6/28/2012

Newest Fox News piece: Holder contempt citation -- just remember that people died because of 'Fast and Furious'

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:
People died.  It is something to remember during today’s historic House vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt. Never before has a sitting attorney general been held in contempt.   
With all the hoopla over past scandals from Watergate to Filegate to Pardongate, the cover up was always worse than the crime.  Yet, in "Fast and Furious," the guns that the US government supplied to Mexican drug gangs have been used to kill one American border agent and over 300 Mexican citizens and commit numerous other crimes. 
To date, because of administration stonewalling, we don't have answers to the most basic questions.  Why would the Obama administration give drug gangs guns without trying to trace them? Why not inform Mexican officials about the program so that the Mexicans could try tracing the guns on the Mexican side of the border? Why start pushing untraceable guns to Mexico at the same time that the Obama administration was making theirwildly false claim that 90 percent of crime guns in Mexico were from the US? . . .



UPDATE: In my piece I mentioned that the Democrats who voted against Holder were under real pressure not to do it.  Politico has this:

The Georgia Democratic Party refused on Friday to denounce antagonistic comments the recently-elected chairman of its convention delegation made regarding U.S. Rep. John Barrow.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who was just last week unanimously elected chairman of the state party’s convention delegation, said Barrow had betrayed his party by green lighting a Republican-championed effort to charge U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt, the first instance in which federal lawmakers had imposed the sanction on a member of any presidential cabinet.
“You are a Republican hiding in Democrat’s clothing,” Lowery said of Barrow. “He doesn’t count in the Democratic column. He might as well go on and be a Republican.”
For the state’s most vulnerable incumbent pol, it was an unusually strong reprimand from a party-endorsed voice. . . .




UPDATE: The final vote was 255-67.

The vote was 255-67 with one lawmaker voting not present. Seventeen Democrats broke ranks to vote in favor of contempt, while two Republicans voted against the measure.
The vote was preceded by a heated floor debate.
“It’s important to remember how we got here,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said during a speech ahead of the vote. “The Justice Department has not provided the facts and information we requested. … It’s our constitutional duty to find out.”
The GOP-led House took the step over the alleged failure to provide additional information about the failed gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious which was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- a division of the Justice Department led by Holder.
Democrats walked out of the chamber ahead of the vote.
“What is happening here is shameful," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who argued House Republicans are more politically motivated in attacking Holder than getting to the bottom of the failed operation, in which at least two of the guns were connected to the fatal shooting of U.S. border agent Brian Terry. . . .
More are following Pelosi's lead that the vote was motivated by Holder's attempt to stop voter suppression.  Seriously?
AME expressed its “profound disagreement” with the contempt vote and also suggested that Holder had been unfairly targeted for his effort to curtail voter suppression laws. . . .

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why walk over TWO THOUSAND guns? You can't do a supposed trace with 50 or a 100 assault rifles? Remember folks, follow the ideology.

6/28/2012 2:39 PM  
Blogger CamEdwards said...

'Why would the Obama administration give drug gangs guns without trying to trace them?'

- You do realize that is a blatant lie, don't you? The Obama administration never gave anyone guns, never had any idea this was going on, and if you actually read the 6 month investigation from Fortune into the whole case, you would know that the purchase and movement of firearms was the result of one ATF member who DIDN'T GET APPROVAL FROM ANYONE and hid information from his superior while conducting the exercise. It is so sad that someone can die as a result of this weird, horrible case of mismanagement, yet that man's life be turned into just another Obama punching bag. Grow up and show some respect for the ATF agent who died.

6/28/2012 9:38 PM  
Blogger John Lott said...

1) You are not Cam Edwards. But given how inaccurate your claims are here, I am not surprised that you felt it necessary to pretend to be someone else.

2) The Obama administration demanded that gun dealers make gun sales that they didn't want to make. Here is an example of gun dealers wanting to know what liability that they will face if they make gun sales that they thought were to people who were prohibited from getting the guns. http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/atf_investigation_02_111207.pdf?tag=contentMain;contentBody

6/28/2012 11:42 PM  
Blogger CamEdwards said...

Unbelievable!!! Inaccurate claims?! READ THE 6 MONTH INVESTIGATION BY FORTUNE MAGAZINE. It doesn't support your claims, so why would you bother, I guess. Just once, open your mind to the fact that you could be wrong about this. That there was no overarching conspiracy, that unfortunately Dodson (you'd know that name if you read the article) acted without approval from the ATF or the attorneys and that the team leader investigating the Fast and Furious case had no idea this had happened until a month later. Back up your facts.

You also keep saying the 'Obama Administration'. You do realize that a government entity such as the ATF doesn't change management when a new party is in power, yes? That the people conducting these cases have been with the organization for 10-20 years each? You have not one piece of evidence that connects the Obama administration OR the ATF to gun sellers being directed to sell guns to Mexican cartels. I would love to believe your conspiracy theory, but if you literally took the time to read the Fortune article, you'd understand how this situation panned out.

And for the record, I am actually Cameron Edwards. :) I found you via your piece on Foxnews.com and felt like setting you straight.

You can't go onto a news website and lie about facts like this. The Obama administration never gave guns to drug gangs.

The end.

6/29/2012 12:13 AM  
Blogger John Lott said...

1) My piece details the wiretap info showing that Obama political appointees at the top of DOJ knew about this months before Brian Terry was killed.
2) This policy involved several DOJ agencies (look through by posts tagged BATF) and you don't get multiple DOJ agencies coordinating actions without heavy involvement from higher political appointees at Justice.
3) Again follow the BATF tag and you will see my response to the poorly done Fortune Magazine article.
4) The Obama administration ordered gun dealers to sell guns that they didn't want to sell to gangs. They then refused to trace them or tell the Mexican government about the guns so that they could trace them.

6/30/2012 12:56 PM  

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