Month: October 2011

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You Can Fool Some Of The People All Of The Time…

October 6, 2011 by

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

The above quote come from President Abraham Lincoln. I seem to remember back in January 2009 there were some foolish people who compared Obama to Lincoln. What a difference two and a half years make.

Today we have Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney being asked about Attorney General Eric Holder and Operation Fast and Furious. His dissembling answer to the press makes me wonder if Carney is trying to outdo former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in evasive smarminess.

From the White House transcript:

Q There have been calls for a general counsel to investigate whether or not the Attorney General perjured himself when testifying about Fast and Furious. Does the President have a reaction?

MR. CARNEY: Well, there has been one call — and I think it’s a biannual call for a special counsel by this particular congressman. Once every six months we hear something similar. And the fact is, the Attorney General’s testimony to both the House and the Senate was consistent and truthful.

He said in both March and May of this year that he became aware of the questionable tactics employed in the Fast and Furious operation in early 2011, when ATF agents first raised them publicly. And he then asked the Inspector General’s Office to investigate the matter, demonstrating how seriously he took them.

Q The question in May was when did he first hear about Fast and Furious? Not the questionable tactics, but when did he first hear of the program?

MR. CARNEY: Look, the Attorney General’s testimony was consistent and truthful. And calls for special counsels, which seem to be a regular occurrence, do not change that fact.

And when the Attorney General learned about the questionable tactics, he asked the Inspector General’s Office to investigate the matter.

Yes.

Another report came back to this topic and it includes references to Eric Schultz’s hissy fit with screaming and cursing aimed at CBS Investigative Report Sharyl Attkisson.

Q Thanks, Jay. I want to go back to Fast and Furious because what you said the Attorney General said is not what he said. He said, quote — and this is in May of this year — “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.” Now these documents that Jake was referring to say that he was actually told the first time about this July 2010 and October of 2010 —

MR. CARNEY: Well, you’re suggesting — first of all, I would refer you to the Department of Justice that is handling this.

Q He’s the President’s Attorney General, so —

MR. CARNEY: Yes, and the President believes he’s an excellent Attorney General and has great confidence in him, and we absolutely know that the testimony he gave was consistent and truthful. And —

Q So how does he have confidence in him if he’s a year off on what —

MR. CARNEY: If a piece of paper in a document that’s many, many pages long contained a phrase that discussed nothing about the tactics that are at issue here, I think what we’re talking about —

Q But he didn’t talk about — I just want to be clear. In his quote he never said tactics. He said —

MR. CARNEY: Ed, the Attorney General’s testimony —

Q — the first time he heard about it —

MR. CARNEY: — was consistent and truthful.

Q — and in the document, in July, he heard about it.

MR. CARNEY: Consistent and truthful.

Q Okay, but you’re not addressing the fact that he was not talking about questionable tactics.

MR. CARNEY: I think I just did.

Q In his quote in May, he said, “The first time I heard about it was a few weeks ago.”

MR. CARNEY: The issue here is not the name, it’s what happened and the questionable tactics. When he heard that, as testified, he asked the Inspector General’s Office to investigate it aggressively, and he has cooperated with — the Department of Justice has cooperated with the congressional investigation. So what he’s testified to is consistent and truthful, and his cooperation — both the fact that he believes it was a problem that needed to be investigated is demonstrated by the action he took, and the department has cooperated with the Congress as it looks into the matter.

Q So to clear up any confusion, when was the first time the President —

MR. CARNEY: Again, I —

Q No, no, not the Attorney General. When was the first time the President heard about this program?

MR. CARNEY: Well, as he said in public, in a press conference, he heard about it when he read about it. And that was sometime earlier this year. I think the press conference was in El Salvador when he was on that trip, and he referenced having heard about it recently. I don’t have a specific day.

Q Okay. And Sheryl Atkinson of CBS News is saying that a few days ago, I believe, a White House official and a Justice Department official was yelling and screaming at her — she’s been reporting about this for some time — about this whole story.

You were a reporter once. When government officials start yelling at you, sometimes it’s because they’re getting defensive, right? Why would they be yelling at her?

