Archives for June 2014

Eric Holder evolved from a widely-respected prosecutor into an increasingly partisan operative, who eventually felt free to trump justice with politics when his ideological soul mate tapped him as attorney general.

That’s the thesis of “Obama’s Enforcer,” a new book by former Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky, who is now with the Heritage Foundation.  His co-author is longtime investigative reporter and columnist John Fund.

Attorney general is a political appointment and those nominated for the job usually share some if not many ideological similarities with the president who chooses them.  However, von Spakovsky says there is a stark difference between past attorneys general and what we’ve seen from Eric Holder.

“Holder has put politics at the forefront, ahead of justice.  You can look at prior attorneys general and you will find that they, very carefully, treaded the line between working for the president and trying to put his priorities in place but on the other hand, realizing they are the attorney general.  The interests of justice and nonpartisan enforcement of the law takes a higher priority.  Past attorneys general of both parties have done it very well,” said von Spakovsky.

“That is not the way Holder has run the Justice Department.  He obviously considers himself part of the president’s political team first, attorney general a distant second.  You can see that in the way that he’s conducted himself and the way they have politicized the prosecution process,” he said.

According to von Spakovsky, Holder approached the law much differently earlier in his career.  A generation ago, officials in both parties applauded him as a tough-minded prosecutor and judge.  Slowly, his actions began to reflect his deepening political philosophy.

“He went from being a very nonpartisan, professional lawyer to having politics and ideology driving him.  A (40-year Justice Department) lawyer we talked to thinks some of that may have been influenced by the woman he married (Sharon Malone) because of the very bitter attitude she has towards the experiences of black Americans,” von Spakovsky.

The book alleges Holder’s increasing partisanship was already on display while he was deputy attorney general in the later years of the Clinton administration.

“He did things there like recommend pardons for sixteen terrorists in American jails.  Why?  They were Puerto Rican terrorists and the thought at the time was this might help Hillary Clinton with her Senate run in New York, so sacrificing national security for political advantage,” said von Spakovsky.

Last decade, Holder shed his Clinton loyalties in favor of Barack Obama, following Obama’s meteoric rise during and after his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign.  By 2008, Holder was not only solidly on board for Obama early in the race against Sen. Clinton, but was a chief fundraiser and surrogate for his candidate as well.  The reason, according to von Spakovsky, was an instantaneous ideological symmetry.  He says that can be seen today as both men have little regard for enforcing laws with which they disagree.

“This attorney general believes he can refuse to defend any law that he doesn’t like and that’s the way he has approached his office.  That is extremely dangerous.  It violates separation of powers.  It can tear apart the kind of constitutional structure we have,” said von Spakovsky, citing Holder’s refusal to enforce immigration law, mandatory drug sentences and the Defense of Marriage Act.

Worse yet, say the authors, is that Holder is encouraging like-minded state attorneys general to follow his lead and not enforce statutes that run contrary to their political beliefs, particularly in the state-by-state debates over the definition of marriage.

Another development von Spakovsky and Fund find very troubling is the politicizing of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) which they claim is critical to maintaining judicial impartiality in the U.S.

“The Office of Legal Counsel is a very special office within the Justice Department.  Its job has always been to provide legal opinions to the president, and particularly on the constitutionality of proposed legislation and actions the president wants to take.  It has the highest, most sterling reputation of any office or division within the Justice Department.  They’ve always been known as an office that will provide an objective opinion.  They don’t care who’s in the White House or what opinion the White House would actually like to have,” said von Spakovsky.

He says that’s all changed under Holder’s time in office.

“For the first time in it’s history, Eric Holder has changed that.  He has installed someone who will give him the legal opinions he wants despite them not being correct,” said von Spakovsky.

The clearest example of this, according to the authors, is President Obama’s attempt to make recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, even though the U.S. Senate was not technically in recess.

“We spoke to veterans of that office who said that opinion was an embarrassment.  It was very clear they had written the conclusion they wanted and then tried to make up the law to fit it.  Some of the arguments they made were described as laughable by a former OLC lawyer who had worked for several different administrations,” said von Spakovsky.

In addition to refusing to enforce laws contrary to his beliefs, Holder is also accused by Fund and von Spakovsky of harassing citizens and businesses with crippling fines and court costs for the smallest and most questionable violation of federal law and regulations.  They also say Holder and his allies in the Justice Department have made a habit of getting sued by their own friends to change laws without congressional approval.

