Off To Houston Plus Two Items

I’ll be leaving to catch my flight to Houston in a few minutes. Blogging may be sporadic for the next two days as I’ll be spending time with family in Texas. Expect it to resume full force during the NRA Annual Meeting and thereafter.

A couple of items before I leave.

First, Sebastian reports that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has turned down the NRA’s appeal in NRA v. BATFE. He has a good preliminary analysis of the opinion. This is the case that challenged the Gun Control Act of 1968’s restriction on sales of handguns to those between 18 and 21 years of age.

Second, today is the 38th anniversary of the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese communists. Mike Vanderboegh posted a very soul-searching remembrance of the event a couple of days ago. As Mike would be the first to point out, he used to be a left-wing radical. When I say “left-wing”, I don’t mean a brie and Chablis liberal – think really hardcore.

If you want to read a good book on that last month of the Vietnam War, I’d suggest Black April by George J. Veith.

The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America’s worst foreign policy disaster of the 20th Century. Yet a complete understanding of the endgame—from the 27 January 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords to South Vietnam’s surrender on 30 April 1975—has eluded us.

Black April addresses that deficit. A culmination of exhaustive research in three distinct areas: primary source documents from American archives, North Vietnamese publications containing primary and secondary source material, and dozens of articles and numerous interviews with key South Vietnamese participants, this book represents one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever accomplished, including almost one hundred rarely or never seen before North Vietnamese unit histories, battle studies, and memoirs. Most important, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of South Vietnam’s conquest, the leaders in Hanoi released several compendiums of formerly highly classified cables and memorandum between the Politburo and its military commanders in the south. This treasure trove of primary source materials provides the most complete insight into North Vietnamese decision-making ever complied. While South Vietnamese deliberations remain less clear, enough material exists to provide a decent overview.

Ultimately, whatever errors occurred on the American and South Vietnamese side, the simple fact remains that the country was conquered by a North Vietnamese military invasion despite written pledges by Hanoi’s leadership against such action. Hanoi’s momentous choice to destroy the Paris Peace Accords and militarily end the war sent a generation of South Vietnamese into exile, and exacerbated a societal trauma in America over our long Vietnam involvement that reverberates to this day. How that transpired deserves deeper scrutiny.

Logistics Wins Wars

The Complementary Spouse’s uncle sent me the video below. It describes the Allied effort in World War II to get gasoline from Great Britain to the front in continental Europe. It was called Operation Pluto for Pipe Lines Under the Ocean.

Mike Vanderboegh recently had a post about the importance of logistics for the Russian Army in their Chechnya campaign. It was based upon an article that had appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette. The article found that the Russians struggled in their battle due to their logistical problems.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution And CSGV

There are times that I think that Josh Horwitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (sic) gets his ideas from outerspace and there are times I think he channels his inner Maoist student revolutionary. Today it appears he is looking to Chairman Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution for his inspiration.

The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to enforce orthodoxy and to wipe out those who deviated from it. In China’s case, it meant Communist orthodoxy. One of the hallmarks of the Cultural Revolution was the public denunciation of those who may have deviated from this orthodoxy. So it is with Josh Horwitz who would have made a good Red Guard.

Today, in his column in Huffington Post, he attacked not only Kurt Hofmann but those gun bloggers who have stood with him.


It would be tempting to dismiss Hofmann as an aberration — an isolated extremist with little ability to inspire actual acts of violence — except for two important factors. The first is that Hofmann’s disturbing call to use IEDs against American service members has been defended by a broad swath of the pro-gun movement. This includes statements of support from “The War on Guns” blogger David Codrea, “No Lawyers — Only Guns and Money” blogger John Richardson, the pro-gun Calumet Foundation, “Gun Free Zone” blogger Miguel Gonzalez, “Guns Save Life” blogger John Boch, “Days of Our Trailers” blogger Roy Kubicek (AKA “Thirdpower”), “Shall Not Be Questioned” blogger/NRA election volunteer coordinator Keith Milligan (AKA “Sebastian”) and “Of Arms & the Law” blogger David Hardy, among others.

