Truth Serum Today: attorney general

Showing posts with label attorney general. Show all posts

Monday, March 16, 2015

GOP: No Loretta Lynch rubber stamp

From the files of Jeff Crouere at Ringside Politics.com

Read the Crouere file at Ringside Politics - New Orleans, Louisiana

The first two months of the new Republican Congress has been extremely disappointing. The only significant accomplishment has been the passage of the Keystone Pipeline bill. Unfortunately, when the Republicans caved on the issue of stopping President Obama’s executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, it sent a strong signal to conservatives across the country that the party leadership will not stop the radical policies of this administration.

This begs the question, why did voters send Republicans to Congress? It certainly was not a mission to be a rubber stamp for the most liberal President in our nation’s history. They were sent to Washington D.C. to stop Obama’s liberal policies and serve as a check and balance to the expansive agenda of the White House.

Next week, the Senate Republicans will have an opportunity to redeem themselves and improve their tattered reputation. To replace the outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, President Obama has nominated another extreme liberal, Loretta Lynch, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. In testimony before Congress, Lynch expressed support for everything Eric Holder has done. In fact, she told U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), that as Attorney General she would pursue an agenda that “would not be different” from Eric Holder.

While continuing Holder’s liberal policies is extremely troubling, Lynch’s support of the President’s lawless executive amnesty should be more than enough to disqualify her for the important position of Attorney General. The President decreed, without congressional approval, the halting of deportations for five million illegal aliens, who will immediately qualify for work permits and benefits totaling $35,000 per year.

In testimony before Congress, Lynch made the incredulous statement that all illegal aliens have a “right to work.” The vast majority of Americans would disagree with Lynch. Illegal aliens do not have the right to enjoy benefits or secure employment. Instead, they have a right to return to their country of origin, posthaste.

After receiving approval from the Judiciary Committee with the support of three Republicans, Lynch now has the support of four Republicans in her battle for confirmation. This nefarious “Gang of Four” includes Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Orrin Hatch of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine.

If nothing changes, those four Republicans will be enough to confirm Lynch if she receives the unanimous support of all 46 Senate Democrats. In the case of a 50-50 tie, Vice President Joe Biden will cast the deciding vote in favor of Lynch.

Along with the four Republican Senators in support of Lynch, there are also several uncommitted Republican Senators including Mark Kirk of Illinois and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. However, Alexander is somewhat uncomfortable with Lynch, especially her “refusal to put limits on the president’s executive power.”

Another undecided Senator is Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. McConnell previously promised to oppose Lynch if she supported the President’s executive action granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

Now that the vote is nearing, McConnell is non-committal. This is another reminder that the Republicans are so very poorly served by McConnell in the Senate and Speaker John Boehner in the House. Neither of these “leaders” are committed to conservative principles and neither of them have the courage to take on President Obama on issues of substance.

Next week will be an important test for the Republican Party and will determine how the remainder of Obama’s term will progress. Let’s hope Republican Senators finally decide to represent the voters who elected them and reject Loretta Lynch. It is time they stopped being intimidated by the liberal news media, their Democratic colleagues, and, most importantly, the President of the United States.

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Jeff Crouere is a native of New Orleans, LA and he is the host of a Louisiana based program, “Ringside Politics,” which airs at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 10:00 p.m. Sunday on WLAE-TV 32, a PBS station, and 7 till 11 a.m. weekdays on WGSO 990 AM in New Orleans and the Northshore.

For more information, visit Jeff's web site at www.ringsidepolitics.com or email him at jeff@ringsidepolitics.com.

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Monday, February 2, 2015

Will the new AG support civil forfeiture reform?

Will New AG Support Civil Forfeiture Reform? from the Warning Signs by Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Loretta Lynch - Read the Warning Signs

The Wednesday hearings on the confirmation of a new Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, lasted hours because members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were often called away to vote.

In the wake of the scandals surrounding the manner in which Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has functioned, the hearing, led now by Republicans, could have been harsh, but it was not. The Wall Street Journal characterized the mood in the hearing room as “cordial.”

Watching it on CSPAN, I can confirm that.

