On February 14th I received an email from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office, containing a copy of a letter the Congressman just sent to Attorney General Eric Holder. In it, Issa points out Holder’s “lack of good faith,” in not complying with document requests heretofore, and to the fact that the DOJ as a whole appears “more concerned with protecting its image through spin control than actually cooperating with Congress.”

Wrote Issa:

The Justice Department’s request for additional time has, unfortunately, not been followed by efforts to bridge the significant differences between its legal obligation to Congress and the reality of its stonewalling. The [House Oversight and Government Reform Committee] is determined to know what happened in Operation Fast and Furious and how the Justice Department responded when it was publicly confronted with evidence of reckless conduct after Agent Terry’s death. If the Justice Department cannot commit to providing, at a minimum, a detailed description of documents it is withholding, and the legal basis for doing so, then the committee has no other option than to move forward with the contempt process against Attorney General Holder.

In addition, the letter sets forth central questions that have to be answers, among which are:

1. Exactly how and when did senior Department officials learn the truth of what happened?

2. Did Department officials retaliate against whistleblowers?

3. Why did Department officials decide to move forward with prosecuting old cases involving highly objectionable tactics when line prosecutors had refused to do so?

4. Why did senior Department officials fail to see the clear connection between Fast and Furious and prior flawed operations they have admitted they knew about?

5. When did the Department first learn about Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s February 2011 suggestion of gunwalking, and why did the Department wait so long before telling Congress about it?

6. A year later, will the responsible senior Department officials be held accountable?

The letter also contains a specific line of questions about Patrick Cunningham, Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, who pled the 5th when subpoenaed by Issa. Apparently, Cunningham did his own “comprehensive review” of Fast and Furious in April 2011, and Issa wants to know what he found out.

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At CPAC over the weekend, Pima County Sheriff Paul Babeu (AZ), also a Republican congressional candidate for the upcoming 2012 election, was asked about Attorney General Eric Holder and Fast and Furious.

His answers were to the point:

I believe…and many sheriffs in Arizona believe that, he…perjured himself. His story has changed. After there was evidence produced that he did know — he was given briefings, he was given emails — he then started to walk back his statements to say that, “well, I misunderstood the question.”

This is a reference to Holder’s original May 3rd testimony wherein he told Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) that he only learned about Fast and Furious “a few weeks ago,” i.e., sometime in April. But as facts continued to emerge, facts like President Obama’s braggadocios snippet about talking to Holder about Fast and Furious in March, Holder back peddled on his timeline, saying he’d misunderstood Issa’s question, and that he’d actually learned of Fast and Furious in late January / early February. (And since the new timeline was introduced, in congressional testimony Holder has admitted that “in early March [he] ordered that a directive be sent to law enforcement agents and prosecutors prohibiting [gun walking].”)

Sure makes the excuse, “Well, I misunderstood the question,” seem a bit weak doesn’t it?

That’s certainly Sheriff Babeu’s opinion:

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At one point during the hearings before the House Oversight Committee on February 2nd, Attorney General Eric Holder said he hadn’t learned of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death until 24 hours after it happened. However, this timeline seems questionable at best when you consider that at 2:31 a.m. on very night of Terry’s death (Terry was shot on the night of December 14/15, 2010), then U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke received an email from an unnamed official that read:

On December 14, 2010, a BORTAC agent working in the Nogales, AZ AOR was shot. The agent was conducting Border Patrol operations 18 miles north of the international boundary when he encountered [redacted word] unidentified subjects. Shots were exchanged resulting in the agent being shot. At this time, the agent is being transported to an area where he can be air lifted to an emergency medical center.

Approximately one hour later, Burke received a follow-up email which said “our agent is dead.” The email was sent to Monty Wilkinson, Holder’s Deputy Chief of Staff at the time. And a few hours later, Wilkinson responded that the incident was “tragic” and added: “I’ve alerted the AG [Holder], the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.”

