For nearly a year now, House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R=CA) and Attorney General Eric Holder have locked horns over Operation Fast and Furious.  Throughout this time we have seen heated exchanges between the two during Congressional hearings, watched the DOJ’s narrative change more than once, and wondered why Holder has thus far been allowed to dictate the speed at which the committee can investigate him.

As of late, when Holder dug in and simply refused to the turn over the documents the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed, the contest between he and Issa turned into nothing less than a battle of wills. And Issa upped the ante when he drew a line in the sand and gave Holder until 5 pm on February 9^th to comply with the subpoenas or face charges of contempt of congress.

And so they squared off, and for any of you who wondered which man would blink first the answer has been revealed—Issa blinked, and gave Holder & Co. a time extension for turning over the documents.

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As Attorney General Eric Holder sat before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday February 2nd, his answers were as predictable as they were unacceptable: predictable because they were the well-rehearsed answers he gives each time he’s asked about Fast and Furious (except when he gives different answers because the timeline demands it) and they were unacceptable because many of his answers were simply contrary to reality.

For example, consider how Holder continued to defend (and rationalize) the speed at which the DOJ is releasing subpoenaed documents to the committee. How he simultaneously maintained that the DOJ has “shared huge amounts of information” and promised to share more, albeit on the DOJ’s timetable rather than that of the Oversight Committee.

But the reality is that the DOJ has only released 8% of the subpoenaed documents, or approximately 6,000 documents. And according to a report from the Oversight Committee, among these 6,000 were many which consisted “of blacked-out pages containing no information,” as well as “many duplicate documents” meant only “to bolster [the DOJs] page count.” (In other words, among the measly number of documents delivered, many contain no information on them.)

At the same time, Holder & Co. have turned over 92% more materials (about 80,000 documents) to the DOJ’s in-house Inspector General. And I’m not the only one who views this through a skeptical lense, especially since the IG falls under the auspices of the DOJ. In fact, it’s easy to assume that Holder’s being more open with the DOJ’s IG because he fears them less than he fears Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and others on the Oversight Committee.

Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) certainly believes this is so. Thus during his exchange with Holder last week he said: “I think you’re hiding behind something here.  There [are] things you don’t want us to see.” Added Burton: “You ought to give us the documents.”

Stop for a moment and think about this: What would happen to the average American if they only provided a court or a federally-backed investigative committee with 8% of what that court or investigative body requested? Moreover, what if a portion of the 8% of documents they turned over were blacked-out pages “containing no information”?

Why then should Holder receive special treatment? (It’d be nice if the law were applied equally, to the ruling class as it is to the country class.)

The good news is that Issa is on record saying that if Holder hasn’t reversed course and complied with the document subpoenas by February 9th, the “committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold [Holder] in contempt of Congress.” Therefore, between now and the 9th Holder needs to hand over the documents  and we need to remind Issa that we expect him to follow through with the contempt charges if Holder simply thumbs his nose at the Oversight Committee again.

During the House Oversight Committee hearings yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder denounced what he called a “political gotcha game.” And he was not without his defenders, Democrats all, who also tried to spin the hearing into nothing more than an election year sideshow orchestrated by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA). Yet ironically, even as Holder and his defenders tried to make Issa and his Republican colleagues look like naïve political opportunists, the rhetoric of the Democrats was little more than a politically charged lesson in sycophancy 101.

For example, when Congressman Gerald Connolly’s (D-VA) time began, he addressed the room, and Holder, thus: “Thank you for being here and showing such dignity and honor in the face of some who are suggesting that you are other [than dignified and honorable].” And Congressman Mike Quigley (D-IL)  opened his time by referring to yesterday’s hearing as a “bonfire of the vanities.” He said this was so because “after nearly six hearings, [by those who] are looking for the perfect case to embarrass the AG and the President,” all that’s been learned is that “this is not it.” These two examples were indicative of the praise Democrats heaped upon Holder, and they clearly demonstrated that the facts don’t matter. Rather, they put party and power above the truth.

