in a stroller in broad daylight in Brunswick, Georgia, when two teenagers approached her.

One demanded money and pointed at her what West first thought was a fake gun. But he fired at her twice, missing her head and hitting her in the leg, West said. The teen then shot the baby Antonio in the face, West said.

Neither teen entered a plea during Monday's court hearing.

The indictment also includes charges against Elkins' mother, Karimah, his sister, Sabrina Elkins; and an aunt, Katrina Elkins.

Karimah and Katrina Elkins are accused of making a false statement. Karimah and Sabrina Elkins are charged with tampering with evidence by throwing a firearm into a pond. The mother also is accused of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Mom to teenage son accused of shooting baby: 'I love you'

Baby's death marks 2nd time Georgia mom loses a son to violence.”

Once again the national media did not think this a story worthwhile of its time or concern. Of course this was a case of black on white crime and we know these crimes do not merit our attention. Will Eric Holder investigate this as a hate crime?

And finally we have the report from Chicago that over the Fourth of July weekend there were 72 shootings in Chicago, President Obama’s hometown, with 12 dead. According Channel 5, NBC Chicago:

“Twelve men were killed and at least 60 other people were wounded in shootings throughout Chicago during the holiday weekend, including eight people who were shot in a West Side attack Saturday.

The weekend's latest shooting took place Sunday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. in the 4700 block of South Ashland when two men were shot, one fatally.

According to preliminary information, one man, whose age was not known, was killed in the shooting after being shot in the back and another was taken in critical condition with wounds to the arm and chest, said Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Joshua Purkiss.

Two men reportedly fired on a group of people at a home in the 2800 block of West Flournoy Street in the Lawndale neighborhood around 6 p.m. Saturday, police said.

The evening shooting left one person dead, four people in serious-to-critical condition at John H. Stroger Hospital and another in fair-to-serious condition at Mount Sinai Hospital, according to fire officials.

Police said a total of six people were hospitalized after the incident.

One man, 49-year-old Terry Patterson, of an unknown address, was pronounced dead, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.

One of the victims also included an elderly woman, 72, who was shot in the ankle, police said.

No one was in custody for the shooting as of Sunday morning.

A 5-year-old boy was among the wounded -- shot early Friday alongside two men at a West Pullman park. Several hours earlier, a 7-year-old boy was also shot in a park -- this one in Chatham.

A 24-year-old man was charged Saturday in connection with the shooting of the 5-year-old boy.

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy released a statement on the weekend's violence stating "no shooting or murder is acceptable."

"While to date we've had significantly fewer shootings and significantly fewer murders this year, there's more work to be done and we won't rest until everyone in Chicago enjoys the same sense of safety," McCarthy said in the statement.”

How many of those killed or wounded looked like Barack Obama? I guess he nor Eric Holder just don’t give a tinker’s damn about black on black or black on white crime. These crimes just do not fit their racial agenda.

The politics and misconduct surrounding the prosecution.

This was a politically motivated prosecution from the get go. When the Local District Attorney and Chief of Police would not bring charges they were fired by the local politicians and the Governor appointed a special prosecutor as he bowed to the pressure of the race baiters who were brought in from New York and Washington D.C.

Judicial Watch announced last week that it had obtained documents proving that the Department of Justice played a major behind-the-scenes role in organizing protests against George Zimmerman. Zimmerman is on trial for second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in February 2012.

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the DOJ on April 24, 2012. According to the documents JW received, a little-known DOJ unit called the Community Relations Service deployed to Sanford, FL, to organize and manage rallies against Zimmerman.

Among JW’s findings:

• March 25 – 27, 2012, CRS spent $674.14 upon being “deployed to Sanford, FL to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.”
• March 25 – 28, 2012, CRS spent $1,142.84 “in Sanford, FL to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.”
• March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent $892.55 in Sanford, FL “to provide support for protest deployment in Florida.”
• March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent an additional $751.60 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement agencies for the march and rally on March 31.”
• April 3 – 12, 2012, CRS spent $1,307.40 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance, conciliation, and onsite mediation during demonstrations planned in Sanford.”
• April 11-12, 2012, CRS spent $552.35 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17 year old African American male.” – expenses for employees to travel, eat, sleep?

JW says the documents it obtained reveal that CRS is not engaging in its stated mission of conducting “impartial mediation practices and conflict resolution,” but instead engaged on the side of the anti-Zimmerman protesters.

On April 15, 2012, during the height of the protests, the Orlando Sentinel reported, “They [the CRS] helped set up a meeting between the local NAACP and elected officials that led to the temporary resignation of police Chief Bill Lee according to Turner Clayton, Seminole County chapter president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.” The paper quoted the Rev. Valarie Houston, pastor of Allen Chapel AME Church, a focal point for protestors, as saying “They were there for us,” after a March 20 meeting with CRS agents.

Separately, in response to a Florida Sunshine Law request to the City of Sanford, Judicial Watch also obtained an audio recording of a “community meeting” held at Second Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Sanford on April 19, 2012. The meeting, which led to the ouster of Sanford’s Police Chief Bill Lee, was scheduled after a group of college students calling themselves the “Dream Defenders” barricaded the entrance to the police department demanding Lee be fired. According to the Orlando Sentinel, DOJ employees with the CRS had arranged a 40-mile police escort for the students from Daytona Beach to Sanford.

These documents detail the extraordinary intervention by the Justice Department in the pressure campaign leading to the prosecution of George Zimmerman,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “My guess is that most Americans would rightly object to taxpayers paying government employees to help organize racially-charged demonstrations.”

Organizing such protests falls well within both President Barack Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s wheelhouses. Obama was a “community organizer” in his career prior to elective politics, a position that uses protests and street theater, along with threats, to obtain concessions from businesses and other political opponents. Holder has accused America of being a “nation of cowards” for not discussing racial issues enough. He also described black Americans as “my people” during a congressional hearing.

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz says the prosecutors in the George Zimmerman murder trial should be charged with "prosecutorial misconduct" for suggesting the defendant planned the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin.

