Fast & Furious: 8 Congressmen Call for Holder to Resign

Not since Watergate have so many Congressmen called for the resignation of a senior administration official like Attorney General Eric Holder.  The power and importance of F&F is finally being recognized by more and more people who are experienced in the ways of government enough to know a true scandal when they see it.

Matthew Boyle at Daily Caller lists the eight:  "Republican Reps. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri, John Mica of Florida, Quico Canseco of Texas and Gus Bilirakis of Florida each told The Daily Caller on Thursday that they believe Holder should step down now. The number of members of Congress calling for Holder to end his career in government because of Fast and Furious is now eight, a number which has doubled in one day. Previously, Republican Reps. Joe Walsh of Illinois, Raul Labrador of Idaho, Blake Farenthold of Texas and Paul Gosar of Arizona called on Holder to resign."

Read more: You-got-to-know-when-to-holder-know-when-to-fold-er

Scandals: No Scandal in Obama's Camp says Partisan Reporter

You gotta be kidding me!  That's my response to this article by Jonathan Alter, who wrote "The Promise, President Obama, Year One" which of course would make him impartial. 

Alter's piece is titled:  Obama Miracle:  A White House Free of Scandal." In it he claims Obama has the most honest administration for a  long time:  obama-miracle-is-white-house-free-of-scandal-commentary-by-jonathan-alter

I guess he hasn't heard of Fast & Furious and 2 dead agents and 2500 guns gone to Mexico; Acorn/Project Vote ballot rigging; Black Panthers let off the hook by DOJ for voter intimidation; Solyndra loan insider influence;  LightSquared spectrum selling with insider influence at FCC; questionable FLOTUS trips on public money; White House insider influence by union bosses; Non-cooperation with many, many FOIA requests by many groups; White House visitor logs non-compliance; Obama telling DOJ to stop enforcing DOMA without Congress' approval; Obama using edict to change the enforcement of immigration laws; ATF creating an illegal mandate to report long gun sales in border states; etc.

Fast & Furious: Napolitano May Not be Lying, but...

she sure doesn't inspire confidence that she is competant at her job.  How can you not know how many of your agents have died?  How can you act so oblivious, so unconcerned?  Again, I ask were is the outrage that these department heads should be honestly showing as they try their damnedest to get to the truth?

Watch this video questioning by Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Homeland Security Boss Janet Napolitano.
Chaffetz questions Napolitano

RedBear Rides on Switchbacks in Four States

Everyone knows about the famous switchbacks in the European Alps and a few other places like Chile, China, Bolivia.  But there are great switchback roads closer to home in the Western United States.

RedBear and FastKitty did a road trip to Colorado in the past two weeks to visit my sister and look for possible towns to live in where we can escape the California taxes.  On the way we treated ourselves to some wonderful roads.  First up was the dips and switches on Hwy 120 near Benton and then there was the descent on Interstate 70 down off the San Rafael Swell heading to Grand Junction.

Second was the Rimrock Trail just south of Grand Junction, CO.  This leads from town along the rim of the upthrust mesa in the predominantly red rocks.  It has great views, smooth pavement and if taken early in the morning, light traffic and the sun at your back.  There are some pretty good switchbacks at each end.

We went over East to Colorado Springs and then west by south to Taos and we continued to drive some great roads.  Monarch Pass at 11312 feet had some snaky bits.  One beautiful and unexpected road was Highway 161 in New Mexico with a 10,000 foot pass on the way to Farmington.



The next day was west toward a hotel at Bullfrog on Lake Powell.  We did the twisty 17 mile drive in Monument Valley after a side trip to Four Corners.  I had missed it before, but FastKitty insisted and it was worth every penny.

On the way through Hite, UT, we took Hwy. 261 and I received my gift of the trip - the Moki Dugway!  I had seen pictures of it on many ADV Rider ride reports, but I was not expecting to actually drive it on this trip. Spectacular road building!


Then we negotiated lots of corners on Hwy. 95 following the canyons down into Glen Canyon and Lake Powell.  We stayed at the Defiance House Inn at Bullfrog on the edge of the lake.

The next day brought the road section I had surreptitiously planned the whole trip around.  Ten years ago I rode RedBear on the Burr Trail and I wanted FastKitty to have the experience.  This road is paved in the National Forrest but is dirt through Capital Reef National Park and brings gorgeous scenery and amazing geology.  Great for Bikes and cars.  Forget it for trailers due to tight corners and the ford at Bullfrog Creek.