Here’s the problem: the timeframe doesn’t match up. What I mean is, if we go by the times the emails were sent and the time at which Wilkinson responded to say he had alerted Holder about Terry’s death, it’s not unreasonable to suppose Holder knew within 12 hours of the murder. Claiming that he didn’t learn about Terry’s death until 24 hours after the fact gave him 12 extra hours in which he could go golfing or play tennis or perhaps even get his team at the DOJ on the same page before news of Terry’s death broke(?).

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The highlight of the exchanges today between members of the House Oversight Committee and Attorney General Eric Holder came when Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY) was given her time to question the AG. Her questions are important because she speaks for a district in New York, far removed from the border mayhem and violence connected to Fast and Furious. The fact her constituents are outraged goes a long way in describing how widespread the angst and disgust over Fast and Furious really is.

After opening her time by pointing out that Holder had frequently responded to charges in a dismissive way, by saying they were all part of a political game, or an election year charade, Buerkle said:

I think it’s important to recognize that you, as the Attorney General, with all due respect, need to  be held accountable, or someone does, as to what happened. Of all the issues that face this country, this is the issue that I hear from my district so frequently about. In fact, today I have no fewer than 30 questions from folks in my district who want to know what happened, why it happened, and who’s going to be held accountable.

She then stated that she’d been “taken aback” by Holder’s haughty declarations to others on the committee, wherein he said “I am the Attorney General,” as if that meant he were above reproach. Said Buerkle: “With all due respect, yes you are [the Attorney General], but you are also accountable not only to the folks in my district, but to the American people.

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February 2nd is fast approaching for Attorney General Eric Holder, who is set to appear before the House Oversight Committee for questioning on Fast and Furious. This will put him in the hot seat in front of Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and other congressional members like Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who have been steady on Holder’s trail since details of Fast and Furious became public.

Holder’s last appearance before a congressional committee was on December 8, when Issa made it clear how irritated he was over the changing timeline, Holder’s perceived arrogance, and the ongoing refusal to turn over subpoenaed DOJ documents. In one of the best exchanges on Dec 8, Issa looked at Holder and asked, “Have you no shame?” That was also the hearing in which Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), expressed his outrage over the fact that Holder’s DOJ had submitted inaccurate testimony then withdrawn it in an attempt to avoid being charged with providing false testimony.

But a lot has changed since that early December hearing. Most recently, the last minute release of subpoenaed documents which show that Holder learned about Border Agent Brian Terry’s death on the day it happened: a point Holder has heretofore denied. (Emails between Dennis Burke, former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, and Holder’s then-deputy chief of staff prove this.) Additionally, other emails in the recently released DOJ documents show that the head of DOJ’s “criminal division, Lanny Breuer, suggested letting some illicit ‘straw’ weapons buyers in the U.S. [to] transport their guns across the border into Mexico where they could be arrested.”

Then there’s Patrick J. Cunningham, Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, who was subpoenaed to appear for testimony on January 24, but pleaded the 5th in order to avoid being “compelled to be a witness against himself.” As a result, a determined Congressman Issa has demanded that Cunningham’s underling, Michael Morrissey, Assistant United States Attorney, “speak with Committee investigators about his role in and knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious.”

All this to say, as I watch the hearings this Thursday I hope to see the committee place Holder under oath and then ask tough, pointed questions about these and other recently revealed matters. For example, in light of the emails, Holder needs to give a clear and binding answer regarding when he found out about Terry’s death. He needs to explain how the DOJ can claim ignorance regarding “gun running” while their own man, Lanny Breuer, was pushing it as a means making arrests. He needs to explain what, if any, interaction he or other DOJ officials/affiliates had with Patrick J. Cunningham between the time Cunningham was subpoenaed and the time his attorney announced he would plead the fifth. And he needs to describe what, if any, interaction he or other DOJ officials/affiliates have had with Michael Morrissey at this time regarding the testimony Morrissey is expected to give when he speaks with investigators.

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Operation ‘Fast and Furious’ has taken a new turn.