"That is something no prosecutor should be allowed to get away with … to make up a story from whole cloth," Dershowitz told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

Dershowitz called Guy's statement "such speculation. How does he get into the mind of Zimmerman? He hasn't cross-examined him, he hasn't met him.

"To ask the jury to believe that is to ask the jury to convict based on complete and utter speculation and that's not the way the law operates."

A day earlier, prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda said Zimmerman — whom he labeled a "wannabe cop" — "followed" and "tracked" Martin after profiling him as a criminal.

Dershowitz said not only should Zimmerman have not been charged with second-degree murder, but prosecutors should not have pushed to have manslaughter and child abuse added to the list of possible jury verdicts.

“It's utterly irresponsible. The idea that the prosecution can try the case on a murder theory and then, at the last minute, substitute manslaughter, even though it seems to be permitted generally under Florida law — it's a big mistake to allow it in a case like this,” he said.

"And then the very idea of even suggesting child abuse in a case like this is so irresponsible."

Dershowitz praised the closing argument of defense lawyer Mark O'Mara.

"He did the right thing by being methodical and factual because this is a case where the prosecution's case is all emotion and the defense case is all factual," the famed civil-rights lawyer said.

"Emotionally, obviously everybody can identify with a young, unarmed 17-year-old who ends up dead, and emotionally, as President Barack Obama said, he's all of our children."

Dershowitz — whose clients have included Claus von Bulow, Mike Tyson, Patricia Hearst, and former televangelist Jim Bakker — said the case had "reasonable doubt" written all over it.

"Nobody knows who started the initial physical encounter, who threw the first blow — and if you don't know that you have to have a reasonable doubt," he said.

"Nobody knows for sure who screamed, 'Help me, help me.' You have to have a reasonable doubt about that. Nobody knows for sure who was on top and who was on bottom, though the overwhelming forensic evidence suggests that Zimmerman was on the bottom having his head banged by a younger, stronger man. You have to have reasonable doubt there."

Immediately after the verdict was announced, however, the NAACP and outspoken activist Al Sharpton called on the Justice Department to launch a federal civil-rights probe, charging that the case had been racially tainted.

Dershowitz is calling for a civil-rights probe as well. But he contends the person whose rights were violated was Zimmerman.

“I think there were violations of civil rights and civil liberties — by the prosecutor,” said the criminal-law expert. “The prosecutor sent this case to a judge, and willfully, deliberately, and in my view criminally withheld exculpatory evidence.”

He added: “They denied the judge the right to see pictures that showed Zimmerman with his nose broken and his head bashed in. The prosecution should be investigated for civil rights violations, and civil liberty violations.”

Dershowitz said the second-degree murder case should never have gone to trial considering the flimsy evidence against Zimmerman. He also does not believe it was strong enough to be submitted to a jury for deliberation.

“If the judge had any courage in applying the law, she never would have allowed the case to go to the jury,” Dershowitz told Newsmax. “She should have entered a verdict based on reasonable doubt.”

Dershowitz singled out special prosecutor Angela Corey for “disciplinary action.”

He criticized the state’s probable-cause affidavit for not including evidence indicating Zimmerman could have been acting in self-defense, including graphic images of blood streaming from his scalp and nose.

“The prosecutor had in her possession photographs that would definitely show a judge that this was not an appropriate case for second-degree murder,” the Harvard professor told Newsmax. “She deliberately withheld and suppressed those photographs, refused to show them to the judge, got the judge to rule erroneously this was a second-degree murder case.

“That violated a whole range of ethical, professional, and legal obligations that prosecutors have. Moreover, they withheld other evidence in the course of the pretrial and trial proceedings, as has been documented by the defense team,” he said.

Dershowitz described the prosecution’s attempt late in the case to add a third-degree murder charge by asserting the shooting constituted child abuse “so professionally irresponsible as to warrant sanctions and investigations.”

Dershowitz said various legal and bar association organizations could investigate how the state handled the prosecution. He added it could warrant a federal investigation as well.

“I think people’s rights have been violated,” the famed attorney told Newsmax, “but it was the rights of the defendant and the defense team, by utterly unprofessional, irresponsible, and in my view criminal actions by the prosecutor,” he said.

Dershowitz went on to express his opinion that Corey is “basically a prosecutorial tyrant, and well known for that in Florida.”

Dershowitz and Corey have had run-ins before. She contacted Harvard Law School demanding that he be disciplined for voicing his opinion that she had improperly omitted information that could have exonerated Zimmerman.

“Of course, the Harvard Law School laughed at her complaint,” he said.

As of Sunday evening Newsmax had not received a response to a request for Corey’s reaction to Dershowitz’s remarks. Even after the verdict was rendered Saturday, Corey continued to defend her decision to charge Zimmerman with second-degree murder.

“We charge what we believe we can prove,” she told the media. “That’s why we charged second-degree murder. We truly believe that the mindset of George Zimmerman and the words that he used and the reason he was out doing what he was doing fit the bill for second-degree murder.”

Corey said the case “has never been about race,” but also said there was “no doubt” young Trayvon Martin had been “profiled to be a criminal.”

Although Zimmerman was cleared of all charges, Corey told the media: “This case was about boundaries and George Zimmerman exceeded those boundaries.

Dershowitz tells Newsmax he expects there will probably be a lawsuit filed against Zimmerman for civil damages. He said civil-damage cases require a lower standard of proof that a wrong has been committed, and Zimmerman would not be able to avoid testifying.

But Dershowitz adds: “I don’t know where you’ll find a lawyer who is prepared to bring it, because it has very little chance of success.”

Asked if he expects Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department to launch a civil-rights investigation targeting Zimmerman, Dershowitz stated: “I don’t think that’s going to happen, and if it happens, I don’t think it would succeed.”

Dershowitz told Newsmax the prosecutor overcharged the case, and never should have sought a second-degree murder conviction.

“The theory was clearly to charge second-degree murder, and hope for a compromise verdict of manslaughter,” he said.

The prosecution is coming under withering criticism from some legal experts for their handling of the Zimmerman case, with some believing that the second degree murder charge was unwarranted.