Yet as stomach turning as this was, perhaps even worse was the Democrats’ unabashed, open pursuit of more gun control during yesterday’s hearings. Almost to a man, once they finished praising Holder they took turns trying to alleviate the pressure he’s under by suggesting Fast and Furious couldn’t have happened if we had more stringent gun control laws. (In making this point, they conveniently overlooked the number of gun control laws that violated with impunity during Operation Fast and Furious.)

So as the saga unfolded yesterday, once Connolly had praised the “dignity and honor” of Holder, he and the AG basically had a conversation in front of the world about the supposed need for a new federal firearms trafficking law.

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Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) opened this morning’s hearings by providing a timeline for Fast and Furious: a timeline that briefly described the role of every law enforcement agency involved. He spoke about the debt we owe Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and agent Terry’s family. And he announced that ATF whistleblower John Dodson was present in the room for the hearings today. (Dodson is the Phoenix agent who risked his career and his life to inform Congress about details of Fast and Furious as they were visible to him on the street.)

Then Issa dug in deeper:

On Oct 11, 2011, after months and months and months of this committee trying to get further documents, we issued subpoenas for documents and were told they’re hard to get. Yet, ten times as many documents have been provided to the Inspector General. Mr. Attorney General, when is the primary investigative committee of congress going to be allowed the same access that the IG has? That the twelve thousand members of the IG have? We ask very little of government by contrast, …but we believe we deserve those answers in at least as timely a fashion as your own IG gets.

We’re going to ask you many things today, hopefully you came prepared to know [the answers to questions] on Fast and Furious. Questions like: What can you do to bring this to a close? What can you do to help the American people know this is no longer going on and will not happen again in the future?

Issa then went on to talk in detail of how frustrating it’s been to try to get information to date. In doing this he referenced former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, the attorney who covered up the connection between Fast and Furious and Brian Terry’s death. And he suggested that Burke “clearly didn’t do his job in a way that anyone can be proud of.” Issa then pointed to more stonewalling on the part of the DOJ, and specifically drew attention to Patrick J. Cunningham, who, when subpoenaed, invoked the 5th to keep from telling what he knew about Fast and Furious.

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I just received an email from Congressman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office, and as I alluded to in my last post on Big Government, zero hour is fast approaching for Attorney General Eric Holder. He is to appear before the  House Oversight Committee for questions over Fast and Furious this Thursday at 9 am, and the closer we get to that time, the greater the pressure that seems to be mounting on Holder.

At the head of the crowd applying pressure to Holder is Issa himself, who has simply grown sick and tired of waiting on Holder to comply with the numerous subpoenas he’s received for documents related to Fast and Furious. As a result, Issa has moved from a “wait and see” approach to one of demanding Holder comply or else. To that end Issa sent Holder a letter on January 31 warning him that he has until Feb. 9 to turn over all documents or face “contempt” charges.

Wrote Issa to Holder:

[Your] actions lead us to conclude that the department is actively engaged in a cover-up. If the department continues to obstruct the congressional inquiry by not providing documents and information, this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress.

Issa has plenty of reasons to suspect a cover-up, and he’s not alone in doing so.  After all, the most recent DOJ document dump (on Friday, January 27), proved that despite months upon months of denials, the DOJ did have knowledge of gun-running all along. Not only that, but the DOJ’s own Lanny Breuer actually suggested gun-running at a tactic.  Who knows how many more revelations await us if Holder will only hand over the rest of the documents Issa has subpoenaed?

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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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As Washington, D.C.’s Democrat-dominated government attempts to evict Occupy protestors from their McPherson Square encampment, only a few blocks from the White House, the protestors have found an unlikely ally: the U.S. Park Police (USPP).

The federal-municipal confrontation has sparked speculation that President Barack Obama is protecting the Occupy protestors from city administrators.

