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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Fast and Furious is a mess. It’s bigger than we were first told, it involved a greater variety of weapons than we were led to believe, and it’s deadlier than the Obama administration let on. (In addition to U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry’s death, there have been hundreds of deaths in Mexico with Fast and Furious weapons, many of which continue to show up at crime scenes in both Mexico and the U.S.)

Moreover, as details keep leaking out, it looks more and more like it’s a mess that originated in or near the White House.  And the recent discovery of secretly recorded conversations, which CBS News alleges may show some evidence is still being suppressed concerning the death of U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry, make it easy to remember what similar recordings did to the Nixon presidency in 1974.

Compounding these issues is the fact that there are still outstanding questions regarding the rocket launcher, grenade launcher, assault rifles, and C4 explosives found near the Mexico/Texas border.

There are still questions about the gun smuggling operation out of El Paso, where it is alleged that Obama administration officials have been selling military grade weapons to drug cartel members in Mexico. (Perhaps this explains the rocket launcher, grenade launcher, assault rifles, and C4?)

Supported by at least one former DEA official and one “CIA contract pilot,” the allegations are that weapons have been regularly transported from the Dallas/Fort Worth area to El Paso, Texas and/or Columbus, New Mexico. From either of those locations they then crossed into Mexico.

But as of yet, there is no word on a serious investigation into these matters.

And not unlike Fast and Furious, the El Paso situation has only gotten messier with time. On Monday the El Paso Times ran a story alleging that just as officials have looked the other way while guns were smuggled across the border from the U.S. into Mexico, so too they are looking the other way while drugs are being smuggled across from Mexico into the U.S.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Europe’s tanking markets, the opposition to Obama’s call for a payroll tax cut, and is the Solyndra scandal is Obama’s Watergate?

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Stocks Hit Hard by Euro Zone Fears
Conservatives join liberals in opposing Obama’s payroll tax cut extension
Democrats Fret Aloud Over Obama’s Chances
A Close Look At The Motives Behind The Solyndra Raid
House Energy and Commerce Committee: Solyndra and The DOE Loan Guarantee Program
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Much has been made of the Jimmy Carter-like malaise that Barack Obama has placed this country in. With good reason, comparisons are being made of the fact that they’re both weak and that neither demonstrates a working knowledge of the military or how foreign policy and energy solutions should be pursued. (Concerning the latter, Carter gave us Gasohol and Obama has given us the Chevy Volt.)

Thus, we’ve been inundated with comparisons to the 1980 presidential elections and predictions of how the right GOP candidate, say Gov. Palin or Gov. Perry, will ring up Obama in November 2012 the way Ronald Reagan rung up Carter some 31 years ago.

But when I recently visited with guest hosts Cameron Gray and John Popp on the NRA’s “Cam & Company,” and we discussed the mobs that betray a seething rage just below the surface in many parts of America, it dawned on me that the comparison to 1980 may not be apropos. Instead, what may be needed is to turn back the clock a bit further to when the counter-culture was in full swing and another Democrat who knew nothing about the presidency was making a fool of himself.

The year was 1968, and the president was Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ).

A Democrat’s Democrat, LBJ spent us into oblivion (and continues to long after his death) via the “War on Poverty.” He watched as the counter-culture went from somewhat peaceful to somewhat violent to completely out of control. And he didn’t take the Vietnam War seriously because he was so intent on passing his domestic agenda (“The Great Society”) and he didn’t want anything to distract from it.

Just think about it folks: Obama has spent us into oblivion (he added more money to the national debt in his first 19 months “than all presidents from Washington to Reagan combined”).  He has not only watched the mobs break loose in certain cities, but has instigated them via his ongoing habit of pitting one group or class of people against another. And while our soldiers are being shot and killed overseas, Obama is angling for a way to pass a second stimulus bill and to raise more taxes in his ongoing bid to “spread the wealth around.”

