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.
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.”
Ted Cruz is the subject of a very favorable Brian Bolduc cover story in the October 17 issue of National Review. (I’ll link to it when it’s actually online.) It doesn’t get much better than that for a conservative candidate.
Cruz was also endorsed by Citizens United (for whom I used to work back in the day).
Blue Dot Blues says that David Dewhurst’s claims of opposing in-state tuition breaks for illegal aliens is “a really disingenuous position for Dewhurst to take,” since he neither campaigned against the issue, nor did anything about it in all the years he’s been in a position to do so.
Dewhurst’s campaign page says that he met with “grassroots leaders” in Corpus Christi, but doesn’t say who they were or what groups they were associated with. Nor can I find mentions of the meeting via news or blog searches. More details, please.
Dewhurst also had a fundraiser in Abilene. Hmmm: Corpus, Abilene. Dewhurst might be making early swings through the smaller cities of Texas, with an eye toward hitting the bigger ones toward the end of the campaign. That sounds like it could be a pretty sound strategy to me.
I think pretty much all the Republican candidates treated Obama’s “jobs proposal” and the pathetic joke it was, so I’m not going to link to individual instances.
This Saturday there’s going to be a Senate candidate forum in either Garland or Plano; the venue link is at odds with the description under it. I’m seeing multiple descriptions of the venue as “Collin County Community College, Spring Creek Campus Living Legends Conference Center, AA135, 2800 E. Spring Creek Parkway, Plano, TX,” so I would go with that. Update: I’ve confirmed with multiple sources that the Plano address is the correct one.
Here’s a write-up on last week’s Kingwood Area Republican Women candidate’s forum.
And once again, this week, Democratic frontrunner Ricardo Sanchez…did absolutely nothing. Maybe he’s practicing for the title role in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
When I did this video interview with Ted Cruz on July 30, I also did an audio interview with him at the same time using an iPhone App called Recorder Pro. The video interview was done by Cruz’s staff (who have a much better camera than I do), and the resulting video was editing done to a sort of “Best of” piece emphasizing his campaign themes. I actually think the full interview will be more interesting to conservatives, as he goes into more detail about a number of topics, including border control, the budget deficit, and federal commerce clause overreach and the 10th Amendment, including a discussion of Wickard vs. Filburn.
It’s taken a good bit longer to get it the audio up here than I wanted to, mainly because I’ve been pretty busy, but also because it was something of a pain to edit the interview and get it up here. First, I had Recorder Pro record in CAF format, which isn’t particularly widely used, so I needed one program to convert it into a .WAV file, and then another to edit the file (there was about a minute and a half of extraneous setup noise I wanted to spare you). Then, after all that, I found out the resulting audio file was too large post all at once, so I’ve split it into two chunks. The first half of the interview is below as an MP3. I’ll try to put up the second half in the next day or so, assuming I don’t get distracted by shiny objects.
Here’s the video edit of my interview with Ted Cruz (click for a larger version on YouTube):
(I think I should have sucked in my gut more.)
After the interview, Cruz said that he reads the blog (which I believe, as I’ve interacted with several members of his campaign who read the blog over the past few months). I said that I started covering the race so closely mainly because the MSM was doing such a poor job of it. He agreed, and said that people wouldn’t start paying attention until the last week. I think he’s right.
Honestly, I have no real issue or ideological concerns with Cruz. If elected, I think he would easily be the best senator Texas has had since Phil Gramm. I do have some small minor concerns with him as a candidate (see this post for some context on the below points). A lot of the things I quibble over is Cruz following standard “How to Campaign 101.” However, I think they may not work as well as in the past for this year, and this particular race.
Frequently Cruz would take the question as asked and segue into one of his talking points, sometimes smoothly, sometimes not. I believe Cruz is right, that the general public is only paying attention to the race in the last week. But this is going to be a long campaign, and I believe Cruz is a bit too “on message” for this stage of the campaign. This part of the campaign, in addition to building a campaign infrastructure and raising money, is to convince Tea Party and Republican Party stalwarts that you’re their guy. Among the Tea Party especially, there’s a certain wariness with politicians being too slick and too programmed. In addition to conservative positions and record (which Cruz has in spades), I think Tea Party patriots are looking for genuine authenticity and sincerity. (“Sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” —George Burns). I think that’s a big reason Glenn Addison won the straw poll at the more recent forum. Cruz is a very good off-the-cuff speaker, and I think he needs a bit less scripting and a bit more continuity at this stage of the campaign.
I gave Cruz the opportunity to criticize his rival candidates and he declined, bringing the question around to his Proven Conservative bit. This is also standard practice: Let the candidate take the high road and let proxies and allies handle the attacks. But I’m not sure that wisdom holds anymore, especially in Texas. Rick Perry went negative early, hard and often on Kay Baily Hutchison, and it didn’t hurt his chances at all. I think the Tea Party is looking for a fighter, and don’t think it would hurt Cruz to engage Dewhurst and Leppert on their respective conservative records (or lack thereof) early and often.
Again, keep in mind this is coming from someone who’s observing Cruz more closely than 99.9% of primary voters ever will. I think Cruz is still far and away the candidate that most closely fits William F. Buckley’s definition of who people should vote for, namely “the most conservative viable candidate.”
Thanks again to Ted Cruz (and his campaign) for allowing me the opportunity to interview him.
I have a longer audio version of this interview, covering more topics, I hope to put up later this week
But don’t worry: I’m sure this decision won’t affect the State Department’s ability to supply us with a steady stream of Wahabbist clerics from Saudi Arabia…
Ricardo Sanchez finally has a website up, though Google still can’t find it, and it was only announced on his Facebook page yesterday. I wonder why it took so long, since he announced back on May 11; it doesn’t take a month to put up a website.
