Sometimes the LA Times surprises me and prints something that will rile the Lefties into a frenzy. This AM on the Opinion page they ran an article by Joseph F. Connor, the son of a man who was killed by FALN terrorists in NY way back in 1975. I didn’t even remember anything about FALN, a violent Puerto Rican nationalist organization. Here’s a bit of Conner’s story:

In 1975, when I had just turned 9, my father was killed by terrorists.

He was supposed to be home early on that Jan. 24 for a family celebration of my birthday and that of my brother, who had just turned 11. Instead, while my father was at a business lunch at the historic Fraunces Tavern in New York’s financial district, a bomb exploded, killing him and three others. One of my father’s colleagues was decapitated, and silverware from the table was lodged in the torsos of the other victims. The Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN, a Puerto Rican terrorist group, claimed responsibility.

My father was just 33. Up to that point, his life had been an American success story. The only child of immigrants, he was raised in Washington Heights, a blue-collar section of Manhattan. He worked his way through college and went on to a job at J.P. Morgan, a firm at which his mother had worked nights as a cleaning lady. He was a terrific father. His death has left a gaping hole in our lives.

Now my family is facing a blow of a different kind.

That brings us to the title of this post. President-elect Obama has nominated for his administration’s attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., who was deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton, and who was instrumental in “working” the information provided to ol’ Slick that ensured pardons be issued to 16 of the convicted FALN terrorists.

Clinton’s decision outraged law enforcement officials, who had sought to contain a bombing campaign in New York, Chicago and elsewhere in the 1970s and 1980s by Puerto Rican groups seeking independence from the United States.

But new interviews and an examination of previously undisclosed documents indicate that Holder played an active role in changing the position of the Justice Department on the commutations.

Holder instructed his staff at the department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney to effectively replace the department’s original report recommending against any commutations, which had been sent to the White House in 1996, with one that favored clemency for at least half of the prisoners, according to these interviews and documents.

And after U.S. Pardon Attorney Roger C. Adams resisted, Holder’s chief of staff instructed him to draft a neutral “options memo” instead, Adams said. The options memo allowed Clinton to grant the commutations without appearing to go against the Justice Department’s wishes, Adams and his predecessor as pardon attorney, Margaret Colgate Love, said in their first public comments on the case.

That’s just lovely now, ain’t it? In the LA Times piece Connors continues with thoughts on surviving the actions of terrorists, not succumbing to victimization. After all that, he was an eyewitness to the falling of the towers on 9/11, he even lost a cousin who was trapped in the north tower. He closes with this:

We Americans have to make clear that we will not tolerate officials who would put our lives in jeopardy by releasing terrorists. It is a disrespectful affront to all Americans, particularly to those of us who have come face to face with their violence.

Keep in mind, that Obama’s transition team, therefore President-elect Obama himself, don’t find anything wrong with Eric H. Holder Jr., champion of pardons for cold-blooded killers, being the next Attorney General of the United States.

Just more CHANGE that we “must” believe in . . .

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