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MSNBC Political Analyst and Georgetown Professor Calls Holder “The Moses Of Our Time”

holdereric170px-rembrandt_harmensz-_van_rijn_079-1In the last couple weeks, it has been astonishing to watch Democrats once again abandoning a core principle — in this case the protection of the free press — to excuse another abuse of the Obama Administration. The new talking point for defenders of the Obama Administration is that it is really not that bad to seize the records of journalists or label a journalist a potential criminal co-conspirator so long as they are not actually prosecuted. None however are quite so adamant as Georgetown Professor and MSNBC Political Analyst Michael Eric Dyson who called Eric Holder our “law giver” and “the Moses of our time.” In this case, of course, Moses came down from the mountain and endorsed the killing of any citizen deemed a national security threat, allowed warrantless surveillance, blocked public interest challenges to abuses of power, and attacked the free press. While some of us believe Holder should be fired, Dyson apparently believes Holder should be be beatified.

Here is Dyson holding forth on the miracle that is Holder:

mqdefault MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: I think the attorney general should step down too – off of that plateau where he resides in high principle and whip some head. But he shouldn’t give up his office. What he should understand is he’s the chief law giver of the United States of America so to speak. He’s the Moses of our time, and at least for this administration.

So, yes, some people want to put him outside of the ark of the legal community. That’s just ridiculous. He is the bully, he is in one sense the whipping boy for so much of the frustration of the right-wing. As Joy Reid has brilliantly indicated, their inability to reconcile themselves to the fact they lost the election means that they will be perennially pursuing a person like an Eric Holder. In sense, they perceive him to be the most vulnerable. They attack him. But I think what he has to do is continue to hold fast. I think the president has given strong indication that he will support Mr. Holder, and, therefore, together they should go forward.

And here’s the real problem. The real problem is it’s not against the law to leak classified information. That’s what we need to get into our sights here. That what we need to do is shore up the law. Not figure out how to scandalize the name of Eric Holder or President Obama. Let’s deal with the undergirding legal principles that are not present, and as a result of that figure out a way to get beyond this morass. Otherwise we’re going to repeat this in the next administration and the administration after that as well.

Dyson captures particularly the cult of personality surrounding this president. Not even the protection of the free press is enough to break faith with this president. By the way, last time I check, leaking classified information was a crime so we can move beyond the view that “The real problem is it’s not against the law to leak classified information.” Moreover, in our tripartite system, Holder is not a law giver of any kind. He is supposed to be enforcing the laws given by others — specifically the legislative branch — and of course protecting the Constitution.

As I mentioned in my surprising disagreement with CNN’s Jeff Tobin last night on the Situation Room, no one denies that such leaks can be crimes. It is how they are investigated. There was no excuse for this fishing expedition into the records of journalists. Also, Bashir joins Dyson in mocking the concerns of journalists that the Administration searched these records since the targets were not prosecuted. He laughed with Dyson at the fact that Rosen was described as a potential criminal co-conspirator. It is perfectly other worldly. The free press rests on guarantees of confidentiality. The administration attacked that guarantee and in so doing created a chilling effect on the work of all reporters.

As for Moses, I shudder to think who Dyson considers to be the Messiah that Holder is foretelling . . . but I can guess.

107 thoughts on “MSNBC Political Analyst and Georgetown Professor Calls Holder “The Moses Of Our Time””

  1. Sam, I don’t agree w/ SWM on this, but you’re way over the line. You diminish yourself and your cause w/ this rhetoric.

  2. bruce you hope for too much from swm. Shes too busy waving the banner of political correctness to ever accept anything out her narrow vision of how the planet should be. Im so sick of these idiots. Every single time they open their mouth the first thing they do is drag race into the issue. Anybody who doesnt agree with them is a racist. Im dont being polite to them. They do not deserve it. Its time people start telling the progressives to shut the f**k up the same way they have been talking to righty for the past decade.

  4. swarthmore your posts speak volumes about you. Says your a old progressive idiot who thinks they need to tell everyone else who things should be run like a dictator. You live and breath political correctness. Guess what. as sick and tired as peoeple are of race we are even more sick and tired of you dudley dogooders trying to shove your political correctness down our throats when all we want to do is shove it up your @ss

  5. Give me a break

    “Holder has always been a target of the ‘keep the white house white crowd” but he is proving to be a distraction in Obama’s second term. Holder will probably leave eventually but should not bow to pressure from Ted Cruz and the republican right wing.”

    heres an idea. Try the truth now. Holder sucks and should be fired and race doesnt have a damn thing to do with it . Try that instead of that whiney worn out progressive act. Its a bunch of horsesh**t and nobody cares anymore. Do you even realize how much of the population is sick and freakin tired of hearing about race? No really. Nobody wants to hear it. Just give it a freakin rest Its just noise in the background. People tune you out just like we tune out the klan idiots. You’re are just as bad as they are.

  7. Swm , does the name Condolizza Rice come to mind? maybe you should watch Fox news to get the truth unlike MSNBC

  8. Did not defend Holder. Just saying that while i don’t agree with Dyson about his “Moses” remark. I do agree that Holder has been a “whipping boy” for right wing republicans and various racists since he assumed his office

  10. Wow a racist opposed Obama? You dont say?
    Now lets pretend that racists didnt vote for Obama too
    Btw playing the race card when your defending Holder is pathetic. Just shut up already. Nobody wants to hear it anymore. Race is the first defense of an idiot with no real defense

  12. Sam, and I suppose the “Don’t Re-Nig in 2012” bumper sticker was just a figment of my imagination, too?

  13. want to see blind zealotry? Look at swarthmore mom.
    Shes just another partisan idiot ruining the country

  14. and there it is…swarthmore mom is delusional. Play that race card baby. *eyeroll*

  15. “The psychology of sales and the psychology of propaganda – which are remarkably similar – works.” — Gene H.

