Attorney General Eric Holder Announces Resignation

United States Attorney General Eric Holder, who folds the dubious distinction of being the only attorney general held in contempt of Congress, announced that he would be resigning on Thursday.

Holder, one of the few Obama remaining appointments from the first term, is one of the longest-serving AG's in US history and the country's first black attorney general. His five year tenure was marked primarily by cover-ups, politically motivated prosecutions and overreach on the part of the DOJ.

In the summer of 2012, Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress when the DOJ refused to turn over documents pertaining to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Operation Fast & Furious, in which the agency allowed straw purchasers to buy guns in US border states and take them into Mexico without intervening. In December 2010, one of these guns was recovered from the scene of a shootout south of Tuscon, AZ where Mexican drug traffickers killed US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and Mexican officials have seized numerous guns traced to the gunwalking program from drug traffickers or recovered them from murder scenes south of the border.

Before Holder announced his resignation, a federal judge ordered Holder to hand over all the requested Fast and Furious documents to the House Oversight Committee by October 1st. This has led to some speculation that the withheld documents contain damaging or politically embarrassing details that would've generated bad publicity for the White House and Democrats a month before the midterm elections. Others believe Holder's departure could have been timed to allow President Obama's hand-picked replacement to be confirmed by the Senate in a lame duck session in the event the majority shifts back to the Republicans after the elections.

Early in his tenure, Holder also supported civilian trials for Al Qaeda terrorists captured on the battlefield and detained in Guantanamo Bay, although the administration later backed off of trying suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Federal court in New York.

As attorney general, Holder seemingly took every opportunity to inject race into the DOJ enforcing federal laws- his DOJ's Civil Rights Commission declined to press charges against members of the New Black Panthers Party who were videotaped clad in paramilitary uniforms and wielding nightsticks in front of a Philadelphia polling station in 2008. Claiming minorities were incapable of obtaining photo ID, Holder's DOJ also unsuccessfully fought newly-passed voter ID laws in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Texas.

Speaking out on the recent unrest in Ferguson, MO, Holder told an audience at New York University this week:

“As an African American man who has been stopped and searched by police in situations where such actions were not warranted, I also carry with me an understanding of the mistrust that some citizens harbor (toward police),"

Under Holder, the DOJ also aggressively went after e-mails reporters from the Associated Press and FOX News and seized the phone records of FOX News reporter James Rosen's parents in the name of national security.

Not surprisingly, holder said that the Department of Justice had no plans to investigate the Veterans Affairs clandestine wait-lists in which the agency deferred treatment to numerous veterans seeking care at VA facilities- with a number of them dying as a result of being denied care.

National Guard Deployed to St Louis Suburb After Week of Protests and Looting

After criticizing the presence of 'militarized' police in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, MO last week, Missouri governor Jay Nixon ordered the National Guard into the city to restore order on Sunday night.

The unrest started last weekend when a Ferguson police officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager named Mike Brown. Although some witnesses gave conflicting accounts that claimed Brown was fleeing or surrendering when he was shot, the police claim that there was an altercation before the shooting where Brown tried to take the officer's service weapon.

After the shooting, a number of vigils and protests in Ferguson where demonstrators called for the officer to be charged with homicide took place [there are some unconfirmed reports out of St Louis that seem to corroborate the officer's version of events- NANESB!].

As tensions between citizens and area law enforcement escalated- with looting and clashes with police in riot gear following the shooting- state and local officials decided to hand over authority to the Missouri Highway Patrol and Captain Ron Johnston. Johnson espoused a hands-off approach to de-escalate tensions, in some instances outsourcing public safety to domestic terror groups like the Black Panthers. However, the clashes and looting continued over the next several nights [further agitated by outside groups such as the Revolutionary Communist Party and New Black Panther Party- NANESB!].

Heading into the weekend, Gov Nixon ordered a midnight curfew for the city of Ferguson as the looting and clashes continued. However, looters ignored the curfew and raided a Dominoes Pizza, Family Dollar store, a self-storage unit and an auto parts store. Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson also released surveillance video purportedly showing Brown committing a strong-arm robbery of a nearby convenience store shortly before the shooting took place, despite pleas from the DOJ not to do so.

An autopsy was also conducted that determined Brown was shot six times- none of them in the back, contrary to early eyewitness accounts. US Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered a federal autopsy of Brown and ordered FBI agents to canvas the neighborhood to search for possible additional witnesses to the shooting.