TeaPartyWire.com – Tea Party News by and for Tea Party Members

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

JG Vibes | This Wednesday the Justice Dept. announced that it had finished investigating itself in regards to the organizations own responsibility in the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal. Yes, you heard that right, they were in charge of their own investigation.

By Mr. Curmudgeon:

A U.S. District Court ruling supports the House Republican’s claim that Attorney General Eric Holder is a contemptible withholder of evidence and the Obama administration’s cover-up artist extraordinaire.

Since the news of Operation Fast and Furious broke, Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa, has buried the Justice Department in enough subpoenas to wallpaper every office in the joint.

To date, Holder has failed to provide House investigators the names of Justice Department personnel responsible for selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels and high-level Justice officials privy to the operation.

Now, the first controversy to embroil the nation’s top law enforcement official, the New Black Panther Party case, is back in the headlines. And we have the public-interest law firm Judicial Watch to thank.

As you may recall, on Election Day 2008 a video surfaced showing members of the New Black Panther Party stationed outside the entrance to a Philadelphia voting precinct. They were wearing barrettes and paramilitary garb and wielding batons, shouting, “white devil” and “you’re about to be ruled by the back man, cracker.”

In a court affidavit obtained by Fox News, a poll watcher swore to seeing “two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters.”

A criminal investigation into the matter that began in the waning days of the Bush Administration was later dropped by the Justice Department’s so-called Civil Rights Commission once Holder took the reins.

“Claims were dismissed against the … defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law. The department [of Justice] is committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote,” read a Justice Department statement.

J. Christian Adams, a trial attorney for the voting section at Justice, resigned in disgust. In his letter of resignation, Adams pointed to the threats leveled by Panther leaders against the attorneys that filed suit against them. “Their grievances toward us generally echo the assertions that the facts and law did not support the lawsuit against them … Knowing intimately the criminal character and violent tendencies of the members of the New Black Panther Party, it is my profound hope that these assertions are tempered.”

That was then.

Monday, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled that “political appointees within DOJ were conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in the days preceding the DOJ’s dismissal of claims in the case, which would appear to contradict Assistant Attorney General Perez’s testimony that political leadership was not involved in that decision.”

And here’s where the judge alludes to the culture of stone-walling in Holder’s department: “Surely the public has an interest in documents that cast doubt on the accuracy of government officials’ representations regarding the possible politicization of agency decision-making.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton’s reaction to the ruling was priceless: “The Court’s decision is another piece of evidence showing the Obama Justice Department is run by individuals who have a problem telling the truth. The decision shows that we can’t trust the Obama Justice Department to fairly administer our nation’s voting and election laws.”

That’s because, as Operation Fast and Furious clearly shows, Eric Holder’s Justice Department IS a criminal enterprise.

By a vote of 255-67, the House of Representatives has held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for withholding documents related to the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking program. According to the Chicago Tribune, this is the first time a sitting member of the President’s cabinet has been held in contempt.

By Deirdre Walsh, Terry Frieden and Tom Cohen
CNN
12:49 PM EDT, Wed June 27, 2012

Washington (CNN) — The U.S. House will proceed with a vote Thursday on holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for withholding documents involving the failed Fast and Furious weapons crackdown, Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday.

“We’re going to proceed,” Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters. “We’ve given them ample opportunity to reply.”

His comment came the day after House Republicans rejected another offer by the White House and Justice Department to turn over some documents sought by congressional investigators.

Administration and justice officials met Tuesday with senior aides to Boehner and House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa to try to head off the House vote, which could bring the unprecedented contempt citation of a sitting attorney general.

A senior House Republican aide said the offer to let congressional investigators see some of the requested documents in return for dropping the contempt measure was insufficient.

According to a summary provided by a senior administration official and a Justice Department official familiar with the discussions, the Justice Department offered to give Congress access to some of the documents generated between February 4, 2011, when the Justice Department initially told Congress there was no inappropriate activity, and December 2, 2011, when it acknowledged the program was “fundamentally flawed.”

“We reached out and showed them a representative sample of the documents so they could see firsthand the types of communications in contention,” said the administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Read more: CNN.com

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The contemptible Attorney General Eric Holder is losing friends among his fearless leader’s party. Utah’s Democratic Representative Jim Matheson announced his plan to join with Republicans who will vote Holder in contempt of Congress this Thursday for obstructing the investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform into Operation Fast and Furious, in which ATF operatives (under the auspices of the Justice Department) sold weapons to Mexican drug cartels at the cost of hundreds of innocent lives.

“Sadly, it seems that it will take holding the attorney general in contempt to communicate that evasiveness is unacceptable,” Matheson told the Salt Lake Tribune.

And Matheson will bring fellow Democrats with him. According to the Associated Press, Rep. Steny Hoyer, the Democratic House Minority Whip, expects more donkey defections, though he refused to say how many.

