According to this article in the Houston Chronicle, “Sixteen small counties across Texas appear to have more registered voters on their rolls as of 2010 than qualified citizens of voting age.”
As the icing on top of the voter fraud cake, here’s James O’Keefe (who you may know from such classics as ACORN’s Hardest Working Pimp) obtaining Eric Holder’s ballot.
And the cherry? “I’ll be back faster than you can say furious.”
After much back and forth with his campaign trying to find a date, I was finally able to interview Texas Senate candidate Craig James on March 21 at the Rudy’s on South 360 here in Austin. This was, alas, not an ideal atmosphere for an interview (it got better when one of his staffers asked Rudy’s to turn off their piped in music for the area, which is something I should have thought of asking for), and the first part of the interview makes it hard to hear. After the first question, I stopped the camera and moved it closer to James so you can hear his answers, so the audio gets much better about 1:35 in, though I seem to have cut off the top of his head in the process. So let me apologize in advance for the less-than-sterling sound and video quality for various parts of the interview, but the vast majority of the interview is intelligible. I filmed this with my Mino Flip camera and did a light edit in iMovie, so the crappiness is 100% my fault (or that of the environment it was filmed in).
Thoughts:
James is a very confident, well-spoken and personable speaker with a lot of natural charisma. He seems to get the big picture of the conservative agenda (a constitutionally limited government, and a commitment to free markets) and obviously comes from a social conservative background.
I like that he would eliminate the Department of Education, but it’s a bit hard to square with his emphasis on vocational training in the second part of the answer. It’s not that I disagree that it’s a good idea, it’s just that after the elimination of the Department of Education, I don’t see any viable (or proper) role for such fine-grained educational policy control at the federal level.
I’m not particularly interested in the Texas Tech question that starts part 2, but since it’s the most famous controversy he’s been involved in, the interview would have felt incomplete without it.
There are a couple of interesting admissions I give him credit for: admitting that Texans for a Better Tomorrow was created as a vehicle for him to explore a role in politics, and admitting that he would root for the New England Patriots (for whom he played in the NFL) were they to meet the Cowboys in the Superbowl, a brave position that’s obviously not pandering to his constituents.
I didn’t like the vagueness of his positions beyond a few policy specifics, and the fact he tried to straddle both sides of some issues (such as PIPA/SOPA in the second half of the interview). Both Ted Cruz and Tom Leppert were occasionally vague on some points, but James is already sounding awfully vague for someone who hasn’t ever held elective office.
The low-point of the interview (about 3:15 into the second part) was finding out that James has never heard of the Posse Comitatus Act. This is not an obscure statute, it’s one of the fundamental laws governing the limitations of using federal troops. I would expect not only anyone with an interest in politics to at least have heard of the Posse Comitatus act, I would actually expect the same of anyone with a basic college education.
I’d like to thank Craig James for taking time out of his busy schedule to speak with me, and his staff for their assistance in setting up the interview.
Now I’ve interviewed all the major Republican Senate candidates but David Dewhurst. If his campaign would get in touch with me to set a convenient date in the next few weeks, I’d like to correct that oversight…
Kay Bailey Hutchison tries to walk back her comments, unsuccessfully. She says she opposes abortion, but supports taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood. That’s like saying you support the Second Amendment, but also support the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. You can believe one or the other, but not both at the same time.
Even The New York Times has noticed the absurdity of the Obama Administration’s position on ObamaCare: “The Justice Department is essentially arguing that the penalty is not a tax, except when the government says it is one.”
Holder stonewalls today on both fast and Furious and Elena Kagan’s role in ObamaCare.
Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner suggests impeachment of administration officials involved with Fast and Furious. he’s right. Breaking the law in a way that results in the deaths of innocent Americas solely to justify a cynical political ploy is indeed an impeachable offense.
Say Uncle pointed out that the U.S. House of Representatives now has a Fast and Furious webpage. Including this handy PDF listing all the fast and Furious players, and this one listing the victims. A very good start, though this scandal begs for some sort of interactive web widget to follow all the threads of evidence…
Sipsey Street also provides an email thread between former ATF head Kenneth Melson and former United States Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis Burke on getting their Fast and Furious stories straight.
Also from Sipsey Street (really, if you’re only going to follow one source for Fast and Furious, it should be them) comes further news of Obama’s war on the ATF whistle-blowers.
Continuing her excellent reporting on the issue, Sharyl Attkisson drops another bombshell: Just like us “paranoid” right wingers thought all along, Fast and Furious was about promoting gun control:
Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation “Fast and Furious” to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.
[snip]
ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called “Demand Letter 3”. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.
On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:
“Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.”
On Jan. 4, 2011, as ATF prepared a press conference to announce arrests in Fast and Furious, Newell saw it as “(A)nother time to address Multiple Sale on Long Guns issue.” And a day after the press conference, Chait emailed Newell: “Bill–well done yesterday… (I)n light of our request for Demand letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this case.”
Read the whole thing.
The best, most favorable explanation is that Fast and Furious was instituted for some still-undisclosed purpose, and that some ATF agents saw it as a ghoulish opportunity to promote gun control.
The worst: The Obama Administration designed and implemented Fast and Furious in a premeditated fashion, breaking the law and helping kill hundreds of Mexican citizens and U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry, all for the sole, express purpose of promoting gun control.
They had to kill people with guns in order to save them from getting killed by guns.
It shows that just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
Hat tip: Powerline, where John Hinderaker says: “If the Obama administration did arrange for the shipment of arms to Mexican drug gangs, not for any legitimate public purpose but in order to advance a left-wing political agenda, and those guns were used to murder hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American border agent–which they were–then we are looking at a scandal that dwarfs any in modern American history.”
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.
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.”
