By BYRON YORK, Washington Examiner

Our Justice Department is hard at work

Attorney General Eric Holder says nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department. But he does not reveal any names beyond the two officials whose work has already been publicly reported. And all the lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in.

Holder’s admission comes in the form of an answer to a question posed last November by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. Noting that one Obama appointee, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, formerly represented Osama bin Laden’s driver, and another appointee, Jennifer Daskal, previously advocated for detainees at Human Rights Watch, Grassley asked Holder to give the Senate Judiciary Committee “the names of political appointees in your department who represent detainees or who work for organizations advocating on their behalf…the cases or projects that these appointees work with respect to detainee prior to joining the Justice Department…and the cases or projects relating to detainees that have worked on since joining the Justice Department.”

In his response, Holder has given Grassley almost nothing. He says nine Obama political appointees at the Justice Department have advocated on behalf of detainees, but did not identify any of the nine other than the two, Katyal and Daskal, whose names Grassley already knew. “To the best of our knowledge,” Holder writes.

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The Washington Times

 Holder’s Justice Department is in trouble

There needs to be a housecleaning at the very troubled Justice Department, and the top echelons of the Civil Rights Division is the right place to start. Its division chief – a presidential appointee – and its highly politicized senior career employees promote liberal ideology more than they enforce the law.

The latest imbroglio concerns two of the division’s top career lawyers, the ones whom the Obama team chose to run the division until controversial nominees Thomas Perrelli and Thomas Perez could be confirmed. The two officials, Loretta King and Steven H. Rosenbaum, were heavily involved (along with Mr. Perrelli) in dropping an already-won voter-intimidation case against several members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, and both were responsible for other, questionable race-based decisions. On Dec. 30, a federal district court in Kansas sanctioned them for misconduct.

The misconduct involved a failure to be "fully responsive" to earlier court filings. Significantly, the judge – himself a liberal who formerly served as counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union – held the Justice Departmentattorneys personally and "solely responsible for paying the monetary sanctions."

As the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky pointed out in December, this is at least the second such sanction earned by Ms. King. In a 1994 case in Georgia, he wrote, "The American taxpayer was forced to pay $587,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs that were awarded to the defendants to compensate them for an unwarranted lawsuit, one in which King and the other Justice Department lawyers ‘commanded’ the state of Georgia, as the Supreme Court noted, to engage in ‘presumptively unconstitutional race-based districting.’ " Federal courts found the conduct of Ms. King’s team "disturbing," an "embarrassment," and "surprising[ly] … blind to [its own] impropriety."

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Andrew McCarthy, New York Daily News

Obama is bringing the Gitmo Boys to New York

The prosecution team I led in 1995 convicted the notorious Blind Sheikh and 11 others for conspiring to wage a terrorist war that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and attempting (unsuccessfully) to attack New York City landmarks. Consequently, some observers seem puzzled that I’m a vocal critic of civilian trials for our terrorist enemies. But they are confusing litigation success with national-security success. So is the Obama administration in deciding to transfer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 plotters to federal court in Manhattan.

We certainly can convict terrorists in civilian court. We’ve done it too many times for that to be a serious issue. It’s also indisputable that the U.S attorney’s office in Manhattan, where I was privileged to work for 18 years, is without peer in the expertise needed for such complex prosecutions. I have every confidence the Justice Department could convict KSM & Co.

The problem on this ride is not the destination; it’s the journey.

We are in a hot war, overwhelmingly authorized by Congress, against vicious enemies still plotting attacks that could dwarf the carnage of 9/11. To deal with war crimes, Congress in 2006 endorsed military commission trials, which have a rich pedigree in our history, are fully consistent with our Constitution, and better enable us to withhold intelligence methods and sources.

Indeed, the Obama administration concedes that military commissions are sound: Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the bombers of the warship Cole will face one.

By Don Loos, Big Government

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is defiant and combative

On Friday, 20 November 2009, The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation (Foundation) decided enough was enough and filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court demanding that they compel the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to comply with the Foundation’s April 6th Freedom of information Act (FOIA) request.
The Foundation’s FOIA requested:

Records from communications and recorded events where specified Obama appointees and Big Labor official were present
Lists of lawsuits involving the Department of Labor and Deborah Greenfield within the past eight years.

List of any gifts received by Solis in the past 5 years from Big Labor or its officials

Specifically provide in detail (a) notes, (b) agreements, (c) communications, and (d) agendas related to the regulations related to the labor union and officer disclosure rules

Copies of phone logs

Copies of any notes or documents related to any enforcement of any labor laws and any outside groups such as labor unions, American Rights at Work, or ACORN

Obama’s Labor Department Ignores His Transparency Guidance
Remember January 21, 2009, when President Barack Obama proclaimed the new era of more open and transparent government began? This U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy memorandum is a good reminder:

On his first full day in office, January 21, 2009, President Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of all departments and agencies on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The President directed that FOIA “should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” Moreover, the President instructed agencies that information should not be withheld merely because “public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.”

