I’ve not been keeping up with the situation in Killeen, but evidently City Council members voted to give the City Manager a $750,000 buyout, then refused to justify their actions to the taxpayers. The result? All five remaining City Council members were successfully recalled. Note to politicians across the state: Texas is not California. Try to get away with this sort of self-dealing here and we will boot your ass out of office. (Hat tip: Blue Dot Blues.)
Speaking of cartel violence, the Mexican government evidently has the La Familia Michoacana drug gang on the ropes. La Familia was previously allied with the Gulf Cartel, but more recently worked with the Zeta cartel. I’d previously mentioned La Familia (and their activity in Austin) here.
Democrats on the “SuperCommittee” propose…wait for it…wait for it…spending more money! Remember, any time a congressional Democrat says they want to cut spending, they’re lying. (If a Republican says they want to cut spending, there’s at least a possibility that they’re telling the truth.)
David Brooks praises Mitt Romney as “smart” and “sophisticated.” Yeah, like conservatives needed another reason to vote against Romney…
By contrast, George Will says that in Romney “Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis.” (What’s the difference between David Brooks and George Will? One is a well-dressed, articulate, sophisticated, respected conservative columnist, and the other is David Brooks.)
I already mentioned this yesterday, but here’s the video of Sen. John Cornyn laying the smackdown on Eric Holder as to the difference between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious.
I’ll try to do a Greek/Euro debt update just as soon as I figure out just what the hell Europe is actually doing…
Been a while since I put one of these up, and since I start a new job today, I thought it high time to catch people at least semi-up-to-date on Fast and Furious developments:
The complete text of Eric Holder’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee. Count the red herrings, and notice, as always, the push for more gun control. Because all the old laws were so effective at keeping Holder and the ATF from breaking them in the first place.
The family of murdered U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry were not impressed with Holder’s testimony: “I thought he was very evasive. I thought that this was his second time around, and I still didn’t get anything out of it — at all. Seems like all the questions that he was asked, he was evading or throwing someone else underneath the bus.” Also: “We’ve heard five different stories, and every time we hear (a new) one, (it) is different. We never got a straight answer.”
Neither was ranking Senator Charles Grassley: “We have his criminal assistant attorney general knowing about it way last year. How could it be that the attorney general didn’t know about it?”
“Former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, who resigned in August, admitted late Tuesday that he leaked a document aimed at smearing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Dodson, an Operation Fast and Furious whistle-blower.”
“So, Mr. ‘You just Took a One Week Break,'” you ask, “where do I go to get up to speed on Fast and Furious, ALA Operation Gunwalker?”
I’m glad you asked.
Perhaps the best place to start is Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea’s six part series, which provides a nice overview, as well as a timeline with links to the related posts:
Now back to our regularly scheduled update, which has been on hold while I did things like Texas Senate Race updates, job interviews, etc. So some of this will be old news to many of you:
Ruben Navarrette on CNN.com: “This scandal is about dead Mexicans….Where’s the outrage?” Also this: “Bully for Issa. We need to get to the bottom of this scandal, and if the administration isn’t cooperating, there is all the more reason to keep digging. That also goes for Attkisson and CBS News, who have done first-rate work.” Question unanswered: Why did it take CNN so long to realize Fast and Furious was a real story?”
How does the FBI fit in? Plus the mysterious Third Gun.
How the ATF punished a whistleblower. And ignored death threats to his life. And then his house burned down in an arson attack. And then the ATF tried to frame him for that.
And I though I was the only one in the rightwing blogsphere who made Waiting for Godot references.
Today, I’m calling for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate Justice Department corruption in the weapons-trafficking scheme, “Fast and Furious.” The facts require a serious investigation. We cannot trust the Attorney General to “investigate” himself. The grave nature of these allegations—and the appearance of multiple obfuscations and evasions—demand an investigation free of political second guessing from the Obama White House.
The more we learn about Fast and Furious, the more disturbing the revelations are. The public has a right to know who knew what and when. Americans deserve an open, transparent investigation free of political spin. It is clear that this case has now reached a critical point where an impartial investigator is required.
Attorney General Eric Holder has been far from forthcoming in this investigation. Questions about what Holder and his staff knew about the operation, and their repeatedly changing stories, warrant an outside review.
Everyone has the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty, but the continual stonewalling in this case has undermined the public trust. That trust can only be ensured by appointing a Special Counsel to review the case.
As part of the Fast and Furious operation, more than 2,000 weapons were provided to Mexican drug cartels as part of a failed attempt to identify weapons smuggling networks. Many of those weapons have turned up at Mexican crime scenes. Two weapons were found at the scene of the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
And then a link to an email for to join the call for the investigation (and, no doubt, provide a handy list of potential Cruz supporters).
There may be a few national gun bloggers reading this who haven’t heard of Cruz, but that will no doubt change when the issue of National Review with him on the cover hits the stands. This is another example of Cruz getting a jump on his main rival, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, in addressing vital issues for movement conservatives.
The MSM seems to have noticed that the Mexican cartels employee heavily armed paramilitary units, which anyone following the story on blogs would have known for, oh, at least a year.
Investors Business Daily says that “Either Holder is the most aloof attorney general in American history or the most incompetent — or worse.”
