{"id":8185,"date":"2012-06-28T10:52:56","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T17:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8185"},"modified":"2012-06-28T10:52:56","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T17:52:56","slug":"fast-and-phony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/28\/fast-and-phony\/","title":{"rendered":"Fast and Phony"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today the US House will vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.  This is a Republican dog and pony show, and nothing but, because both their insane NRA conspiracy theory and their deceitful misrepresentation of the facts in the case are falling apart, as a new article in Fortune demonstrates.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"Health…Quite simply, there’s a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal<\/strong>. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.<\/p>\n

Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.<\/p>\n

How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today. It’s a story that starts with a grudge, specifically Dodson’s anger at Voth. After the terrible murder of agent Terry, Dodson made complaints that were then amplified, first by right-wing bloggers, then by CBS. Rep. Issa and other politicians then seized those elements to score points against the Obama administration, which, for its part, has capitulated in an apparent effort to avoid a rhetorical battle over gun control in the run-up to the presidential election. (A Justice Department spokesperson denies this and asserts that the department is not drawing conclusions until the inspector general’s report is submitted.)<\/p>\n

"Republican senators are whipping up the country into a psychotic frenzy with these reports that are patently false," says Linda Wallace, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation unit who was assigned to the Fast and Furious team (and recently retired from the IRS). A self-described gun-rights supporter, Wallace has not been criticized by Issa’s committee.<\/p>\n

The ATF’s accusers seem untroubled by evidence that the policy they have pilloried didn’t actually exist<\/strong>… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Fortune\/CNN<\/a>> <\/p>\n

This is a very lengthily and complex article, extensively documented, and a small snippet like this cannot give you even a rudimentary picture of what it is all about, but in short, the Republican description is almost the exact opposite of what Fast and Furious actually was.  I urge you to click through and give it the study it warrants.<\/font><\/p>\n

Rachel Maddow outlined Republican lies and interviewed the article\u2019s author, Katherine Eban.  They did an excellent job explaining it.<\/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

This will go down as one of the most embarrassing incidents in congressional history.  The one good thing is that, except for bellows from Republicans, the vote will end this shameful political theatre.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today the US House will vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.  This is a Republican dog and pony show, and nothing but, because both their insane NRA conspiracy theory and their deceitful misrepresentation of the facts in the case are falling apart, as a new article in Fortune demonstrates. …Quite […]<\/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-8185","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\/8185","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=8185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}