The Occupy activists, however, seem to believe otherwise.

Big Government headed into the heart of the snow-bound encampment for an exclusive on-site interview with an Occupy DC demonstrator who does not believe the USPP is acting on orders from the Obama administration.

The Occupy DC Encampment under Washington, D.C.'s first snowfall

The activists are familiar with the details of the political fight that began when the D.C. Mayor and the District Council wanted the Occupy sites finally shut down for health reasons, but USPP refused to do so in the name of the First Amendment.

The theory that the White House was pressuring USPP not to enforce District of Columbia statutes emerged Tuesday, January 24, during a Congressional hearing, when National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis fielded questions from Republican lawmakers.

U.S. Representatives were mystified as to why the USPP has not responded to District requests to finally shut down the encampment, and why the overnight sleeping ban in federal parks had not been enforced.

“Each of our First Amendment demonstrations (is) a little bit unique. And this one is, let’s say, unprecedented. The core of their First Amendment activity is that they occupy the site,” Jarvis told lawmakers. “We felt that going in right away and enforcing the regulations against camping could potentially incite a reaction on their part that would result in possible injury or property damage.”

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Just received an email from Congressman Darrell Issa’s office, which indicates that the House Oversight Committee “demands“ that Assistant United States Attorney Michael Morrissey “speak with Committee investigators about his role in and knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious.”

As stated in the email:

[Morrissey’s] supervisor, Patrick Cunningham, has stated he will exercise his Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer any questions pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious – such an assertion is extremely rare and suggests possible criminal culpability on the part of a high ranking Justice Department official.  Morrissey, who reported directly to Cunningham’s and was intimately involved with Operation Fast and Furious.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Issa wrote:

Since August, the Department has identified Patrick Cunningham as the best person in the U.S. Attorney’s Office to provide information about Fast and Furious to the Committee. The Department has refused to make Michael Morrissey and Emory Hurley, both Assistant United States Attorneys supervised by Mr. Cunningham, available to speak with the Committee, citing a policy of not making “line attorneys” available for congressional scrutiny.  Mr. Morrissey, however, was Mr. Hurley’s direct supervisor, and an integral part of Fast and Furious.  Importantly, both Morrissey and Hurley are unique in their possession of key factual knowledge about Fast and Furious not readily available from any other source.

For anyone not familiar with Hurley, he was a member of the three-person shuffle Holder tried to pull to get the dogs off the scent back in August 2011. (That’s when Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson was re-assigned, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke retired, and Emory Hurley was moved from “the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix” to the civil division.

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Yesterday, I had a post on Big Government which focused on a subpoena Rep. Darrell Issa had sent to Patrick J. Cunningham, Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona. In both the subpoena and a letter accompanying it, Issa made two complaints: 1. That Cunningham had theretofore refused to voluntarily testify before the House Oversight Committee, and 2. That members of the DOJ had informed Issa that some of their inaccuracies in testimony were due to false information they’d been provided by Cunningham.

The subpoena demanded Cunningham testify before the committee on January 24, 2012. And yesterday, Cunningham’s attorney, Tobin J. Romero, made it known that although his client will show up as demanded, he will not be providing any information to Issa and the rest of the committee.

Here’s an excerpt from Romero’s letter:

My client, Patrick Cunningham, has spent his entire 32-year career in government service, including as a JAG officer in the United States Army, as a state court prosecutor, and as a federal prosecutor. He also served on the State Bar of Arizona’s Committee on Rules of Professional Conduct (Ethics Committee) from 1995 to 2002. When he returned to the United States Attorney’s Office in 2010, he did so to advance the law enforcement interests of the United States. Regrettably, he now finds himself caught in the middle of a dispute between the Legislative Branch and the Executive Branch, with both, according to the allegations in your letter, finding it convenient to make accusations that are inconsistent with the documentary evidence and the public record.

