Monday, March 13, 2017

NY Times piece on Alex Acosta

Labor nominee Alex Acosta's hearing has been pushed off a few days to allow the chair of the committee to attend a Trump rally.  Acosta will easily be confirmed when the hearing occurs. In the meantime, there have been a bunch of articles about him. Strangely, the Herald and NY Times have done a number of hit pieces on him.  Putting aside that ease with which Acosta will get confirmed, I think it would be a huge mistake for the Democrats to object to his nomination.  He is a fair, really smart, and pragmatic guy, who also has a big heart.  He was a very successful U.S. Attorney, who was extremely involved with the cases (from top to bottom) in the office (unlike many other top prosecutors who focus more on policy and community projects). Here's the nice part from the NY Times piece:
Others, including an immigration advocate and several professors at Florida International University’s law school, say Mr. Acosta is a fair leader who did not let his conservative ideals affect his decisions for the school and who worked hard to recruit, retain and support a diverse student group.
Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Hispanic studies professor at Florida International University, met Mr. Acosta several months before he was tapped to join the university’s law school, in 2009. Mr. Acosta was then the United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida, where his office prosecuted the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the terrorism suspect Jose Padilla and founders of the Cali drug cartel.
Mr. Camayd-Freixas and several others called on the prosecutor’s office to investigate an immigration raid in Homestead, Fla., where, they claimed, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had unfairly roughed people up.
“I was very impressed with the way he handled it and his fairness in presenting essentially abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Department of Justice for investigation,” Mr. Camayd-Freixas said of Mr. Acosta. “He put together a complaint, and he elevated it.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uh, Valentine's Day was last month.

Anonymous said...

Acosta, however, did follow tacit instructions from the WH to examine credentials of prospective hires for GOP leanings and to reject those who were not Republicans