Internet Scofflaw

Pajamas Media has an update on the scandal of political hiring in the Holder Justice Department. Every single one of the 113 lawyers hired in the Civil Rights Division under Eric Holder has been a leftist. Not one of them have been conservative, libertarian, centrist, or even apolitical.

In case you are wondering, yes, this is improper, and not merely unseemly. The Department of Justice prohibits discrimination on the basis of political affiliation. The left used to understand this. They attacked the DOJ’s hiring record under President Bush, even though that record was much better than what we’re seeing from Holder now.

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A red-light camera in Port Lavaca, Texas issued this truck a ticket:

The town is cancelling the ticket, but that’s not good enough. The thing is, machines are not supposed to issue tickets; humans issue tickets. So, supposedly, humans review the material and then sign the ticket, which includes a statement — under penalty of perjury — confirming the machine’s findings.

Clearly, the man who signed this ticket — a police sergeant — did not review the material. Will he be prosecuted for perjury? Not bloody likely. But if the police can lie on these statements without any consequence, they are of no value. Every single ticket issued in Port Lavaca pursuant to a red-light camera ought to be thrown out.

Moreover, does anyone believe that this one town is the only place in which the authorities are not diligently reviewing the red-light camera data?

As astonishing as it is that the Gunwalker scandal could get worse again, it has done just that. Not only did the ATF facilitate the trafficking of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, they did it themselves! They bought weapons with taxpayer money, and then delivered them to the criminals:

Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel — the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.

This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice’s previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a “botched” operation where agents simply “lost track” of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another.

Well, that defense (that they simply “lost track” of the weapons) was undermined long ago. We’ve known for some time that the ATF never followed the weapons. The new revelation here is the astonishing lengths to which the ATF went to avoid following the weapons:

According to sources directly involved in the case, [Agent John] Dodson felt strongly that the weapons should not be abandoned and the stash house should remain under 24-hour surveillance. However, [ATF supervisor David] Voth disagreed and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office. Dodson refused, and for six days in the desert heat kept the house under watch, defying direct orders from Voth.

A week later, a second vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons. Dodson called for an interdiction team to move in, make the arrest and seize the weapons. Voth refused and the guns disappeared with no surveillance.

Read that twice and see if you can comprehend it. The ATF was determined to see these guns end up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels without any surveillance.

It is now clear that, whatever the purpose of Operation Fast and Furious was, it certainly was not to follow the guns back to the “big fish”. ATF’s management took pains to avoid following the guns! So what was the purpose of the operation? No one has yet suggested any plausible, legitimate purpose. The only theories on the table are the gun-control theory, and the anti-Zeta theory.

POSTSCRIPT: More here, including a document that purports to be Voth’s written authorization to buy the guns.

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I’ve been lax about reporting the Solyndra affair as it has grown from a typical screwup of the sort that arises whenever the government tries to supplant the marketplace and pick winners, into a huge political scandal. Let me catch up by listing what we know:

After Solyndra went belly-up (after blowing through half a billion in taxpayer money), the FBI raided their offices. We know that one of Solyndra’s top backers was a major fundraiser for President Obama, that Solyndra officials were frequent visitors to the White House, and that federal officials sat in on Solyndra board meetings.

We know that the White House pressured the OMB to approve the loan, and quickly (in time for a presidential speech), despite the OMB’s concerns that they hadn’t done due diligence (that’s for sure!):

“We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week),” one official wrote. That Aug. 31, 2009, message, written by a senior OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeny, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, concluded, “We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews.”

And it wasn’t just the Obama-era OMB with reservations. The Bush administration shelved the loan application (despite recent attempts on the left to blame Bush for the mess). PriceWaterhouseCoopers warned that Solyndra’s troubles “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.” And it wasn’t just finance people, either. According to a former Solyndra employee, everyone working there knew the company was doomed. They were making a product for $6 that they could only sell for $2-3. The Obama administration was aware of these warnings, but ignored them.

Worse, this isn’t merely a situation where political pressure resulted in a terrible decision. The process violated federal rules and the law. The General Accountability Office found that the loan process bypassed required steps. The law specifically forbade the DOE from subordinating the government’s stake (i.e., placing the government after other creditors in any bankruptcy proceeding), but the Obama administration disregarded that provision.  Thus, the loan was not only unwise, not only improper, it was illegal.

Solyndra’s actions were not proper either. Once they received the government’s “investment”, they lavishly wasted money. They spent over a million on lobbying, hiring lobbyists connected to John Kerry (D-MA) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD). And, in fact, they violated the terms of their loan starting in December 2010.

Solyndra officials took the Fifth at a Congressional hearing last week. That surprised Congressional investigators who had earlier agreed to delay the hearing in exchange for a promise that the officials would testify. However, many other people did agree to testify. (Andrew Stiles summarized the proceedings here and here.)