Late Friday night, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released documents that show Attorney General Eric Holder was alerted of border patrol agent Brian Terry’s death the day it occurred- contradicting Holder’s statements when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2011. At the time, Holder said he was informed of Terry’s murder only “a few weeks” before the hearing.

Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller has the story:

“An email from one official, whose name has been redacted from the document, to now-former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke reads: “On December 14, 2010, a BORTAC agent working in the Nogales, AZ AOR was shot. The agent was conducting Border Patrol operations 18 miles north of the international boundary when he encountered [redacted word] unidentified subjects. Shots were exchanged resulting in the agent being shot. At this time, the agent is being transported to an area where he can be air lifted to an emergency medical center.”

That email was sent at 2:31 a.m. on the day Terry was shot. One hour later, a follow-up email read: “Our agent has passed away.”

Burke forwarded those two emails to Holder’s then-deputy chief of staff Monty Wilkinson later that morning, adding that the incident was “not good” because it happened “18 miles w/in” the border.

Wilkinson responded to Burke shortly thereafter and said the incident was “tragic.” “I’ve alerted the AG [Holder], the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.”

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As I wrote in a post for Big Government this past Sunday, January 22, the Arizona’s legislature has decided once more to do the job the feds won’t do, and has launched its own investigation into Fast and Furious. And during an appearance on FOX NEWS this morning, Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin explained why they’ve taken this step. He said that constituents were flooding their offices with questions about the gun-running operation, and he said one recurring question was, “You’re not waiting for the feds [to do something] are you?” He then said the answer to that question was “No.”

Said Tobin:

This is an incident that occurred on Arizona soil, with Arizona business owners, [where we lost] an Arizona agent (Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry), and quite frankly we felt it needed a lot more attention. We felt our citizens needed a place to go to share their stories. Maybe there’s more there. This was a failed program right from the start and I think the idea is to put more light on it.

Tobin explained that as he’s watched this story unfold, and learned about the tactics used in Fast and Furious, it just hasn’t made sense: “I’m from the family of a law enforcement officer and I don’t think that the process by which they were going was the direction in which we fight back on border security and drug infiltration.”

He went on to explain that the Arizona House has been disappointed in the way Eric Holder has handled things up till now, and added:

It doesn’t appear he had a grasp on it right from the beginning when the inquiries started coming in. And forgive me for being concerned when I hear that the federal government’s here and they’re here to help. [We’re] the state that had to pass S.B. 1070 so we could help secure our borders, and the fed sued us…we’ve lost millions of acres of forest land [to fires] because the feds won’t let us clean them, we’ve got a Navajo power plant that the EPA may close…I meant the list goes on and on.

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Nationally, Fast and Furious has entered the vernacular. As a result, Americans of all walks of life now know that the ATF and DOJ oversaw the sale of approximately 2,500 guns to straw purchasers who, in turn, passed them to criminals in Mexico and elsewhere. Moreover, Americans know that the plan from the get-go was to have these guns carried across an international border and passed to criminals whom the ATF then planned to arrest (but they never got around to arresting them because they hadn’t bothered tracing the guns from the point of sale).

Therefore, Americans also know that of the 2,500 guns originally sold, approximately 1,300 are still on the streets and unaccounted for. At least two of these guns were found at Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder scene in December 2010, and Americans increasingly know that while Terry may have been the first American victim, odds are he won’t be the last with such a large number of weapons on the loose.

Lastly, Americans know that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have both denied complicity in Fast and Furious, particularly in the gun-running aspects of it. Throughout the course of denying complicity, Holder has changed his story more than once, Obama has demonstrated confusion over when he first learned about Fast and Furious, and former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke (Arizona) was allowed to retire without charges although he was demonstrably involved in covering up the connection between Fast and Furious and Agent Terry’s death.

Perhaps through all this, the one thing the American people have witnessed to a sickening degree is the stark failure to prosecute those involved in Fast and Furious to the full extent of the law. Holder has been handled with kid gloves, Burke is now living a private life, and Obama is not being asked to clear up the many discrepancies in his timeline.