Large swathes of the press may love Obama, but David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun says that Fast and Furious shows that Obama doesn’t return the favor, at least when reporters actually do their jobs. “Team Obama is in full campaign mode, and because of their fundamental contempt for the press, that means they reward those who come on bended knee and they punish those who dare to question them. The bended knee boys include Brain Williams, the bowing anchorman. Have you noticed how many “exclusive” interviews Obama has given NBC recently? Oh yeah, NBC is kowtowing to Obama.” Zing!
Indirectly related: Jeremy Schwartz at the Statesman has been doing some interesting reporting on the La Familia cartel, which has been using Austin as a base of operations.
I’ve been following the Fast and Furious scandal for a while, but haven’t been blogging about it much since so many other fine bloggers were on the case. I didn’t want to just post a chunk of text only to add “what Dwight said” or “what Sebastian said”.
However, since I was able to make my own original contribution, and since, despite a few breakthroughs here and there, the MSM still isn’t covering the story, I thought I would add my voice to the chorus and start doing regular Fast and Furious Updates.
If you check Snowflakes in Hell or Sipsey Street Irregulars (who have been one of the leading blogs on Fast and Furious, and who I just added to the blogroll) daily, you’ll probably see a fair amount of things you’re already familiar with, but I’ll also try to have some original bits from time to time.
So, without further adieu, here’s today’s Fast and Furious Update:
Add Frederick Hill, spokesman for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee headed by Rep. Darrell Issa that is investigating Fast and Furious, to the list of people deeply skeptical of Holder’s latest denial:
If Attorney General Holder had said these things five months ago when Congress asked him about Operation Fast and Furious, it might have been more believable. At this point, however, it’s hard to take at face value a defense that is factually questionable, entirely self-serving, and a still incomplete account of what senior Justice Department officials knew about gun walking.
Over at Pajamas Media, Bob Owens notes the curious case of the dog that didn’t bark, i.e., how the Brady Bunch and gun-grabbing Democrats have recently fallen strangely silent on Fast and Furious.
Mark Steyn, filling in for Hugh Hewitt, cuts to the heart of the matter: “There were hundreds of dead Mexicans from a gun running program run by the United States.”
If you hadn’t heard, sales to Mexican cartels weren’t just through dealers; sometimes the ATF ordered one of its own agents “to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.”
CBS lets Sharyl Attkisson decloak long enough to print Eric Holder’s “I didn’t lie, I swear, I was just incompetent” defense for the Fast and Furious scandal:
Holder says that his testimony to Congress, stating he first heard of Fast and Furious earlier this year, “was truthful and accurate… I have no recollection of knowing about Fast and Furious prior to the public controversy about it.”
In other words: I’m so out-of-the-loop that I didn’t know my underlings were involved in a massive, illegal, and deadly plot to break the law resulting in over 200 deaths. Way to be on top of things, Mr. AG!
Holder maintains he didn’t know about the controversial gunwalking tactics used in the case.
The Sgt. Schultz defense.
The Attorney General says that while he was sent received memos on Fast and Furious, they are “actually provided to and reviewed by members of my staff and the staff of the Office of the Deputy Attorney General.”
The Richard Nixon “I was out of the loop” defense. Didn’t work so well for him either.
As CBS News has reported, the Deputy Attorney General during Fast and Furious, Gary Grindler is now Holder’s Chief of Staff. Documents provided to Congress indicate Grindler received a detailed briefing on Fast and Furious in March of 2010 and made handwritten notes on briefing materials.
However, in the letter, Holder says Grindler “was not told of the unacceptable tactics employed in the operation in his regular monthly meetings with ATF…”
“I now understand some senior officials within the Department were aware at the time there was an operation called Fast and Furious although they were not advised of the unacceptable operational tactics being used in it,” says Holder’s letter.
There’s a word for this sort of denial: it’s called bullshit. Bureaucracies are good at one thing: Following the rules. Even as stupid as some of the cowboys in ATF are, there’s no way some field-level supervisor got the bright idea: “Hey, let’s directly violate the federal laws we’re supposed to enforce! Plus I won’t tell anyone higher up! What’s the worst that could happen?” Doesn’t pass the smell test. You don’t isolate top officials from this sort of info, you make sure they’re in the loop to cover your own ass. Fast and Furious is so far off the reservation that the order for it had to come from way up high. Not necessarily Holder (though that’s a distinct possibility), but someone far enough up the food chain to make such an outrageous order stick. Like Obama.
Plus this:
In his letter, Holder also criticized the House Committee investigating Fast and Furious, saying he cannot sit idly by “as law enforcement and government employees who devote their lives to protecting our citizens be considered ‘accessories to murder’.”
Well then, maybe you should have, oh, I don’t know, provided enough oversight to make sure they weren’t accessories to murder. Shouldn’t be that hard.
There are two possibilities:
A. If Holder knew about Fast and Furious, he’s an accessory to murder, and shouldn’t be Attorney General.
B. If Holder didn’t know about Fast and Furious, then he’s manifestly incompetent, and shouldn’t be Attorney General.
I was previously unaware of the Texanomics blog, but the blogger there (curiously anonymous; there’s nothing in the About Me page) is giving WILLisms a run for his money in charting the superiority of Texas over the other 49 states (or, if you’re Barack Obama, the other 56 states, including Wyomorado).
Well, here’s some cheerful news: “Moldovan authorities believe that 2.2 pounds of weapon-usable uranium is held by traffickers who have in the past sought to sell the material to North African buyer.” (Hat tip: Bruce Sterling’s Twitter feed.)