“The administration and the Justice Department have been engaging in what we call collusive settlements.  These are what we call ‘sue and settle’ cases, where the department will go and solicit one of their allies, a political advocacy organization and say, ‘Why don’t you guys sue us, claiming that we haven’t, for example, issued a particular type of environmental regulation that we all want but don’t have the legal authority to issue.  As soon as you file the lawsuit, we will not fight it.  We’ll immediately surrender and agree to settle.  The settlement agreement, which we can get rubber-stamped by a federal judge, will let us do whatever we want,'” said von Spakovsky.

“Those kinds of cases have skyrocketed under the Holder Justice Department and under this administration.  That’s a pretty clear indication of the kind of abuse that the department is engaging in,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Eliana Johnson of National Review cheer CNN being exposed for prompting their studio audience to cheer for Hillary Clinton. They also groan as Clinton continues to associate herself with the middle class despite a net worth of $50 million. They get a chuckle from Marion Barry’s claim that he never did crack “simple as that.”

Both parties deserve blame for the humanitarian crisis on our southern border and our government is actively involved in making the problem worse, according to a longtime immigration official the solution is as simple as enforcing the existing laws.

Tens of thousands of people have flooded the southern border this year, exponentially more than any other full year in recent memory.  Many observers expect the numbers to swell into the hundreds of thousands.

Michael Cutler served many years as an immigration official, with what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) combating drug trafficking, human smuggling and terrorism.  He calls himself a lifelong Democrat, but says this is a political problem where both parties are to blame.

“Most politicians, from both the Democrat and Republican parties, are thrilled to have foreign nationals surge across our borders.  This isn’t an accident.  This is something they have been doing everything in their power to encourage,” said Cutler, who says politicians are largely acting on the wishes of their donors.

“Campaign contributions are nothing more than legalized bribes.  The politicians are taking the money and the people giving them the contributions have an expectation.  As a federal agent for 30 years, I was not allowed to accept a cup of coffee.  If you’re concerned that a cup of coffee might influence an agent’s objectivity, what do you think thousands of dollars does when given to a political candidate?” asked Cutler.

He also points to the failure of the government to enforce border security laws is a key factor because people entering the nation illegally know they probably won’t be sent home.

“If you’re on a highway that has EZ-Pass or a tollgate, and they were to suddenly create a third lane that says, ‘Free.  No Speed Limit,’ what would it say about someone’s intelligence or state of mind if they would wait to pay a toll when all they have to do is drift into that third lane where there’s no speed limit and no toll,” said Cutler.

Cutler says the federal government not only wants this to happen, but officials are breaking the law to make it happen.  He says reports this week suggesting the Department of Homeland Security is hiring escorts to move illegals around the country is absolutely true.

“They’re actually using agents to bring these aliens into cities across the country,” said Cutler.  “What the government is now doing is taking over the job of alien traffickers.  If you go to the immigration laws, aiding, abetting, encouraging, inducing, harboring, shielding or transporting are all felonies.  This is no longer a matter of what the president would call prosecutorial discretion and I call prosecutorial deception.  We are now becoming the competition for the alien smugglers once they get to the border of the United States.”

“The starter’s pistol has been fired, and, for aspiring illegal aliens around the world, the finish line is the border of the United States of America,” he said.

Much hand-wringing continues in Washington about how to solve the crisis unfolding along the border.  Cutler says it’s really pretty simple and he cautions Americans not to believe that every unaccompanied teenager is an innocent child in search of the American dream.

“Enforce the law.  And we keep saying ‘young people.’  As an agent, I’ve encountered gang members who were thirteen and fourteen years old.  We’ve seen kinds get involved with carrying out murders for hire at age thirteen because they knew they wouldn’t go to jail for a significant period of time.  We have to be careful who we’re letting in,” said Cutler.

He says the current mess in the southwestern U.S. is ample evidence that Obama administration claims of much tighter border security are largely fiction.  He says the explosion in drug trafficking clued him in a long time ago.

“The real way of determining border security is to look at the price and availability of heroin and cocaine.  Those chemicals are not produced in the United States.  They are purely smuggled in.  We are in the midst of a heroin epidemic.  Our border is nothing more than a speed bump,” said Cutler.