Second, and more important, is the man that Hofmann himself cites in his blog (on four separate occasions) as the inspiration behind his scheme to empower “budding militia ordnance engineers”: former Alabama militia leader Mike Vanderboegh.

The real target of Horwitz is not Kurt and not the other gun bloggers. It is Mike Vanderboegh. Horwitz devoted as much time attacking Mike and his online novel Absolved as he did the rest of us. That Horwitz feels so threatened by a middle-aged man who is in tremendously poor health is telling.

After reading the post and the comments, it is obvious to me that they hate the First Amendment as much as they do the Second Amendment. To be more precise, Josh Horwitz and his erstwhile Red Guard believe in freedom of speech for themselves but not for those who deviate from their notion of orthodoxy. Those of us who deviate must be silenced, denounced, and made to confess our sins.

The ironic thing is that during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, as the child of a physician father and a research scientist mother, it would have been Josh himself who was expelled from school and his parents made to confess their sins against the proletariat.

Josh Horwitz is just as much a totalitarian thug as the rest of his minions at CSGV. No amount of education at “the better schools” will ever change that.

UPDATE: Joe Huffman is upset that he wasn’t listed among the gun bloggers by Josh Horwitz. Moreover, he does know a thing or two about blowing things up.

Mike Vanderboegh On White House Links To Fast And Furious

As I said yesterday, it will take days to sift through all the stuff that was released on Tuesday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the first part of their Final Report on Operation Fast and Furious.

Mike Vanderboegh has been doing some sifting of his own. He has written extensively in the past about Dr. Kevin O’Reilly who had been in the White House on the National Security Council. You may remember that he and Phoenix SAC Bill Newell had a back channel communication going on Operation Fast and Furious. While Newell has been questioned about this, the White House refused to let the Oversight Committee speak with Dr. O’Reilly citing executive privilege.

In his latest installment, Mike finds more evidence of the White House’s fingerprints on Operation Fast and Furious. Sit down with a cup of coffee and read it a couple of times. There is a lot there.

Vanderboegh And Codrea On Lou Dobbs Tonight

I’m glad to see Lou Dobbs give Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea the credit they deserve for breaking the story on Operation Fast and Furious. They were interviewed this evening on his Fox Business show about their ethics complaint against Eric Holder as well as what they see coming next for the investigation.

Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

A bit off topic but I think Mike looks good given his recent surgery and the attendant complications. You can tell he’s lost some weight. I hope and pray that his recovery continues without any further complications.

Bar Ethics Complaint Against Holder Makes Fox News

The formal ethics complaint filed with the DC Bar by Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea got some airtime today on Fox News.

William LaJeunesse of Fox discussed the complaint with Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation and Michael Frisch of Georgetown Law Center. Frisch was formerly senior assistant bar counsel to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. As might be expected, they differed in the seriousness of the ethics complaint and how it would be treated by the DC Bar.

Darling, who is a Senior Fellow for Government Studies at Heritage, thought the complaint was on solid ground. However, he didn’t expect them to take it up until next year.

“It is clearly a reasonable basis for a complaint against Eric Holder to say ‘you are in charge of the Justice Department, the Justice Department is refusing to produce documents that were subpoenaed by Congress and as a result you were held in contempt to Congress not once, but twice’,” he said.

Frisch, who is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown, didn’t think the DC Bar would take the complaint seriously and would likely dismiss it.

“Because this particular complaint is written as if the attorney general had already been convicted of a crime, I think it will likely be rejected on its face,” said Michael Frisch, former member of the D.C. Bar Counsel and current Georgetown Law School professor.

Frisch goes on to add that the DC Bar has the option of deferring any action until such time as a parallel proceeding such as a civil proceeding is completed.