    Yes, indeed. As in the case of:

    A Mistaken Pardon
    (after the style of Algernon Charles Swinburne’s A Forsaken Garden)

    In a time of deceit, in an age of unreason,
    The frightened find faith in the fabulous fraud.
    Divided and conquered in Fascism’s season,
    The browbeaten buffaloed brandish their GAWD:
    A weapon of weirdness when doom encroaches,
    Whom preyed-upon pray to for jobs and a meal,
    While the thief who thrives and the prince who poaches
    Smile and steal.

    The lies laugh loudly, obscenely spoken,
    As time and the tides for an honest man wait.
    If a truthful word should appear as a token
    Of dawn, would the dark not retaliate?
    So long have the meaningless mantras befuddled
    The passive consumer in word-magic’s trap
    That the ad-man’s slogan has even muddled
    Simple crap.

    The duped can’t see when their eyes won’t focus
    On cynics who say what they know they don’t mean;
    For duplicity serves as the principle locus
    Of talking-point “dots” so arranged as to screen
    The head from hearing no thing but the bellows
    Of nothing much else than the noise we receive.
    Should a thought intrude with its doubting fellows,
    None believe.

    And yet, as he falters, he still dissembles,
    Since witches once sold him some trifling crumbs.
    The one who lit fires in the forest trembles:
    To Dunsinane Castle now Birnam Wood comes.
    And those he kicked hardest while climbing higher,
    Ascending to roost at the greasy pole’s top,
    Guffaw as the Furies pursuing the liar
    Reap their crop.

    The law, as we’ve heard it expounded in verses,
    Presumes us all innocent, absent a proof
    Of guilt beyond doubt, as a long line of hearses,
    Gives eyewitness testament, terse and aloof,
    To death’s final sentence which no one can question
    And from which no pardon can later on spare
    Since Nature, despite any plea or suggestion,
    Does not care.

    Yet in our own country, of late, we’ve seen visions
    Of what The Law means when the outlaws in charge
    Proclaim ex-post-facto that their bad “decisions”
    Require of them only remaining at large.
    And subsidies, too, they demand for their “service,”
    While helping themselves to whatever is left
    As “bonuses” stolen while never nervous
    At the theft.

    While perched at the top of the heap, The Decider
    Has chosen to pardon preemptively much
    That courts should consider infractions wider
    Than just misdemeanors like lying and such.
    But too many judges, for lifetime appointed,
    Who think of the Law as “semantics,” at best,
    Enable our “leaders” whom they have anointed
    Truly blessed.

    The truth turns timid, afraid of facing
    The gargoyle who grins at the trust now betrayed;
    So why would the sheep ever think of replacing
    The forces of fraud now against them arrayed?
    While memories fade in a flash of forgetting
    And what didn’t happen now screams that it does,
    The perps blow their bubbles without fear or fretting,
    Just because….

    The talented traders of tripe roll in riches
    Yet swear that – for taxes — they haven’t a sum,
    While Congressmen beg them to scratch where it itches
    And unemployed men by the millions grow numb
    To poverty, homelessness, debt and disaster
    As fewer grow richer and more become poor
    The fish in their feeding, ever faster,
    Take the lure.

    Till the cows come home to the chickens roosting,
    Till hens crow at sundown and pigs take to flight,
    Till the world and its woes need a lot less boosting,
    The touts and promoters will hype-up the fight
    To customers, baffled, but only too willing
    While Goldman and Sachs to the government turn
    For more money, gratis, which then for a killing,
    They can burn.

    Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2009

  16. Holder has always been a target of the ‘keep the white house white crowd” but he is proving to be a distraction in Obama’s second term. Holder will probably leave eventually but should not bow to pressure from Ted Cruz and the republican right wing.

  17. Chris Hedges nails it again:

    blockquote>The world has been turned upside down. The pestilence of corporate totalitarianism is spreading rapidly over the earth. The criminals have seized power. It is not, in the end, simply Assange or Manning they want. It is all who dare to defy the official narrative, to expose the big lie of the global corporate state. The persecution of Assange and Manning is the harbinger of what is to come, the rise of a bitter world where criminals in Brooks Brothers suits and gangsters in beribboned military uniforms—propped up by a vast internal and external security apparatus, a compliant press and a morally bankrupt political elite—monitor and crush those who dissent. Writers, artists, actors, journalists, scientists, intellectuals and workers will be forced to obey or thrown into bondage. I fear for Julian Assange. I fear for Bradley Manning. I fear for us all.

    — “The Death of Truth,” Truthdig.com (Posted on May 6, 2013)
    http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/the_death_of_truth_20130505/

    “Criminals in Brooks Brothers suits and gangsters in beribboned military uniforms.” Priceless.

  18. I like what roger3 had to say…. Gene good to see you back… Hope all is well…and games on has valid points….

    I wonder where the die hard Obama supporters are…. They certainly aren’t defending this puppet….. But The AG is a disposable Asset….

  19. bettykath, MSNBC tells us they don’t lean left, they lean forward. Like we all do when dropping a morning deuce.

  20. With a corporate tool like Barack Obama in the White House, the Republicans don’t need to win presidential elections. In addition to power-drunk autocrats like Eric Holder — a true reflection and extension of his boss — I see where our “Democratic” party President plans to nominate yet another of Deputy Dubya’s former minions to head the FBI.

    The time has come to drop that ridiculous color-coding scheme of “red” and “blue” states in favor of red for the Republicans and orange for the Democrats (orange = red + yellow).

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