The Miami Herald ran an article that stated:

“After five weeks of trial and 56 witnesses, few legal observers believed prosecutors came close to proving Sanford neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman committed second-degree murder when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin in February 2012.

So for many legal analysts, it was no surprise that jurors rejected even a lesser "compromise" verdict of manslaughter, acquitting Zimmerman outright of all criminal charges and deciding he acted in a reasonable way to protect his own life.

The acquittal was a stinging blow for prosecutors and their decision to file the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman, who was not initially arrested by Sanford police after claiming self-defense. And it was a resounding embrace of the defense's strategy during closing arguments not just to establish that prosecutors hadn't proven Zimmerman guilty, but also to show he was "absolutely" innocent.

"Justifiable use of force is one of the most difficult areas of the law," State Attorney Angela Corey acknowledged Saturday after Zimmerman's acquittal. "Make no mistake, Trayvon Martin had every right to be on the premises as did George Zimmerman that's what makes this case unique."

Zimmerman defense attorney Don West Zimmerman defense attorney called the prosecution's case a "disgrace."

"We proved that George Zimmerman was not guilty," he said.

Jude M. Faccidomo, the former president of Miami's Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said the jury clearly believed in the right to self-defense: "Especially when cases are so gray, like this one was, self-defense really resonates because people can associate with being afraid."

And while some also have questioned the state attorney's office acceptance of a mostly white jury, a more diverse panel would have returned the same verdict, lawyers who have watched the case believe.

"After seeing the quality of the evidence presented by the state, the diversity of the jury really didn't matter in the end," said Larry Handfield, a prominent African American Miami criminal defense lawyer. "But it would have helped the community in giving more credibility to the decision to acquit Zimmerman."

This is a fascinating article in that it rehashes the trial, step by step, witness by witness, showing how incredibly weak the prosecution's case was. It just wasn't credible and the jurors weren't buying it.

One telling remark is the notion that even a "diverse" jury would have found Zimmerman innocent. Could a jury with several African Americans on it given Zimmerman a fair shake? I don't know if it's universally true, but I've told by attorneys and jurors alike that a remarkable transformation occurs when people are faced with deciding the fate of a fellow citizen as they sit on a jury. They take their responsibilities very seriously and try to do the right thing without regard to race or class. I'd like to think that Zimmerman would have been found innocent regardless of who was sitting on the jury.

But now, something has happened and it’s sure to be something that won’t sit well with Angela Corey. “The indictment accuses Corey of allegedly withholding photographs of Zimmerman’s head after the incident. Also, Corey allegedly falsely signed an arrest warrant under oath without including the pictures as evidence. Critics claim that Corey rushed the arrest warrant through because activists were rallying around the Trayvon Martin shooting, demanding that Zimmerman be charged with murder. Critics argue that Corey was attempting to secure a reelection with the support of the activists.

I feel no pity for people who deliberately obfuscate facts because it is politically expedient for them to do so and are eventually discovered because of it. Such is the case with Corey. As noted above, Corey deliberately appeared to withhold key evidence and then falsified everything by signing an arrest warrant under oath. In spite of her denials to the contrary, it appears that Corey did what she did to placate the activists who were screaming for Zimmerman’s blood. This is not justice! It is political correctness and we know that under political correctness, it is not justice that is sought, but “equality,” whatever that means.

Of course, we need to be clear here. This is a citizen’s grand jury and while the results of their findings may harm Corey’s career politically, it has no power to put her in a court of law that might result in a jail sentence. Citizens’ grand juries carry little weight, but they do make a statement.

Who knows, but maybe in the not-too-distant future, a real jury will preside over a court case involving Angela Corey and her illegalities. One can only hope.

The racial politics that we are deluged with today.

The George Zimmerman case should never have been brought. Saturday night after the “not guilty” verdict was delivered, State Attorney Angela Corey justified bringing the case “to put the facts out there.” But criminal cases should never be brought simply to put the facts before the public.

No one should be charged with a crime unless prosecutors themselves really believe that the person committed a crime.

Yet, the prosecution and their own experts’ language consistently showed a lack of certainty. Prosecutors aren’t supposed to bring cases where the best they can say is that something might “possibly” have happened or that there was a “chance” that it did.

Comments by President Obama, Al Sharpton, and others surely stirred up the racial aspects of the case and appear to have led some blacks across the country to attack whites to avenge Trayvon Martin (e.g.,Gainesville, Florida; Oak Park, Illinois; Mobile, Alabama; Toledo, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Norfolk, Virginia).

This farce of jurisprudence would never have occurred without leading “liberals” like Al Sharpton and his mainstream media buddies beating the drums endlessly for an indictment in a case the local Florida authorities never wanted to try (and for good reason).

Barack Obama helped out too, injecting the presidency (and race) in an unfortunate, but minor regional death by saying “If I had a son, he’d look just like Trayvon.”

I guess all black people look alike to Obama who, unlike Trayvon, attended the most exclusive private school in Hawaii followed by Occidental, Columbia and Harvard in that order. No such luck for Trayvon and, most likely, not much more had he lived. He wasn’t exactly an honor student and evidently dabbled in petty crime. But he did share something with the president, an attraction for cannibis sativa.

According to former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy writing in National Review:

“Attorney General Eric Holder's minions, it is worth remembering, consulted with the NAACP before the Justice Department dropped the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case that the government had already won. There would have been no Florida prosecution of Zimmerman absent the extortionate pressure brought to bear by Attorney General Eric Holder.

We knew that even before learning last week that Justice's 'Community Relations Division' (Alinsky-style rabble-rousing under the guise of 'peacemaker') colluded at taxpayer expense with the NAACP and other agitators to demand that charges be brought against Zimmerman — managing, in the process, to get Sanford police chief Bill Lee cashiered for daring to do his job faithfully, tune out the politics, and decline to arrest Zimmerman because the evidence didn't support it.

