Happy now, Darrell Issa? The effort you led to discredit Attorney General Eric Holder got you what you wanted from the beginning: a vote to hold in contempt the Attorney General of the United States. You told the New York Times, "This was not the outcome I had sought." There's a word for that.
Regardless, you've earned your coveted footnote: the Congressman who brought about the first such sanction of a sitting cabinet member in U.S. history. And not just any cabinet member, but the one responsible for effective, professional, nonpartisan law enforcement. Not even Alberto Gonzales or John Ashcroft, two of history's least distinguished incumbents of the AG's office, met the fate of Eric Holder.
The country's interest is best served when both the executive and the legislative branches resist partisan showboating and rigorously defend against the politicization of the Department of Justice.
There's cause for ambivalence about President Obama's claim of executive privilege. Such a claim makes sense if shielding behind-the-scenes conversation about the flaws of "Operation Fast and Furious" can legitimately be defended as a life-saving measure. But if the internal back-and-forth is simply embarrassing or inconvenient, hiding behind executive privilege is both unnecessary and foolish.
A shaky constitutional claim on a major gun case provides ammunition for the NRA and the Gun Owners of America. In their respective campaigns to paint the president as a weak defender if not an enemy of private gun ownership, they have already begun issuing report cards on individual members of congress. An A to those who voted in favor of the contempt citation, Fs to those who voted no or walked out in protest over the vote. Politically, it simply doesn't matter that the Congressional battle is not over guns but the internal conversation of a president and his staff.
On the subject of saving lives, the loss of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was a tragedy no matter who was responsible or how it happened. But let's not forget the Bush administration's multiple uses of the same tactics used to "climb the ladder" of the hierarchy of Mexican drug cartels. Such tracing and tracking of firearms and other items of evidence (think drug supplies, marked bills, stolen property) is common in law enforcement. If managed lawfully and competently (much in question in this case), it's an essential public safety tool.
For a politician to suggest that the agent's life would have been spared had the federal government not allowed the putative murder weapon to migrate south of the border, is naïve or disingenuous. (Thanks in part to the pro-gun lobby, drug-dealing thugs on either side of the border have no trouble buying or stealing vast arsenals of high-powered weaponry.)
But seeking to make political hay of the death of Agent Terry is despicable. The same could be said of efforts to taint the reputation of the highest law enforcement official in the land.
Follow Norm Stamper on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CopsSayLegalize
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-contributor-who-helped-enact-assault-weapons-ban-ran-fast-and-furious
I get it. You like Obama. You like everyone associated with him and you are blindly partisan. It's not hard to figure out. In your mind Obama is good so everything associated with him is good. This includes Holder. You don't need to know any more than that.
If Fast And Furious ran under a Republican administration you'd be calling for heads. At least one American LEO and 200 Mexicans are dead because our gov told gun dealers to sell thousands of weapons to known gun runners. They didn't track the guns and let them walk across the border. They never notified anyone in the Mexican gov or law enforcement.
Fast And Furious (begun in July, 2009 btw) was an incompetently run operation and those involved in running are criminaly negligent. There's no other way to describe their failure.
The agents involve could have spent all day every day surfing for porn and playing computer games and we would have gotten more for our tax dollars. At least no one would have died.
Yet no one has been demoted, No one has been fired and no one has been charged.
Contrast this with the Left's hysteria over Valerie Plane.
You guys are some serious hypocrites.
The BATF did not inform the Mexican government that they were letting illegal assault weapons cross the border. This was under Operation Fast And Furious. There was no way for this op to work.
During Operation Wide Receiver the Mexican LEOs were informed and worked with the BATF when the guns crossed the border. This is how an operation should be run and while the op ultimately failed it was due to the corruption in Mexican rather than the gross incompetence shown during the Fast And Furious operation.
This operation didn't begin under Bush it started in July, 2009 under Obama. Operation Wide Reciever was run under Bush's watch but there were key differences between the two ops. The main one is that the Mexican authorities were involved when illegal guns crossed the border. Under Fast And Furious the guns simply were allowed to cross without any means of tracking them and without Mexican law enforcement being informed.
This is why the operation is criminal and those involved incompetent.
Holder denied any earlier knowledge of the operation when first grilled about it but then e-mails showed that he did in fact know about it much longer than he claimed. There are about 250,000 documents associated with this operation. Holder has turned over about 7,000 and many of them are nothing but black sheets of paper as everything has been redacted (blacked out). There are binders and binders of blacked out documents turned over. This shows how well the Justice Dept is cooperating.
2 American LEO's have been killed with these guns and over 200 Mexicans. The count keeps going up.
No one has been held accountable for this operation. No one has been demoted of fired.
Yet the Left continues to lie, coverup and obstruct justice.
and check into Burke further and guess what you find.? plenty of dirty laundry that's what.
"the original question about what happened to him"???
Can you please translate that into English?
www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-57461204-10391695/a-primer-on-the-fast-and-furious-scandal/?tag=contentMain;contentBody
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/25/fast-and-furious-documents-what-do-show/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2018545824_guns28.html
http://www.examiner.com/article/apologists-resort-to-talking-point-ridicule-attacks-as-contempt-vote-looms
It seems as if your anger is directed at the wrong target. You're worrying more about law abiding gun owners and gun rights organizations than you are the criminals and the law enforcement officers and beaurocrats that are ciminally negligent .
Nothing wrong with the gov arming narco terrorists along our southern border. Nope.....nothing to see. Move along.
Because they all know the average GOP voter does not have any incentive to check the actual facts concerning any GOP action.