Welcome to the Obama administration's cringe-inducing non sequitur of the week. On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder continued stoking the fires of racial resentment over a Florida jury's acquittal of George Zimmerman. In an address to NAACP leaders, who are demanding federal intervention, Holder attacked Stand Your Ground self-defense laws.
All together now: Squirrel!
In a "How can he possibly top this?" move, Eric Holder's Justice Department "is trolling for email tips on the former neighborhood watch volunteer (George Zimmerman) as it weighs a possible federal civil rights case against him."
What other establishment press outlets besides Fox News will cover this? And if they do, which of them (if any) will note the mountain of exculpatory evidence about Zimmerman? First, excerpts from Fox's report by Jake Gibson, followed by the accumulated evidence that Zimmerman more than likely hasn't a racist bone in his body (HT to a frequent tipster, who saw coverage of this on a Fox show earlier today; bolds are mine throughout this post):
Norah O'Donnell gushed over Eric Holder on Wednesday's CBS This Morning, trumpeting the supposedly "remarkable" and "very personal" speech that the attorney general gave to the NAACP on Tuesday. O'Donnell also played up how "Holder, the first African-American attorney general...talked very personally about, after Trayvon Martin's death, counseling his own 15-year-old son if he was stopped by police" [audio available here; video below the jump].
The morning newscast spotlighted how the controversial Obama administration figure "sharply criticized the so-called 'stand your ground' laws in Florida and other states", and played 36 seconds of clips from his speech to the organization:
Imagine if -- and you'd have to imagine it, because it never happened -- the George W. Bush administration had sent members of its Justice Department to a city where a black man charged with murder was claiming self-defense in the killing of a non-African-American for the purposes of ginning up protests against the accused. Establishment press coverage and would have been justifiably intense.
On Thursday, Judicial Watch revealed that it had obtained documents showing that "a little-known unit of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Community Relations Service (CRS), was deployed to Sanford, FL, following the Trayvon Martin shooting to help organize and manage rallies and protests against George Zimmerman." In other words, DOJ did to Zimmerman what I just noted Bush 43 administration never did and would never have considered doing. JW's bombshell is not news at the Associated Press or at the Politico.
The Barack Obama Administration has been on a five-plus-year-long Collect-As-Much-Information-On-Us-As-Possible spree.
With Tens of Millions of Phone Records Grabbed – It’s the Government, Stupid
‘Thousands of NSA Analysts Can Listen to Domestic Phone Calls,’ Read Emails, Texts, IMs
Latest Big Government Data Grab: Justice Sues to Get It Without a Warrant
IRS Tea Party Scandal Shows Government Should Be Kept Away From Our Data
IRS-Conservatives, Justice-AP, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, HHS, EPA – This is Big Government
These incredible, all-encompassing violations of our Constitutional rights actually drew (shocker) some negative coverage from the usually sycophantic White House Stenographer (Press) Pool.
"I am sick and tired of not getting answers from my government when my government is abusing my freedoms," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told the crowd at yesterday's Tea Party Patriots-organized "Audit the IRS" rally outside the U.S. Capitol. "It is time to tell this nation's top cop, Attorney General Eric Holder, it's time to go. Fire Eric Holder!" the Media Research Center founder and president added to cries of "Fire Eric Holder!" from the crowd.
Closing his brief remarks, Bozell also asked rally participants to thank the few media outlets that had showed up for doing so, but then to demand that "the national news media that have been aiding and abetting this censorship" of the IRS scandal to "do their jobs" and "report the story."
As NewsBusters previously reported, CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson announced last Friday that her computers had been hacked into “by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012.”
On Monday, Attkisson told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly that she thinks she knows who did it (video follows with transcript and commentary):
As NewsBusters has been reporting, it's been a hoot watching typically anti-surveillance liberal media members support the President's program of having the National Security Agency look into everyone's phone records.
Count MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski amongst them, for on Wednesday's Morning Joe, the co-host struck back at any suggestion that leaker Edward Snowden was a whistleblower (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
Jay Leno continued his humorous attacks on Barack Obama Tuesday.
During a series of opening monologue jokes about the various scandals plaguing the White House, the NBC Tonight Show host said of quarterback Tim Tebow, “Now that he's associated with the word 'Patriot' he's being audited by the IRS” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):
As NewsBusters has been reporting, even the Obama-loving David Letterman has been humorously attacking the current White House resident for all the scandals plaguing him.
On the CBS Late Show Monday, the host said that Obama gave daughter Sasha Justin Bieber’s phone records for her birthday (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
Comedian Steve Martin stepped into the political ring this weekend tweeting numerous comments about the newest scandal facing the White House.
His most recent one reads, "Wearing my NSA spy-phone helmet as I bike by the UN is the definition of cacophony":
George Will had some harsh words for the Obama administration Sunday.
Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Will said that the recent revelation concerning National Security Agency information gathering is going to metastasize the IRS controversy into a national security scandal, and concluded that as a result, “the willingness to trust the executive branch is today minimal and should be.”