Recall that contemporaneous with the spring 2012 demonstrations against Zimmerman that the Justice Department abetted — and with President Obama's nod-and-wink incitement that, if he had a son, the son would 'look like Trayvon' — Holder sped down to Florida. There, he sang the praises of race huckster extraordinaire Al Sharpton, joining Rev. No Justice, No Peace in calling for Zimmerman's scalp. Holder's M-O was to threaten a federal civil rights prosecution if Florida failed to act."

Race relations is an industry in our country. Many non-profit groups, who long ago out lived their own stated goals, must continue race-baiting and doing exactly what Martin Luther King preached against. What is truly sad is that they are not as passionate about solving the real problems in the ghettos and inner cities, in places like DC, Detroit and Chicago. Instead they use these disastrous places as justification to try and disarm all law-abiding Americans and demand even more tax dollars be spent on failed programs. Their main concern and focus today is to raise money and gain power. They really don’t give a damn about the people they supposedly speak for.

"Over the past several years I've read numerous articles from Mark Alexander that were great. However, Race Hustlers is outstanding and I believe it should be required reading for all who are allowed to vote in this country.

The civil rights movement in 20th century America attracted many people who put everything on the line for the sake of fighting against racial oppression. But the eventual success of that movement attracted opportunists, and even turned some idealists into opportunists. Over the generations, black leaders have ranged from noble souls to shameless charlatans. After the success of the civil rights insurgency, the latter have come into their own, gaining money, power and fame by promoting racial attitudes and actions that are counterproductive to the interests of those they lead. None of this is unique to blacks or to the United States. In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people — and to hate those other people.

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having racial or ethnic leaders. While most Americans can easily name a number of black leaders, current or past, how many can name Asian American ethnic leaders or Jewish ethnic leaders? The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

Will we graduate to full-blown mob rule, where the "Justice for Trayvon" community decides that verdict wasn't good enough, and demands a rerun of the legal drama - perhaps under the auspices of federal civil-rights charges — until the "correct" verdict is returned? Is this really getting anyone in any community where they want to go? The odds of a young black person dying violently remain terribly high, but the odds of a "white Hispanic" neighborhood watch volunteer pulling the trigger are vanishingly small. America should not tear itself apart pretending otherwise.

The Tyranny of our Ever Expanding Government

“Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?” — James Madison, Federalist No. 62 — 1788

When writing about the tyranny of a mutable government and the legislature passing long and complicated laws of which no one could comprehend and obey James Madison raises the very forceful point. He stated that citizens will find it very difficult to obey the law if it is constantly changing (“mutable government”), either by growing enormously in size to be beyond the grasp ordinary people, or by being incoherent, or being repealed or revised before they are promulgated.

Today we have the situation where massive and complicated laws, like ObamaCare (over 3,000 pages) are passed without having been read or debated by the legislators themselves, let alone discussed in the press and by the people. When this sad state has been reached, the law itself, as Madison eloquently says, “poisons the blessings of liberty.” James Madison stated in Federalist No. 62:

“To trace the mischievous effects of a mutable government would fill a volume. I will hint a few only, each of which will be perceived to be a source of innumerable others.

In the first place, it forfeits the respect and confidence of other nations, and all the advantages connected with national character. An individual who is observed to be inconstant to his plans, or perhaps to carry on his affairs without any plan at all, is marked at once by all prudent people, as a speedy victim to his own unsteadiness and folly. His more friendly neighbors may pity him, but all will decline to connect their fortunes with his: and not a few will seize the opportunity of making their fortunes out of his. One nation is to another, what one individual is to another; with this melancholy distinction perhaps, that the former, with fewer of the benevolent emotions than the latter, are under fewer restraints also from taking undue advantage of the indiscretions of each other. Every nation, consequently, whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability, may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors. But the best instruction on this subject is unhappily conveyed to America by the example of her own situation. She finds that she is held in no respect by her friends; that she is the derision of her enemies; and that she is a prey to every nation which has an interest in speculating on her fluctuating councils and embarrassed affairs.

The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the FEW, not for the MANY.

In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

But the most deplorable effect of all is that diminution of attachment and reverence which steals into the hearts of the people, towards a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity, and disappoints so many of their flattering hopes. No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.”

In Federalist Paper 10, probably the most important of the Federalist Papers, James Madison, writing as Publius, addresses the Tyranny of the Majority trough Factions.

“Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true.”

As I have stated in previous blogs in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations.” In this context, it is irrelevant who resides in the White House or holds the House speaker’s gavel. America is not a nation of laws, but of rules. Only a renewed cultural will to true reform, coupled with political leadership, can correct that.

Today we are experiences the worst of our Founder’s fears. An unfettered executive branch coupled with a legislative branch that is so encumbered with factions that it no longer serves the will of the people. This combination of ills has formed a fourth branch of government — the administrative state.

I have written numerous times about the history and tyrannical effects of the administrative state and how it is slowly destroying the republic our Founders envisioned. The latest egregious example is the Senate passed 1,200 page immigration bill that contains so much pork a pig farmer would have problems weighing it. It contains cars for immigrants to placate Senator Barry Sanders of New Hampshire and subsidies for the Alaskan fishing industry. It states that the counterfeiting of no more than three U.S. passports is not a crime. While allowing for the hiring of 20,000 additional border patrol agents and building a fence along the entire border it gives the Department of Homeland Security the power to cancel the fence construction at any time at their discretion.

Today a landmark Supreme Court ruling that struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act has set up a stand-off between Republican-led states and the Obama administration over controversial voting laws that until now had been stalled.

The 5-4 ruling on Tuesday addressed a 1960s-era provision that largely singled out states and districts in the South — those with a history of discrimination — and required them to seek federal permission to change their voting laws.

The court ruled that the formula determining which states are affected was unconstitutional.

In doing so, the court potentially opened the door for certain states to proceed with voter ID laws and other efforts that to date had been held up because of the Voting Rights Act. Prominent among those are voter identification laws in Alabama and Mississippi.

Yet Attorney General Eric Holder has claimed that he does not agree with the ruling and will continue to do all he can to force states to abide by his edicts

Attorney General Eric Holder warned states against going too far. He said the Justice Department would not hesitate to take "swift" action against states looking to "take advantage" of the ruling.