The AP adds that the National Rifle Association will “score the vote.” The Obama media may find it ironic that the NRA is helping to unmask the culprits responsible for illegal assault weapon sales. They shouldn’t. The NRA represents the interests of normal, law-abiding gun owners. The contemptible Obama administration, on the other hand, represents the interests of armed, murderous Mexican drug cartels.

“The reason we support the contempt resolution,” said the NRA in a letter to Congress, “is the same reason we first called for Attorney General Holder’s resignation more than a year ago: the [Justice] Department’s obstruction of congressional oversight of a program that costs lives in support of an anti-gun agenda,” said the NRA.

Guns don’t kill people; anti-Second Amendment fanatics in Washington do … and by the hundreds.

Thanks to Reasoned Politics for the bulk of this post..

Liberals are trying to pin Fast and Furious on George Bush up to and including the White House – well lets just take a look at the timeline

So didn’t this all start under Bush? Didn’t he do the same thing? Didn’t his “Wide Receiver” operation use the same tactics?

The short answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT. The longer and more accurate answer follows.

Under the Bush administration, several sting operations were conducted in which straw buyers were allowed to purchase guns and attempts were made to follow the guns to, and in some cases over, the border. The largest and most well known operation was called “Wide Receiver”. The other operations were similar. During these operations approximately 200-250 firearms “got away”. The fact that some guns did cross the border is the only similarity between the Bush era program and Fast and Furious.

Let’s compare the two programs:

Cooperation with Mexico:
Wide Receiver: Mexican Law Enforcement notified, Mexico consented and was a full partner.
Fast and Furious: Mexico intentionally kept in the dark. No coordination or consent.

Surveillance of Firearms:
Wide Receiver: Agents attempted to keep track of the guns at all times.
Fast and Furious: Agents were ordered not to track the guns after they were purchased.

Use of Tracking Devices:
Wide Receiver: Extensive – placed in every lot of guns purchased
Fast and Furious: One “agent built” device in one gun

Performance of Tracking Devices:
Wide Receiver: Smugglers figured out how to defeat trackers
Fast and Furious: Smugglers didn’t have to do anything

Number of Firearms Sent to Cartels:
Wide Receiver: About 250
Fast and Furious: Exact number unknown, but over 2,500

Actions at the Border:
Wide Receiver: Attempted to hand off surveillance to Mexican law enforcement
Fast and Furious: ATF worked with Customs to make sure guns were not stopped at the border

Reaction to guns “getting away”:
Wide Receiver: Program terminated. William Newell wrote memo saying “never again”
Fast and Furious: Program continued – recovered guns tracked and mapped.

Ironically, Wide Receiver provides an excellent example of a truly “botched sting operation”. The purpose of the Bush era programs was to track the guns to and over the border where Mexican law enforcement would make arrests. It was poorly planned and executed – but it at least has some potential to work and serve a law enforcement purpose. Make no mistake – Wide Receiver should result in heads rolling – but the program was not designed to send guns to the cartels.

Another point: Since the Phoenix ATF had experience with this kind of operation, why would they think that a program with many less safeguards would ever work? Why was such an operation begun with months of President Obama taking office and immediately after their bogus numbers on US retail sourced guns going to Mexico were exposed as false? Sadly, the answer is obvious.

In contrast, Fast and Furious was designed to pump guns into Mexico, without the knowledge of the Mexican government. Without their knowledge and cooperation, their was no chance of making arrests as a result of allowing guns to cross the border. Therefore, there was no law enforcement purpose. It was designed and executed for the purpose of sending guns from US retail outlets to the cartels. It was not a “botched sting operation” – it was a correctly executed plan with a very evil purpose.

This begs the question: What was the purpose of sending these guns into Mexico, where they were used to kill hundreds of Mexicans?

If one looks at what this could accomplish, the only answer on the table is the same one named by both the whistle blowing agents and the former head of the Pheonix DEA office who was “in the loop”: The passage of new gun control laws in the US.

If you still think these operations were “the same” or “used the same tactics” – please follow the link below and listen to Eric Holder tell you that the two programs were not similar.

Nov. 8, 2011 - Sen. Cornyn Grills Holder on Wide Receiver vs Fast and Furious (Wide Receiver questioning starts at about 3:00)

More…

The ATF Fast and Furious Scandal: An Overview and Timeline

Related posts:

1. Hank Johnson: Fast and Furious is the Tea Party and NRA’s fault…
2. Clueless Obama: Guns in Mexico… ah… it’s a big Government or something.
3. Feinstein: We need Laws to stop Law Enforcement

Fear is always something that can make people act oddly. It causes them to be irrational and behave in strange ways that are almost self-destructive.

That’s the way the White House is acting with the Fast and Furious scandal, and in the same way that another troubled President – Richard Nixon—did. Both Presidents acted against their own self-interest in a public scandal in order to protect people close to them, and in the end, did more harm than good to America.