The road switches its way up a steep escarpment, similar to the Moki Dugway.  The views of the southern section of Capital Reef are better than one gets on the well traveled tourist section at the north end of the park.  Someday I will have to do the northern section (1670) up to Caineville.

The switches here came as a surprise to FastKitty. She squealed a little but loved the landscape.


Later in the day we passed through the small towns of Boulder, Escalante, and Cannonville and on to Bryce Canyon National Park.  I had never been to the look-off at Bryce, so that was a treat.

The next switchbacks were on the way to Cedar City.  We took the northern Route 20 to avoid the slow Hwy. 14 through Cedar Breaks Park, and ended up on another high pass road that was pretty neat.  Good thing too, because the south route was closed due to a massive landslide.

So there you have it.  The trip ended with one long day of high speed straight roads and curvy mountain passes in Nevada, followed by a beautiful trip over Hwy. 108 Sonora Pass.  More switches and stitches!  I had to pity the two guys with big toyhauler trailers who made the mistake of trying to use Sonora Pass to get to Nevada.  Last we saw they were still trying to turn one of the rigs around and head back west to find a more sane route.

Fast & Furious - Tidbits

So much has happened in the past week and continues to happen so quickly that I can't keep up.  But the hole gets deeper as the mud is removed.  Here are a few tidbits:

Senator Grassley at Judicial Watch:  Judicial Watch Presentaion by Grassley

Obama Science Czar covers up emails, proving openness in Obama Administration is a joke:  Obama-science-czar-led-un-effort-hide-proceedings-subvert-foia-records-indicate

Fast & Furious - Eric Holder Subpeonaed

The House Oversight Committee on October 12 SUBPOENAED Attorney General Eric Holder and many, many other administration and political office holders in connection with Fast & Furious.  The last time this happened was in the Richard Nixon era.

The F&F scandal is now about 8 months old.  More and more information keep coming to the surface, each piece more heinous than the last.  The big question for me is: Why isn't The President hot and bothered about this scandal?  Why hasn't The President come down hard looking for the answers to why people have died and guns have been lost in Mexico?  All I can think is that he also is trying to make it all go away.  I am waiting for the Nixonian moment when he proclaims "I did not know about Fast and Furious."   Oh, wait, he did say that.

RedBear prediction:   Even if Holder gets indicted, or convicted for this scandal, he will get off.  Obama will almost certainly pardon him.  It's the Chicago and Washington way.  Sigh.

Fast & Furious - ATF Internal Punishment of Agents

I've been away for a week roamimg around Colorado, Utah and Nevada.  Great trip.  But I find on return that F&F is still generating amzing stories of scandal and wrong-doing within the Administration, DOJ and ATF.

Today, Katie Pavlich has a Townhall.com article about a very brave ATF agent who has been basically dumped and screwed over by the same ATF managers who were responsible for F&F.
See here:   atf_ignored_death_threats,_tried_to_frame_whistleblower_agent_to_cover_corruption

Jay Dobyns, highlighted on the TV show Gangland,  infiltrated the Hells Angels gang for several years, at great risk to his life, and made significant busts of bad guys.  Now that the operation is over, he is getting severe threats on himself and his family from the gangs.  Someone burned down his house.  They threatened to kidnap and then rape his wife on videotape.

And what did Bill Newell, his boss, do?  He ignored Dobyns requests for protection and then finally accused Dobyns of setting the fire.  It is time for some serious changes in DOJ and ATF.

Jobs Bill: Who is telling the truth?

The Houston Chronicle had a good summary of all the disingenuousness being displayed by President Obama and both Democrats and Republicans around the so-called jobs bill. 
See here:  SPIN-METER-Obama-disconnects-rhetoric-reality

Fast & Furious: New Subpenas This Week for Holder

Darrell Issa on Fox News Sunday said his House Oversight Committee will issue new subpenas this week for DOJ and Eric Holder.  See post below for letters.

More and more it appears Holder, Asst Atty General Lanny Brueur and other knew about F&F much before they admitted that they knew.

