personalliberty | Speaking to the Sharpton crowd On Wednesday, the Attorney General
charged that the lawmakers’ actions had nothing to do with the Justice
Department he presides over stymieing a Congressional investigation into
the fatally-flawed Fast and Furious gun program.
Here is an off-the-record portion of Holder’s speech which didn’t appear in the transcript released by the DOJ:
I’m pleased to note that the last five years have been defined by significant strides and by lasting reforms even in the face, even in the face, of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly, and divisive adversity. If you don’t believe that, if you look at the way, forget about me, forget about me, if you look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House Committee, it had nothing to do with me, forget that, what attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?
To be exceedingly fair, Holder didn’t actually use the words
“racists,” “racism” or any other variations thereof. But considering his
audience, it doesn’t take an imaginative stretch to understand what was
implied: Gohmert, Farenthold— and presumably anyone else who asked him a
tough question or went there by mentioning contempt— are clearly racists.
And if that’s not what Holder meant, efforts to elucidate his remarks
to a different end provide even more worrisome possibilities than the
U.S. Attorney General mistaking oversight mandated by the Constitutional
balance of powers for outright racism. (That inference, by the way,
isn’t difficult to make because it’s completely plausible, likely even,
that Holder views the Constitution as a fundamentally racist document
better scrapped and re-written than amended.)
If Holder wasn’t calling the House lawmakers racists without using
the word, it means that “it had nothing to do with me, forget that” is
the most important thing he said. Was it an admission that the
withholding of the Fast and Furious documents that precipitated his
contempt charge was ordered from higher up? That the AG is the fall guy?
Or does it mean Holder really believes that he holds absolutely no
responsibility for the agencies which he presides over?
The answer is probably in the unreleased documents. But, of course, efforts to have them released are, well, you know… racist.
What a powerful tool the race card has become.