According to the way the Democrats tell it, Rep. Darell Issa is on a witch hunt and the investigation into the death of Brian Terry is strictly a politically motivated act designed to embarrass this administration and to get rid of Eric Holder. Yet, there is something that a lot of critics and pundits are forgetting.

Brian Terry is dead.

Let’s assume for moment that Issa IS on a witch hunt, and that the Republicans want someone to be held accountable for the death of the border agent, and the deaths of numerous Mexicans caught up in violence from the sudden increase in cheap weaponry in a drug war along the Mexican American border.

Brian Terry is dead.

There’s no denying that, and political or not, someone needs to be held accountable. Is America going to simply shrug its collective shoulders and say to the family, ‘Sorry about that, tough cookies, we screwed up.’? To this date, our government still has not apologized to the satisfaction of his family nor held anyone senior accountable.

That’s not good enough, not at all. America used to stand for something in this world, at least in my understanding of this nation’s history. We didn’t act like the communists or the Nazis; we didn’t allow a death to merely roll off as another statistic on the record books. If America has had one defining position it has been that it has stood up for the rights of a single individual over the rights of a collective society. It was Marx that said that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, not Thomas Jefferson.

Brian Terry is dead.

In fact, it is the single most reason that America is different than every other nation in the world. Its interest in the value and rights of the individual over the rest of society has been unique in world history. Every other country since the dawn of man first beginning to write laws to govern society has put limits on individual’s rights, and has defined in its charter or by its actions that the whole of society is more important than the individual. It is irrelevant that it is a drunk on the street or a slain hero in the heat of the Arizona sun, each person is of value equally to our nation.

This is also characteristic of the mentality of the White House in almost every legislative action to date—that the whole of society is more important than a single individual. And it is in this why Brian Terry’s death is such an atrocity and an affront to the American mindset and to his surviving family. The very idea that one of the people sworn to protect us was murdered by the careless disregard of how an investigation by the Justice department was handled is hateful to most Americans.

America is and should be, better than this. We do not let the heroes that defend our nation’s borders die forsaken in the desert, shot by weapons that we supplied to an enemy, without those responsible being held accountable for the misdeeds that allowed it happen. It does not matter if it was intentional or it was an accident by blunder. Even if the Fast and Furious project was not politically motivated as the Democrats contend, it does not mitigate the severity of the crime.

Brian Terry is dead.

Not a single individual or group of individuals has been held responsible for his death. While a few low level personnel have been shuffled around at the Justice Department, the ultimate responsibility has to fall upon the neck of Eric Holder, the Attorney General. Even if he did not know or condone the failures of Fast and Furious, even if it was not a politically motivated project as some in the GOP contend, he is in charge of the Justice Department and as department head he is responsible for the actions of his people.

Are we going to simply move on and forget the main reason why there is Congressional committee meeting s for weeks on end?

Brian Terry is dead!

Something needs to be done about it. Regardless of politics, it would be indecent not to do so.

Source: http://www.thomas-purcell.com/2012/06/brian-terry-is-dead.html

For the left, Operation Fast and Furious is George W. Bush’s fault, or it’s a witch-hunt over already answered questions. After all, Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department gave more than seven thousand documents to the House committee investigating the matter.

Considering the sheer volume of paper involved, two questions remain unanswered: First, who ordered the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to sell assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels? Second, did the person or persons in question ever once consider the deadly consequences this action would have on the lives of innocent people caught in the crossfire?

For some, the question seems to boil down to race. Many accuse House Republicans of targeting Holder due to his skin color than credit a small cadre of GOP lawmakers for uncovering a high-level administration gunrunning operation – and its subsequent cover-up.

“I don’t want to start too much [of a] forest fire here, but it is my instinct: Is this [Holder contempt vote] ethnic?” asked MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

Former Rep. Arthur Davis wrote at Politico that by invoking Executive Privilege, President Obama intended “to drive the narrative of Republican extremism,” adding, “Holder’s race, frankly, is a convenience that abets the other favored Democratic argument of covert Republican racism.”

I submit that contemptible racism is a singular component of Operation Fast and Furious – not because of the justifiable attacks on Attorney General Eric Holder and the Stone-Walling Oval Office occupant – but that our media and political establishment ignores the deadly operation’s voluminous victims … innocent Mexican citizens.

Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez was kidnapped by the Sinaloa drug cartel in October 2010. After subjecting him to torture, his thuggish narco kidnappers switched on a video camera to record Rodriguez denouncing his sister, who was then the attorney general for the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The body of Rodriguez was later recovered with two Kalashnikov rifles, which were traced back to Fast and Furious.

“The basic ineptitude of these [ATF] officials caused the death of my brother and surely thousands more victims,” said Patricia Gonzalez Rodriquez to an ATF official attached to the U.S. embassy in Mexico City.

