When Eric Holder Earned His Spurs (Elian Gonzalez, April 22, 2000)

The New Black Panther Party threatened Philadelphia voters with billy clubs and Eric Holder’s justice department couldn’t be bothered. CAIR was accused of fundraising for Hamas, and Eric Holder shrugged.

But back when Fidel Castro demanded the return of an escaped slave, Eric Holder snapped to attention, clicked his heels, and sprung to action. Scrupulous legality, we’re given to understand by Mr Holder, prevents his Department from prosecutions against the New Black Panthers and CAIR.

But regarding scrupulous legality, FoxNews Andrew Napolitano had (then Deputy) Attorney General Eric Holder’s number way back in April 23rd, 2000. Here it is thanks to The Media Research Center:

Napolitano: Tell me, Mr. Holder, why did you not get a court order authorizing you to go in and get the boy (Elian Gonzalez)?

Holder: Because we didn’t need a court order. INS can do this on its own.

Napolitano: You know that a court order would have given you the cloak of respectability to have seized the boy.

Holder: We didn’t need an order.

Napolitano: Then why did you ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for such an order if you didn’t need one?

Holder: [Silence]

Napolitano: The fact is, for the first time in history you have taken a child from his residence at gunpoint to enforce your custody position, even though you did not have an order authorizing it. When is the last time a boy, a child, was taken at the point of a gun without an order of a judge…Unprecedented in American history."

Holder: "He was not taken at the point of a gun."

Napolitano: "We have a photograph showing he was taken at the point of a gun."

Holder: "They were armed agents who went in there who acted very sensitively..."

Thanks to the ritual MSM-Castroite collusion most people forget (or missed) the crucial legal and ethical details of this circus/tragedy — which were mostly established during the first week after Elian’s rescue at sea, after his heroic mother’s drowning. The “son-belongs-with-his-father” crowd, for instance, “missed” (with the help of the MSM-Democratic complex) that Elian’s father was initially delighted that his motherless son was in the U.S. and in the loving arms of his uncles and cousins.