Holder’s View on Racial Profiling Too Extreme Even for Obama Inc.

harl

Attorney General Eric Holder’s political extremism was a low point for his office, but he’s become too extreme even for other figures in the administration who are themselves well left of center.

The first major revisions of US racial profiling rules in over a decade required the African-American men who steer the United States government to check their own civil rights ideals against the demands of national defense.

But as federal officials prepared the new guidelines, three men steeped in civil rights history and tribulations – Attorney General Eric Holder, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and President Obama – clashed over its breadth and impact.

Consequently, the rules, to be released only weeks before Holder leaves office, exempt large agencies, including the Transportation Safety Administration, which secures airports, and the Border Patrol, which secures the border, from having to ignore visual traits as objects of suspicion.

According to published reports, Mr. Johnson worried that eliminating profiling altogether could hurt national defense by handcuffing agents trying to infiltrate ethnic populations, including Hispanic and Islamic neighborhoods, more likely to include individuals threatening national security.

According to the Times, Holder believed border agents had no reason to consider race or ethnicity, but Johnson’s DHS pushed back against factors that could impede investigations involving illegal immigrants. DHS officials said, bottom line, that it was impractical to ignore people’s ethnicity while trying to do work at the border.

Border security has mostly been dismantled under Obama and the TSA bends over backward to avoid profiling, but the TSA does function as a political firewall and Jeh Johnson doesn’t want a terrorist attack blamed on racial profiling rules. In this he’s showing more foresight than Holder who didn’t seem to care about the consequences at all.

  • Hard Little Machine

    I seriously doubt Obama ever questions or debates anything. He’s happy to let the few underlings who deviate from the One Truth badger each other until he or she’s forced from their job. Jeh Johnson will likely either leave or be stripped of most of his authority.

  • Hanna Han

    It’s Very sad that Obama and his entire administration has been so divisive instead of making us better. All the Hope and change went to government sponsored racism and mistrust

    I thought Obama was supposed to bring our country together? I’ve never seen a country more divided. We all hate each other now.

    Under Obama, 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and have no hopes for raises anytime in this Obama administration. They also just had their health insurance cancelled and are forced to sign up for a more expensive policy with higher deductibles and co-pays. They are also living in a country where racial relations are as tense as ever (see Ferguson, MO).

    I was laid off in 2010 shortly after the start of the recession. I’m highly skilled in my field, yet have been bouncing around from job to job all making starting salary numbers, despite being 36 years old. Paying my mortgage is a struggle. Paying my health insurance is worse ($375/month from Freelancer’s Union). My car insurance is cheap at $25/month (from Insurance Panda), but who knows when Obama will step in and socialize that too! My daughter is forced to attend a public school that is in increasingly worse condition thanks to illegal children and welfare leeches moving in. Yet here I am, unable to afford a quality education for her.

    The middle class is shrinking in Obama-America because Obama is taxing them to oblivion and not giving them any hand-me-outs. To be middle class in today’s America is to be poor.

    • andrewwhitehead

      I feel your pain. The dream of middle class is over; the new dream is upper lower class.

      • objectivefactsmatter

        Some times we find that stupid policies are like damns. They’re holding back resources that get released when the problems are solved or at least reduced.

        The USA is long over due for a more robust economic expansion. Some investors and entrepreneurs are just behaving extra cautiously because we have too many Marxist thinkers in charge right now.

  • andrewwhitehead

    The racists in the administration are eating each other. Don’t question it, just stand out of the way and pass the ketchup!

  • truebearing

    So, we can conclude from this story that Jeh Johnson is at least somewhat sane.

    We frequently see people who profess their heartfelt dedication to causes and principles, but who readily abandon them to get what they want. This seems to be especially prevalent in the civil rights profession where crocodile tears soon turn to supercilious sneers.

    Jesse Jackson opposed abortion in black communities because he rightly saw the intent. A little money and some political clout changed his tune, overnight.

    Flooding the nation with illegal aliens will serious hurt poor blacks, yet Obama and Holder see no problem with it. These Social Justice One Percenters don’t seem to see the irony in bragging about championing the poor while doing favors for the rich. Maybe Irony Deficiency Syndrome should be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. You could just call them heartless frauds and liars but that will never make it into the DSM.