Although no official numbers have been released, and with the media decidedly uninterested in finding out, it is estimated that at least 300 Mexican citizens died as a result of the ATF’s gun sales.

In a profile on Eric Holder, The New York Times noted that a “more extreme segment” of conservatives are “motivated by animus against Mr. Obama and that he [Holder] served as a stand-in for him,” said the Times.

“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him … both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American,” Holder told the Times.

The Afro-centric nature of Holder and Obama’s mindset renders them oblivious to the suffering of others outside their racial orbit – even other racial minorities.

“Have there been mistakes made under AG Holder’s watch?” asked MSNBC host the Rev. Al Sharpton, “Yes. But was he responsible for creating the Fast & Furious program, or has he been non-cooperative? No. Is he being unfairly targeted and dragged through the mud as a method of delay from other pressing issues? Undoubtedly for sure.”

No issue is more pressing than knowing if the Attorney General of the United States – charged with upholding the nation’s laws – sanctioned an operation that added to the deadly arsenals of ruthless Mexican drug cartels and hastened the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of innocent people.

The truth, we are told, should take a back seat to Chicago-style race politics. “Pay no attention to the dead of Mexico,” the Obama administration and the mainstream media seem to be saying, “They aren’t the right shade of brown.”

Operation Fast and Furious, a U.S. Justice Department gunrunning operation that sold weapons to Mexican drug cartels at the cost of hundreds of innocent lives, is only now starting to get the attention of the Obama media.

For that, we can thank Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for his skillful and methodical gathering of evidence – evidence so compelling it forced a usually non-confrontational GOP House Speaker to allow Issa to advance a contempt-of-Congress action against a stonewalling Attorney General, one Eric Holder.

Describing Fast and Furious as “a botched gunrunning sting operation,” the New York Times condemned Republicans for shamelessly turning “what should be a routine matter into a pointless constitutional confrontation.”

Nowhere in its lead editorial did the Times explain why they believe the Obama administration’s deadly weapons deal with foreign drug lords is a “routine matter,” nor did they bother to list other similarly routine Obama administration transactions.

If the deaths of hundreds of innocents were not enough to stir the souls of the compassion-filled, Obama-boosters of the Times’ editorial board, the president’s first official response to Fast and Furious certainly did.

“On Wednesday, for the first time since he was elected, President Obama invoked executive privilege on the disputed documents. Doing so now bars prosecution of Mr. Holder in federal court should the full House vote to hold him in contempt of Congress,” said the Times.

The documents in question pertain to a letter dated February 4, 2011, sent to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee by Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich.

In the letter, Weich dismissed the gunrunning allegations as “false,” saying the “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico. Indeed, an important goal of Project Gunrunner is to stop the flow of weapons from the United States to drug cartels in Mexico.”

Weich concluded his letter by asking Grassley not to take his constitutional oversight duties so seriously and asked that the “Committee staff not contact law enforcement personnel seeking information about pending criminal investigations, including the investigation into the death of Customs and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.”

In other words, the documents Issa subpoenaed, and Holder refuses to surrender, concern internal communications between high-ranking Justice Department officials (if not the president) proving that Weich’s letter to Grassley was an intentional lie – one meant to cover up the administration’s complicity in the mass murder of Mexican civilians and a U.S. boarder agent.

In the case of Fast and Furious, people died … and the administration lied.

However, with the Senate in the control of Harry Reid Democrats, Holder’s Justice Department had no worries. That was not the case in the Republican/Tea Party-controlled House. Chairman Issa had ATF whistleblowers testify before his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, blowing the lid off the Justice Department’s deadly “sting operation.”

The sting, it turns out, was not against Mexican drug cartels but against law-abiding U.S. gun owners. “… There are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstate the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” said Holder in a 2009 news conference. “I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum … making the assault weapons ban permanent …”

Fast and Furious was intended to help in that regard.

“More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States,” said Obama in a 2009 speech delivered while on a state visit to Mexico, “many from gun shops that lay in our shared border. So we have responsibilities as well.”

It’s clear the Obama administration used Operation Fast and Furious to manufacture data to support the president’s baseless statistics and his plan to scale-back Second Amendment rights.

Sen. Grassley, whose legitimate oversight questions elicited a string of Justice Department denials and outright lies, asked a rhetorical question during a News Max interview: “Is it because the president does have something to do with it?”

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank thinks that slapping Holder with a contempt citation is rather funny. “Even if the full House follows the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s vote Wednesday to hold him in contempt, the decision about whether to prosecute him will be left to the Justice Department run by … Eric Holder.”

Milbank’s cynicism is well founded. It’s unlikely that the death and carnage resulting from Holder’s Fast and Furious will lead to criminal prosecutions … beyond a few lower echelon ATF agents.

In the end, Fast and Furious will be tried in the court of public opinion. On November 6, American voters – not the Congress or the courts – will speak for the hundreds who lost life, liberty and any hope for future happiness. And the verdict will say more about the jury than it does about the perpetrators.

