Keep your eyes on the shiny object

[Texan]

As long as the Obama bunch can keep everybody distracted with fearmongering over the debt ceiling, they're getting away with this:


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/us/politics/27guns.html?_r=3


http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/25/mexico.guns/index.html


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/26/atf-accused-in-congressional-report-arming-cartel-for-war-through-operation/


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20083453-10391695.html


http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/bombshell-white-house-new-about-atf-gunrunning-scandal_577666.html

 

[Mike]

Yep. The amazing part is the budget deal is only gonna cut (or supposedly cut) 1 Triilion in spending in the next 10 years. We're screwed. Our kids are going to be paying compounded astronomical interest on the debt for the rest of their lives. :roll:

 

[okfarmer]

Unfortunately it is not the debate that is distracting, but the lack of reporting that is the issue. This is one of the biggest scandals ever committed against our own country. And barely a peep.

Most politicians are crooked, but this administration is Evil. Many lives have been lost on account of their actions.

You don't hear about all the violence across the boarder unless you are right there. I don't care to interfere with a foreign country's problem when we can't handle our own, but it is not right for our bad policies to make it worse for innocent people.

People that lived in small communities along the border have either been murdered, ran out or having to pay cartels monthly payments to keep their own house.

Anyone crossing over with a US tag is immediately targeted for ransom- even those that grew up in Mexico and traveled back and forth often, won't go back.

If these idiots were to succeed in cracking down on gun ownership here, the violence will follow.

 

[Steve]

ATF allowed the acquisitions and dealings to continue for more than a year, until December of last year, when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. Two Fast and Furious assault rifles were recovered at the murder scene.

On a recent visit to Mexico, the Oversight Committee was allowed to view bullet holes in one of two Mexican government helicopters recently shot at by cartel members ... including a .50-caliber round that penetrated the bulletproof-glass windshield. Officials recovered Fast and Furious weapons among the suspects' cache.

I am not a fan of independent prosecutors in DC, as most are only witch hunts.. but I think an independent investigation is needed to get to the bottom of this quickly and swiftly.. and to fire anyone who promoted this fiasco..

 

[okfarmer]

fire is not enough, serious jail time at a minimum.

 

[Mike]

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a fierce critic of the entire process, did not outright oppose the legislation but also expressed his disappointment in the chain of events that led to the 11th-hour deal. He said he had wanted seven days to review the bill.

"Republicans offered budgets and bills with trillions more in spending cuts than contained in the current legislation," said Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/01/congressional-leaders-to-pitch-debt-reduction-compromise-to-caucuses/#ixzz1TpgQsTbp

 

[Texan]

It seems as if the Obama Administration and the Holder Justice Department feel like they can just hunker down and ride this out. It's good to see that some in the media are calling them out.

It's my personal feeling that the President and the Attorney General are both lying when they deny knowledge of this operation. It's inconceivable that this would be done without approval from the Attorney General. And it's further inconceivable that Holder didn't share a giggle with the President over an operation that was clearly designed to further their gun control agenda.

==========================


End the delays of Fast and Furious inquiry

White House, Justice should cooperate with congressional probe.
Express-News Editorial Board

Updated 12:02 a.m., Sunday, August 14, 2011

The revelations about Operation Fast and Furious keep getting worse. The Obama administration needs to start showing some accountability and providing answers.

In the latest round of congressional hearings on the gun sting run amok, agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives posted to Mexico City testified that they pleaded with their superiors in Washington to end the operation. "Hey, when are they going to shut this, to put it bluntly, damn investigation down?" one ATF agent recalled asking. "We're getting hurt down here."

ATF agents in the United States lost track of as many as 1,700 weapons that were intentionally sold to straw buyers under Operation Fast and Furious since 2009, many of which ended up in the hands of violent drug cartels. According to the Mexican government, which was not aware of the program, 150 Mexican citizens have been killed or injured by weapons smuggled in from the United States with the full knowledge of U.S. officials.

Which officials knew about the program and its failures is still a big question. President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have denied knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious before this spring, and no one at the Justice Department — the ATF's parent agency — has acknowledged a role in authorizing or running the program. Yet Operation Fast and Furious didn't materialize out of nowhere.