He, like President Obama, said he was "deeply disappointed" in the decision, saying discriminatory practices live on and need to be addressed.

"These problems have not been consigned to history," Holder said.

Holder and Obama urged Congress to create a new formula.

"Today's decision invalidating one of its core provisions upsets decades of well-established practices that help make sure voting is fair, especially in places where voting discrimination has been historically prevalent," Obama said.

To read more on this decision click here.

In another example of the power of the administrative state today Obama declared his war on coal even though throughout the 2012 election campaigned he denied such a war on coal or guns.

So much for the denials. An administration that throughout its 2012 election campaign denied it was waging a War on Coal has now come out and publicly declared its intention to shut down coal-fired power plants – putting hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work and sending electricity prices skyrocketing.

This is not what the American people voted for.

Responding to a White House petition to end the War on Coal, the administration said: “The President has made clear that he understands that coal has played a critical role in our country’s energy portfolio for decades and will continue to be an important source of energy in the future.”

Sycophantic liberal media outlets (like The Nation and the Associated Press) went further, repeatedly claiming that the War on Coal was a myth. The Obama campaign even ran a TV ad in Ohio claiming that Mitt Romney would be bad for coal – and trotted out former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland to deny there was a war on coal and echo the attacks on Romney.

Yet today Obama political consultant David Plouffe took to Twitter to bang his chest: “Today's climate announcement underscores that elections matter greatly” – as if Obama had campaigned on shutting down coal plants instead of on denying his intention to do so.

Such denials are no longer necessary. Today a top Obama global warming adviser told The New York Times the denials were just election-year politics. Daniel Schrag said: “Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal. On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.

And Obama delivered. It’s right there on page 19 of his Climate Action Plan: “Going forward, we will promote fuel-switching from coal to gas for electricity production.”

Indeed, Obama made clear in his speech that he intends to impose regulations on existing coal plants that can only be met through carbon capture and storage (technology that doesn’t exist on a commercial scale), switching to natural gas, or shutting down completely.

Coal still produces 37 percent of U.S. electricity. A Heritage Foundation analysis found that implementing Obama’s proposed regulation on existing coal plants would destroy more than 500,000 jobs, slash the income of a typical family of four more than $1,400 a year, and increase electricity prices at least 20 percent. Price spikes could be much higher in states that depend heavily on coal-fired power plants, especially in the Midwest. President Obama once famously explained that he intended to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket.”

Obama intends to fight his War on Coal by issuing a Presidential Memorandum to the EPA to issue regulations under the 1970 Clean Air Act. This is despite the fact that the law’s principal author, Democrat John Dingell of Michigan, famously said: “This is not what was intended by the Congress and by those of us who wrote the Clean Air Act. We are beginning to look at a wonderfully complex world, which has the potential for shutting down or slowing down virtually all industry and all economic activity and growth.”

And there is zero global warming benefit to go with all the economic costs, because even if all United States greenhouse gas emissions were shut down to zero tomorrow, the rest of the world would keep on puffing. Paul Knappenberger recently calculated, based on standard assumptions, that getting to zero emissions in the U.S. immediately would only reduce global average temperatures an imperceptible 0.08 degrees Celsius by 2050. Moreover, the rest of the world would replace all U.S. emissions within seven years.

So it’s all pain and no gain — by legally dubious means — to accomplish the opposite of what Obama promised on the campaign trail. Congress should take exception to being circumvented and step in to stop Obama’s (now-declared) War on Coal.

Once again it is plain to see that complex laws passed by a willing legislature leave the door open for the executive branch to do just about anything it wants under the color of law. This is truly a feature of the administrative state where the masterminds call the shots and self-government is a thing of the past. So much for the Republic Mr. Franklin.

On the other hand 62 Tea Party representatives dealt a blow to the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives when they gather enough support to defeat an overblown Farm Bill on June 20^th.

The GOP leadership suffered a stunning defeat as 62 Republicans voted against the 5-year farm bill (H.R. 1947), which locks in the record baseline of food stamp spending and creates multiple new agriculture subsidy programs. A handful of them voted against it because it cut too much spending, and others like Bill Shuster voted no because they are facing potential primary challenges (Shuster voted for the 2008 bill). But this is a strong showing, as it is a dynamic none of us would have ever predicted several years ago.

Some Republicans are complaining that because of the conservative revolt we will now continue on the status quo with direct farm subsidies. But they fail to understand that the new price support programs and shallow loss coverage that were created by this bill would have been more expensive and represent worse market distortions than direct subsidies. It’s better to reauthorize the status quo than to pass a long-term bill that creates even more problems and precludes real reforms for another 5 years.

Other Republicans complain that now we will face the so-called milk cliff. Pursuant to a silly 1949 act of Congress, every time we fail to renew expiring farm programs, the government must begin imposing Soviet-style price controls on milk by decreasing supplies through massive purchases of milk, butter, cheese, and other dairy products. Under permanent law, the USDA would begin purchasing dairy products at a rate of $38.54 per hundredweight; more than double the current price ($18 per hundredweight). This market manipulation could double the price of milk, dairy products, and everything else up the food chain.

But instead of avoiding the deleterious effects of the Agriculture Act of 1949 by growing government, why don’t we just repeal the damn law?

In a sane world, both houses of Congress would convene and repeal this inane and outdated law within a few minutes by unanimous consent. That way we could debate a long-term farm bill without having the sword of the 1949 law brandished over our necks and forcing Congress to rush through bad legislation.

However, Congress is not sane, and they have no plans to repeal the law. In fact, Paul Broun introduced an amendment to do just that, but all the Democrats and more than half of Republicans voted it down.

The latest ephemeral trend in Washington is to create a contrived crisis for the purpose of growing government, increasing spending, or raising taxes. The new “milk cliff” is just the latest in the bag of tricks held by the permanent statist class.

