No, I’m not talking about women’s rights, suffragettes, or even cigarettes – though I am from North Carolina. I’m actually talking about bloggers and gun bloggers in particular.
Bloggers are considered by the media to be the crazy cousins in the attic obsessed with their Shih-Tzu’s or the Royal Wedding. (Oh, wait, it is the mainstream media that was obsessed with that last thing.) Still, it can be truthfully said that bloggers are given little respect by the mainstrain media.
At 10am or so this morning, NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre is expected to call on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to resign, in part, due to the fallout from Operation Fast and Furious (aka Project Gunwalker).
Without two gun bloggers – David Codrea of WarOnGuns/Gun Rights Examiner and Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars – we would not have known of this sordid affair. When they broke the story last December that the weapons found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry were linked to an ATF operation, it was ignored by the mainstream media. There were no headlines in the Washington Post who had been doing a whole series of feature stories on firearms and crime. There was nothing in the New York Times though their editorial page had been active in pushing for “common-sense” gun control. It was ignored by the networks.
Fast forward to the present. All three major gun rights organizations are on board. Congressional investigators from the offices of Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley are in Arizona probing the Phoenix Field Division for answers. Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has done a number of on-camera and on-record reports with ATF whistle-blowers such as Senior Agent John Dodson and former ATF Attache to Mexico Darren Gil (among others). Contempt of Congress proceedings may be forthcoming from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for the failure of ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson to respond to a subpoena from the committee.
I’m sure David and Mike had hopes in those cold gray days of December and January that Project Gunwalker would been seen for what it is. However, I think even they at times would have said the chances were somewhat slim. So when Wayne LaPierre speaks at the Members Meeting this morning and calls for Holder to resign, I will be thinking of them and saying to myself “You’ve come a long way, baby.”
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