“That heroin is behind a lot of the crime that we’re seeing.  So while everyone’s talking about limiting how many bullets we should be putting in our guns and how we need to cut down in salt and sugar, why is no body addressing the issue of the damage that narcotics trafficking and narcotics use has on America and the crime rate?” he said.

Not surprisingly, Cutler is staunchly opposed to any sort of comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

“Comprehensive reform does not address the problem.  It would exacerbate the problem.  It would give people lawful status.  The argument is we can’t deport eleven million people.  No one is talking about deporting eleven million.  when you have drunk drivers, nobody says, ‘The numbers are too great.  Let’s just forget about it.’  You enforce the law as effectively as you can.  The answer is deterrent,” said Cutler.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Andrew Johnson of National Review cheer a new NPR poll conducted only in states with the most competitive Senate races and shows President Obama to be very unpopular.  They also wonder whether allegations of campaign finance crimes will sink Scott Walker, even though two judges have found the allegations baseless.  They size up the new House GOP leaders and laugh as Harry Reid claims no billionaires contribute to the Democratic Party.

A new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report designed to show the new health care laws are increasing access and lowering costs may actually provide evidence that the program could be in the first stages of a financial death spiral.

When the Obamacare exchanges opened last year, most patients were expected to enroll in the least expensive, “bronze” plans.  However, Wednesday’s “Premium Affordability, Competition, and Choice in the Health Insurance Marketplace, 2014” report from HHS shows a much larger than expected number of Americans enrolling in the “silver” plans.  

National Center for Public Policy Research Health Care Policy Analyst David Hogberg says that could be very significant to the financial future of our health care system.

“About 65 percent of enrollees have chosen a silver plan.  One of the theories behind this has to do with the fact that if you earn 250 percent of the federal poverty level or less, and you choose a silver plan, you get an additional subsidy t help you with your plan’s cost-sharing.  So not only do you get  subsidy to help you with your premiums, you also get one to help you pay for deductibles, co-pays and other types of cost-sharing,” said Hogberg.

“This cost-sharing subsidy can greatly increase the value of the silver plan.  Who is likely to choose a plan that has a subsidy for cost-sharing?  It’s probably people who are likely to have a lot of medical expenses, people that are sick.  Some of the thinking has been that maybe this feature of the exchanges has attracted a lot of sicker people to the exchanges than it optimal.  What we’ve been missing is any real evidence that a lot of people buying silver plans do in fact make 250 percent of the federal poverty level or less.  So far, it’s been a guess,” said Hogberg.

He says that guess carries a lot more weight after the new HHS report.

“Yesterday’s report actually provided some pretty compelling evidence.  You go down to Table 2 in the report and it shows the average premium subsidy that people got by plan type.  This matters because the lower your income, the larger the subsidy you will get to help to help pay for your premiums.  Guess which type of plan had the largest average premium subsidy?” said Hogberg.

“[Silver’s] average was $276 a month, which is about 20 percent higher than the subsidy for any other plan.  What this strongly suggests is that silver plans are attracting a lot of people below 250 percent of the federal poverty level.  If the reason they’re choosing silver plans is that they have a lot of health problems, then you’ve got an insurance pool that is probably sicker than average and that will be very costly to cover,” he said.

Hogberg cannot say with absolute certainty that the die is cast for the death spiral, in which premiums rise and young, healthy people drop out instead of paying high costs for insurance and that process keeps repeating itself until the system collapses underneath its own weight.

But the telltale sign in the coming months, he says, will be seeing just how much premiums rise.  But how much do they need to be rising to be a signal of financial instability in the health care sector?

“I think you would probably be seeing at least 10 percent or more on average and we’ve started to see a bit of that,” said Hogberg.

Ohio insurers are already announcing that average premiums will be increasing 13 percent next year.  It’s 12 percent in Vermont.  Virginia and Washington state rates will be jumping nine percent on average, but on insurer in Washington is asking for a 26 percent hike in premiums.  Individual insurers in Arizona are requesting increases of 25 percent and 14 percent respectively, but the overall state average has not yet been calculated.

“If we see really high increases like that, there’s going to be a lot of incentive for young and healthy people who aren’t getting very big subsidies or getting no subsidy at all to drop out of the exchanges,” said Hogberg.

