SENATE REPUBLICANS MUST STAND FIRM TO BLOCK THE SECOND COMING OF HOLDER

              Back in November, Splashing Rocks explained why the Senate should not confirm Ms. Loretta Lynch of New York City to succeed the insidious Eric Holder as Attorney General --  let alone rubber-stamp her nomination during the post-election lame duck session of Congress.  See http://splashingrocks.blogspot.com/2014/11/no-kumbaya-confirmation-for-holder-20.html. 

                Although the Senate did deny Ms. Lynch a swift confirmation in the lame duck, it now appears that a sufficient number of Republican senators may capitulate to their own pathological compulsion to support black nominees, regardless of fitness, to enable this provocative and politicized appointment to go through.  But the battle is not over yet.  A number of GOP senators, like Rand Paul of Kentucky, have become more outspoken in their opposition.  And a group of feisty conservative House Republicans have recently sent a letter to their senate colleagues stressing the urgency of blocking a nominee whose confirmation would rightly be viewed as a ratification of the Obama-Holder axis's subversion of constitutional government in America.

                Yet some spineless Republican senators seem determined to offer a preemptive surrender to the continued dominance of the Dark Side at the Department of Justice.  In particular, Vichy-Republican Senators Orrin Hatch (Utah), Jeff Flake (AZ), and Lindsey Graham (SC) signaled their readiness to support the Lynch nomination even before she had stated her unqualified support of Obama's unconstitutional grant of executive amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.  

                 Al Sharpton and his choice for Attorney General:  Loretta Lynch

               In gratuitously declaring their blind support for Lynch even before the hearings and Committee background investigation had been completed, these invertebrate appeasers have formulated a contemporary revision of the Queen of Hearts' famous legal dictum from Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.  While the mad queen declared, "Sentence first, verdict afterwards," the Spineless Senators effectively declare, "Confirmation first, hearing afterwards."

                That embarrassing Ted Kennedy-courtier, Orrin Hatch, was not even content to indicate mere support for Ms. Lynch.  Instead, he impulsively slobbered, "I'm going to be a strong supporter of her nomination. . . .  And I believe she's not only qualified, but exceptionally well qualified, and a very good person, to boot."  Has Hatch forgotten that Kennedy is no longer around for him to suck-up to?

                Hatch's clueless claim that the undistinguished and politically compromised Lynch is "exceptionally well qualified" is utterly unfounded and gratuitous. On the contrary, Ms. Lynch is palpably unqualified to serve as Attorney General in an era when a keen and principled grasp of constitutional law is more essential to that position than ever  – and when the Nation is in desperate need of a racially unbiased Justice Department. 

                Lynch's unqualified support of Obama's unconstitutional seizure of Congress's authority over immigration, and her unquestioning embrace of Holder's racially biased law enforcement policies, demonstrates her ignorance or disrespect of the Constitution.  Even as I write, a federal district judge in Texas has issued a preliminary injunction blocking implementation of the unconstitutional amnesty order that Lynch has embraced and endorsed.  And this is wholly apart from her lack of scholarly experience, let alone distinction, in addressing the many other complex issues of constitutional law the Nation faces today.  

               Ms. Lynch is a garden-variety, patently Democratic, pedestrian federal prosecutor -- one of some 93 equally "qualified" U.S. Attorneys -- nothing more.

                Lynch's confused understanding of the law and the Constitution is also typified by her ridiculous assertion that “the right and the obligation to work is one that’s shared by everyone in this country regardless of how they came here.”  

                No, Ms. Lynch.  If a person entered and remains in this country illegally, that person does not have the "right" to work.  On the contrary, it is unlawful for such a person to be employed in the United States.  8 U.S.C. 1324a.  This patently erroneous statement alone demonstrates not only Lynch's ignorance of the law, but a recklessness that is flatly inconsistent with the responsibilities of the Nation's chief law enforcement officer.

                Moreover, Senator Hatch's assertion that Ms. Lynch is a "very good person" is an entirely unfounded and gratuitous throw-away line.  The Mormon senator from Utah doesn't even know this heretofore obscure Brooklyn prosecutor, let alone know her long enough or well enough to make authoritative pronouncements on her purported virtue. 

                But here's something we do know:  the degenerate racial agitator and riot-inciter, Al Sharpton, was actively involved in her selection as Obama's nominee, and has declared his confidence that Lynch "will continue in the same vein that Eric Holder had began."  [sic]

                Although there is every reason to doubt Sharpton's honesty and integrity in areas such as tax compliance and inter-racial crime, there is no reason to doubt his conviction that Loretta Lynch will adhere to the same politicized left-wing, anti-constitutional, and racially preferential policies inflicted on the Nation by Holder.  Indeed, Sharpton would have no reason to enthusiastically support Lynch's confirmation unless he were confident that she would further Sharpton's (and Holder's) race-based goals in areas such as criminal law, affirmative action, school discipline, and racial preferences in housing, education, and employment.

                Unfortunately, the Senate Judiciary Committee's toothless and timid examination of Ms. Lynch's background failed to identify a glaring indicator of her blind commitment to the same divisive, race-based approach to justice and law enforcement that has been the hallmark of Eric Holder's tenure at DOJ.

                As reported by the lively Gotnews.com website, Lynch not only endorses the fraudulent narrative that the death penalty is discriminatorily applied against blacks, but apparently is heavily influenced by that false doctrine in her adamant opposition to the death penalty as a tool of federal law enforcement.  See http://gotnews.com/read-lorettalynch-hates-death-penalty-leads-dead-blacks/.  Every senator who votes on the Lynch nomination should read this piece and the sources supporting it.

