{"id":8112,"date":"2012-06-21T11:39:26","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T18:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8112"},"modified":"2012-06-21T12:01:35","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T19:01:35","slug":"fast-and-frivolous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/21\/fast-and-frivolous\/","title":{"rendered":"Fast and Frivolous"},"content":{"rendered":"

In order to put this article together, I had to do a couple extra hours research last night to bring me up to speed on the Fast and Furious controversy.  I was behind the curve on it, because I knew just enough to realize that it was not important enough to warrant my attention.  That was before Republicans determined to hold a House vote to declare Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, a political ploy without merit, inspired by an conspiracy theory coined by a thoroughly discredited extremist.  This is the newest Republican chapter of jobs, jobs, jobs.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"21FandF\"The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted to find Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress for failing to provide subpoenaed documents in the flawed Fast and Furious gun-tracking case, just hours after President Obama asserted executive privilege and backed the attorney general\u2019s refusal to release the material.<\/p>\n

The vote for contempt and the White House insertion into the growing Southwest border \u201cgun-walking\u201d scandal set up a significant constitutional clash between the two branches of the federal government, one that ultimately may not be resolved until it reaches the courts.<\/p>\n

The Republican-led committee, headed by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), voted strictly along party<\/strong> lines in finding Holder in contempt. It now sends the matter to the full House for a floor vote to ask the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., or a special prosecutor to force the Obama administration to provide the documents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe committee has uncovered serious wrongdoing by the Justice department,\u201d Issa said of his investigation into Fast and Furious, in which several thousand illegally purchased firearms were circulated on both sides of the Southwest border and many wound up with Mexican drug cartels. \u201cThat wrongdoing has cost lives on both sides of the border.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the panel, said the Republicans caused the standoff by demanding the release of internal Department of Justice records<\/strong>. \u201cThe administration was forced into this position by the committee\u2019s unreasonable insistence on pressing forward, \u201c he said.<\/p>\n

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), put it on a more personal level and said she was \u201cextremely disgusted\u201d that her committee had come to this. \u201cI am horrified you are going through with this contempt charge,\u201d she said. \u201cThis shouldn\u2019t be a witch hunt.\u201d\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <LA Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Fast and Furious is an expansion of Operation Linebacker, a very similar program started under the Bush Regime.  The sting, a locally managed operation, went bad, and Holder shut it down when he learned of it.  That should be the end of it, and Congress would be better served to investigate Darrell Issa, for excellent reasons<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n

To give you more detail, here is Ed Schultz interviewing Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Jonathan Alter.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

Why were no Republicans interviewed to explain the transition between Operation Linebacker and Fast and Furious?  Committee Democrats requested this over and over again.  But Issa and the Republicans have no interest in learning the truth.<\/font><\/p>\n

Now because I did not watch Faux Noise<\/em>, the Republican Ministry of Propaganda, I did not know the rest of what Republicans are up to with this witch hunt. They are pushing an absurd Second Amendment Conspiracy Theory. Rachel Maddow covered that in two segments. In the first she provides background.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

In the second, she discusses this Teabuggery with Bob Herbert.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it amazing that this whole thing grew out of \u201cObama gonna take your guns away\u201d Teabuggery championed by the same guy who intentionally instigated rock throwing violence at Democratic offices when Obamacare passed?<\/font><\/p>\n

I think that Obama claimed executive privilege, because he saw where Issa and the Republicans were going with this, an attack on him and a stall to prevent any real work from being done.  In addition, many of the documents Issa demanded are documents that the executive branch cannot legally release, so Issa was setting up a refusal on which to base his bogus contempt charge.  However Obama mas mistaken to take this route to refuse, because it gives the appearance of a coverup.<\/font><\/p>\n

Finally, during the 2008 campaign Obama said he had no intent to pursue Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzales, etc., for the many actual crimes committed during the Bush Regime, because he wanted to move forward, instead of tying up Congress with the matter and getting nothing else done.  At that time, I said he was making a mistake, and I said that, as soon as Republicans had the opportunity to do so, they would tie up Congress and get nothing else done, pursuing trumped up crimes against his administration.  History has validated my hypothesis.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In order to put this article together, I had to do a couple extra hours research last night to bring me up to speed on the Fast and Furious controversy.  I was behind the curve on it, because I knew just enough to realize that it was not important enough to warrant my attention.  That […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}