MR. CARNEY: First of all, I have no insight into the conversations she may or may not have had. Second of all, I know that you guys are all hard-bitten, veteran journalists and probably don’t complain when you have tough conversations with your sources sometimes. Again, this is just generally speaking.

I don’t know about it. I think it’s —

Q But she’s a credible reporter. When you say, “I’m not sure what conversations she had,” I mean, she said this on the record that she was yelled at and screamed at. Why would the administration be yelling at her about this story? I don’t —

MR. CARNEY: Again, I take issue with the report. I don’t know that it’s true. I’m just — what I think is that I know you are tough enough to handle an extra decibel or two in a phone conversation. I’m not sure that that happened here, but it’s a surprising complaint.

As I said yesterday, the response of Tracy Schmaler and Eric Schultz reminded me of a fear-biting dog. It lashes out because it is scared and it appears they are acting in exactly the same manner.

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Sharyl Attkisson Report On Operation Wide Receiver

October 5, 2011 by 1 Comment

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News had a report this morning on The Early Show about an earlier ATF operation called Operation Wide Receiver. It was run out the ATF’s Tucson office. The operation which began during the Bush administration also involved gun walking and Mexican drug cartels.

Kurt Hofmann, the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner, does an excellent job in analyzing the differences between Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious. While they both involved ATF, Mexican drug cartels, and gun walking, Kurt notes some important differences.

Well, for one, four or five years ago, we didn’t have the administration (from the President on down), the mass media, and “gun control” advocates incessantly claiming that, “[Some variable, but invariably wildly inflated] percentage of seized Mexican crime guns come from the U.S.,” imposing on us the moral imperative to “strengthen” our “weak gun laws.”

We didn’t have a requirement in the southwest border states to report multiple long gun sales–a requirement for which “walked” guns ouf of “Operation Fast and Furious” were used as justification. Nor did we have guns “walked” from Indiana to Chicago used to attempt to impose extra reporting requirements on and Indiana gun dealer.

At this point, we don’t seem to have any evidence that earlier “gunwalking” involved the FBI, the DEA, DHS, the State Department, the IRS, and even the White House Security Council.

 Kurt is correct that this should be investigated as well. He is also very correct in saying that the signs of failure of Operation Wide Receiver were known by 2009 and that it should have been a warning about going ahead with Operation Fast and Furious.

Jim Shepherd of the Outdoor Wire was writing about this failed program back in June and I had a post on it then. You can compare the newest story with what we knew in June.

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Issa On AC360 With Anderson Cooper

October 5, 2011 by

The first correction I would make to Anderson Cooper’s intro is that this was not a botched gun sting. You can also see the damage control coming out of the Justice Department in Cooper’s questions. That said, he played it straight without any “gotcha” questions for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).

Mike Vanderboegh has posted a transcript of Rep. Issa’s comments to Cooper here.

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Quote Of The Day

October 5, 2011 by

Investors Business Daily is taking a hard line on Eric Holder and his perjurious testimony given to the House Judiciary Committee regarding when he first knew of Operation Fast and Furious. In an editorial published this evening entitled “Indict Eric Holder”, they concluded:

As Issa told radio talk show host Laura Ingraham last month: “We have a paper trail of so many people knowing that the only way the attorney general didn’t know is he made sure he didn’t want to know. … But if you don’t want to know something of this sort, then you shouldn’t have the job he has.”

We’d go a step further. Baseball star Roger Clemens was equally vehement when he told a House committee in 2008: “Let me be clear. I have never taken steroids or HGH.” Clemens was indicted for lying to Congress.

The same should go for Eric Holder.

And I would add that IBD is correct.

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House Judiciary Committee Chair Calls For Special Prosecutor

October 4, 2011 by

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is calling for a Special Prosecutor to investigate whether the statements made by Attorney General Eric Holder in response to a question by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)were false.

Washington, D.C. – House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether comments made by Attorney General Eric Holder during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in May 2011 were truthful. In a letter to President Obama, Chairman Smith expressed concern that Members of Congress may have been misled by the Attorney General’s response to a question regarding his knowledge of the Fast and Furious program. The Attorney General stated that the first time he had heard of the program was in the weeks leading up to the May 2011 hearing. But documents released on Friday night raise significant questions about the truthfulness of the Attorney General’s testimony.