Both the White House and the Justice Department have declined to comment on the case because Justice is pursuing an internal investigation. Congressional investigators and the acting ATF director have accused Holder of using the internal investigation as an excuse to obstruct the inquiry on Capitol Hill.

One of the ATF agents in Mexico City called the bungled operation "a perfect storm of idiocy." The lack of cooperation from the White House and Justice Department are making that perfect storm even worse.


http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/End-the-delays-of-Fast-and-Furious-inquiry-1920848.php

 

[okfarmer]

I really hope this story is not lost in shuffle of these fools. This is a big thing and needs to have the publicity it deserves.

Too many people still don't know enough about it.

 

[Mike]

If the shoe was on the other foot, the Dems would be screaming for justice.

I would like to see another Democrat impeached.


I take it back, I would LOVE to see another Democrat Pres. impeached.....................specially this one.

 

[hypocritexposer]

Holder requests Fast and Furious docs from Issa, Grassley for 'independent' investigation
By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller 10:02 PM 08/17/2011
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New details about Operation Fast and Furious cast doubt on the ability of the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General to conduct an "independent" and fair investigation, congressional Republican investigators say.

The information comes via a letter Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday. In it, they question a request from Holder for a trancript from a meeting they held in secret on July 4th with Ken Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Holder apparently told Issa and Grassley he was requesting the transcript for the DOJ and for the Office of the Inspector General — the entity that's supposed to be distinct enough from Holder's office to conduct a fair Operation Fast and Furious investigation.

Holder and other DOJ officials have repeatedly said the DOJ's Inspector General is conducting its own internal investigation into what went wrong with Fast and Furious. Even so, Holder's latest request on behalf of the OIG sparks skepticism from investigators in Congress.

"Since the OIG is supposed to be conducting an independent inquiry, it seems odd that the Department would make a document request on behalf of that office," Grassley and Issa wrote to Holder on Tuesday. "We presume that if the OIG would like to make such a request, it is capable of doing so on its own initiative. However, we have not received any such request from the OIG."

In their Tuesday letter, Grassley and Issa also ask Holder to provide complete and full answers to all of the questions they sent him on July 22. Issa and Grassley say Holder failed to do so in his most recent response.

They say "perhaps the most troubling reply" Holder gave them was that the ATF did not have detailed information available on 11 instances ATF admits being aware of that Fast and Furious weapons were recovered inside the United States in "connection with violent crimes." (RELATED: Issa, Democrats, NLRB fight spar over oversight committee document demands)

"The question specifically asked you to 'describe the date and circumstances of each recovery [in the United States] in detail,'" the top Republican congressional investigators wrote. "However, the reply failed to do so."

Issa and Grassley say Holder failed to provide an "enumerated response" when they asked him if the Deputy Attorney General's office or any other DOJ agency was given a briefing paper outlining Fast and Furious's mission. "Currently, our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place," the briefing paper read.

Issa and Grassley also point out that Holder's response, that unnamed DOJ officials became aware of that briefing paper once the House Oversight Committee began investigating Operation Fast and Furious, didn't answer their question.

"That may be true and somewhat related to the question, but it falls far short of being responsive," they wrote. "Whether some unnamed DOJ officials may have learned of the briefing paper during the Congressional investigation in 2011 tells us nothing about which other officials at Department components outside ATF may have received the briefing paper in 2010."

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/17/holder-requests-fast-and-furious-docs-from-issa-grassley-for-independent-investigation/#ixzz1VLwIFpSr

 

[Texan]

...Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have expended far more energy covering up than coming clean.

Dallas News, Sports, Weather and Traffic from The Dallas Morning News

Editorial: Details only get worse from ATF's Fast and Furious fiasco

Finding someone to stand up and take responsibility for the feds' ill-advised gun-walk-to-Mexico program has been anything but fast. Only the denying, obfuscating and bus-throwing-under has been furious.

Months into a congressional investigation into Project Gunrunner and its Arizona-led wing, Operation Fast and Furious, we know only a little more. In large part, this is because Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have expended far more energy covering up than coming clean.

Gunrunner, conceived and approved somewhere by someone around October 2009, was tasked to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The goal was to allow "straw man" gun purchases in the U.S. and track the high-powered weapons to their expected destination, Mexico's violent drug cartels.