Also this week, multiple sources reported that many Americans may soon be looking at higher premium costs because their subsidies will be reduced or eliminated altogether because their financial information on their enrollment forms did not match what the IRS had on file.

Hogberg says this is a headache that was totally preventable.

“To some extent it’s the administration’s own fault that this has happened.  They didn’t have the technology ready to be able to check people’s income with the IRS but they went ahead with the exchanges anyway.  And then, about a year ago, they said for a number these exchanges we’re going to rely on the honor system to report your income,” said Hogberg, saying people took a shot at fudging their numbers when it appeared the government had no intention of enforcing the law.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Andrew Johnson of National Review are intrigued by MSNBC’s Krystal Ball suggesting Hillary Clinton is the Democrats’ Mitt Romney.  They also discuss why the media and even Republicans seem very interested in the IRS emails vanishing forever.  And they have fun with Brett Favre’s new ad endorsing Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran.

A key member of the House Ways and Means Committee says he does not believe years worth of emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner and six other figures vital to the investigation are suddenly missing but he also hinted that his committee may not do much to hold anyone accountable for failing to preserve and produce the documents.

In the past week, the IRS revealed that nearly two-and-a-half years worth of Lerner’s emails are “missing” and cannot be given to congressional investigators because her computer crashed.  Subsequently, lawmakers were informed computer problems also wiped out the emails of six other figures connected to the investigation.

“As an old cop, there’s something fishy somewhere.  I have some waterfront property in Arizona to sell.  I don’t believe a word of it,” said Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Washington), a member of the Ways and Means Committee who spent most of his adult life in law enforcement.

Both the Ways and Means Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have requested volumes of documents in connection with the alleged IRS harassment of conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status.  Reichert says his committee is getting evidence in a slow trickle, but even that glacial pace is turning up information that has the IRS running scared.

“We got enough information that helped direct us to certain individuals to focus on  and interview.  Those interviews then led us to ask for more documentation.  This is an investigation very similar to many I participated in in my 33 years in law enforcement,” said Reichert.

“You interview people.  You collect documents.  They lead you to other people to talk to and other documents to search for.  All of a sudden we’re getting close and Lois Lerner takes the fifth and other people resign.  I think we’re really close to finding the truth because all of a sudden they can’t stall us anymore, so now they’ve got a new excuse.  ‘We can’t find them. They’re lost.  They’ve disappeared.  The servers are wiped dry and the hard drive is gone and we have no idea how to get this information back,’ which is also something I don’t believe,” said Reichert.

Reichert says the committee was informed of the “missing” emails in a letter from the IRS but says that vital information was “buried on page 15 in a 27-page letter.”

On Friday, the Ways and Means panel will question IRS Commissioner John Koskinen about the emails and other perceived stonewalling in the transfer of documents related to the investigation.  Reichert gave us a preview of what he will ask.

We’re going to ask him a lot of questions.  Who is visiting the White House during this period of time?  What were they talking about?  Especially (former Chief of Staff to the Deputy Commissioner) Nikole Flax, because Nikole Flax is also one of those people whose emails have disappeared somewhere into never-never land.  Was she updating the White House on targeting or was she getting orders from people.  These are answers we don’t have,” said Reichert.

The congressman also wants to know about any previous computer meltdowns at the IRS.

“One of my questions will be, ‘Has this happened before?  How many times has this happened before?  Were you able to recover the information in past events?  Did you make any corrections to your system to help prevent this from happening?’  Obviously, if this is a true story, they didn’t,” said Reichert.

“It’s very suspect that Lois Lerner and these six others who were deeply engaged in conversation regarding the targeting of conservative people and organizations, they’re the ones whose emails have been lost,” he said.

Conservatives suing the IRS for alleged harassment are already making plans to go to court over the missing emails if necessary.  However, when directly asked how his colleagues will respond to the recent IRS actions, Reichert says the Ways and Means Committee will likely be content to plow forward with the documents the IRS has disclosed to lawmakers rather than hold officials accountable.