Chairman Smith: “The Department’s consistent response to Congress has been that Operation Fast and Furious was a discrete law enforcement effort largely isolated to the ATF office in Phoenix. These documents appear to undermine this claim and bring into question statements made by Attorney General Holder to this Committee.

“Allegations that senior Justice Department officials may have intentionally misled Members of Congress are extremely troubling and must be addressed by an independent and objective special counsel. I urge you to appoint a special counsel who will investigate these allegations as soon as possible.”

The full letter from Smith to Obama can be found here.

Ed Morrissey at Hotair.com speculates that Obama will defy Congress and protect Holder rather than have a Special Prosecutor running wild amongst the emerging scandals of his “clean” administration.

Now Obama has to decide whether to defy Congress and create a precedent for protecting appointees who willfully mislead Congress, or submit to a special prosecutor that could run wild on his administration. I’m going to guess that Obama will defy the House, but that may not last very long, especially with Darrell Issa probing Solyndra and other potential scandals.

Fox News is also on this story. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) met with Holder on January 31st in Grassley’s office. At that time, Grassley gave him a letter with details on the investigation into Operation Fast and Furious. Grassley, saying he isn’t a lawyer, won’t speculate on whether Holder perjured himself but did add:

“But I can tell you this. They’re doing everything they can, in a fast and furious way, to cover up all the evidence or stonewalling us. But here’s the issue, if he didn’t perjure himself and didn’t know about it, the best way that they can help us, Congressman Issa and me, is to just issue all the documents that we ask for and those documents will prove one way or the other right or wrong.”

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Administration Officials Yell And Curse At Sharyl Attkisson

October 4, 2011 by

In some of their more classy actions, spokespeople at both the White House and the Department of Justice have both cursed and yelled at CBS New’s Sharyl Attkisson. This was in response to her asking questions about the latest documents released and Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in May.

Attkisson divulged their behavior in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Ingraham’s radio show today.

Tracy Schmaler is the Director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Justice Department and earlier in the decade worked for Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) at the Senate Judiciary Committee. She refused to put any clarifying information about Holder’s testimony on paper and continually yelled at Attkisson on the phone.

At the White House, Eric Schultz is the Associate Communications Director and is the one who not only screamed at Attkisson but cursed her as well.

This sort of behavior on the part of spokespeople for Holder and Obama indicates to me a high level of fear on their part. It is like a dog that is a fear biter – they don’t bite out of aggression but rather as a fear response. You have to wonder if it is because the truth is starting to emerge and it is much uglier than we could ever have imagined.

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Better Send The Fire Department – Eric’s Pants Are On Fire

October 4, 2011 by

Back on May 3rd, Attorney General Eric Holder, in response to a question from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) asking when he first knew of Operation Fast and Furious, said  “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.”

Today, thanks to Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, we see proof that he had been briefed on Project Gunwalker multiple times beginning 10 months earlier.

The lame response from the Department of Justice to explain Mr. Holder’s perjurious testimony – he misunderstood the question. Is that any better than a little kid saying the dog ate his homework?

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For Once, Michelle Obama Is Correct

October 4, 2011 by 2 Comments

In a speech to campaign donors this weekend, First Lady Michelle Obama said something with which all of us in the pro-gun rights movement can agree. She said the Supreme Court is at stake in 2012.

Michelle Obama spoke on Friday night at the Providence, R.I., home of Joseph Paolino Jr., a former mayor of the city. About 220 people were scheduled to attend, and the event was expected to raise more than $300,000 for the president’s re-election campaign.

Obama told those in attendance that “we stand at a fundamental crossroads for our country. You’re here because you know that in just 13 months, we’re going to make a choice that will impact our lives for decades to come.” After addressing issues like health care and the economy, she invoked the appointments of Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

Sandy Froman, former President of the National Rifle Association, made similar comments about what is at stake in the 2012 election at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Chicago. However, she said it would be our gun rights and that we should “pray for the five.”

Just as important will be the Presidential appointments at the District and Appeals Court levels.  Using the example of President Bill Clinton, Ms. Froman said that a 2-term President will get to appoint almost 50% of the Federal judiciary. Can you imagine how many anti-gun judges Obama could appoint in a second term?