Sowing and Reaping

It's beginning to look a lot like Eric Holder is guilty of lying to Congress under oath, which is perjury, and/or lying to a federal judge in order to get a warrant to search the personal communications of Fox News reporter James Rosen. Whatever the nature of Mr. Holder's prevarications, if such they be, his future as Attorney General looks bleak. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has the details:

Last week, under relatively friendly questioning from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) about the Department of Justice seizure of Associated Press phone records, [Mr. Holder was] asked about the potential to prosecute reporters under the Espionage Act of 1917. ”You’ve got a long way to go to try to prosecute the press for publication of material,” Holder responded.

Later, though, he returned to the topic unbidden, emphasis mine:

In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material. This is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.

As it turns out, Holder not only heard of it, he personally approved it. The warrant in the Rosen case specified that he was considered a potential suspect in the leak of classified material, [which is why] the DoJ didn’t bother to follow the existing Watergate-era statute in coordinating the records request with Fox News.

And note that Holder’s testimony in this case wasn’t produced by some sophisticated perjury trap sprung by a Republican, but as a freely-offered representation to no particular question during the question period of a Democrat.

There is no other way to view this except as a lie.

In fact, Mr. Holder was under oath which makes his lie perjury. Moreover, as Morrissey explains later, Holder may also have lied to a judge to obtain the warrant for seizing Rosen's records.

In an update, Morrissey notes that there's a bipartisan consensus emerging for Holder's resignation. The Huffington Post and Esquire have both had enough. Pressure to resign would seem, though, to be the least of Holder's worries. He may also be looking at disbarment and a few years in prison.

Exit questions: Does anyone seriously think that Holder would have signed off on the Rosen matter without someone high up in the White House knowing about it? How high does this go? How many more scandals must attach themselves to this administration before the media starts talking about it being the most corrupt administration in American history?

War of Attrition

Mark Steyn is a brilliant satirist, but I don't think I've ever read anything by him quite as good as his piece on the fatuousness of the liberal European political figures and media in the wake of the grisly murder of officer Lee Rigby on the streets of London last week.

I thought as I read it that at some point in the not-too-distant future Europeans and Americans are going to arrive at the realization that our refusal to see that a substantial portion of the Islamic world is at war with the West has been a form of self-delusion. Our authorities keep telling us, despite repeated and ample evidence to the contrary, that acts of savagery and murder being carried out against non-Muslims are the random acts of a few extremists:

• Heavily influenced by a Muslim cleric, Nidal Hasan murdered thirteen soldiers and wounded thirty more at Fort Hood, Texas, shouting that "God is Great," and the Obama administration refuses to call it Islamic terrorism, preferring instead to label it an instance of "workplace violence."
• Two young Muslims kill and maim hundreds at the Boston Marathon and we're told that we must not blame Islam which does not countenance such barbarity.
• Stockholm, Sweden is in the fifth night of rioting and the news reports refuse to mention that it is Muslim youths who are burning their communities.
• Two British Muslims behead a British soldier and the British authorities rush to see who can utter the most asinine banality as to the irrelevance of the religion of peace to the atrocity.

How many acts committed in the name of Allah by devout Muslims citing Koranic warrant and perceived offenses against Islam must we suffer before our valiant public servants recognize that maybe there's a connection?

One of the most risible excuses for the Stockholm riots is the assertion that Muslim violence is a result of penurious social conditions. What were the social conditions these immigrants came from in Somalia, Sudan, and Chad? As one Swedish commentator put it,

"In Sweden you’ve got welfare, access to the educational system – up to university level, you got access to public transport, libraries, healthcare – to everything. And still they feel that they [immigrants] need to riot, throw stones and Molotov cocktails. It’s ridiculous and a bad excuse."

Another adds,

"The problem is not from the Swedish government or from the Swedish people. The last 20 years or so, we have seen so many immigrants coming to Sweden that really don’t like Sweden. They do not want to integrate, they do not want to live in [Swedish] society: Working, paying taxes and so on.

"The people come here now because they know that Sweden will give them money for nothing. They don’t have to work, they don’t have to pay taxes – they can just stay here and get a lot of money. That is really a problem."

The world is changing. Anyone in the next generation who can afford it will likely be living in gated communities with armed security guards. Armed guards will patrol shopping malls, businesses, schools and school busses. As in Europe today there'll be entire neighborhoods into which police and fire personnel simply will not venture.

We are, whether we wish to recognize it or not, deeply embroiled in a generational war of attrition waged against us by people who see themselves as agents of Allah, a deity who desires his votaries to kill any and all of those who disparage Islam or refuse to embrace it. The Obama administration, in a state of purblind denial, responds by treating the threat as a law enforcement problem, and strives to strip Americans of the right and the means of protecting themselves against just the sort of horror that befell that young soldier in London.

Europe seems to be realizing, though probably too late, the folly of allowing so many who have no intention of ever assimilating into Western culture to immigrate to their cities. Perhaps we in America will realize it, too, but as of yet our somnambulant cultural elites are too intoxicated on political correctness and multicultural moonshine to offer much ground for optimism.