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I just received an email from Congressman Darrel Issa’s office, containing a copy of a letter that was just sent Patrick J. Cunningham, Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona. The letter announces that Cunningham has just been subpoenaed for “repeated refusals to testify voluntarily” before the House Oversight Committee, concerning accusations that he relayed inaccurate and misleading information to the Justice Department in preparation for its initial response to Congress.

Wrote Issa to Cunningham:

During the course of our investigation, the Committee has learned of the outsized role played by the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s Office – and you specifically – in approving the unacceptable tactics used in Fast and Furious. Senior Justice Department officials have recently told the Committee that you relayed inaccurate and misleading information to the Department in preparation for its initial response to Congress.

These officials told us that even after Congress began investigating Fast and Furious, you continued to insist that no unacceptable tactics were used.  In fact, documents obtained confidentially just last week appear to confirm that you remained steadfast in your belief that no unacceptable tactics were used, even after the Department’s initial response to the congressional inquiry.  Given that the Attorney General has labeled these tactics as unacceptable and Fast and Furious as “fundamentally flawed,” this position is startling.

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The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a nightmarish piece of legislation moving the House Judiciary Committee currently which Hollywood is pushing hard for. The Tinsel Town lobbyists are in full press on Capitol Hill, doing all they can to get the legislation out of committee and up for a vote. The problem is, SOPA in no uncertain terms is a direct assault on a free internet.

One of the reasons many of us get our news and entertainment from the Net these days is because we find the legacy media lacking. We have turned our backs on old media because it has failed to serve us. We no longer have to tolerate obvious and unceasing news bias, or watch only boxed and packaged melodrama. We are now free to pursue news and entertainment where we like with the click of a mouse or a swipe of the Ipad.

Hollywood, and most of legacy media are unhappy about this and would prefer that we continue to listen to their propaganda and watch their terrible movies. I mean, how many sequels can these guys crank out? SOPA seeks to put we the media consumers back in line.

SOPA is being sold as a way to stop the piracy of movies and music from overseas sites, and this is a problem, but the bill goes much further than just addressing this issue.

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I just received an email update from Congressman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office, stating that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 2. The questions will center on the Department of Justice’s knowledge of, and response to, the gunwalking tactics that were used in Operation Fast and Furious. The A.G. will also be asked to address the DOJ’s   “steadfast refusal to disclose information following the February 4, 2011 letter to Senator Grassley, which the [DOJ] has withdrawn because it contained false information denying allegations made by whistleblowers about Operation Fast and Furious.”

Wrote Issa:

The Department of Justice’s conduct in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious has been nothing short of shameful. From its initial denials that nothing improper occurred, to efforts to silence whistleblowers who wanted to tell Congress what really happened, to its continuing refusal to discuss or share documents related to this cover-up, the Justice Department has fought tooth and nail to hide the full truth about what occurred and what senior officials knew.  Attorney General Holder must explain or reverse course on decisions that appear to put the careers of political appointees ahead of the need for accountability and the Department’s integrity.

The last portion of the letter provided me via Issa’s email highlights new (and startling) information on the DOJ’s refusal to cooperate with investigators to date.

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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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In an interview published over the weekend by the New York Times, Attorney General Eric Holder reminded us he will go to any length to conceal his culpability in Fast and Furious. His latest ploy is to declare as “racist” everyone who’s hounding him about the illegal guns sales, the gun smuggling, and the death, cover-ups, and other examples of lawlessness connected with the operation.

In the Times piece, Holder intimated that President Obama is disliked because of his race, and that people are piling on the bandwagon against Holder as a means to get Obama. Holder’s exact words: “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him…both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

And who are the people going after Holder and Obama because of their race? Those rascally “conservative commentators and bloggers” of course. They are those who are part of what Holder describes as a “more extreme segment” of news reporting. (I suppose it’s extreme because it’s not news that’s run through a White House sensor or an MSNBC producer before being disseminated to the public.)