Fast & Furious: Letters, Letters, Letters

Issa To Holder, Oct 9:  From Fox News:   Issa-responds-to-holder-letter-with-matching-gusto
Read the letter:  Issa-responds-to-holder-letter-to-house-oversight-panel

Holder Complains to Darrell Issa, Oct 7:  Eric Holder has written today to Darrell Issa to complaining about the bad press he has been getting. How can he explain away the apparent fact that the top cop was not kept informed of, or could not recall, an operation where a Border Patrol agent was killed?   Holder to Issa

Issa & Grassley to Holder, Sept 27:  Issa asks numerous sticky questions of the Attorney General about guns and drugs financed by DOJ.  Letter-from-issa-and-grassley-to-holder

10 AZ Sheriffs Demand Independent Investigator:   In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, ten sheriffs from Arizona have demanded an independent investigator be appointed to get to the bottom of the F&F scandal.

On the documents front (those released last Friday) Sharyl Attkisson of CBS is saying that there are many more documents in that release that have yet to be reviewed.  And that she expects further important revelations to come from them.

Pass this Bill! - Oh, Maybe Not...

The President has been campaigning hard for a month to Pass This Bill! for his new jobs bill.  But most Democrats don't like parts of it, not to mention many Republicans. So Harry Reid has refused to vote on it.

Harry Reid changed the Senate rules today so that Democrats don't have to vote on President Obama's jobs bill.  Harry Reid blocked all amendments and then abolished the Minority right to suspend the rules and offer an amendment after debate is finished.  Reid has basically blocked all Republican bills for the past four years by "filling the tree" with nonsense amendments to use up time.  He is forcing the Republican Senators to filibuster everything, creating even more gridlock than we have now.

Not quite the nuclear option, but close.  The nuclear option would mean Reid would try to get rid of the filibuster and the 60 votes needed to pass things.

Fast & Furious: President Still Likes Holder; Others Troubled

President Obama today maintained that he has "complete confidence" in Eric Holder.   "Obama said Holder has “indicated that he was not aware of what was happening in Fast and Furious. Certainly, I [Obama] was not [aware].”"

DOJ continues to obfuscate, claiming again that Holder didn't know about F&F, didn't know that Brian Terry had been killed, didn't know that gun were allowed to walk.  Pick your poison at this point:  1) Holder is so disconnected from his job that he shouldn't be doing it, or 2) Holder is lying.

Today, more documents were released that show Holder received detailed briefings in 2010 about F&F and 1500 guns in the straw purchase pipeline.   From Daily Caller:  "In summer 2010, Holder received briefing memos from National Drug Intelligence Center Director Michael Walther on July 5, July 12, July 19, July 26 and August 9. Each briefing memo contains the name “Operation Fast and Furious.” Each memo also contains a description of what appears to be how Operation Fast and Furious was conducted." Fast-and-furious-docs-reveal-holder-was-given-multiple-detailed-accounts-of-gun-program

Meanwhile Congressmen Blake Farrenhold and Raul Labrador (ID) have called for Holder's resignation.  And Congressman Paul Gosar (AZ) is saying that the DOJ is no longer representing the rule of law in the U.S.  Many are calling for a Special Prosecutor to be appointed, as long as DOJ doesn't do the appointing.

And the Mexican Attorney General has announced that Mexico feels "betrayed" by F&F.

Occupy Wall Street: Humor by Mistake

For some rather hilarious reading try some of the lists of demands by the Occupy Wall Street groups.  There is really no one group, or much consensus on demands, or much consistency on demands, or much understanding on economics, history or government affairs.  But there is lots of flame and motion and discord and general mayhem.  And there is lots of Big Mac eating, iPhone using, Twitter tweeting, etc..  Seems to me these things are products of good capitalism.  Also available for public consumption are lots of garbage creating, gratuitous arresting, bad singing of stupid songs, etc.  It all reminds me of the one and only student strike at my university in 1971.  A few made classes unavailable for all, and most of the protestors didn't really understand the issues.  The background puppet string pullers used the "useful idiots" just like is happening now in New York with strings now being pulled by the big unions, the American Socialist Party, and other radical groups.

For New York:  Proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme
Another for Wall Street: Good-lord-the-occupy-wall-street-imbeciles-release-their-idiotic-demands-20-minimum-wage-and-across-the-board-debt-forgiveness-for-all
For Washington:  Specific-demand-and-action-list-for-washington-dc

Fast & Furious: WashPo Reports on F&F - It Must be Real Now

Yesterday I said the Washington Post was ignoring F&F as a story.  Well, shucks, they proved me wrong and released a document dump story late in the day.  Except that it is merely a link to the CBS report from Monday.