Enter Arizona.

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Late yesterday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s office sent me an email with a copy of a letter the Congressman had sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on December 15 — a letter to which the A.G. has yet to respond. In it, Issa informs Holder that the Committee would like him to appear for more testimony on January 24, 2012.

In other words, Fast and Furious isn’t going away any time soon.

Issa wrote:

The hearing will examine flaws in the management structure of the Justice Department as demonstrated in the genesis and implementation of ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious. Specifically, the hearing will focus on what senior Department officials could and should have done to put a stop to this reckless program, as well as the specific areas where failures in communication and management occurred.

As those of you who watched the hearings on December 8th certainly noticed, Holder isn’t a big fan of the way Issa deals with him.

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One year ago tonight—the night of December 14 / 15, 2010—Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down with weapons sold to a straw purchaser in Operation Fast and Furious. Originally, two Fast and Furious weapons were said to have been found at the murder scene, but there has since been evidence that a third weapon, also tied to Fast and Furious, was found there too. However, it’s very existence still being covered up by the FBI. So we’ll just say “at least two” Fast and Furious weapons were found at the murder scene the night that Terry was killed.

There are so many sad aspects to this story that I don’t know where to begin.

For starters, Terry was just days away from going home to see his parents and his siblings for Christmas. (In the days after Terry’s death, his father highlighted again and again the fact that his son had already purchased his plane tickets to come home for Christmas.)

Following his death, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke did everything he could to cover up the connection between Terry’s murder and Fast and Furious. He even went as far as to deny “victim of crime” status to the Terry family, in order to prevent government liability for what had taken place with Fast and Furious weapons.

But it must be noted that there is absolutely no doubt that Terry was killed with Fast and Furious weapons: no doubt whatsoever. The name of the straw purchaser who bought the weapons is known, Jamie Avila, and the name of the gun store from which he purchased the weapons is known as well: Lone Wolf Trading Company in Phoenix. (If the name “Lone Wolf Trading Company” rings a bell, that’s because it’s where the secret ATF recordings were made that indicate Attorney General Eric Holder had a thorough working knowledge of Fast and Furious at least as early as mid-March 2011.)

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On October 18, 2010, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer sent communiqués to Attorney General Eric Holder alerting the A.G. that indictments over Fast and Furious could be forthcoming.  This alert came on the heels of briefings on Fast and Furious which were sent to Holder at least as early July 2010. Yet although Fast and Furious was the topic of such correspondence and the focus of such briefings, in February 2011 Breuer told Congress he knew nothing about the gun walking tactics which had been used in the operation. His contention was that he only learned of the tactics once Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry had been killed in December 2010.

More recently, however, Breuer has decided he knew about the gun walking aspects of Fast and Furious as early as April 2010. But he continues to carry water for the DOJ by saying that although he knew, he never took the time to tell Holder about the gun walking.

How many lies can these people tell before someone changes the locks on their office doors and takes away their parking credentials?

Senator Charles Grassley, for one, has had enough, and just today officially called for Breuer’s resignation from the Senate floor. (more…)

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 8th, Attorney General Eric Holder continued to claim he knew nothing about guns being walked into Mexico until after the fact, and that he knew nothing about operation Fast and Furious until earlier this year. With little worry that he had given a completely different answer to the House Oversight Committee on May 3rd, a non-repentant Holder told the Senators:

I first learned about the tactics and the phrase “Operation Fast and Furious” at the beginning of this year — I think when it became a matter of all of this public controversy. In my testimony before the House Committee, I did say “a few weeks.” I probably could have said “a couple of months.” I don’t think that what I said in terms of using the term “a few weeks” was inaccurate, based on what happened.

Come on Mr. Holder, this is getting ridiculous.

What makes it worse is that neither timeline is honest: In other words, he neither found out about it a few weeks ago or earlier this year. Rather, he was briefed on Fast and Furious in mid-summer 2010 and three months later was sent memos which dealt with specifically with gun walking into Mexico.

