It's time for Eric Holder to resign

President Obama's attorney general still fails to own up to DOJ's botched Fast and Furious operation — a failure that has cost at least 300 lives

Edward Morrissey

Over the weekend, Attorney General Eric Holder offered an odd view of why his critics have demanded transparency and disclosure from the Department of Justice over Operation Fast and Furious. The ATF sent hundreds, if not thousands, of weapons across the U.S.-Mexico border in 2009 and 2010, ostensibly to track them as they passed from straw buyers in the U.S. to drug cartels in Mexico. However, the ATF didn't actually track the weapons, which have now begun appearing in crime scenes north of the border. The weapons have been used in hundreds of murders in Mexico and at least one in the U.S., in which Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed just over a year ago.

When a botched American law enforcement operation ends up contributing to the murder of more than 300 people, one might think that this would be enough to explain strong criticism of the ATF, its parent agency the Department of Justice, and the leadership in both. But the attorney general rejects this view. Instead, Holder told The New York Times' Charlie Savage that the intense scrutiny of himself and Barack Obama relating to Fast and Furious came from a few "extreme" bloggers and conservative media figures whose criticisms were "both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we're both African-American." The rest of the critics, Holder assured Savage, were motivated by ideological reasons rather than racial bigotry.

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Edward Morrissey

Edward Morrissey has been writing about politics since 2003 in his blog, Captain's Quarters, and now writes for HotAir.com. His columns have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Post, The New York Sun, the Washington Times, and other newspapers. Morrissey has a daily Internet talk show on politics and culture at Hot Air. Since 2004, Morrissey has had a weekend talk radio show in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and often fills in as a guest on Salem Radio Network's nationally-syndicated shows. He lives in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, and his two granddaughters. Morrissey's new book, GOING RED, will be published by Crown Forum on April 5, 2016.