In America today just like in Lake Woebegone every child is above average and every child gets a trophy.  We may score low in international grade comparisons but we rank number one in self-esteem.  In other words American students may not be doing well but they think they are.  Those of us old enough to remember how Dad could control the situation with a look and when you got in trouble in school your parents didn’t sue or contact the School Board you got in trouble at home too are also old enough to remember Watergate.

This scandal that the general public still does not understand brought down a president and led to the Watergate Congress which threw away the victory in Vietnam and solidified the Progressive control of Congress until 1994.  Today we are confronted with contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law that makes the Watergate Scandal look like the tempest in a teapot that it actually was.  How many people died as a result of the Watergate Scandal = 0.  How many have died as a result of the Fast and Furious debacle = at least 200 and still counting including an American law enforcement officer.  How did Richard Nixon disrespect, disregard or violate the Constitution in the Watergate Scandal = 0 (although his use of Executive privilege did spark a constitutional crisis).  How many times has Barack Obama disrespected, disregarded or violated the Constitution during his time in office = at least twice as documented below by making recess appointments while Congress was still in session and refusing to enforce laws.

There is an old saying, “That’s good enough for government work.”  This saying comes out of the big government make-work programs of the 1930s and has been used ever since as short hand for “Approximate is close enough,” which might as well be the new national motto.  In societies that rob Peter to pay Paul the stage before all the Peters change their names to Paul is typified by government bean counters picking winners and losers.  This process discourages producers and encourages non-producers assuring you get less of the former and more of the latter.  As an educator I have a belief that if you don’t teach someone to do something right you are teaching them that doing it wrong is acceptable.

If Congress does not assert its place as a co-equal branch of government, the Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama will continue to usurp power.  From recess appointments while Congress is in session to refusing to enforce the laws of the land this President is fundamentally transforming our system of government.  Not through the amendment process, but through a campaign of unconstitutional and therefore illegal actions designed to buy him enough votes for a second term.  Whether it is through the money laundering schemes that are government negotiations with public service unions, pork barrel payoffs to political donors, or back-door amnesty this is nothing more than buying votes: a time-honored Chicago tradition.  Combine this with a campaign to resist any attempt to verify who is voting and the stage is set for an election that would make any managed society proud.

His supporters may call it the Audacity of Hope Campaign, but if it is successful it will be the audacity which crushes any hope of limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom.  The dreams from his father will become the nightmares of our children and grandchildren.  With no authority Mr. Obama is attempting to rule by decree.  Executive orders have previously been used to direct the Executive Departments how to implement laws.  Mr. Obama is using them to legislate, and that is in direct contravention to the separation of powers clearly outlined in the Constitution.

President Obama has built a shadow government that parallels and is standing ready to supplant our constitutional government.  He has appointed more Czars than most of his predecessors and these Czars are not just advisers they are actually tasked with duties that under our traditional American governmental structure have been the responsibility of Cabinet Secretaries.  These Czars are not confirmed; they are anointed, and none of them are accountable to anyone but the President.  Even though Congress voted to defund his Czars, President Obama has said he will ignore that part of the Budget and keep them anyway.  A cult of personality surrounds him typified by a compliant media which fawns over his every action and defends his every transgression.

As if to add icing to the cake the Obama Administration has invoked Executive Privilege to support Attorney General Holder in his refusal to surrender all requested documents in the Fast and Furious Scandal.  What national security issues could there be in this matter?  If the documents proved that the operation really did start under the Bush administration as Mr. Holder contends does anyone doubt they would have been on the table yesterday?    Either the President is attempting to protect his Attorney General, some member of the White House staff or himself.  Either way this may eventually provide a real similarity to the Watergate Scandal.  Though in this case the cover-up could not be worse than the crime it could lead to enough fallout to make his own supporters leave a sinking ship to avoid the stigma of a failed presidency and a looming constitutional crisis.

If this slide into tyranny is not stopped it will continue. If it is not protested it will be accepted.  I know there are not enough Senators to convict but if these blatant attacks upon the checks and balances are not punished, at least by the shame and reproach of an Impeachment Resolution, they are being silently condoned.  Speaker Boehner stand up and lead the House!  Don’t just make a speech; present a case.  Don’t just give us a photo op; give us a fighting chance to save this great experiment in human freedom.

If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.  America it is time to stand up to this Southside Chicago bully, and let him know he can’t have our lunch money anymore, and he can’t subvert our Republic either at least not without us protesting and using every legal means available to stop him and preserve limited government.

We, the lovers of freedom and the supporters of limited government cannot merely wait the clock out on the Obama presidency.  Because if he wins another term with all these affronts to constitutional government unchallenged combined with a campaign based upon class warfare and the redistribution of wealth he and his statist backers will declare it a mandate for more of the same, on steroids.  An oligarchy of the perpetually re-elected veneered over a permanent nomenclature of federal bureaucrats will easily fall in line behind a complacent and complicit media to cheer the new order as the soft tyranny of the central planners tell us what is best for us and then forces us to say thank you.