                This writer has been extensively involved in litigation (e.g., the landmark case of McCleskey v. Kemp), legislative battles, and scholarly debates that have demonstrated that, far from discriminating against blacks, capital punishment is in fact disproportionately imposed on white murderers.  Indeed, a recent posting on this blog presented data reported by Obama's own Justice Department confirming these indisputable facts.  See The Capital Canard of Death Penalty Discrimination, SplashingRocks.blogspot.com (July 17, 2014).  As that article documented, "For roughly three decades now, whites have consistently received a disproportionately large number of death sentences in relation to their portion of the relevant population of homicide offenders, whereas the reverse is true with respect to black homicide offenders."

                Notwithstanding these hard  facts, Loretta Lynch (in her capacity as a prosecuting U.S. Attorney) has rejected the enforceability of the death penalty based on her blind endorsement of the insidious leftist myth that capital punishment is discriminatorily applied against blacks.  Not only does this demonstrate the utter fallacy of her defenders' hackneyed assertion that she is a "no nonsense prosecutor" – the discriminatory death penalty argument is the very epitome of legal "nonsense" – but it provides clear confirmation that Lynch is committed to the dangerous doctrine that federal law enforcement must be tilted and tailored to accommodate the most extreme canards of black racial agitators like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

               

                Eric Holder, a left-wing, race-obsessed fanatic, has been Attorney General of the United States for about six years, since the beginning of the Obama administration.  Holder hardly bothers to pretend to administer the laws and enforce justice even-handedly as between blacks and whites.  In his official capacity as Attorney General, he has openly singled out blacks as "my people."  Whites, East Asians, and others who are not "his people," we must assume, are on their own as far as law enforcement goes.  He has openly and aggressively taken the side of violent black offenders against blameless law enforcement officers and white victims in case after case, relentlessly driven by his fanatical commitment to the most extreme notions of black entitlement and black preference.  And Al Sharpton is confident that Loretta Lynch "will continue in the same vein" as Mr. Holder.

                Six years of discriminatory law enforcement is more than enough.  But with the nomination of Loretta Lynch, Mr. Obama appears determined to perpetuate Holder's race-based administration of justice for the remainder of his term in office.  If Al Sharpton's (not to mention Holder's) enthusiastic promotion and support of Lynch's confirmation were not enough to confirm this, Lynch's endorsement and application of fraudulent and divisive doctrines like the myth of the discriminatory death penalty should remove all doubt.

                Unless the newly elected Republican Senate wants to reaffirm and ratify Mr. Holder's lawless maladministration of the Justice Department, it should firmly reject the nomination of Loretta Lynch --  who was clearly selected to perpetuate Holder's policies at DOJ for the remainder of this administration.

                Addendum:   A portion of Ms. Lynch's testimony in her hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee raises additional troubling questions and inconsistencies respecting her position on the death penalty – and her honesty.

                As noted above, reports on Lynch's remarks at a panel discussion in 2002 contain specific quotes and information strongly indicating that she objects to use of the death penalty because of a purported disparate impact on blacks which has been conclusively disproven by Justice Department statistics and other data.  At her confirmation hearing, however, Lynch tried to deflect possible criticism or objections to her position on the death penalty in the following colloquy with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.-SC):

                Sen. Graham: "Do you support the death penalty?"

                Lynch:  "I believe the death penalty is an effective penalty.  My office was able to achieve a death verdict there—"

                Graham:  "How about yes?"

                Lynch:  "So, we have sought it, yes," Lynch replied.

                The astute reader will notice that Lynch very carefully avoided answering Graham's question.  Her cagey statement that the "death penalty is an effective penalty" does not mean that she supports it or even that she would be willing to order its enforcement as Attorney General.  Saying the death penalty is "effective" could merely be an acknowledgement of the truism that, on the rare occasions when it is actually carried out, it is "effective" in eliminating a particular defendant through execution.  Lynch's response was patently evasive.

                And when Graham pressed again for a straightforward "yes" answer, Lynch again avoided a direct answer with another evasive statement affirming that her office (the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn) had sought (and obtained) the death penalty in one case – probably referring to the notorious case of cop killer Ronell Wilson.  She carefully and craftily avoided giving a direct affirmation that she "supported" the death penalty, and answered instead a question that Sen. Graham did not ask.  If Lynch was referring to the Wilson case, moreover, it was the Office of the Attorney General, rather than her office, that made the decision to pursue the death penalty.

                Something simply does not add up here.  Lynch's statements at the 2002 conference provide strong evidence that she strongly objected to the death penalty based on the leftist/racialist myth that it is discriminatorily applied against blacks.  Yet when faced with the prospect that anti-death penalty testimony in her hearings would undoubtedly raise complications for her confirmation among Republican senators, Lynch provided evasive and non-responsive answers, deceptively couched to leave the Committee with the false impression that she does support the death penalty.  The clueless media in fact inaccurately reported that Lynch had affirmed her support for the death penalty, in an obvious effort to reinforce the utterly bogus narrative that she is a moderate, no-nonsense prosecutor.

                More importantly, neither the feckless Senator Graham nor other Republican members of the Committee responded to the obvious prevarication in Lynch's testimony by pressing her to reconcile her race-based anti-death penalty statements in 2002 with her mendacious attempts to create the misimpression that she is now a death penalty supporter.  This is a classic case of what veterans of confirmation hearings have labeled "confirmation conversion" – a sudden and drastic shift of position on a crucial issue in order to facilitate a positive senate confirmation vote.

                The bottom line is that Lynch's misleading testimony on the capital punishment issue provides further grounds to oppose her confirmation – i.e., the failure to testify honestly and forthrightly to the Judiciary Committee.