“We’re continuing our investigation.  We still have documents to look over.  There are thousands of them.  As we go through these documents, they do lead us to other people and other interviews.  We’re going to continue this investigation.  As far as what specific steps we’ll take, I think that depends on the testimony that (Koskinen) provides us on Friday,” said Reichert.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Eliana Johnson of National Review react to low approval numbers for President Obama’s foreign policy. They also discuss what to expect from further investigation into the IRS lost emails. And they find some comedic relief in the patent office’s revocation of the Washington Redskins’ trademark.

The attorney representing many conservative groups suing the IRS for harassment over their applications for tax-exempt status does not believe the claim that more than two years of critical emails are suddenly missing and she is demanding answers.

On Friday, the IRS announced that emails to and from former Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner were missing between the beginning of 2009 and mid-2011, the exact stretch in which the tea party was swelling in activity and political influence.

“Just when you think they can’t think of anything more bizarre to say that they’ve done or not done, then they come up with this,” said Cleta Mitchell, a highly regarded Washington attorney who is suing the IRS on behalf of True the Vote and other groups alleging IRS misconduct.

“They are required under many court decisions and many federal statutes to retain information that would be discoverable and relevant and issue related to litigation,” she said.

As a result, Mitchell is taking swift action in demanding answers to how the emails suddenly vanished and what the government plans to do about it.

“We sent a letter to the (Justice Department) and to the attorneys for Lois Lerner and the other IRS defendants yesterday, giving them until noon Wednesday to respond to several questions.  If they don’t respond, we will file a motion in court to allow for an independent forensics expert to have access to the computers and the hard drives and to take the necessary steps to recover and preserve the evidence,” said Mitchell.

Lerner’s emails are also being sought by congressional investigators.  IRS Commissioner John Koskinen recently assured House lawmakers that the emails existed and were carefully protected.

Mitchell isn’t buying the explanation and doesn’t think much of Koskinen either.

“I think they’re lying.  They’re either lying before or they’re lying now.  John Koskinen may be a nice person but he’s like a puppet.  He says whatever his staff tells him to say and he trots over to Congress and says things.  If I were in his position, I would have some heads because he has just parroted whatever the underlings have told him to say ever since he got there,” said Mitchell.

The IRS position lacks credibility on at least two fronts, according to Mitchell.  First, she points out the investigation is nearly a year old and the IRS could have easily reported the missing emails when they were requested if they really didn’t exist.  Second, the IRS only agreed to turn over the emails a month ago, which makes the timing of this announcement even more suspect to her and officials have made no effort to recover them.

“We have a bunch of people who are lawless.  There are statutes that require the retention of these documents.  They would not call in the FBI and the forensic experts at the NSA to recover these emails.  I’ve had many, many emails from people around the country saying this is just not possible.  This is not 1978.  Those emails are not lost.  They can be recovered.  What I’m worried about is that they’ve proactively destroyed the sources of the hard drives and computers,” said Mitchell.

Mitchell insists her clients still have a strong case against the IRS and the government’s failure to preserve evidence can be construed by the courts as evidence against the IRS.  Nonetheless, she says the Lerner emails could be very revealing.

“I think it would be a day-by-day diary,” said Lerner.  “This was at the height of IRS targeting, when it began, how it began, the communications within the agency and outside the agency.  She’s at the center of the storm,” said Mitchell.

The plaintiffs in the case are resolute in their commitment to find justice in this case, according to Mitchell.  She says this entire saga is not only another dagger in the reputation of the IRS but is also a scandal for how Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department have done everything they can to prevent the truth from coming to light.

“Everybody should be beyond being shocked at what the IRS can come up with.  It’s just breathtaking this is the most lawless agency.  The thing that is most distressing is that if we had independent law enforcement of the nation in Attorney General Eric Holder, instead of an enforcer for the Obama administration’s political hatchet agenda, they could fear that the DOJ would step in and bring the FBI in and do whatever’s necessary to recover and preserve documents and prosecute those for failure to follow the statutes,” said Mitchell,

“However, we all know that the Department of Justice is complicit in this effort.  My clients are more determined than ever to see this through with litigation, hoping that we’ll get law enforcement through the federal courts,” she said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review react to Hillary Clinton contending the American political system is the most brutal in the world.  They also fear Iran is winning new friends without renouncing any radical positions because the world is focused on ISIS in Iraq.  And they shake their heads as Secretary of State John Kerry devotes his morning to discussing climate change with Leonardo DiCaprio.