Protest the lawless Progressive counter-revolution!  Contact you Representative and demand an impeachment hearing to investigate President Obama for the High Crimes of subverting the Constitution.  He should be investigated for:

• making recess appointments while Congress was still in session
• for ignoring his obligation to enforce the laws of the land in the areas of Immigration and the Defense of Marriage Act
• for incorrectly using a claim of Executive Privilege to cover up reckless and possibly criminal activity in the Fast and Furious scandal.

Act today!  Contact your Representative and let them know patriotic Americans want this tyranny ended and limited government restored.  Keep the faith.  Keep the peace.  We shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

by Paul Bedard
“Washington Secrets”
The Washington Examiner

In a second major retraction over its version of the the gun-walking scandal, the Justice Department has retracted Attorney General Eric Holder’s charge in a hearing last week that his Bush administration predecessor had been briefed on the affair.

In a memo just released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa senator reveals that Holder also didn’t apologize to former Attorney General Michael Mukasey for dragging him into the Fast & Furious scandal that is headed for a major legal clash and likely contempt of Congress charge against Holder.

According to Grassley’s memo, Justice said that Holder “inadvertently” made the charge against Mukasey in a hearing.

Read more: The Washington Examiner

New Black Panther voter intimidation in Philly

Pelosi: GOP attacking Holder to suppress voters

The top House Democrat says a committee vote holding the attorney general in contempt of Congress is part of Republican efforts to suppress votes in the upcoming elections.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday that the vote on Attorney General Eric Holder was an abuse of power by Republicans. She says it is no coincidence that Holder is the official in charge of preventing voter suppression and enforcing civil rights laws.

So tell me Nancy where was Eric Holder the great preventer of voter suppression at when the New Black Panthers holding night sticks in Philly?

Where was Holder on ACORN?

Where was Holder on any case of voter fraud, which is always Democrat?

As Rush said Pelosi is the mayor of the planet Stupider … and I’ll add it’s right past Obama’s planet of Moranus.

Related posts:

1. Peanut Brain Pelosi warns of violence…
2. The Horrible Effects of Botox: Pelosi
3. Pelosi lies to C-SPAN

A round-up of news about today’s committee hearing on the Holder contempt of Congress vote…

The Hill:

A House panel voted Wednesday to place Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his failure to comply with a subpoena, defying an assertion of executive privilege from President Obama.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Republican Chairman Darrell Issa (Calif.), approved a resolution along party lines to place Holder in contempt after battling him for months over access to internal agency documents about the gun-tracking operation known as “Fast and Furious.”

The vote came after Obama escalated the conflict by sending a letter to the committee claiming executive privilege over the documents the panel had sought.

All 23 Republicans on the committee voted for the contempt resolution, while all 17 Democrats voted against it. Every member of the panel was present for the vote.

Minutes after the panel’s decision, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) announced that the full House will vote on the contempt measure next week.

“While we had hoped it would not come to this, unless the attorney general reevaluates his choice and supplies the promised documents, the House will vote to hold him in contempt next week,” the Republican leaders said in a statement. “If, however, Attorney General Holder produces these documents prior to the scheduled vote, we will give the Oversight Committee an opportunity to review in hopes of resolving this issue.”

The New York Times:

Representative Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York, said the investigation had degenerated into a “political witch hunt,” while a fellow Democrat, Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, called the proceeding a “kangaroo court,” saying it was designed to result in a contempt citation from the start as a way to get at Mr. Obama. They and other Democrats complained that the panel was ignoring its mission of coming up with reforms, like finding ways to strengthen laws to combat gun trafficking along the Southwestern border.

The Daily Caller:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi attacked House Republicans for pursuing contempt of Congress charges against Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday.

“I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day,” Pelosi said on Wednesday, The Huffington Post reports. “I’m not kidding. There’s a prison here in the Capitol. If we had spotted him in the Capitol, we could have arrested him.”

“Oh, any number” of charges could have been brought against Rove, Pelosi said. “But there were some specific ones for his being in contempt of Congress.”

Pelosi also criticized Republicans pushing for justice for Border Patrol agent Brian Terry — as House oversight committee ranking Democratic member Rep. Elijah Cummings has on numerous occasions — as “just strictly political.”

“It’s just the irresponsibility of the Republicans,” Pelosi said. “We want jobs. Why are they spending this time doing this?”

Pelosi attacked House oversight committee Chairman Darrell Issa too. “‘Loose cannon’ would sort of be like such a compliment to Darrell Issa,” Pelosi said. “‘Loose cannon’ would be a moderate phrase. This is an explosive device. It doesn’t serve our country, and it undermines the true purpose of contempt of Congress.”

