Next step–full House vote which could come next week.
A year-and-a-half long investigation into a botched gun trafficking program culminated Wednesday with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted along party lines to pass a resolution holding the attorney general in contempt for withholding documents pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious.
The vote went forward despite intervention by President Obama, who invoked executive privilege, which protects the Justice Department from handing over documents, even though a subpoena has been issued.
Here are the names of the seventeen Democrats that voted against the Contempt of Congress for Holder:
Cummings, Towns, Maloney, Norton, Kucinich, Tierney, Clay, Lynch, Cooper, Connolly, Quigley, Davis, Braley, Welch, Yarmuth, Murphy, Speier.
I wager some, if not all, are in the group of 80 or so in the House of Representatives that Rep.Allen West claimed(4/11/12)are Communist Party members. (Kucinich is a given, ok?)
And I will bet One Trillion Dollars if there was a video tape of Holder giving a Mexican Drug Cartel member a loaded full auto AK-47, they would still make an excuse for him and El Presidente’…that’s because they are immoral and corrupt.
posted 6/20 420pm Texas[Fight the Democrat/Media Complex!] Time
I try to understand these things, rather than blindly condemn Obama. As Tammy notes, executive privilege is on occasion invoked for entirely legitimate and appropriate reasons. And, in legal proceedings, the ugly custom is to drown the other guy in paperwork by requiring him to produce every document back to Noah’s flood, and then condemn him as obstructionist when he falters.
With everyone shouting out their favorite talking points, what are the vital and relevant points to Fast & Furious?
I guess the first question would be about the program itself, and to what extent it was uniquely insane and destructive. Obama’s people are alleging that Bush started the program, but others say this is a lie; that any Bush programs were administered more carefully. I take it nothing like this catastrophe went down under Bush. Are Obama’s people just saying that Bush got lucky and Obama did not?
On the face of it, Fast & Furious does sound crazy. It seems like one of those things that could never work, and would only result in tools of death going into the hands of extremely evil people. Is that a fair assessment? If so, why didn’t someone in the food chain put a stop to it?
It has been suggested that the true reason for F&F was to provide substance to the allegation that guns were flowing from America to Mexican criminals. The argument was being floated that this was a problem, and the solution would be to make it harder for Americans to buy guns. F&F was an effort to manufacture a reason to disarm American citizens. That’s a speculative hypothesis, but you can see how it fits the broad facts and explains an otherwise inexplicable undertaking.
If I understand Tammy correctly, it’s pretty much on the record that Holder knew about F&F from the beginning, and he lied when he testified otherwise.
It’s ironic that, with all the security leaks from this administration (which seem to have been engineered for the sake of glorifying Obama), there is great secrecy with respect to this botched program and its fatal consequence. I guess this shows Obama’s people can keep a secret when they want to.
It’s unfortunate that the committee vote ran along party lines, reinforcing the meme that this is a political witch hunt rather than a problem of substance. As always, party loyalty seems to trump the national interest. Congressional Republicans supported Bush’s destructive spending spree, and now Democrats stand shoulder to shoulder with their own failed leader. It’s all just a game to these people. I can’t be that sanguine about it.
The program that occurred during the Bush administration was known as Wide Receiver. It was instituted by BATFE personnel in AZ as an attempt to track weapons up the chain. Approximately 500 weapons made their way into Mexico under this program.
The major difference between the two programs is as follows. In Wide Receiver the local BATFE agents instituted the program without authorization at a higher level and when the Bush DoJ found out about it, they immediately shut it down and slapped reprimands all over the place. In Fast and Furious the Administration and Obama DoJ instituted the program themselves, forcing local BATFE that knew better to stand down and not stop the weapons from crossing into Mexico. A minimum of 1700 weapons are Known to have crossed the border, some believe the number to be as high as 2500.
The reasons for the demands for documents are several. One is that almost all of the 7600 documents released so far have been heavily redacted, almost to the point of illegibility. Another is that they have requested Specific documents that they Know exist through whistleblowers giving them copies of the documentation, but they need the documents released through the subpoena process for things to be 100% legal.
The Obama Adminstration, at the beginning of his term, attempted to say that 90% of the weapons used in crimes along the border were guns bought in America and shipped to Mexico illegally. The Administration made noises about abridging the 2nd Amendment to alleviate this issue, making it orders of magnitude harder to purchase firearms and ammunition (one of the reasons for the massive jump in firearms sales as well as the current “shortage” of ammunition). The Administration claims were quickly refuted before they could get their grubby paws on an eraser and the Bill of Rights. I am guessing that this whole thing was an attempt to be able to point to American Firearms being used in crimes in Mexico and along the border.
The Adminstration not only allowed the illegal purchase of firearms, but they forced BATFE agents to allow the weapons to cross the border by threats and intimidation. After the death of Agent Terry, several agents could no longer allow themselves to be scared into silence and began to blow the whistle. Several of these brave lads have been threatened and their careers ended by personnel at higher levels (in violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act) and others are still being retaliated against, though they have not lost their positions.
We need to start stepping on some necks. The Citizenry are supposed to be the ones in charge in this country, therefor it is time to stand up, hold our representatives accountable and when they refuse to behave, step on their political career’s neck and finish it at the next election. When they realize that we are no longer slumbering, they will begin to behave. Representatives like LtCol West and others already know this and are doing their jobs, it is time to force the rest to do theirs.
Regarding leaks from the BHO administration, something that I didn’t know:
“…The Obama administration has also ramped up the war on whistleblowers. It has used the 1917 Espionage Act six times to prosecute federal officials for leaking unflattering information to the media, leading the New York Times’ David Carr to call it a “kind of ad hoc Official Secrets Act.” In the 95 previous years, there were only three Espionage Act charges against whistleblowers….”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/the-opacity-of-hope-obamas-war-on-transparency/article/2500212
It’s about frikkin’ time! It’s only been, what, a year and a half since the mid-term elections? And it took this long for Boehner (sp?) and the rest of the Republican leadership to take their political Viagra?
[…] As Tammy Bruce notes: You know its bad when Obama uses the economy as a distraction! […]
Let’s all pray the boyz in Congress do not have a change of heart over the weekend. We’ve seen the boyz back down in the past so let’s hope we are not once again disappointed by the establishment.
I think a more appropriate title would be: “Penis Pumps Arrive in DC; House Committee votes 23-17 To Hold Eric Holder In Contempt of Congress.”