There are few things more telling about an administration than cabinet-level appointees. You can learn a lot about the inner workings and unadvertised positions of a presidency just by examining the kinds of people who surround the executive and their behavior.
To some extent, it’s more important to exercise vigilance over unelected officials than it is to pay attention to elected officials because they are not directly beholden to the people but are afforded limited oversight by the legislative and judicial branches.
Ultimately, any cabinet official serves at the pleasure of the president, and his or her activities are representations of the president’s policy.
On Jan. 2, 1920, under democratic President Woodrow Wilson, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer conducted multi-city raids that led to the arrest and extended detention without trial of at least 6,000 people. These arrests were coordinated under the auspices of rooting out anarchists, radicals and revolutionaries in preparation for an inevitable “Red uprising” known thereafter as the “Palmer Raids.”
Palmer’s conduct was later repudiated by the fact that no uprising materialized, and public opinion soured at the authoritarian overreach of the Wilson administration.
Never criticized or disciplined by Wilson, Palmer remained unrepentant to the end, stating in his 1921 testimony before a Senate hearing, “I apologize for nothing that the Department of Justice has done ... I glory in it. I point with pride and enthusiasm to the results of that work; and if ... agents of the Department of Labor were a little rough and unkind ... with these alien agitators, ... I think it might well be overlooked in the general good to the country.”
Today, President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, faces mounting calls for his resignation and possible prosecution under a contempt of Congress charge currently being prepared in response to his failure to comply with a subpoena issued by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. This legally binding warrant demands documents related to the botched “Fast and Furious” operation, which resulted in the “gun walking” of thousands of firearms purchased in the United States into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
These weapons were never tracked and later re-emerged at the scene of the fatal shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in a firefight on U.S. soil.
Holder tellingly made statements early in Obama’s term outlining his desire to see a permanent ban on so-called “assault rifles.” Fast forward to the present, and what appears to be occurring is the exposure of Holder’s botched attempt to manufacture justification for attacking Americans’ Second Amendment right to bear arms.
When repeatedly questioned about his unwillingness to comply with congressional subpoenas, Holder deflected criticism, channeling Palmer’s contempt for the Constitution by ludicrously citing lax U.S. gun laws as the real reason for Mexican cartel violence.
Thus far, Obama’s only commentary on the multi-year debacle still assailing the credibility of his justice department was to deny any knowledge or responsibility, as usual.
The most prescient remaining question is how Obama can continue to trumpet his administration as the most transparent in history when, in reality, it is becoming readily apparent that it may ultimately be one of the most secretive and grossly incompetent, if not criminal, ever.
Joshua Fonzi is a microbiology and cell science and entomology and nematology senior at UF. His column appears on Thursdays. You can contact him at opinions@alligator.org.
