Hold It, Holder! Why the Rush?

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

Someone in Facebook posted a link to a great column by Margaret Kimberley at uruknet.info – the website that provides news and information about the Middle East – today. Her piece starts out as follows:

Call a Georgetown law student a slut, and the liberal universe goes into supernova. Destroy Somalia and Libya, or obliterate due process of law, and the same people just yawn. Attorney General Eric Holder "asserts that the president can in fact decide to kill anyone he wants, as long as he claims that person is a terrorist." Liberals love the guy.

My sentiments exactly.

I find the uproar over the obese, sexist drug addict’s insult of Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a tad excessive. I’m guilty too – I wrote about Rush last Tuesday – but I ended my piece by making a similar point:

Now that we've forced Rush "Pigboy" Limbaugh to lose advertisers and apologize for insulting a middle-class white woman, maybe we can turn our sights on the lousy treatment that poor people and people of color receive every day in this country.

Holder and Obama

I agree that there are other, more noteworthy atrocities occurring here and around the world that deserve our scorn and attention. And although I’m taking it easy on the POTUS because he’s still a far better choice than any of the pricks being proffered by the GOP, he’s directly or tacitly endorsed some pretty disturbing policies and positions. My hope is that we can address this after BHO is re-elected in eight months.

I don’t think it’s helpful for Kimberley to call liberals who ignored Holder’s pronouncement sluts. I do think we’re lazy, though. It’s a lot easier to rail against a disgusting, overweight misogynist in Facebook than it is to march in the streets against war with Iran or try to engage our friends and neighbors in conversations about why Holder or Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner should be taken to the woodshed. It’s less time-consuming to repost a list of Limbaugh advertisers to boycott than to educate ourselves and others about the Syrian government’s bloody massacre of its people or why the Patriot Act is so worrisome.

For anyone too focused on the intentionally provocative utterances of a buffoonish multimillionaire broadcaster to know what Kimberley’s writing about, click here to learn what our attorney general told a Northwestern University Law School audience in Chicago earlier this week.

"In this hour of danger, we simply cannot afford to wait until deadly plans are carried out," Holder said. "And we will not."

Does anyone want to launch a tirade against those in government who claim they can detain or murder anyone they want without due process?


P.S. It’s interesting that Kimberley’s essay was published at a website specializing in Middle Eastern news rather than at Faux News, CNN or MSNBC, isn’t it?

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Photo of Holder at Northwestern courtesy Brian Kersey/AP.
Photo of Holder and Obama courtesy Charles Dharapak/AP.

Sources: Chicago Tribune, uruknet.info.