But, true to the Post's mission to protect the White House, they ran an AP story on Tuesday about how a Bush-era gun sting project called Operation Wide Receiver that targeted straw purchasers in a similar manner to F&F.  However, there was a key difference.  Guns in Wide Receiver were not allowed to vanish.  The article states no charges were filed, but other sources have said the criminals with the illegally purchased guns were prosecuted.  2-law-enforcement-officials-bush-era-atf-probe-permitted-gun-transfers-to-traffickers

And today the Post ran two stories. One by AP and one by their own Sari Horwitz.  Of course both kind of made Eric Holder out to be the injured party.  And to use a quote of "Calm down" from ATF Director B. Todd Jones is hilarious, as he scrambles to rearrange the deck chairs with a major re-org in ATF. 
Horwitz:  Calm-down-about-fast-and-furious-gun-sting-atf-acting-director-says
AP:  ATF-head-makes-11-personnel-changes-in-trying-to-move-agency-past-gun-smuggling-controversy

I do give kudos for the nice hold no punches graphic though.  Evolution-of-a-scandal

And, of course, neither story asked the question that some reporter must inevitably ask:  Why hasn't anyone been fired yet?

So maybe the Post has awoken from their slumber and will now declare F&F to be a legitimate story.  Or not.

Fast & Furious: DOJ and White House Say F&F is Not a Story!

Sharyl Attkisson was on Laura Ingram's show today, talking about F&F and her revelations on CBS yesterday that Eric Holder is firmly implicated to have perjured himself.  Sharyl Attkisson on CBS

For background, the Main Stream Media (MSM) has been doing its best to hide F&F and cover up the scandal to protect the White House and DOJ.  The last time ABC even mentioned F&F was June 15, with a two sentence blurb.  For NBC it was April 17.  See: Media Research Bias Alert  The Washington Post today had nothing on Friday's document release or the CBS revelations.  The New York Times has been doing its best to turn the whole thing into a way to campaign for more gun control.  Only the alternate press and Sharyl Attkisson at CBS and Roger Serano at LA Times have been consistently investigating and well reporting on this story. 

So, today Attkisson described how press officials at DOJ and the White House reacted to her questions yesterday.  At DOJ, the woman yelled at Attkisson, maintaining there really was not story to be concerned about.  At the White House, a male press secretary screamed at her to write it their way - that she was not following their script of how to write about the story.  He maintained that because the Post, NYT, and other MSM were not covering it there was no story.

Obviously, when press people say "there is no story, just move along now," then you know there is something important to be found. 

Senator Chuck Grassley yesterday also told Cam on NRA News that on January 31 he had Eric Holder in his office and gave him a letter of complaint about F&F.  So it becomes increasingly hard to believe that DOJ isn't lying about Holder's knowledge of F&F.

Fast & Furious: Eric Holder Now Implicated by Emails

Last Friday, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS watched as the White House and DOJ released a big pile of F&F documents under shadow of Friday night.  (See last post.)  She has now had a chance to review the documents and her news report on CBS evening News tonight shows emails that indicate Eric Holder was briefed on F&F in 2010, with at least 7 memos between July and December.  This April, when asked by Darryl Issa, Holder maintained that he didn't know about F&F until February or March of 2011. Of course, DOJ is saying that Holder is a busy guy and just because he was sent memos, it doesn't mean he actually read them.  Can you say weaseling or incompetence?  Or is he just plain lying?
Attkisson Report on Holder Memos

In addition, Atkinson reported on emails between officials who were worrying about "guns walking" even in October of 2010.  They hoped in those emails that F&F would be wrapped up by December 2010.  Too bad that didn't happen.  Brian Terry might still be alive.  Not to mention hundreds of Mexican citizens.

CBS, Washington Times and the LA Times are the principal mainstream media outlets reporting on F&F.  Most of the rest are studiously ignoring the whole scandal.  I wonder if an upcoming election might be involved?

F&F summary:  Forbes Magazine asked Frank Miniter to look into F&F and write what he found:  Fast-and-furious-just-might-be-president-obamas-watergate