“That’s why I didn’t arrest Karl Rove when I had the chance,” Pelosi added.

—————–

House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel told The Daily Caller that President Obama’s claim of executive privilege implies a startling new allegation pertaining to Fast and Furious: The White House was either involved with the operation or a cover-up.

“Until now, everyone believed that the decisions regarding ‘Fast and Furious’ were confined to the Department of Justice,” Steel said in an email. “The White House decision to invoke executive privilege implies that White House officials were either involved in the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation or the cover-up that followed. The Administration has always insisted that wasn’t the case. Were they lying, or are they now bending the law to hide the truth?”

Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz said “it’s sad” and “it’s disappointing” that this scandal has “come to this.”

“This isn’t about Holder, this is about the Department of Justice and justice in the United States of America,” Chaffetz said. “I hope we have the guts and the perseverance to get to the bottom of this. We have 2,000 weapons purposely given to drug cartels. We have a moral obligation to get to the bottom of this.”

Read more: The Daily Caller

Posted by ZIP on Wednesday, June 20, 2012, at 4:22 pm

Stay tuned, more to follow…

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers

by Jason Howerton
The Blaze

The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) is joining a growing chorus of groups and lawmakers calling for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder for his part in the failed gunrunning operation known as “Fast and Furious,” the Washington Times reports.

The NBPC represents all 17,000 of the Border Patrol’s “nonsupervisory agents.”

Council President George E. McCubbin III said the attorney general’s handling of the case was “a slap in the face to all Border Patrol agents who serve this country.” He also said Holder attorney has failed to provide any leadership within his department.

“It is time for Attorney General Eric Holder to show the least shred of responsibility and leadership and resign his post,” McCubbin told the Washington Times. “Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry deserves nothing less.”

Further, a Border Patrol agent is prohibited to cross into Mexico without approval from various U.S. and Mexican government agencies being informed, McCubbin explained. This is why he argues there is no way that Fast and Furious was carried out without knowledge and direct approval from the Justice Department and the Obama administration.

Read more: The Blaze

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. arrives at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, June 19, 2012, to meet with the House leadership to discuss the congressional investigation into the botched anti-gunrunning Fast and Furious operation. (Andrew Harnik/The Washington Times)

Ed. note: You can watch today’s hearings live via streaming HERE.

By Jerry Seper
The Washington Times

Justice Department officials on Wednesday said President Obama has asserted executive privilege over documents sought by a House committee in an investigation of the botched “Fast and Furious” operation.

The last-minute move came just prior to the start of a scheduled hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on a contempt on Congress citation against Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has refused since October to honor a committee subpoena seeking the documents.

In a letter to Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, a Justice Department official said the privilege applies to documents that explain how the department learned there were problems with the investigation, which allowed more than 2,000 weapons to be “walked” to drug smugglers in Mexico.

A contempt vote against Mr. Holder became likely after he and Mr. Issa failed to reach an agreement over turning over the documents during a 20-minute meeting Tuesday on Capitol Hill. Mr. Holder did not turn over any records at the Tuesday meeting and later told reporters he would not turn over Fast and Furious documents unless Mr. Issa agreed to another meeting, where he said he would explain what is in the materials.

He said he wanted an assurance from Mr. Issa that the transfer of the records would satisfy the committee’s subpoena.

Read more: The Washington Times

(Photo: AP Photo)

Source: The Hill

By Daniel Strauss

Senate Democrats blocked a resolution introduced by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to introduce an outside special counsel to investigate a number of recent military and intelligence leaks.

McCain introduced a resolution Tuesday expressing the Senate’s support for Holder to appoint a special prosecutor. But Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) objected after McCain asked for unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to consideration of his resolution.

“What is at issue here is whether or not we are going to give an opportunity for U.S. attorneys, professionals in their fields, to handle this particular inquiry,” Wyden said. “And I see no evidence, Mr. President, that the way U.S. attorneys are handling this investigation at this time is not with the highest standards of professionalism.”

McCain said that recent military and intelligence leaks warranted outside legal counsel to investigate the leaks.

“The damage to our national security has been articulated by many both in and outside the administration,” McCain said.

A week earlier, McCain had called for a special counsel to look into a number of leaks related to a report about an Obama administration “kill list” of terrorists as well as a story about a U.S. cyberattack against Iran. Democrats have so far refused to back McCain on the resolution.

Please visit: The Hill

By Matthew Boyle
The Daily Caller
Published: 3:11 PM 06/05/2012

House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa said Tuesday that congressional investigators now have documents that prove senior officials in Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice approved gun-walking in Operation Fast and Furious.

“The Committee has obtained copies of six wiretap applications in support of seven wire intercepts utilized during Fast and Furious,” Issa said in a Tuesday letter to Holder.

Issa said those wiretap documents “show that immense detail about questionable investigative tactics was available to the senior officials who reviewed and authorized them.”