Agencies were directed to respond to requests “promptly and in a spirit of cooperation.”

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By Peter Brookes, Real Clear Politics

The Obama administration’s decision to release a previously classified 2004 CIA interrogation report and appoint a special prosecutor to look into possible misdeeds by personnel involved in questioning high-value terrorists is a huge mistake.

It’s almost as if – in addition to the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and on terror – the Obama administration has now declared war on the CIA, which is one of our most important assets in gathering intelligence for winning these conflicts.

First, these choices will likely have a chilling effect on the morale at the agency. Earlier this year Barack Obama himself vowed it was time to look forward, not back. (Of course, that is until it’s time to look back.)

In addition to being another Obama policy flip-flop, these decisions will likely leave officers in the field wondering whether they should be more concerned about getting terrorists or getting lawyers.

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By DEVLIN BARRETT and PAMELA HESS, Associated Press

The Obama administration launched a criminal investigation Monday into harsh questioning of detainees during President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism, revealing CIA interrogators’ threats to kill one suspect’s children and to force another to watch his mother sexually assaulted.

At the same time, President Barack Obama ordered changes in future interrogations, bringing in other agencies besides the CIA under the direction of the FBI and supervised by his own national security adviser. The administration pledged questioning would be controlled by the Army Field Manual, with strict rules on tactics, and said the White House would keep its hands off the professional investigators doing the work.

Despite the announcement of the criminal probe, several Obama spokesmen declared anew — as the president has repeatedly — that on the subject of detainee interrogation he "wants to look forward, not back" at Bush tactics. They took pains to say decisions on any prosecutions would be up to Attorney General Eric Holder, not the White House.

Monday’s five-year-old report by the CIA’s inspector general, newly declassified and released under a federal court’s orders, described severe tactics used by interrogators on terror suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Seeking information about possible further attacks, interrogators threatened one detainee with a gun and a power drill and tried to frighten another with a mock execution of another prisoner.

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By MATTHEW COLE, RICHARD ESPOSITO and BRIAN ROSS, ABC News

Leon Panetta may leave the CIA because of attacks by Justice

A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com.

Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials.

"You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year," a senior adviser to Obama on intelligence matters told ABCNews.com.

A White House spokesperson, Denis McDonough, said reports that Panetta had threatened to quit and that the White House was seeking a replacement were "inaccurate."

According to intelligence officials, Panetta erupted in a tirade last month during a meeting with a senior White House staff member. Panetta was reportedly upset over plans by Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation of allegations that CIA officers broke the law in carrying out certain interrogation techniques that President Obama has termed "torture."

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By JOHN FUND, Wall Street Journal

Black Panther’s outside polling place last November

President Obama’s Justice Department continues to stonewall inquiries about why it dropped a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

The episode—which Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the left-wing Village Voice, calls “the most blatant form of voter intimidation I’ve ever seen”—began on Election Day 2008. Mr. Bull and others witnessed two Black Panthers in paramilitary garb at a polling place near downtown Philadelphia. (Some of this behavior is on YouTube.)

One of them, they say, brandished a nightstick at the entrance and pointed it at voters and both made racial threats. Mr. Bull says he heard one yell “You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!”

In the first week of January, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring voters with the weapon, uniforms and racial slurs. In March, Mr. Bull submitted an affidavit at Justice’s request to support its lawsuit.

When none of the defendants filed any response to the complaint or appeared in federal district court in Philadelphia to answer the suit, it appeared almost certain Justice would have prevailed by default. Instead, the department in May suddenly allowed the party and two of the three defendants to walk away. Against the third defendant, Minister King Samir Shabazz, it sought only an injunction barring him from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of a Philadelphia polling place for the next three years—action that’s already illegal under existing law.

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By Greg Miller and Josh Meyer, LA Times

Bush and officials protecting us from terrorists are targeted

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.

A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.

Current and former CIA and Justice Department officials who have firsthand knowledge of the interrogation files contend that criminal convictions will be difficult to obtain because the quality of evidence is poor and the legal underpinnings have never been tested.

Some cases have not previously been disclosed, including an instance in which a CIA operative brought a gun into an interrogation booth to force a detainee to talk, officials said.

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By Jerry Seper, Washington Times

Obama just Department drops the case against these thugs

Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, the No. 3 official in the Obama Justice Department, was consulted and ultimately approved a decision in May to reverse course and drop a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party of intimidating voters in Philadelphia during November’s election, according to interviews.

The department’s career lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division who pursued the complaint for five months had recommended that Justice seek sanctions against the party and three of its members after the government had already won a default judgment in federal court against the men.

Front-line lawyers were in the final stages of completing that work when they were unexpectedly told by their superiors in late April to seek a delay after a meeting between political appointees and career supervisors, according to federal records and interviews.

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