Besides informing us that we’re racists for making a big deal out of hundreds of deaths among Mexican citizens, thousands of weapons sold illegally (and over 1,000 still on the street), as well as the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, Holder also took a little time out to pat himself on the back during the Times interview. Said Holder: “I think that what I’m doing is right” and “I think the stands I have taken are totally consistent with a person who is looking at things realistically, factually.”

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On December 8th, the very day Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Oversight Committee to answer questions about Fast and Furious, I had a post on Big Government which highlighted Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner’s (R-WI) mention of impeachment. You’ll recall Sensenbrenner essentially told Holder he was sick and tired of the way the DOJ was dragging its feet in answering questions, and he was particularly weary of Holder’s habit of answering inquires with, “gees, somebody else did it.” And even if you haven’t followed Fast and Furious closely up till now, if you read the exchanges that took place between Sensenbrenner and Holder on Dec. 8th, it’s easy to see why the Congressman was pushed to his wits end.

But just in case you need a primer, as you read the transcript below, please keep two things in mind. First, on May 3rd, Holder gave testimony to Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) in which he claimed he had only learned of Fast and Furious in the past “few weeks.” This claim by Holder is demonstrably false—has been proven false—and Holder has since changed his answer. And secondly, on Feb. 4th, the DOJ submitted a letter to Congress in which they claimed no gun-walking had taken place in relation to Fast and Furious (in other words, they claimed that none of the 2,500 weapons sold to straw purchasers had been smuggled, or been allowed to “walk,” into Mexico). That letter, like Holder’s prior testimony, was recanted.

That’s the backdrop for the following exchange on December 8:

Sensenbrenner: There have been inconsistent submissions to Congress. You yourself testified that you’d only heard about [Fast and Furious] a few weeks earlier, and then in November you said it probably was a few months. [And] as late as October 7th, in response to allegations that you lied on May 3rd, you wrote to Congress that your statements on Fast and Furious have been “truthful and consistent.” [Yet] one of your underlings, on Feb. 4th, Assistant A.G. Ronald Weich, responded to Senator Grassley denying that the ATF had walked guns and that letter ended up being withdrawn.

Clearly, Sensenbrenner was incensed as he thought of the lies surrounding Fast and Furious. So much so, in fact, that as he spoke he took pains to try to be measured in his speech:

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Just when you thought Attorney General Eric Holder couldn’t get more sordid and arrogant, he has.  His testimony last week before the House Judiciary Committee took the scandal plagued Justice Department into territory not traveled since John Mitchell worked overtime to conceal administration wrongdoing nearly four decades ago.  Even Chairman Darrell Issa recognizes the comparison is appropriate.

On Tuesday, Americans will have a rare chance to voice their disdain of the corruption and lies flowing from this Justice Department.  They will have a chance to speak out against the radical and racialist law enforcement priorities of this Justice Department.  Eric Holder comes to Austin, Texas to make a major announcement about voting laws, probably to acquiesce to some loud demand of the NAACP to block state efforts to ensure voter integrity. But a counter-rally organized by Catherine Engelbrecht and True the Vote will greet Eric Holder’s appearance in Austin, Texas at the LBJ Library at 4 p.m.  America is invited, and here is a flier with details.

You have a First Amendment right to petition your government for redress of grievances.  Use it.  So rarely has so much been worth grieving.

As bad as Watergate was, it didn’t involve hundreds of murders, dead American law enforcement agents, and the illegal distribution of thousands of firearms.  How long has it been since an Attorney General appeared before Congress and words such as “contempt” and “impeachment” were used by members as they were last week?

The Fast and Furious scandal isn’t the only mess overseen by Eric Holder.  His entire tenure has been characterized by racialist radicalism, disguised to some critics as mere incompetence.  But it is far worse than incompetence, and to think otherwise is a mistake. From the dismissal of the voter intimidation case against racist anti-Semitic New Black Panther thugs, to the Mirandizing of battlefield captures in Afghanistan, Holder has presided over a systemic radicalization of the most powerful federal agency.  This isn’t incompetence.  It is radicalism.