Also, he’s apparently going to be running as “Ric Sanchez,” though most of the media (save the Dallas Morning News) don’t appear to have gotten the memo.
The website actually contains some policy substance, though you have to wade through lots of vague, boilerplate, focus-group tested blather to get to it:
Sanchez, after some hemming, hawing, and hand-wringing, supports the Dream Act illegal alien amnesty. Despite some vague comments on “enforcement of our existing immigration laws” and a nod to the drain illegal aliens put on state and federal budgets, there’s absolutely no mention of completing the border fence, and no mention of the narco-terrorist war raging in Mexico.
He also supports teachers unions. He mentions vouchers (but not school choice or charter schools), but in the sort of highly-qualified way that makes you think he only wants them for public schools. And he slams the No Child Left Behind Act, critics of which are not exclusive to the left.
So far, so standard for liberal Democrats. However, in “The Economy and Job Creation” section, in addition to the usual “green jobs,” “social safety net” and “infrastructure” blather all Obama-era Democrats parrot, there’s this: “The best approach to creating jobs in Texas is for us to provide tax cuts, incentives, and increase financing support for small businesses.” Never mind that the entire page is vague to the point of distraction, never mind that the words “budget deficit” and “national debt” are nowhere to be found; the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for the Texas Senate seat actually came out for tax cuts. Even more shocking is that there’s no mention of that holiest of Democratic talking points, “tax hikes on the rich.” Indeed, a Democratic candidate calling for tax cuts is so out of character that I feel compelled to take a screen shot in case the Nutroots read him the riot act and force him to scrub it, so here it is:
It’s in the third paragraph. Click to embiggen.
Granted, anyone can say anything on their website; it doesn’t mean they believe in it, and it doesn’t mean they won’t jettison it ten minutes after they’ve won election. But for a major Democratic candidate to call for tax cuts not before the general election, but even before the Democratic primary, suggests that either Texas is even more conservative a state than even we on the right realize, or (and I mention this only as a possibility) Ricardo Sanchez actually believes in tax cuts as a way to create economic growth. That would put him in agreement with the all the major Republican candidates, but it’s pretty close to heresy in today’s Democratic Party.
We’ll see what sort of reaction his positions get, assuming people can actually find his website…
Three of the four candidates came across as prepared, articulate, polished and effective speakers, and all four tried to portray themselves as tea party conservatives:
Ted Cruz was the most polished of the four, as you would expect of the former Texas Solicitor General. He was very good not only at making his points, but also expertly tying highlights of his career and life-story (like his work on 10th Amendment issues for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and his father fleeing Castro’s Cuba [see here for correction]) into answers without it seeming forced. His only drawbacks were that every now and then he would seem just a little bit too polished, his pitch modulations a little too calculated, and he needs to add a few touches of humor liven things up. (His one recycled Reagan anecdote isn’t going to cut it.) With Michael Williams out, I think Cruz cemented his status as both tea party favorite and frontrunner.
I have not made any secret of my doubts as to Tom Leppert‘s new-found conservative convictions, but he comes across as a very polished and prepared speaker. He says that he cut a lot of unnecessary programs as Dallas Mayor; when I get a chance, I’m going to ask his campaign for a list. If you didn’t know about his previous record, you would think him just as conservative as his compatriots. He did have a couple of weaknesses as a public speaker: shrugging and spreading his hands was his go-to move for almost every question. He also displayed a sort of nervous eye-twitch between questions, maybe because of the bright stage lights. But guess what? There are going to be a lot of bright stage lights between now and March…
Roger Williams had the most varied performance: He has an engaging, natural personality (with just the right touch of rough-hewn “old coot” country charm) and can clearly hold his own against his more polished opponents, but he went back to his “I’m a small businessman” routine two or three times too many, and too transparently. On the other hand, Williams also got the best laugh lines of the night. Referring back to an earlier question about how he’d eliminate the budget deficit in one year (he didn’t think the Ryan plan went far enough), in a question on the the EPA’s attempt to take over Texas air quality, he said “You know that 1.6 trillion I’d cut out of the deficit? The EPA would be among them.” Williams probably improved his standing the most of any candidate attending.
Elizabeth Ames Jones…look, I’m not going to sugarcoat this. Jones should get out of the race. It wasn’t her message (she made effective conservative points), it’s the fact that she was a cringingly bad public speaker tonight. I can’t tell if it’s nervousness or an actual speech impediment, but her voice sounded like it was trapped at the back of her soft palate, almost as if she had all her wisdom teeth yanked a week ago and was still getting use to her own mouth, and late in the debate she seemed to have a slight lisp. She spoke like someone who was so eager to talk that the words all tried to come out in a rush at once, causing her to stumble over herself, stop and start, and generally sound nervous; way too nervous for someone that already holds a major statewide office. She calmed down a little bit after the first couple of questions, and occasionally made good points (“I have to fight the EPA every day”), but she was far and away the weakest candidate on stage by a good measure. And her “I was down in the trenches” refrain (mostly dealing with her time in the legislature) got even tireder than Williams’ small businessman shtick. Between this and her abysmal fundraising numbers, I see no hope for Jones in this race and no reason she should continue in it. She’s doing a good job on the Railroad Commission, and she should probably stay there for the immediate future.
Not a lot of policy differences on display. All agreed not to raise taxes under any circumstances (I wondered why moderator Evan Smith didn’t ask any of them “Not even in the event of a World War with China?”), all were on-board with the Ryan plan or an even more immediate cutback in federal spending, all for greater border control measures and against amnesty, all pro-life (one of Jones’ most effective moments), all more national energy exploration, all against earmarks, all slamming Obama.
Enough for tonight. I’ll post more tomorrow if I have the time.