One who did agree to testify was DOE official Jonathan Silver, who admitted that the conditions for Solyndra have been unfavorable for years (since before the latest loan!), and that the DOE has known since last July that Solyndra would go under.

One of the strangest aspects of the scandal is that somehow the California Democratic Party ended up a Solyndra creditor. No one will admit to knowing how that happened.

Alas, the Obama administration has learned nothing from the scandal. They have just announced three more solar loans totaling more than $2 billion, and have billions more to throw away this week. One of those loans, for $737 million, is to the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a project connected to Ron Pelosi, the House Democratic Leader’s brother-in-law. The political connections of the other projects have not yet been determined.

UPDATE: A nice video summarizing the scandal.

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Over 200 murders have been linked to weapons trafficked to Mexican drug cartels by the ATF.

That’s at least 200 more than were murdered in Watergate, our government’s second-worst scandal.

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The government of San Juan Capistrano, California, show themselves to be unqualified for any position of public trust:

An Orange County couple has been ordered to stop holding a Bible study in their home on the grounds that the meeting violates a city ordinance as a “church” and not as a private gathering.

Homeowners Chuck and Stephanie Fromm, of San Juan Capistrano, were fined $300 earlier this month for holding what city officials called “a regular gathering of more than three people”.

This reminds me of China’s crackdown on house churches. There’s obviously a difference in severity (a $300 fine does not compare to torture), but it’s not a field of endeavor that American officials are supposed to be in at all. Tarring and feathering is too good for them.

(Via Instapundit.)

A British man who killed a home invader with the invader’s own knife has been arrested for murder. The only way this makes any sense at all is if the police suspect that the home invasion story is false:

Chief Superintendent Tim Forber of Greater Manchester Police said: ‘We believe the dead man was one of two men who were attempting to carry out a burglary at the house.’

Well, scratch that theory I guess.

So in England today, not only are you forbidden to have the means of self-defense (heck, you can’t even have a Swiss Army Knife), you’ll be arrested even if you use the criminal’s own weapon against him. If you want to stay on the right side of the law, you have to roll over for the criminal and hope he doesn’t kill you. I’m sure “he obeyed the law” will look great on your tombstone.

But the reaction of the authorities isn’t the worst part of this story. Read this and weep:

[The home invader's] family were too upset to comment but they left floral tributes at the scene referring to him as ‘Ray’ and ‘Uncle Raymondo’.

One read: ‘Love you son, going to miss you more than anything. You mean the world to me. Love you loads, Dad.’

And it goes on. There are photos of weeping friends. Friends of the criminal that is. England is now a place where the family of a criminal killed in the midst of a home invasion feel they can go back to the home he tried to invade and place a tribute to him! They will even get their sorrow reportedly sympathetically in the press. That place has truly lost its moral compass.

(Via Instapundit.)

Pajamas Media reports:

The final tally in our hiring expose is staggering. Since Barack Obama installed Eric Holder at the Justice Department, there have been 113 new career lawyers hired into the Civil Rights Division. There isn’t even a single token conservative in the bunch. Worse yet, as this PJMedia series has demonstrated conclusively, the breakdown of the new hires reveals that not even moderates are welcome. Here are the numbers:

Liberals: 113

Conservatives: 0

Apolitical Attorneys: 0

As has been said repeatedly, there is nothing problematic with hiring liberals to work in the Division. But contrary to the views of many in the civil rights community — including the current leadership of the Justice Department — there is also nothing wrong with hiring conservative or apolitical attorneys to undertake this work. Yet such professionals have been categorically blackballed from joining the career ranks of the Division. That is not only unjust, it is illegal. . .

Notwithstanding the claims of revisionist historians, the Bush Civil Rights Division hired and promoted lawyers from all across the political and ideological spectrum. Even in the three sections of the Division that were the focus of a libelous report from the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility and Inspector General, nearly a third of the new career attorneys hired and promoted were clearly liberal and many others were entirely apolitical. Meanwhile, enforcement figures in nearly every section were through the roof (in some cases, such as the Voting Section, putting the Obama administration numbers to shame), while not one nickel had to be paid out in sanctions.

Now, less than three years later, all semblances of ideological balance in the Division have been utterly eliminated, and proudly so. . . Reports from inside the Division by individuals familiar with the work of the hiring committee describe the resumes of one qualified applicant after another being tossed in the “No” file merely because the candidate could not satisfy the newly imposed liberal litmus test.

What’s the big deal if a liberal administration hires only liberals? Don’t forget that, not very long ago, the hiring record of the Bush administration — which was much, much better — was billed as scandalous.

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