In practice, this proved a logistical and public relations disaster. This became clear in North Texas earlier this year, when a gun used to kill a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent in Mexico traced back to two brothers from a Dallas suburb under Gunrunner surveillance. ICE Agent Jamie Zapata's slaying followed by two months the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry near Nogales, Ariz. The gun that killed him also was to have been under ATF monitoring.

Even as Justice Department officials have stalled and stonewalled, what new details have emerged are alarming.

Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch's letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee concedes that Fast and Furious guns have turned up at 11 other violent crime scenes in the U.S. The Welch letter also says 1,418 firearms were circulated under the program — and it's not clear how many remain missing.

Almost improbably, three key Fast and Furious supervisors have been given new management positions at ATF's Washington headquarters. William G. McMahon had been deputy director of operations in the West; William D. Newell and David Voth were field supervisors who oversaw Fast and Furious out of the Phoenix office.

After the Los Angeles Times broke this news, ATF officials insisted the moves were not promotions but "lateral" transfers. This view would not be shared by many field agents, including those charged with executing Fast and Furious over their own misgivings. In testimony, they also describe McMahon, Newell and Voth as enthusiastic supporters of the disastrous program.

So to translate ATF higher-ups, these three mid-level bosses were not kicked upstairs, just shoved out of view.

Meanwhile, Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF's acting director, says he learned of the program's details in January 2011 and only after it had been shut down. He apparently doesn't recall a December 2009 briefing and other "periodic updates" that Welch notes in his letter to Congress.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has been a leader in demanding information on this fiasco, as he should on behalf of his border-state constituents. Yes, it's possible he sees partisan advantage in going after a Democratic administration, but it doesn't make him wrong.


http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20110819-editorial-details-only-get-worse-from-atfs-fast-and-furious-fiasco.ece

 

[Mike]

Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch's letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee concedes that Fast and Furious guns have turned up at 11 other violent crime scenes in the U.S.

The victims of these crimes should be due some sort of retribution.

Obama's and Holder's Impeachment is not nearly enough. Maybe they should be put before a firing squad?

 

[Texan]

These editorials just keep piling up. The longer that Obama and Holder stonewall on this, the dirtier they look. Unfortunately, the Obama supporters here look just as sleazy and partisan for not speaking out against it.

Maybe if it was Rupert Murdoch, Sarah Palin, or the Koch brothers running guns and lying about it, you Obamaniacs could grow the nuts to comment?

===========================

What has happened is nothing short of a national disgrace.

Our View: Past time for answers on Operation Fast and Furious.

The Sierra Vista Herald/Bisbee Daily Review

It's well past time the American public receive clear answers on Operation Fast and Furious.

At this juncture, after months of a congressional investigation, it appears Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice are committed to hoping an extended silence will allow the entire scandal to simply go away.

Each time law enforcement officials recover another of the thousands of guns that were allowed to be transported to members of Mexican drug cartels, the failure of this operation is again brought to light.

Fast and Furious, which was the Arizona version of a similar investigation called Gunrunner in Texas, was conceived and approved somewhere by someone around October 2009, and was tasked to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The goal was to allow "straw man" gun purchases in the U.S. and track the high-powered weapons to their expected destination, Mexico's violent drug cartels.

What has happened is nothing short of a national disgrace.

Someone at the federal level, we still have no specific information on whom or which agency, allowed these investigations to proceed without intervening before the weapons left the United States.

What has resulted is the death of two federal agents, shot with guns traced back to these investigations, and the suspected murder of hundreds of Mexicans caught in the middle of the violent drug wars.

Even as Justice Department officials have stalled and stonewalled, what new details have emerged are alarming.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has been a leader in demanding information on this fiasco, as he should on behalf of his border-state constituents. Yes, it's possible he sees partisan advantage in going after a Democratic administration, but it doesn't make him wrong.

Until we get the extent of this failure, and find who is accountable, the investigation should continue with urgency.


http://www.svherald.com/content/opinion/2011/08/21/219749

 

[Steve]

and all the other rightwingnuts silence to the subject- and refusing to comment looks like backslapping to me....

some words are timeless..