And who can forget Holder’s own speech in Mexico on April 2, 2009, wherein he boasted of operation Gunrunner:

Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels.  My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion.  DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail. (emphasis mine)

By the way, what does the name “Gunrunner” signify if not the intention to run (or walk) guns?

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From Reuters:

Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday expressed regret over a botched operation meant to track guns smuggled to Mexican drug cartels and said his department misinformed Congress about it.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley slammed Holder and the Justice Department for inaccurately telling lawmakers in a February letter that the agency did everything possible to try to stop weapons bought illegally from being sent to Mexico.

“In the nine months since then, mounting evidence has put the lie to that claim,” Grassley said to Holder at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “Documents contradicting the department’s denials came to light.”

Grassley said the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Lanny Breuer, who is a close Holder friend, failed to correct the record for months even though he knew it was inaccurate to say the agency had done everything it could. (more…)

What to do U.S. House members Dan Burton, Allen West, Lynn Jenkins, Trent Franks, Tim Huelskamp, Mike Pompeo, Duncan Hunter, Devin Nunes, Dennis Ross, Vicky Hartzler, Raul Labrador, Quico Canseco, Blake Farenthold, Paul Gosar, Joe Walsh, Gus Bilirakis and John Mica, have in common? All 17 of them have called for Attorney General Eric Holder to turn in his letter of resignation over Fast and Furious and his seeming inability to tell the truth.

Representative Burton (R-IN), in particular, is tired of Holder’s lies, and he was tired of them before Fast and Furious was even a reality. In fact, Burton never thought Holder should have been confirmed as Attorney General to begin with.

Said Burton:

When I was chairman of government reform and oversight during the Clinton administration, we had Holder before my committee a number of times and he misled the committee. In fact, he lied. During his confirmation in the Senate, I sent a letter to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, [Sen. Patrick] Leahy, and I sent it to the other members of the committee as well, and I cited specific cases where Holder had not been straight with the committee and I said he should not be confirmed.

And now that Fast and Furious is the topic Holder’s lying about, Burton adds: “I don’t think he’s a trustworthy Attorney General. He’s a political animal. He’s more concerned about politics than he is about what’s right for the country.”

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CBS News recently got their hands on secret recordings of conversations about Fast and Furious that took place between an ATF agent and a gun store owner, both of whom were located in the Phoenix area (and both of whom were thoroughly acquainted with Fast and Furious).

The recordings captured agent Hope McAllister talking with Andre Howard, owner of Lone Wolf Trading Company, at a time when Howard was noticeably worried that Fast and Furious was going to become public knowledge or be put under the microscope of a congressional investigation. Howard especially feared that Senator Charles Grassley might push for an inquiry of some kind. Thus at least four times in the recordings he can be heard mentioning Grassley, and one of those four times it’s to say someone needs to tell Grassley “to sit [his] a—down.”

What’s also interesting about the recordings is that although they were made in mid-March 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder’s name comes up quite a bit. And his name doesn’t come up because they’re afraid he’s going to find out about Fast and Furious but because he was the one they were counting on to deflect attention from it.

In other words, he was well aware of the operation by mid-March 2011, and this is somewhat ironic because in answering questions from Congressman Darrell Issa on May 3 he said he only learned of Fast and Furious “over the last few weeks.” This means he led Issa to believe the earliest he knew anything about the operation was sometime in April. Yet on the recordings (from mid-March), it is clear Holder was the one Howard hoped would stop the investigative momentum by responding to a letter regarding Fast and Furious from the House Oversight Committee:

HOWARD:  “Holder has to respond to this tomorrow.”

McALLISTER:  “Yeah, he’s gonna respond.”

HOWARD:  “I know he is.  And I assure you the media isn’t gonna like his response, because basically it’s gonna mirror what he’s told Grassley.”

McALLISTER:  “Yeah.”