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As Attorney General Eric Holder testified before Congress yesterday, two things were reinforced. One: Holder has a problem telling the truth. Two: Congressmen Darrell Issa (R-CA), Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), and Ted Poe (R-TX), have a problem with people who have a problem telling the truth. And they have a point. As a matter of fact, as I watched the hearings unfold I continually thought to myself: “If Bill Clinton had obstructed justice to this degree, even Senator Trent Lott would have manned up and removed him from office.”

Said Poe:

To believe you weren’t aware of Fast and Furious requires, to coin a phrase, a willing suspension of disbelief. It is hard for me to believe you were unaware of this operation. [So] my question is very simple, who is the person in the U.S. government that made the decision in Operation Fast and Furious to send guns to Mexico?

Although such a straightforward question seems simple enough, Holder’s answer was “we don’t know yet.”

How can the A.G. not know who started an operation that resulted in the sale of 2,500 weapons to straw purchasers—some of which were paid for with U.S. taxpayer money, the passing of those weapons to criminals, the smuggling of those weapons across the border, the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with at least two of those weapons, and the death of hundreds of Mexican citizens? (I bet Holder could tell you who authorized the raid on the Gibson Guitar factory with no problem.)

Anyway, Issa was relentless all day long. And during the late afternoon, he pressed Holder to release all the documents which had subpoenaed but not released. Holder gave a sloppy answer to this question: a combination of “yes” and “we’ll see.” In response to such non-clarity, Issa compared Holder to John Mitchell, Nixon’s Watergate A.G.

Holder replied by asking, “Have you no shame?” And Issa countered with, “Have YOU no shame?”

This is a teachable moment folks: Holder has grown so accustomed to the success of his own hypocrisy that he took offense to being called out on the carpet. He took offense to being compared to Mitchell when the truth is, Mitchell’s family should be offended that one of their own was compared to Holder.

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When it came time for Attorney General Eric Holder to make his opening comments, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) requested that the A.G. be sworn under oath. Issa had already noted that Congress had been lied to and that in previous hearings, Holder & Co. displayed the “unheard of” habit of redacting their letters and testimony to the Congress. Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) said that it wasn’t necessary for Holder to be sworn under oath because it was understood that he was already under oath by virtue of the purpose for which he was appearing. Issa then asked Smith if he was sure that Holder was bound as being under oath, and Smith verified that he was.

So it was settled, and Issa had made his point – Holder should choose his words carefully.

Cameras then turned to Holder who said he was happy to describe the “decisive action” his department has taken “to ensure the flawed tactics actions used in operations Fast and Furious and in earlier operations under prior administration are never repeated.” (Notice the jab at Bush.) He then took time to brag on how the 117,000 employees of the DOJ throughout world have basically saved American from apocalypse. (He did this by describing what he called the DOJ’s historic progress in protecting the American people “from global terrorism and violent crime, financial fraud, human trafficking, and more.”)

He finally turned his attention to the Southwest border, i.e., the one the DOJ/ATF allowed 2,500 weapons to walk across. Here, DOJ’s “battle against gun violence” took center stage:

In recent years, the department has devoted specific resources to this fight and specifically, to addressing the unacceptable rate of illegal firearms trafficking from the United States to Mexico. Unfortunately, in the pursuit of that laudable goal, unacceptable tactics were adopted as part of Operation Fast and Furious. As I have repeatedly stated, allowing guns to walk, whether in this administration or the prior one, is wholly unacceptable. The use of this misguided tactic is inexcusable. It must never happen again. Soon after learning about the allegations raised by agents involved in Fast and Furious I took action designed to ensure accountability. In February I asked the department’s acting Inspector General to investigate the matter. And in early March I ordered that a directive be sent to law enforcement agents and prosecutors prohibiting such tactics.

