For those who are unaware of the Fast and Furious scandal, the three links below, along with an excerpt from my first post on this issue are included before the main post.
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2011/10/fast-and-furious-lapierre-speaks-out.html
It entailed having Federal Agents browbeat licensed firearms dealers into making firearms sales with which they themselves either not comfortable or would refuse to do without a DEA agent telling him to make the sale.
The weapons were ostensibly allowed (under the eyes of federal agents) to be brought across the border for the purposes of investigating where the weapons would wind up. Surprise! - They wound up in the hands of drug cartels!
This is not the case of an agent setting up a sting-type sale of a fake missile, explosive, drugs, etc. to a criminal or terrorist for the purpose of making an arrest. We are asked to believe that it would be of benefit to investigating agents to see where real guns would go.
I find this entire thing to defy any rational attempts at explanation. For years, the American public was fed cooked statistics to lead us to believe that the less than third world - horror show of mass murders, shootouts with Mexican Police and military, and Mexico’s descent into narco-state status was the result of American gun dealers and their customers who were supposedly supplying the criminals with the tools to commit their atrocities. A favorite statistic was that 90% of guns recovered in Mexico and then traced were found to have originated in the US. The part of the story that was not put out was that a tiny fraction of recovered guns were in fact traced in the first place. Only guns that appeared to have been likely to have come from the US were put through the tracing process. The result of that practice was the magic number that was used in an attempt to sway the American public to support more restrictive gun laws in the US.
One of the weapons sold in this operation was used in the Murder of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December..........
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2011/11/erick-holder-declines-to-apologize-for.html
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/06/holder-feeling-pressure-from-issa.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Main post, with a hat tip to our contributor Catalus.
With the truckload of Obama administration scandals, it is easy to get lost in the mix. We have hit the two-year anniversary of the point when, after the scandal came to light with the murder of Agent Brian Terry, Obama and his stooge of an Attorney General Eric Holder began the process of covering up the details of the program.
When the Congressional investigation of the scandal reached threatening proportions, Obama fell back and declared that numerous documents and communications pertaining to the channeling of weapons to Mexican cartels were protected by Executive Privilege and thus not available to the investigators.
The process has been painfully slow and Obama still has Holder doing his best to stymie the investigation. Recently, a request that the lawsuit to challenge the citing of Executive Privilege be dismissed resulted in a key loss for the administration.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/10/federal_judge_rejects_eric_holders_attempt_to_keep_fast_furious_documents_from_house_committee_inves.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/fast-and-furious-doj-documents-97604.html#ixzz2gTkr51VC
-From The American Thinker:
In a ruling Monday night, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson turned down the Justice Department's request to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege to prevent some records about the administration's response to the "Operation Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal from being turned over to Congress.
"This case presents the sort of question that the courts are traditionally called upon to resolve," Jackson said in her 44-page decision, issued more than five months after lawyers argued the issue in her packed courtroom and more than a year after the House committee filed suit. "Dismissing the case without hearing it would in effect place the court's finger on the scale, designating the executive as the victor based solely on his untested assertion that the privilege applies," she wrote. (snip)
The legal fight arose after the Justice Department refused to comply with House subpoenas seeking information about the response to "Operation Fast and Furious," a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives undercover operation targeting gun trafficking along and across the Mexican border......"
The fight is by no means over at this point, but at least the lawsuit will go to trial.
-on a lighter note, a group of US WWII veterans did not let the closures that resulted from the government shutdown stop them from visiting the WWII veterans memorial. Just like when they were young, the veterans (with a little help this time*), moved through the barricades and completed their mission:
"What was meant to be a final gathering of heroes Tuesday instead became a final victory for dozens of World War II combat vets who refused to let the government's budget battle block a visit to their memorial in the nation's capital.
With bagpipers playing "Amazing Grace," nearly 200 veterans from Mississippi and Iowa swept past barricades and security guards at the World War II Memorial in Washington in order to keep a commitment to visit the site, which was closed today due to the partial government shutdown. The veterans, in their 80s and 90s, were accompanied by Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., a former Marine who earlier vowed not to let the National Park Police keep them from a planned visit to the open-air monument.
"Well, I would have been so down-and-out if I got all the way up here and wasn't able to get in," Navy veteran Oscar Leroy Russell, 90, who is blind after he suffered a stroke, told FoxNews.com.
Some veterans on hand wiped away tears when they saw a crowd waving the American flag as they came out of their bus.
"These men and women didn't cower to the Japanese and Germans," Palazzo said. "I don't think they're about to let a few National Park Police stand in their way."
Palazzo, who was joined by several other members of Congress, moved the barricades at the memorial and police did not try to stop the veterans' access.
"I’m not going to enforce the 'no stopping or standing' sign for a group of 90 World War II veterans," a U.S. Park Police officer, who declined to give his name, told The Washington Post. “I’m a veteran myself.”
The veterans are traveling as part of Honor Flight
, a program that enables World War II veterans to partake in an expense-paid trip to view the memorial. Tuesday's trip is the second-to-last flight, with the last scheduled for November. But prior to their arrival early Tuesday, there was fear that the government shutdown and federal worker furloughs would mean no access to the monuments on the National Mall.But with lawmakers leading the charge, the American military heroes, some in wheelchairs, surged into the memorial........"
No comments:
Post a Comment