Moving forward, we must split up the farm bill into two components; food stamps and agriculture programs. Food stamps must be devolved to the states and most agricultural subsidies need to be means-tested and charted on a gradual course towards elimination. And most of all, the dairy supply control system must be repealed once and for all in a standalone piece of legislation.

That would represent responsible conservative reform that is becoming of a GOP-controlled House. Working harder to buy off Democrats with more spending increases is not the way forward. If Kevin McCarthy and Eric Cantor desire to grow government with Democrat support, maybe they should run for the Pelosi whip team.

The American people elected a Republican House to provide a bold contrast to the Obama-Pelosi agenda, not to work behind the scenes to help grow government with their support.

You can read more about the defeat of the trillion dollar food stamp and farm bill by clicking here.

One of the things all tyrannical regimes such as the administrative state does is to compile a list of enemies. These enemies are defined as those who do not agree with their policies and could pose a threat to their agenda.

The vast majority of the annual shooting homicides are committed by inner-city and minority youths below the age of 30. Handguns are involved in 80% of all murders. Rifles and shotguns account for less than 10% of homicides.

No matter; the National Rifle Association is now blamed for generic gun violence, especially the mass shootings at schools, even though usually no one knows of any proposed gun law — barring outright confiscation of previously purchased firearms, bullets, and clips — that would have prevented the shooters at Sandy Hook and Columbine. Gun merchants are blamed by the president while in Mexico for selling lethal semi-automatic weapons to drug cartels. But so far, the only identifiable purveyor of illegal weaponry is the president’s own attorney general, whose subordinates in the Fast and Furious operation sold hundreds of guns illegally to Mexican drug lords.

Suggestions to encourage greater incarceration of the mentally unstable, to jawbone Hollywood about its profitable (and gratuitous) gun violence, to regulate extremely violent — and extremely well-selling — video games usually fall on deaf liberal ears. In short, the stereotyped camouflaged, weekend gun enthusiast is not the problem that leads to Columbine, or the nearly 532 murders last year in Chicago. But because we can’t or won’t address the causes of the latter, we go after the former. He is not the unhinged sort that shoots a Gabby Giffords or innocents in an Aurora, Colorado, theater; but somehow is the supposed red-neck yokel that a journalist like ABC’s Brian Ross assumes does.

If the Department of Homeland Security, as is rumored, really did wish to stockpile hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition, then why did it begin such repository buying right in the middle of a hysterical national debate about limiting access to various rifles and semi-automatic weapons? Was it not to create a climate of fear and panic buying that has emptied America’s shelves of the most popular types of ammunition? If the homicide rate in Philadelphia and Chicago is any indication, murderers still have plenty of access to bullets. Those who want to target practice or shoot a varmint on their property do not.

The CIA and FBI knew of the suspicious activity of the Boston bombers, of Major Hasan, and of Anwar al-Awlaki. And they did nothing to preempt their violence. The FBI is said to be carefully avoiding monitoring mosques, although all of the above terrorists were known by many fellow Muslim worshipers to be either disturbed or extremist or both. In contrast, the NSA monitors, we are told, nearly everyone’s communications rather than focusing on Middle Eastern male Muslims, even though Middle Eastern male Muslims have been involved in the vast majority of post-9/11 terrorist plots. The NSA is the electronic version of the TSA, which feels it is noble and liberal to stop an octogenarian in a wheel chair for special frisking as proper compensation for every focused look at a West Bank resident or Pakistani visitor on his way into the United States.

The words “Tea Party” and “patriot” in a non-profit’s name would more likely earn a negative appraisal from the IRS than would “Islam” or “Muslim.” One wonders how Lois Lerner’s IRS division would treat a hypothetical “Sarah Palin Foundation” versus “The Dr. Zawahiri Charity.”

The IRS is not worried at all about 47% of the nation who pay no federal income taxes. The vast majority of those whom it focuses on are instead the 10% who pay over 70% of all taxes. These are the would-be proverbial “fat cats” who did not build their own businesses. They are reluctant to spread their wealth. They certainly did not know either when to stop making money or when the age of profit altogether had passed. Sometime around 2009 success was deemed failure, and failure success — at least if we collate the president fat-cat rhetoric with the vast expansion in the disability, food-stamp, and unemployment-insurance rolls.

Note that the IRS is not interested in leaking to Democrat senators or former administration official rumors about George Soros’s income or the details of the tax returns of Warren Buffett, Steven Spielberg, or Bill Gates. Instead, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate bragged that he knew (falsely as it turned out) that Mitt Romney paid no income taxes. And former high administration official Austan Goolsbee claimed (also falsely as it turned out) that he too knew that the Koch brothers were shorting the IRS.

Note that only liberal groups like ProPublica leak information about the confidential donor lists of conservative activists, apparently given their familiar arrangement with the IRS. So far IRS chiefs are not looking at prominent Democrat politicians for tax violations, although for a time — cf. Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, Hilda Solis — that might have been a fruitful profile for inquiry. (One encouraging side note: if you are a suspect white, mature, well-off, conservative, heterosexual, Christian male, you can still obtain exemption from federal suspicion by loudly announcing that you also are enthralled by Barack Obama.)

We know who was not an administration suspect in the killing of four Americans in Benghazi — hard-core, al Qaeda-related Islamic terrorists. Instead a supposedly right-wing unhinged video-maker was the object of vitriol from the secretary of state, the UN ambassador, and the president of the United States. He currently sits in jail. The known perpetrators of the murders walk free. In contrast, Lisa Jackson, the former EPA director, just got a fat inside job from Apple, despite creating not just a fictitious name (e.g., “Richard Windsor”) to avoid scrutiny when she communicated official business, but also an entirely made-up alter ego: “Richard Windsor” became an ideal employee lauded by the unethical EPA for his supposedly “ethical behavior.”

We also know who in the media is not a target. Not the CBS or ABC News presidents who have siblings working in the White House. Not ABC’s Good Morning America, given that one of its stalwarts is married to Press Secretary Jay Carney. Instead, there are two sorts of suspicious reporters that are considered hostile to the administration and worthy of having their communications monitored. One group are those journalists who leak information that the administration wished to preempt and leak first or who refuse to only leak favorable classified information — the bin Laden trove, the cyber war against Iran, the drone targeting protocol — that makes the president look as if he were a competent commander in chief.