Issa said these documents prove that the Department of Justice again provided “false” information to Congress.

“On February 8, 2012, Senator Grassley, Congressman Meehan and I wrote to you requesting the Department’s assistance in obtaining the wiretap applications from Operation Fast and Furious,” Issa wrote to Holder. “We did so because we believed their contents would shed additional light on senior Department officials’ level of knowledge of the unacceptable tactics used in Fast and Furious.”

“Other than having acknowledged receipt of the letter, the Department has not responded to the February 8 request,” Issa continued. “In a May 15, 2012 letter, the Deputy Attorney General reiterated the Department’s position that the ‘inappropriate tactics used in Fast and Furious … were not initiated of authorized by Department leadership in Washington.’”

“We now know that statement is false,” Issa said. (RELATED: Full coverage of Operation Fast and Furious)

Issa said the wiretap applications his committee has obtained “were approved by senior Justice Department officials in March, April, May, June and July 2010.”

“Each application included a memorandum from Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer to Paul M. O’Brien, Director, Office of Enforcement Operations, authorizing the wiretap applications on behalf of the Attorney General,” Issa wrote to Holder. “The memoranda from Breuer are marked specifically for the attention of Emory Hurley, the lead prosecutor for Operation Fast and Furious.”

To read more, please visit The Daily Caller.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Cal.) is getting angry. The chairman of the House Oversight committee is circulating a “contempt of Congress” citation among Washington’s lawmakers accusing Attorney General Eric Holder of withholding information shedding light on the person or persons within the Obama administration responsible for ordering the deadly Fast and Furious operation. The aforementioned action funneled weapons to Mexican drug cartels that killed or wounded hundreds of innocent Mexican citizens and led to the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Chairman Issa issued a subpoena last October requiring Obama’s Justice Department to hand over relevant Fast and Furious documents covered under 22 categories of information. According to Issa, Justice has remanded documents pertaining to a mere 12 of those categories.

Issa understandably considers Holder’s noncompliance stonewalling. Holder insists that handing over the identities of those responsible for the death and misery on both sides of the Mexican border would interfere with his “ongoing investigation.”

One Justice Department person of interest is Deputy Attorney General David Ogden who, in testimony before Congress back in 2009, said $10 million in Obama stimulus money had been earmarked for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to increase ‘its efforts by adding 47 more employees and three new offices … and redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest Border … to fortify its Project Gunrunner, which is aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.”

None of the thousands of Justice Department documents handed to the House Oversight committee pertain to David Ogden or what he described as “several new and aggressive steps” that were part of the Obama administration’s new “comprehensive plan” to  combat Mexico’s drug gangs.

“Is there an appetite in the House with the GOP leadership to issue a contempt citation?” asked Greta Van Susteren on her Fox News program “On the Record.”

“There is going to come a point where there’s nothing left but to say, ‘We find, broadly, this Attorney General to be in contempt,” answered Issa.

“But this has been going on for over a year and a half,” insisted Van Susteren, “You have a border agent who has been murdered, and you have a family that’s grieving and wants that information. And it seems like a simple thing … and it’s sort of caught up in this sort of Washington – whatever. I know you want to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T’ but time is running out to get answers for this family.”

Van Susteren got to the heart of the matter.

“We hear rumors … we hear that Speaker [John] Boehner isn’t wild about this [issuing a contempt citation]. That he doesn’t what to do this … will a decision be made before the November election?”

Issa sidestepped the Boehner question, assuring Van Susteren that the citation would be issued before the election.

“We’ve sent out, to every member of Congress, sixty-four pages laying out the case for contempt. We’ve asked them: Do they have any questions; can we show them the proof? A lot of them, especially our Democratic members … they have a lot of misinformation on what is owed [in subpoenaed documents] and what hasn’t been delivered,” said Issa.

In a letter to his House colleagues, Issa recounts Holder’s initial denial of “whistleblower allegations that the Justice Department had facilitated the illegal transfer of weapons to Mexican drug cartels” and that the Justice Department made “every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.”

“Nearly ten months later,” Issa continued, “the Justice Department sent Congress a new letter rescinding the previous written denial and acknowledging that Operation Fast and Furious was ‘fundamentally flawed.’”

It is understandable why Eric Holder would wish to impede Issa’s investigation into the Obama administrations facilitation of cross-border mass murder. It is, after all, an election year, and Holder’s boss would like four more years in office to … God only knows.

What is more perplexing is the hesitation on the part of the GOP’s intellectual colossus, John “Bonehead” Boehner, to unequivocally support Issa’s quest to bring justice to Justice … giving voice to those whose lives were snuffed out so callously.

And, to Ohio’s 8^th Congressional District: it is to your eternal shame that this disgraceful GOP embarrassment has not suffered the same electoral fate as his Senate colleague – and fellow Republican gelding – Richard Lugar.

That itself  is deserving of a contempt citation.