Month: June 2012

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GRNC Recommendations For The NC Runoff Primary

June 29, 2012 by

The Grass Roots North Carolina Political Victory Fund issued four recommendations for the upcoming July 17th runoff primary.

GRNC-PVF CANDIDATE RECOMMENDATIONS

US House District 8 Republican primary: GRNC-PVF recommends you vote for SCOTT KEADLE for Congress. Keadle earned GRNC’s highest 4-star evaluation and will be a leader in defending your rights. Keadle has a long history of bucking the “establishment” GOP and will represent you, not the status quo.

US House District 9 Republican primary: GRNC-PVF recommends you vote for ROBERT PITTENGER for Congress. Pittenger built a 100% pro-gun voting record in the NC Senate, earning GRNC’s highest 4-star evaluation (****). Opponent Jim Pendergraph (GRNC 0-star) claims to be a Second Amendment supporter. But during his tenure as Mecklenburg County Sheriff, he obstructed pistol permits and refused to sign Form 4s for Title II firearms.

US House District 11 Republican primary: GRNC-PVF recommends you vote for MARK MEADOWS for Congress. With a perfect 100% on GRNC’s gun rights candidate survey, Meadows earned GRNC’s highest 4-star evaluation (****) and has made defense of the Second Amendment a pillar of his campaign.

NC Senate District 41 Republican primary: GRNC-PVF recommends you vote for JEFF TARTE for NC Senate. Through his actions as mayor of the town of Cornelius and his GRNC candidate survey, Tarte earned GRNC’s highest 4-star evaluation and has vowed to sponsor pro-gun legislation once elected. He has also promised to buck Senate leadership if necessary to advance the cause of gun rights – something which has proven painfully necessary in the recent session of the legislature.

Early voting began yesterday and July 10th is the last day to request an absentee ballot in writing. For more information on Early Voting Sites, go to this website. It should be noted that Early Voting Sites are not always open five days a week.

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CCRKBA On The Vote For Contempt

June 29, 2012 by

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms issued statement last night saying that the vote to find Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress was “necessary for justice to be served.”

The full statement is below:

BELLEVUE, WA – The historic 255-67 vote by the House of Representatives to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to provide documents relating to the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious was “necessary for justice to be served,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said.

Holder repeatedly did not comply with a subpoena issued last October by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Instead, he successfully appealed to President Barack Obama to claim executive privilege at the last minute in an attempt to shield the documents from Congressional review.

“As the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the nation, the attorney general is not above the law,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb declared. “It should not have come to this. Eric Holder should have complied with the subpoena. If he had cooperated fully with the Fast and Furious investigation from the outset, none of this would have been necessary and he knows it.

“The only conceivable reason that Holder and the Obama administration do not want to turn these documents over,” he said, “is that they contain damning evidence of either incompetence or complicity, or both.

“We are disappointed, but not surprised,” Gottlieb continued, “that Holder’s Democrat cheerleaders tried to portray this as a witch hunt, and tried to blame the Bush administration, but their arguments do not wash. This is about the rule of law and finding the truth about a horribly mis-managed gun trafficking operation, the murder of an American Border Patrol agent and what appears to have been a cover-up by the Department of Justice.”

CCRKBA had urged gun owners to contact their congressional representatives in support of the contempt vote.

“We are proud,” Gottlieb noted, “of the 17 Democrats who joined the Republican majority on this vote. This was not about partisanship, but accountability and transparency. Fast and Furious has a body count, and so long as people provide cover to the attorney general, the blood is on their hands.”

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In Contempt, Contemptible, and Highly Contemptible

June 29, 2012 by
Holder – In Contempt of Congress
The Noes – Contemptible

Baldwin

Barber

Berkley

Berman

Bishop (NY)

Blumenauer

Bonamici

Braley (IA)

Capps

Cohen

Connolly (VA)

Cooper

Costello

Courtney

Cuellar

DeFazio

DeLauro

Deutch

Dicks

Dingell

Doggett

Eshoo

Farr

Green, Gene

Heinrich

Higgins

Himes

Hirono

Holden

Holt

Langevin

Larsen (WA)

LaTourette

Loebsack

Lofgren, Zoe

Luján

Lynch

McDermott

McNerney

Michaud

Miller (NC)

Miller, George

Moran

Murphy (CT)