The other target, of course, is Fox News, whose staff, in a variety of ways and on a number of occasions, the Obama administration has previously attacked as in some way illegitimate.

Again, who fits these profiles that our current, vastly expanding big government does not like? If you are an operator of a coal plant that creates needed energy at a profit, then beware that the EPA is after you. If you are a shady insider who wants tens of millions of government dollars to subsidize a money-losing wind and solar plant, you hit the jackpot. Ditto the suspect people who build guitars, loan money to Chrysler, or wish to locate a jet airliner plant in South Carolina. Profits create suspicion; failures earn subsidies.

Then there are the clingers, whom the president long ago blasted as religious zealots and gun-toting xenophobes. These are the sorts whom the attorney general calls “cowards” (not “my people”) — the “enemies” whom the president advises Latino activists to “punish” at the polls, the sorts that the president apologizes for abroad as guilty of sundry sorts of past class, race, and gender oppression.

In contrast, who is not so worried about government surveillance or audit? The New Black Panthers who turned up at a polling station in Philadelphia to intimidate voters; the “farmers” who, according to the New York Times, filed bogus claims to cash in on the government’s ill-advised and poorly administered Pigford settlement; the Secret Service agents who routinely visited prostitutes while on duty protecting high government officials abroad; and the assistant to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who used her office to enhance her private consulting business.

Americans wonder whom would the immigration services more likely wish to deport: the German Romeike family that was “guilty” of homeschooling their children; Obama’s aunt Zeituni, who lied about her immigration status to illegally obtain state and federal subsidies; or Onyango Obama, who likewise is here illegally (for 21 years) and was recently charged with ramming a police car while driving intoxicated? Is the U.S. so short of DUI offenders and frauds that we must deport homeschoolers to make room for them?

There is currently a climate of fear growing throughout the United States. Millions of Americans are terrified of the IRS, the Department of Justice, the EPA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and even perhaps the FBI, CIA, and State Department.

Why?

These government agencies have never been bigger, more powerful, and more ideologically driven. Citizens fear them for understandable reasons: those who do nothing wrong, whether in filing tax forms or trying to buy a rifle, are considered suspect and deserving to be the target of either federal scrutiny or presidential slurs. But those who do a great deal of wrong, either by illegally entering the country, disrupting polling, trafficking in weapons in Mexico, eavesdropping on American citizens, pulling tax information for partisan purposes, subverting a government agency, or lying to the public about government activity, seem exempt from punishment — and, more chillingly, sense that they are so exempt.

Ask who now is sitting in prison — a shyster video-maker who had nothing to do with the deaths of four Americans, or their five known terrorist killers lounging about in North Africa? Apparently, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, like EPA director Lisa Jackson, was guilty of creating a fake persona. Like Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, he had a lien on her business. Like former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, he had some unpaid taxes. Like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he had been visited by government investigators. Like Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, he lied to federal authorities — although they were not quite as high as those in the U.S. Congress. And unlike all of the above, he was therefore jailed.

Of all the legacies of Barack Obama, the most pernicious will be the creation of a rogue government that has cut off and terrified half the population — and for no other reason than that they seem to represent things that Mr. Obama simply does not seem to understand.

The truth is that governments are always like pitchers trying to pitch out of a jam with all the bases loaded. We the people want a little free stuff. The ruling class wants to seize and hold political power. Promising free stuff is how you get elected. This what James Madison knew when he authored Federalist No. 10.

Usually, those vote-buying promises result in policies that damage the economy. President Obama has been worse than most. The result is that politicians and their officials are always involved in trying to Band-Aid over the distortions and the wounds they have inflicted on the economy and our freedoms in their crude bid for power.

Too Many Scandals

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." — George Washington

With all the scandals it’s getting hard for the average American to keep up. First we had Benghazi. Then the Justice Department’s snooping into the e-mails of the AP and James Rosen of Fox News. Then came the IRS’ overt bias against conservative groups requesting 501c(3) tax exempt status. Now we have the bombshell of the National Security Agency’s data mining of millions of Americans. And we will soon have the exposé of the EPA’s illegal actions of going after conservative groups by loading them with onerous regulations and the looming sex scandal involving the State Department.

Most Americans spend their time working and supporting their families. They don’t have much time to focus on all of these scandals every day. Most get their news from the nightly TV news shows or the late night comedians. Unless they are dedicated listeners to talk radio of the cable news channels they just can’t keep up.

The beauty of the 1973 Watergate Scandal is that it was the only scandal to focus on. The American people were able to watch replays of the hearings each night on the three major TV networks. Most of the anchors on these networks were fairly unbiased reporters who did a reasonable job of reporting the news and not getting into opinions. That was left to the Sunday shows like Meet the Press and Face the Nation.

This overload of scandals is in a way a blessing for the Obama administration. It creates a cloud of obfuscation over all of the scandals with the exception of the most current one. In this case it’s the NSA and Edward Snowden. The Benghazi attack of 9/11/2012 and the issue of gun-running to Syria has taken the rear most seat in the media. The DOJ’s illegal snooping is growing dim. The IRS scandal according to Representative Elijah Cummings (D MD) is over and the case is closed yet the reports and law suits continue to mount. Now it’s all about the NSA.

It’s difficult for the mainstream media to walk and chew gum at the same time. In fact it’s difficult for some of the MSM’s publications and outlets to walk at all. This is good news for President Obama and the worst Attorney General since Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789 and the Federalist and former Secretary of State Edmund Jennings Randolph was appointed as the first Attorney General.

The United States Attorney General (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice (see 28 U.S.C. § 503) concerned with legal affairs and is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. The attorney general is considered to be the chief lawyer of the U.S. government. The attorney general serves as a member of the president's cabinet, and is the only cabinet department head who is not given the title secretary.