HOWARD:  “He can’t deviate.”  (Italics added.)

As Howard continues to express concern over what Holder will say, Agent MacAllister tries to calm him by saying she believed Holder & Co. would “come out with [something a] little more um b—-y…than they [had] in the past.”

In the next portion of the recording, former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke’s name is referenced. This is where agent MacAllister admits Burke had been more tenacious in handling Fast and Furious inquiries than Holder would be:

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From The Los Angeles Times:

In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard’s Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semiautomatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns, and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out of the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.

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I don’t believe we’ve seen a more corrupt, politicized and incompetent Department of Justice (DOJ) in modern political history than we have now under President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. And I never thought I’d write those words after suffering eight years of Attorney General Janet Reno during the Clinton administration.

But check this out as reported by The Associated Press:

The Justice Department replaced three officials Tuesday who played critical roles in a flawed law enforcement operation aimed at major gun-trafficking networks on the Southwest border.

The department announced that the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the U.S. attorney in Arizona had resigned and an administration official said a prosecutor who worked on the operation was reassigned to civil cases.

The operation, known as Fast and Furious, was designed to track small-time gun buyers at several Phoenix-area gun shops up the chain to make cases against major weapons traffickers.…

A congressional investigation of the program has turned up evidence that ATF lost track of many of the more than 2,000 guns linked to the operation.

The ATF, with the full approval of the DOJ, allowed guns to be sold and sent to the Mexican drug cartels in the hopes of having them show up at crime scenes in Mexico! This reckless craziness seems to have resulted in, among other crimes, the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a shootout with Mexican criminals in December, 2010. Fast and Furious guns were found at the scene of his death.

Last week the Acting ATF Director Kenneth E. Melson was transferred to a make-work position in the DOJ and the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix resigned.

But Eric Holder still has his job!

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News broke yesterday that punishment had been meted out for “Fast and Furious.” Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson had been re-assigned and U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke had resigned. There was no mention of pending criminal prosecution or jail time. Rather, we were politely informed that Melson would be moved to a new position at the DOJ in Washington DC while Burke would “return to private life.”

Hmmm. Let’s think about this: Over 150 Mexican law enforcement officials have been killed as a result of Fast and Furious. As have nearly 1,000 Mexican civilians, at least one U.S. Border Agent (God bless the family of Brian Terry), and who knows how many other humans on both sides of the border who have yet to be accounted for. And there are still over 1,000 weapons on the loose, although we are starting to find them more and more at crime scenes in America.

And all that happens in response to this is that an Acting Director gets re-assigned and a U.S. Attorney returns to private life?

Think about it: “Straw purchasers” went into gun stores to buy weapons they had pre-determined to pass on to criminals, and now those criminals have used the weapons against Mexicans and Americans alike. It has put us all at risk, and especially those living near the border in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

No wonder Congressman Paul Gosar of the House Oversight Committee contends that “we (Americans) were the known collateral damage” in this whole plan.

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On December 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was doing his job along the US/Mexico border in Arizona. But while tracking suspected border bandits just north of Rio Rico, AZ, he was shot in the back with an AK-47 and died while being airlifted to a hospital.

He was only days away from going home to be with his parents and siblings for Christmas: his dad said Terry had already purchased plane tickets for the trip.

Terry gave his life in service to this country – period. And God bless him and his family for that.

And I while I do not in any way want to diminish that service, it must be stated that the tragedy of Terry’s death is multiplied many times over by the fact that the AK-47 used to kill him was one of the 2,500 weapons purchased by straw purchasers during “Fast and Furious.”

That right: the rifle used to kill Terry was purchased by 23-year old Jamie Avila. It was part of the larger effort ostensibly aimed at leading law enforcement closer to the Mexican drug cartel by allowing weapons, illegally purchased in Phoenix, AZ, to be smuggled into Mexico (with the approval of the ATF and the full knowledge of the DHS, DEA, ICE, IRS, and DOJ.)

Folks, this stinks to high heaven.

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