The Election and DOJ Oversight

Obviously, there are many things that can be stuffed into the “First Order of Business” file, but one of them ought to be oversight of the Obama Justice Department — there hasn’t been any, and the current DOJ is the most willfully political . . . ever. Senator Leahy is incorrigible and, in chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee, has only encouraged Attorney General Holder. In the House Judiciary Committee, however, Rep. John Conyers will no longer be wielding the gavel. While it’s not yet certain who will, Rep. Lamar Smith (R, Texas) is a good bet — he is currently the ranking member and, judging from this CNN report on the coming GOP congressional leadership, Representative Smith doesn’t appear to be term-limited (in connection with his assignment to the committee).

I’d strongly suggest that, if he hasn’t already, Representative Smith read the scathing indictment of the Department written by Quin Hillyer in the current edition of The American Spectator — and available online here. And I don’t say that because Quin made kind mention of me (on the subject of a civilian trial for KSM & Co.). His essay is comprehensive, as suggested by its opening passages:

Under attorney general Eric Holder, the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) is dangerously politicized, radically leftist, racialist, lawless, and at times corrupt. The good news is that it’s also often incompetent. This means the Holderites can bungle their leftist lawlessness so badly that even the most reticent of judges are obliged to smack them down.

The abuses by the Holderites are legion. They range from DOJ’s infamous abandonment of the already-won voter-intimidation case against several New Black Panthers to multi-faceted assaults on traditional standards of voting rights and obligations; from a growing list of lawsuits deliberately destructive of border security and citizenship laws to outrageously race-based bullying tactics; from efforts to undermine military discipline and state sovereignty on homosexual-related issues to the dangerous obsession with terrorists’ “rights” to the detriment of national security; and, finally, to the selection of judges openly contemptuous of the existing law-all while dedicated to a vision of judge-imposed “universal justice” based not on the text of American statutes but instead on the reigning cultural standards of coastal and international elites. While doing all this, the Holderites operate the least transparent DOJ in decades, treat congressmen and independent agencies with contempt, and claim breathtakingly spurious “privileges” against disclosure of public information.

This isn’t law enforcement and it isn’t justice, but instead is subversive of both.

You should read it all, and so should the new Congress. When they’re done, they should turn to The Weekly Standard, where — with Congress AWOL — Jen Rubin has, in effect, been our inspector general for the last two years. And, yes, I may have written a thing or two on the subject myself.