The attorney general is nominated by the President of the United States and takes office after confirmation by the United States Senate. He or she serves at the pleasure of the president and can be removed by the president at any time; the attorney general is also subject to impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial in the Senate for "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors."

The original duties of this officer were "to prosecute and conduct all suits in the Supreme Court in which the United States shall be concerned, and to give his advice and opinion upon questions of law when required by the president of the United States, or when requested by the heads of any of the departments." Only in 1870 was the Department of Justice established to support the attorney general in the discharge of his responsibilities.

Since AG Randolph was appointed we have had 81 Attorney Generals — some good, some bad, some charismatic, but most unknown to most of us today. If I were to ask who Edward Bates or Richard Olney were I would venture you would not know. On the other hand if I asked if you knew who Edwin M. Stanton, Alexander Mitchell Palmer, Francis Biddle, Robert F. Kennedy, or John Mitchel were most educated Americans would get that question correct of Jeopardy.

Three of the worst AGs in American history come to mind: Alexander Palmer (Wilson), Janet Reno (Clinton), and the worst being our current Attorney General Eric Holder.

Prominent voices from both sides of the aisle are calling for embattled Attorney General Eric Holder to resign as America’s chief law enforcement officer. Even those on the left have abandoned him. Holder has presided over a “comprehensive erosion of privacy rights, press freedom and due process,” according to liberal professor Jonathan Turley

In his May 29^th column in USA Today Turley said:

“Recently, Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the administration's sweeping surveillance of journalists with the Associated Press. In the greatest attack on the free press in decades, the Justice Department seized phone records for reporters and editors in at least three AP offices as well as its office in the House of Representatives. Holder, however, proceeded to claim absolute and blissful ignorance of the investigation, even failing to recall when or how he recused himself.

Yet, this was only the latest attack on the news media under Holder's leadership. Despite his record, he expressed surprise at the hearing that the head of the Republican National Committee had called for his resignation. After all, Holder pointed out, he did nothing. That is, of course, precisely the point. Unlike the head of the RNC, I am neither a Republican nor conservative, and I believe Holder should be fired.”

While Prof. Turley makes a case for Obama firing Holder I think it’s a liberal’s way of brushing the issue of government overreach and abuse of power under the rug in the Oval Office and a way for Holder to eat Obama’s sins.

Here are a few reasons why Holder should not be fired:

(1) If Holder is culpable, let him face investigation and the legal consequences for his actions. If he is not, let him keep his job. Resignation is an unsatisfying compromise that leaves the American public without the answers we deserve.

(2) This is no time for him to ride off into the sunset. Resignation would allow him to disappear over the horizon and return to private life. The press will move on to the next kerfuffle du jour, and the American people will lose interest in what he may or may not have done while serving as attorney general.

(3) Resigning would immediately reduce his accountability. Resignation would make it easier for Holder to claim he no longer has access to key information. When congressional committees seek answers to the many unanswered questions, Holder can claim that he doesn’t know and that he no longer has access to relevant information.

4) We don’t need any more obfuscation. Holder’s resignation would give political cover to the administration’s erosion of privacy rights, press freedom and due process. The federal leviathan now has unprecedented access to health information, thanks to the behemoth of bad legislation known as ObamaCare.

Freedom of the press goes the way of individual privacy. Outrageous incursions — obtaining phone records of editors and reporters at The Associated Press, the electronic monitoring of Fox News reporter James Rosen — together with Holder’s denials before the House Judiciary Committee that he was not involved in either incident prompted Obama to ask Holder to investigate himself.

And remember that bit in the Fifth Amendment about no person being “deprived of life” without “due process of law”? I missed the part where it says “except in the case of drone strikes.” Waterboarding non-citizen, enemy-combatant Jihadis makes the president evil, whereas vaporizing U.S. citizens from the sky makes the president a hero.

5) Atonement requires more than just a sacrificial lamb. Holder should not resign because that will allow the left to claim that he was a rogue attorney general and that his boss bears no responsibility for his misdeeds. It will allow Obama to escape making the tough public decision to fire him for cause, and it would give Obama an easy way out.

Obama faces a watershed moment in his presidency. From Benghazi to the IRS scandal to the AP and James Rosen investigations to the NSA’s surveillance of the entire population, the American people have innumerable unanswered questions about this administration’s approach to the rule of law.

Obama promised the most transparent administration ever. He claimed he would bring “an unprecedented level of openness in government” that would “work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency.”

He promised transparency. He delivers opacity, blocking investigations of wrongdoing. He promised “a review of government regulations” to find and “fix” rules unnecessarily burdening business. He delivers a one-way ratchet on federal governmental expansion at the inevitable expense of individual freedom.

The issues posed by the current epidemic of current and developing scandals cannot be solved by the resignation of Eric Holder, Lois Lerner, Cheryl Mills, Michael Morell or anyone else. We need to keep the public spotlight shinning on these dark corners of our administrative state.

Barack Obama wasn't an average citizen before moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He was a senator. He was on the Foreign Relations Committee and had access to classified information — all the more reason to believe that he knew that the terror threat was not cynical “fear mongering' by President Bush. When Bush engaged in data mining, he was “undermining our constitution and our freedoms.” When Obama does it, he is “striking the right balance” between security and freedom.

The president assures us that “no one is listening to our phone calls,” and that may be true. But this administration also assured us that no sweeping data collection on American citizens was going on, that the IRS was not unfairly singling out conservatives, that the Justice Department had not attempted to prosecute journalists, and that the Benghazi attack was the response to a video.

According to the latest Fox News poll two-thirds of American voters (66 percent) think the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups as part of a high-level operation to punish political opponents. Far fewer — 23 percent — think it was a mistake by a handful of lower-level IRS employees.

More than three-quarters of voters (78 percent) want Congress to continue to investigate the IRS. That’s a bit higher than the number that thinks Congress should continue to investigate the Justice Department seizing journalists’ records (76 percent) and the Obama administration handling of the attacks in Benghazi (73 percent).

Holder’s resignation would make things easier on this administration. And that’s the last thing we need if we want to return to constitutional government.