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In early October 2006, as it was becoming more obvious by the day that Republicans were going to lose big in November, I was approached by a nervous young presidential aide at a White House meeting. He reminded me that I had been around in 1974 when the GOP took a post-Watergate pasting that those who lived through will never forget.

Wondering what it was like back then, he asked, “Did it feel like this?”

“Worse,” I said, “much worse.” Back then, Republicans knew there was no way out, and the apprehension by October was probably greater than among 1994 Democrats, who managed to remain in denial almost until the votes were counted.

This time, though, Democrats know what’s coming and, like their Republican counterparts back in 1974, they don’t know what to do about it. As a result, they’re rushing around the deck of the sinking ship blaming each other, the media and, in some case, the “stupidity” of an ungrateful electorate.

With limited funds and a need to focus on incumbents they might actually be able to save, today’s fights among the Democrats are over who ought to be allowed into the lifeboats and who ought to stoically accept their fate. Democratic leaders have triaged candidates they believe are drowning anyway in an understandable effort to save those they can.

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James O’Keefe, along with Hannah Giles, broke one of the biggest investigative news stories since Watergate on the systemic corruption of radical left governmental organizations. It was, for new media, a defining moment. And while the historic implications of the O’Keefe/Giles expose are not yet fully understood, the media landscape was forever changed.

Despite this seismic shift in modern journalism, the mainstream media scornfully ignored the biggest story of the Obama administration. ACORN, Obama’s personal community organizing group, funded with taxpayer dollars, was shown to be a criminal, rapacious, and predatory organization. In clip after clip from O’Keefe and Giles, ACORN’s indecency became more obvious and outrageous, and the little remaining trust that the American people had in government/community service organizations morphed into outright contempt.

And the mainstream media yawned.

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The government has now confirmed what has always been clear:  No one tried to wiretap or bug Senator Landrieu’s office.  Nor did we try to cut or shut down her phone lines.  Reports to this effect over the past 48 hours are inaccurate and false.

As an investigative journalist, my goal is to expose corruption and lack of concern for citizens by government and other institutions, as I did last year when our investigations revealed the massive corruption and fraud perpetrated by ACORN.  For decades, investigative journalists have used a variety of tactics to try to dig out and reveal the truth.

I learned from a number of sources that many of Senator Landrieu’s constituents were having trouble getting through to her office to tell her that they didn’t want her taking millions of federal dollars in exchange for her vote on the healthcare bill.  When asked about this, Senator Landrieu’s explanation was that, “Our lines have been jammed for weeks.”  I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for “weeks” because her phones were broken.  In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu’s district office – the people’s office – to ask the staff if their phones were working. (more…)

Today is the day that I have been invited to go on MSNBC for the very first time.  At no point during the ACORN story was I put on the hot seat to defend the work of James O’Keefe.  My thesis from day one has been that the mainstream media is biased in favor of the left and MSNBC is its most obvious case study.

So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized upon a narrative that presumed O’Keefe’s guilt, falsely extrapolated that he was being charged with felony wiretapping and instantaneously coined and repeated endlessly the new buzz phase, “Watergate Jr.”

Thus it came as no surprise to me that Keith Olbermann’s super sub, David Shuster, called me early Wednesday.  ”Watergate Jr.” pushed MSNBC to send Shuster down to New Orleans to own the destruction-by-media of James O’Keefe and anyone in his proximity.  I immediately told Shuster that I had been getting emails about his absurd, over-the-top and rush-to-judgment journalism.  He told me that I had him confused with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, that he has “no horse in this race.”  He asked that I come on his show and that he would give me a fair interview.  He proceeded to send me the following emails to formalize the request.  See below <strong>(emphasis mine)</strong>:

As you see, Shuster is attempting to lure me into this story based upon the false premise of his objective neutrality on the issue. Notice he says, “As I said, I don’t have a horse in this race.” A simple Google search of David Shuster and James O’Keefe immediately finds that Shuster went into a Twitter frenzy to tar and feather James O’Keefe and propogated what are now provably false lies about the Landrieu case.

See below:

(Read the full post and watch the video of the interview at BigJournalism.com)