In early November the Wall Street Journal, in an opinion titled “The Next Attorney General: One area to question Loretta Lynch is civil asset forfeiture”, it noted that “As a prosecutor Ms. Lynch had also been aggressive in pursuing civil asset forfeiture, which has become a form of politicking for profit.”

“She recently announced that her office had collected more than $904 million in criminal and civil actions in fiscal 2013, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Liberals and conservatives have begun to question forfeiture as an abuse of due process that can punish the innocent.”

That caught my eye because the last thing America needs is an Attorney General who wants to use this abuse of the right to be judged innocent until proven guilty. Civil forfeiture puts no limits on the seizure of anyone’s private property and financial holdings. It is a law that permits this to occur even if based on little more than conjecture. It struck me then and now as a bizarre and distinctly un-American law.

Writing in the Huffington Post in late 2014, Bob Barr, a former Congressman and the principal in Liberty Strategies, told of the passage of the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) in 2000 “as a milestone in the difficult—almost impossible—task of protecting individual rights against constant incursions by law-and-order officials.” The problem is that civil forfeiture was and is being used to seize millions.

“The staggering dollar amounts reflected in these statistics, however,” wrote Barr, “does not pinpoint the real problem of how law enforcement agencies at all levels of government employ the power of asset forfeiture as a means of harming, and in many instances, destroying the livelihood of individuals and small businesses.”

“In pursuing civil assets, the government need never charge the individuals with violations of criminal laws; therefore never having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are guilty of having committed any crimes.”

As noted above, as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Ms. Lynch’s office had raked in millions from civil forfeiture. Forbes magazine reports that she has used it in more than 120 cases and, prior to the hearing to confirm her as the next Attorney General US News and World Report noted on January 26 that Ms. Lynch’s office had quietly dropped a $450,000 civil forfeiture case a week before the hearings. She clearly did not want to answer questions on this or any other comparable case.

Just one example tells you why there is legitimate concern regarding this issue and it appeared in a January 3rd edition of Townhall.com. I recommend you read the account written by Amy Herrig, the vice president of Gas Pipe, Inc, a Texas company that an editor’s note reported as “faced with extinction of a civil asset forfeiture to the federal government of more than $16 million. Neither Herrig nor her father, Jerry Shults, have been charged with any criminal offense.”

Jerry Shults is a classic example of an American entrepreneur. After having served in the Air Force and serving in Vietnam where he earned a Bronze Star, Shults moved to Dallas where he began selling novelty items at pop festivals throughout Texas.

Since the first store that he opened had gas pipes exposed in the ceiling, he dubbed it Gas Pipe, Inc. Suffice to say his hard work paid off for him. By the late 1990s, he had seven stores, a distribution company, a five-star lodge in Alaska, and was an American success story. By 2014 the company had grown to fourteen stores and other notable properties.

By then he had been in business for nearly 45 years and employed nearly two hundred people. And then someone in the northern district of Texas, Dallas division, initiated a civil forfeiture seizure against him. I was so appalled by his daughter’s description of events I secured a copy of the September 15 complaint that was filed.

I am no attorney, but it looked to me as spurious as one could have imagined, except for the details of Gas Pipe’s assets. On 88 single-spaced pages, those were spelled out meticulously and all were subject to seizure despite the fact that not a single instance of criminality had been proven in a court of law. Imagine having 45 years of success erased by one’s own government in this fashion. It is appalling.

Assuming Ms. Lynch will be approved for confirmation as our next Attorney General, civil forfeiture is the largely hidden or unknown issue that could spell disaster for countless American businesses, large and small, in the remaining two years of the Obama administration. She has a record of pursuing it. The upside of this is that the current AG, Eric Holder, in early January announced that the DOJ would no longer acquire assets seized as part of a state law violation.

On the same day of Ms. Lynch’s hearing, January 28, writing in The Hill’s Congress Blog, former Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) was joined by Bruce Mehlman, a former Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the George W. Bush administration, to raise a note of warning.

“The topic of civil asset forfeiture should be an important part of the discussion with Lynch. As U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Lynch was the top official in a hotbed of civil asset forfeiture—helping to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars under the program in recent years.”

Ms. Lynch was not asked about civil forfeiture by either the Republican or Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was a lost opportunity and, if the new Attorney General applies her enthusiasm for it to the entire nation, it will be yet another Obama administration nightmare.

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