Nadler

Pastor (AZ)

Perlmutter

Quigley

Rigell

Rothman (NJ)

Ryan (OH)

Sanchez, Loretta

Schrader

Schwartz

Sherman

Shuler

Slaughter

Smith (WA)

Speier

Sutton

Thompson (CA)

Tierney

Tsongas

Visclosky

Wasserman Schultz

Waxman

Welch

The Walk-Outs – Highly Contemptible

Ackerman

Andrews

Baca

Bass (CA)

Becerra

Bishop (GA)

Brady (PA)

Brown (FL)

Butterfield

Capuano

Cardoza

Carnahan

Carney

Carson (IN)

Castor (FL)

Chu

Cicilline

Clarke (MI)

Clarke (NY)

Clay

Cleaver

Clyburn

Conyers

Costa

Crowley

Cummings

Davis (CA)

Davis (IL)

DeGette

Doyle

Edwards

Ellison

Engel

Fattah

Filner

Frank (MA)

Fudge

Garamendi

Gonzalez

Green, Al

Grijalva

Gutierrez

Hahn

Hanabusa

Hastings (FL)

Hinchey

Hinojosa

Honda

Hoyer

Israel

Jackson (IL)

Jackson Lee (TX)

Johnson (GA)

Johnson, E. B.

Kaptur

Keating

Kildee

Kucinich

Larson (CT)

Lee (CA)

Levin

Lewis (GA)

Lowey

Maloney

Markey

Matsui

McCarthy (NY)

McCollum

McGovern

Meeks

Moore

Napolitano

Neal

Olver

Pallone

Pascrell

Pelosi

Peters

Pingree (ME)

Polis

Price (NC)

Rangel

Reyes

Richardson

Richmond

Roybal-Allard

Ruppersberger

Rush

Sánchez, Linda T.

Sarbanes

Schakowsky

Schiff

Scott (VA)

Scott, David

Serrano

Sewell

Sires

Stark

Thompson (MS)

Tonko

Towns

Van Hollen

Velázquez

Waters

Watt

Wilson (FL)

Woolsey

Yarmuth

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Grassley Eviscerates Fortune Magazine Claims

June 28, 2012 by 3 Comments

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) doesn’t think much of the Fortune Magazine article by Katherine Eban. He released a memo to reporters and editors today that savages it. Given that Sen. Grassley was the first person in Congress to take Project Gunwalker seriously, he is more than a little pissed off at this 11th-hour “Empire Strikes Back” attempt to denigrate the investigation.

M E M O R A N D U M

To: Reporters and Editors
Re: Fortune magazine piece on Fast and Furious
Da: Thursday, June 28, 2012

The Fortune magazine piece on Operation Fast and Furious is problematic in several respects. Sen. Chuck Grassley began investigating the circumstances of the death of border patrol agent Brian Terry 18 months ago after whistleblowers came to him with concerns. The following statement is from Grassley’s office. Supporting documents are available here.

“The Fortune piece conspicuously ignores the most important fact in this case: ATF encouraged cooperating dealers to sell guns to known traffickers. That fact is key to understanding how ATF made a strategic choice to track the guns instead of stop them. The central claim of the article, that there was nothing ATF could have done to stop the illegal sales, is simply incompatible with the evidence. If it is true that ATF could not interdict and seize weapons due to legal hurdles beyond its control, then ATF had no business telling gun dealers to go ahead with the sales.

“The Fortune article asks the reader to believe that sworn statements by whistleblowers who put their careers on the line to expose the truth for Brian Terry’s family are merely conspiratorial fabrications for the sole purpose of getting back at their boss. It asks the reader to believe that the ATF Director, the Attorney General, the White House, and Congress all fell victim to the fabrication and completely misinterpreted or misunderstood the thousands of pages of documents that corroborate the whistleblower allegations. The Justice Department retracted its previous denials of those allegations last December 2. If the Fortune article is accurate, the Justice Department’s December 2 retraction would itself be a false capitulation under political pressure aimed at protecting senior DOJ officials at the expense of ATF field office personnel in Arizona.

“The Fortune article inexplicably credits the self-serving statements of the supervisors in Arizona responsible for overseeing Fast and Furious. There is no explanation as to why, given their obvious motive to claim there was no gun-walking to save themselves from criticism and punishment. That’s why the written records, the interviews on the record, and obtaining and weighing all evidence is so important. We can only draw fair, informed conclusions from the facts.”

