Just a little real talk from the junior senator from Texas to round out your day, especially after that truly impressive display of lavish and metaphorical (?) praise heaped upon Attorney General Eric Holder by MSNBC that Allahpundit already highlighted. As Sen. Cruz opines, it’s getting harder and harder for the American people to maintain trust in the executive institution that is supposed to be ultimately responsible for the proper enforcement of the law when said institution is trampling all over said law right and left. The administration has managed to somewhat bury in legal proceedings the Fast & Furious scandal that initially gained Attorney General Eric Holder enough notoriety to glean calls for his resignation, not to mention, oh, just the contempt of Congress, that ol’ chestnut — but this latest batch of wildly questionable judgment calls is producing renewed criticisms from an even wider audience. The fact that Holder is once again finding himself in the hot seat over such a flagrant abuse directly administered by his department hardly helps to justify the claim that Eric Holder is merely a noble sufferer of the GOP’s hyper-partisan slings and arrows of outrageous political misfortune. Via Mediaite:

Well, I think that the conduct of the Justice Department does not inspire confidence. We have seen pattern after pattern with respect to the investigation of the media. We’ve seen the Department of Justice willing to seize the phone records, to seize the e-mails of this network, of the Associated Press, and by all appearances, the attorney general went before Congress, stated he had nothing to do with it — and now it’s become public that he did in fact have quite a bit to do with it. I think the attorney general needs to come forward and explain what the truth is and why he told Congress something different. … It’s unprecedented, and the degree of willingness of this administration to target a reporter for this network as an unindicted co-conspirator — I mean, that is without precedent, and unfortunately I think it’s part and parcel of a pattern from this administration of not respecting the Bill of Rights. Not respecting the First Amendment, not respecting the Second Amendment, not respecting our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights regarding drone strikes, regarding the IRS. Over and over again, the pattern we’ve seen is an unfortunate willingness to use the machinery of the federal government as a tool, and a partisan tool, to punish those perceived as your political enemies. I think that’s really troubling, particularly when combined with a willingness to dissemble and to mislead the American people. … Yes [I think President Obama should ask for Eric Holder’s resignation], absolutely, and I think the reason is this Department of Justice has demonstrated a willingness to disregard the law.