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