Fortune is a business magazine and ought to concentrate on business issues. Any credibility they may have had on business issues is now suspect in my opinion. If they are willing to put their name and reputation on Eban’s piece of junk research, what does that say about anything else they publish?

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From The Highly Reputable Al Gore Network

June 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

The Al Gore Network – or as it is more properly known, Current TV – ran with the 11th hour “Empire Strikes Back” article by Katherine Eban of Fortune Magazine which stated gunwalking never intentionally happened. It appeared on The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur.

I suggest just skimming through the video as it is enough to make one puke. However, the gun prohibitionists were Tweeting the link to this like crazy last night as if it were the gospel truth. I guess when you are grasping for straws….

Mike Vanderboegh had this to say about the Fortune Magazine story and its author Katherine Eban:

There was much excitement at MSNBC today about a CNN/Fortune magazine hit piece on John Dodson entitled: The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal. We’ve known this was coming for a while. The author, a long-time Clintonista contacted every body she thought she could milk for dirt on John starting sometime last October. She was given access to internal ATF documents, all selectively arranged to make the case which Katie Pavlich subjects to some deconstruction here: Fortune Magazine Tries to Tell The “Truth” About Fast and Furious, Fails Miserably

Of course you have to give the Evil Empire credit, they timed the release beautifully. I grew concerned earlier today when I was told that wavering Dems were having the article waved under their noses and were being warned that “it was all a lie so don’t vote for contempt.” However, my sources on and near the Hill dismissed the reports, saying no one believed that it would get any traction. Said one, “They waited too long. If they had done this six-months ago, they might have crafted an alternate storyline, but then the Committee could have had the time to debunk it as well.” Another said, “This won’t survive the publication of the contempt Report tomorrow.”

One thing I do wonder is whether Katherine Eban was given access to documents that have been withheld from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. I wouldn’t put it past this DOJ to do something like that.

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House Resolution 706

June 28, 2012 by

House Resolution 706, if passed, authorizes the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce its subpoenas in its investigation of Operation Fast and Furious.

 H. Res. 708 from the Rules Committee sets the ground rules for the debate on H. Res. 706 and will limit debate to 50 minutes equally divided, allows no points of order, and will only accept one motion to refer it back to committee. The last part also states that only Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) is allowed to make that motion. This resolution from the Rules Committee also allows for consideration of the report from the Oversight Committee, House Report 112-546, that would find Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress.

H. Res. 706 states:

H. RES. 706

Authorizing the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

June 26, 2012

Mr. ISSA submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Rules

RESOLUTION

Authorizing the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas.

Resolved, That the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is authorized to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings in any Federal court of competent jurisdiction, on behalf of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to seek declaratory judgments affirming the duty of Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, to comply with any subpoena that is a subject of the resolution accompanying House Report 112-546 issued to him by the Committee as part of its investigation into the United States Department of Justice operation known as `Fast and Furious’ and related matters, and to seek appropriate ancillary relief, including injunctive relief.

Sec. 2. The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform shall report as soon as practicable to the House with respect to any judicial proceedings which it initiates or in which it intervenes pursuant to this resolution.

Sec. 3. The Office of General Counsel of the House of Representatives shall, at the authorization of the Speaker, represent the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in any litigation pursuant to this resolution. In giving that authorization, the Speaker shall consult with the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group established pursuant to clause 8 of rule II.

House Report 112-546 is the 270 page report that outlines the case against Eric Holder and is the recommendation that he be found in Contempt of Congress. The Executive Summary of the report states:

The Department of Justice has refused to comply with congressional subpoenas related to Operation Fast and Furious, an Administration initiative that allowed around two thousand firearms to fall into the hands of drug cartels and may have led to the death of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent. The consequences of the lack of judgment that permitted such an operation to occur are tragic.

The Department’s refusal to work with Congress to ensure that it has fully complied with the Committee’s efforts to compel the production of documents and information related to this controversy is inexcusable and cannot stand. Those responsible for allowing Fast and Furious to proceed and those who are preventing the truth about the operation from coming out must be held accountable for their actions.

Having exhausted all available options in obtaining compliance, the Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee recommends that Congress find the Attorney General in contempt for his failure to comply with the subpoena issued to him.