I have a question: How did Holder address the “allegations” associated with gun walking in Fast and Furious in February if he didn’t know about Fast and Furious until mid-April? Remember, when he first gave testimony to Congress on May 3, he told Issa he had only known about Fast and Furious for a few weeks:

On May 3rd Issa asked: “When did you first know about the program…called ‘Fast and Furious?”

Holder responded: “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks”

This exchange notwithstanding, Holder is now telling Congress about the actions he took in light of allegations about Fast and Furious in February and March. In fact, he specifically said he issued a directive in March against “such tactics” (i.e., gun walking) after the allegations of such tactics were made by ATF agents.

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Operation Fast and Furious has marred Eric Holder’s stint as Attorney General. Between the selling of upwards of 2,500 weapons to straw purchasers (who were knowingly to pass the guns to criminals), the failure to trace those guns, the gun-walking, the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with at least two of those guns, and the myriad cover-ups associated with the whole operation, Holder’s name is mud (or worse) among law abiding citizens. And the frequently made defense that this operation was meant to draw members of the Mexican cartel out into the light for capture is as tired as it is false.

Note to Holder: No one believes you were after cartel members. Everyone believes you were trying to cause enough crime on the border to justify the passage of more gun control.

But an interesting thing happened on the way to Holder’s prosecution—the DOJ added “cash-walking” to gun-walking and now, someone has to explain how the D.E.A. laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for the Mexican cartel.

That’s right, hundreds of millions of dollars.

In a Dec. 5th letter to Holder, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) juxtaposed this scenario with the one used to justify Fast and Furious:

Apparently, this same goal of dismantling Mexican drug cartels motivated the Drug Enforcement Administration in aiding and abetting [the] same cartels in laundering millions of dollars in cash. In fact, the New York Times reports that agents needed to seek Department approval to launder amounts great than $10 million in any single operation. Officials quoted in the story said this $10 million cap was more of a guideline than a rule, noting it has apparently been waived on many occasions to “attract the interest of high value targets.”

This was part of Issa’s announcement that he’s broadening his investigation into Fast and Furious so as to include an investigation into cash-walker.

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To date Barack Obama, the dispenser of hope and change and the presiding officer over the least transparent presidency in history, has claimed he only learned about Fast and Furious earlier this year. However, with each new document dump Obama’s timeframe seems to be as inaccurate (or as purposely misleading) as Attorney General Eric Holder’s.

For example, just months after he took office it was evident he was focused on a Fast and Furious-like operation, ostensibly aimed at cutting down on gun trafficking on the southern border.  Thus, on March 24, 2009, Deputy Attorney General David Ogden made the following announcement:

The President has directed us to take action to fight [Mexican] cartels…and Attorney General Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration’s comprehensive plan.

And the following month, April 2009, he stood beside Mexican President Felipe Calderón and uttered words we now recognize as hypocritical and duplicitous at best:

I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment right in our Constitution — the rights of sportsmen and hunters and homeowners that want to keep their families safe — to lawfully bear arms, while dealing with assault weapons that, as we know here in Mexico, are used to fuel violence.

Fast forward one year, and White House logs show that then-Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler met personally with Obama four times between May 7 and May 19, 2010.

Just in case Grindler’s name doesn’t set off sirens in your mind, he had received an in depth briefing on Fast and Furious on March 12, 2010. (This briefing came via an ATF slideshow which I covered in a post for Big Government earlier this year.) During this same briefing, Grindler was provided with details concerning the number of times that a straw purchaser named Uriel Patino had purchased guns during Fast and Furious. (Patino’s total weapon acquisition numbered approx. 720 guns.)

By the way, Grindler is no longer a Deputy Attorney General. Rather, he is Holder’s Chief of Staff.

So what do you figure he and Obama talked about when they met four times in May 2010?

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