Mike and David fired a shot across the bow and it was a brilliant strategic move. Whether it is squashed or not by the DC Bar is actually irrelevant because it has kept the issue of Holder and contempt alive in the mainstream media.

Ethics Complaint Filed Against Holder With The DC Bar

In the next stage of taking the fight for justice to the belly of the beast, David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh have filed a formal ethics complaint with the Office of Bar Counsel, Board on Professional Responsibility of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

From their press release:

3 July 2012

An ethics complaint against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been filed by David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh with the Office of Bar Counsel, Board on Professional Responsibility of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Codrea and Vanderboegh are the two bloggers who first broke the news of the Fast and Furious scandal in December 2010.

Said Vanderboegh, Eric Holder believes that he will escape serious consequences of the congressional investigations of the Fast and Furious scandal simply by running out the clock on his tenure. We intend this ethics complaint to place him on notice that his lies and malfeasances will follow him until justice is done.”

 The letter accompanying their ethics complaint can be found here.

More power to David and Mike. I’d love to see the look on the face of the person who opened that complaint!

Condolences

Condolences to David Codrea and his family on the passing of his father this morning. David’s father had been ill for some time. Nonetheless, nothing really prepares one for the loss of a parent.

Also keep Mike Vanderboegh in your prayers as well. He went in the hospital on Monday for what was scheduled to be an out-patient procedure to place a stent in his esophagus. The out-patient procedure turned into an overnight stay and I’m still not sure if he has returned home yet.

It is a cruel twist of fate that the two citizen journalists who broke the news of Operation Fast and Furious were not able to participate in today’s events. Without their groundbreaking work and their introduction of certain whistleblowers to Congressional investigators, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee would never have voted to hold Eric Holder in contempt. We owe them a debt of gratitude for their tireless work on this scandal. We should also keep them and their families in our prayers during this trying time for both families.

“There’s A Bus Waiting”

Given the history of Obama throwing subordinates and other supporters under the bus, I don’t think any of us really believe that he’ll go to the mattresses for Eric Holder. Chris Muir in tomorrow’s Day by Day cartoon captures this reality very well.

It is obvious that Muir keeps up with the gun blogs to know about Mike’s latest revelation regarding the new whistleblowers.

Courtesy of Chris Muir and Day by Day Cartoon.

Keep In Your Thoughts And Prayers

During this Holy Week I’d ask that you keep in your thoughts and prayers two gun bloggers who have made very important contributions over the years.

First, Dave Hardy who was just released from the hospital on Wednesday.

Released from the hospital yesterday afternoon, still rather weak. Last night I got a sound sleep, but the night before got only an hour or so. The usual hospital noises, awakenings for blood draws and vital checks, plus a special disturbance…. patients in the next room over who listened to the TV or talked loudly until 2 AM, and thereafter faked moans of pain and begged for help. They stopped the moans of pain after another patient mocked them by groaning in chorus. I don’t know if they were drunk, had mental problems, or were just jackasses.

Doc said he was initially concerned that I was going septic, but that had been avoided.

All I have left is exhaustion, some aches from sleeping on that bed, and some bruising where the IV went in and more where I got all the blood sticks in the other arm. I even got four injections to the belly; I’d only heard of those for rabies (and that might be history, or a legend).

Secondly, Mike Vanderboegh who just had major surgery has been readmitted to the hospital to deal with what has now been diagnosed as an abcess.

Woke up 0230 with stabbing pain in my left side just under the rib cage, like somebody was taking a Sykes-Fairbairn dagger and probing for my lung. Called Doc and he, like me, feared a pulmonary embolus. Made it into the ER in record time. CAT scan on lungs said no, praise the Lord. Further tests revealed that something is leaking internally, with probable infection. They stuck another drain in me and here I am sitting in Room 539 back at Trinity Montclair. Keep me in your prayers.

I’d also ask that you remember the family of Newbius whose funeral was this past Wednesday. Losing a father and husband is always hard.