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Quote Of The Day

June 28, 2012 by

Today is the day that the House of Representatives will probably vote to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. It is also the day in which the Supreme Court will issue its ruling on the validity of ObamaCare. Jim Shepherd of The Outdoor Wire is calling this Big Thursday. With regard to Holder and the mainstream media’s play on his role in Project Gunwalker, he had this to say:

The “spinning” on that is already underway. Mainstream media is characterizing the fight between the Justice Department and the House committee charged with oversight of that agency as a test of the lobbying prowess of the “gun lobby” (that’s the NRA, Gun Owners of America, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and they myriad of other local and state organizations).

It decidedly is not. Sorry, it’s just not, and no amount of spinning will make that wish come true. It’s an investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing by officials who swore an oath to enforce our laws, not selectively ignore or violate them with impunity.

Mainstream media just refuses to accept that, and refuses to let their viewers, readers or listeners hear it reported as such. Instead, it’s been diminished and characterized as just another political cat fight.

It’s not about ideology. It’s not about guns. It is not a liberal/conservative, black/white or red/blue debate. It’s about justice – for all- including the people supposed to be equally enforcing the law.

Maybe that’s why some people are nervous at the thought of laws being equally enforced.

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Jason Chaffetz On Contempt Vote Tomorrow

June 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) was interviewed today by Fox’s Megyn Kelly about the vote scheduled for Thursday on the contempt of Congress resolution for Attorney General Eric Holder. He said that he expects the vote to occur around 5 pm EDT tomorrow and that he sees there is no way of avoiding it.

He acknowledged what we have known or suspected for a long time that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee already has copies of documents, memos, and emails given them by whistleblowers that implicate the political leaders of the Department of Justice. The purpose of the subpoena is to confirm the authenticity of the documents and allow them to be entered into the record.

Watch the latest video at <a href=”http://video.foxnews.com”>video.foxnews.com</a>

The accompanying article estimates that approximately 20 Democrats will also vote to hold Holder in contempt. Other estimates that I’ve read are as high as 35 so we really won’t know until the votes are tallied.

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Jay Carney Takes The Press And Americans For Idiots

June 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

Jay Carney, President Obama’s Press Secretary, must think both the press and the public are idiots. Listen to his explanation of how Obama learned of Operation Fast and Furious.

The full text of what he said, courtesy of Breitbart, is below:

“I would only say broadly that the idea behind that thinking suggests that there was some grand plan behind the Fast and Furious program when, in fact, everyone knows the President did not know about this tactic until he heard about it through the media; the Attorney General did not know about it. The tactic itself was employed by the previous administration in a different operation. This was a field office tactic that was flawed. And when the Attorney General learned about it, he took action to ensure that it was no longer used, and he directed the Inspector General at the Department of Justice to investigate.”

How could Obama learn of Operation Fast and Furious from the media when they have avoided reporting it – Sharyl Attkisson and William LaJeunesse excepted – like the plague? It was only this past week that NBC even let the words “fast and furious” touch Brian William’s lips.

My message to Jay Carney is that we just are not as stupid as he thinks.

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Contempt Vote On Holder Will Be Bi-Partisan

June 27, 2012 by

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has expressed his belief a number of times that the vote to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress will be bi-partisan. He is correct.

Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT), who represents parts of Salt Lake City and all of eastern Utah, confirmed to the Salt Lake Tribune yesterday that he will be voting to find Holder in contempt.

Matheson, D-Utah, announced his position Tuesday, joining House Republicans, such as Utah Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz, who have railed against Holder’s reaction to the congressional probe into the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” operation. One of the lost guns was later used in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

“It just compounds the tragedy when both sides play politics instead of releasing the facts. The Terry family, the public and Congress deserve answers,” Matheson said. “Sadly, it seems that it will take holding the attorney general in contempt to communicate that evasiveness is unacceptable.”

Matheson faces a strong challenge this fall from Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love in the newly formed 4th District. Love has attracted a lot of attention (and money) as she is conservative, Republican, and African-American. If Love is elected, she will become the first black Republican woman in Congress.

UPDATE: There is also this from House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) who says that there will be Democrats voting to find Holder in contempt because the NRA is scoring the vote. Thanks to Mike Vanderboegh for this link.