Holder Can’t Say No — Just Like Gonzales
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 3rd, 2008 5:28 am by HL
Holder Can’t Say No — Just Like Gonzales
Soon after Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, the former president and I had a brief telephone conversation. I had been downright heated about the pardon, a lot angrier than I had ever been about Monica Lewinsky. Clinton implied that I had things historically backward. Long after the Rich pardon had been forgotten, he said, the Lewinsky scandal would remain a vivid memory. That day is yet to come. The Rich pardon is back. The vehicle for this lingering echo from the year 2001 is the choice of Eric Holder as Barack Obama’s attorney general. Holder was Clinton’s deputy attorney general and he played a significant role in the pardon. When asked by the White House what he thought about a pardon for Rich, Holder replied, “Neutral, leaning towards favorable.” These four words have stalked him ever since.
Freedom and the Left
Most people on the left are not opposed to freedom. They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom. Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of. Nazis were free to be Nazis under Hitler. It is only when you are able to do things that other people don’t approve that you are free. One of the most innocent-sounding examples of the left’s many impositions of its vision on others is the widespread requirement by schools and by college admissions committees that students do “community service.”
