Showing posts with label Fast and Furious scandal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fast and Furious scandal. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

SLOW AND IMPERIOUS!




On December 14, 2010  an American border agent Brian Terry was killed by guns allowed to walk across the border by the ATF's sting operation known as "Fast and Furious" that started in 2009.  Pursuant to a  lawsuit filed by Congress, the court finally burped out a ruling in January 2016, that required the administration to release a portion of documents requested by the oversight committee. 

Now three months after that court ruling and almost 5 years after the scandal first broke, the Department of Justice is releasing some, (not all) of that portion of documents required by the court ruling and demanded by the House and Senate.
 
Obama used Executive Privilege to shield Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice officers, allowing them to withhold documents for years regarding the gun-running scheme. Congress then sued for the documents claiming that Obama could not use Executive Privilege in order to deny the Terry family or the American people, the right to know the extent of the government's involvement in this deadly so called anti-crime caper.

After a long laborious court battle the square cement wheels of justice, have finally rolled the cart of corruption forward, where it is spilling a little more of its oozing load of backhanded culpability onto the public street. Congress is just now weeding through voluminous notes and e-mails looking for evidence. Meanwhile, most Americans believe justice for the Terry family and countless others, deadly affected by our government's Machiavellian arrogance, will never be served to those that deserve punishment.   

"Justice delayed is justice denied" is a quote by William Gladstone a 19th century British politician, but its razor edged truth has not dulled with time. This Administration has used delay, deflection and subversion as its modus operandi from the very first days in office and will shamelessly have all its henchmen and women safely far away, from viewing vertical iron bars and wearing orange jumpsuits, when it finally folds its occupy the White House tents, for good, next year.

It is one thing to have a deliberate and due process system that protects the rights of citizens from being falsely or unjustly imprisoned, but if our justice system is so slow and imperious to the need for a swift end to the withholding or the destruction of evidence, by our government, then there isn't justice, but rather elitist absolution.

The Obama administration has been turning its back to Congress knowing the chamber is just a room full of rubber cleavers. He is unconcerned that his iniquitous activities would earn them a stab of ethical retribution or legal accountability.
Why have our representatives done nothing to government violators of our laws, while the average citizen experiences swift and heartless legal enforcement? Given the corruption of Holder's justice system they should have passed an independent counsel bill, to sharpen the cleaver blade. 

There is a difference between government scandals that involve innocent citizens being killed or financially ruined, versus government waste. Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS targeting, need swift justice not years of stalling. Retribution needs to be swift and harsh to send a strong deterrent message to those people in government who are involved with callous acts against the citizenry. Otherwise animosity between the government and the people ferments a cynical loathing by both, and then government power becomes routinely abusive. 

Waco, Ruby Ridge and now the recent FBI shooting of Lavoy Finicum involved in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge center in Oregon, make all Americans wonder, "Do citizens matter"? Whether you think the ranchers should have been protesting and trespassing on federal lands, or not, was killing a man necessary? When did vandalism and trespassing rise to a death sentence in America? Why didn't the FBI let this man go turn himself in, to the county sheriff? 

Not all government corruption is equal, just as not all crime, involves sirens and paddy wagons. For instance, police are not called when there is a beating by a sadist married to a masochist. Police are not called when parents are robbed by their drug addicted child. Police are also not called when criminal gangs are warring with criminal gangs.

However, if the sadists lays hands on a unwilling victim, or that addicted child robs the neighbors, or those gangs shoot and kill innocent bystanders on the street, then police are called and the community clamors for justice and accountability.

 "Fast and Furious" did spill out onto the street. It is, the sadist government,  the addict government and the gang government spilling out of their haven and harming innocent citizens in three ways. 

First, we citizens have a masochistic tendency to call for laws on every folly in life, unwittingly causing more pain to a wider group of people. The government sadists love it, because they protect their own, but for the rest of us, more laws, only results in less freedom. Most Americans believe that our justice system has ceased to be blind, and there are sadly those who live, above the law. Today, it seems that only  unconnected citizens suffer consequences under the federal code.

Second, as government is addicted to money and power, we as citizens continue to enable our addicted Congress persons by re-electing them back into office rather than tossing them out. Too many inept and constitutionally ignorant House and Senate representatives hold on to power because we refuse to demand accountability. How can we not, expect that our rights will be altered, ignored or legislated away, when we refuse to stand up to Washington corruption?

Three, government departments are like gangs. When they engage in turf wars with each other we have incidences like 911 or the Boston Marathon bombing, in which all of us, trusting citizens are victims, thought of only as collateral damage by the bureaucracy. There are people dead and missing limbs, because the DHS and the FBI, acted politically correct rather than err on the side of American safety. (The Tsarnaev family should never have been granted asylum by DHS, and the FBI should have deported Tamerlan Tsarnaev.)

Worse, when government agencies join forces in a collective gang to harass citizens, it becomes a conspiratorial cabal as rotten and thuggish as any section of a major city where street gangs set the rules.

When citizens like Catherine Engelbrecht, start a civic minded group called True the Vote, in order to ensure that elections are not filled with fraud, instead of our government celebrating her participation in helping to keep elections clean, they ganged up to shut her down. The IRS, BATF, OSHA, EPA and FBI all investigated Engelbrecht family and their business because they don't like conservative groups exposing government and Party corruption. Countless other Americans have been harassed and financially hurt (Gibson Guitar) by bureaucrats empowered by a lazy Congress. 

Our government has spied on us, lied to us, used unwarranted investigation to intimidate us, forced lawful gun dealers to sell to drug dealers across the border and when these scandals result in the ultimate price of death, we as citizen expect more. Much, much, more than a grandstanding hearing by pompous politicians promising to make law changes to ensure abuses don't repeat. We want all those at the ATF and Justice Department, IRS, Veterans Administration, FBI who abused their power and caused citizen's irreparable harm to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Doesn't law enforce clamor for swift and strong justice in order to deter future crimes? Where is citizen justice for a corrupt government?

Unless citizens demand smaller more accountable government, from both political parties, then tyranny will slowly but imperiously shadow every citizen's doorway, and government edicts will be fast and furiously tyrannical, while guilty government officials remain free to be above the law. Is this the government, that so many brave Americans have died to preserve?  How perverse are American values today, that we are willing to allow government to get away with murder?    



Sunday, May 18, 2014

DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE



The Democrat Party, media pundits and liberal activists have circled the wagon around a president that has shown contempt and defiance for America's Constitution and the value of law we inherently hold dear as a nation. 

Their defensive arguments addressing Obama's many constitutional transgressions run the childish gamut from finger pointing at the previous administration to sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming a mantra of mockery with the intend to marginalize the transgressions.

In their insulated world of Obama deification they label every American that is critical of this President as racists, misogynistic, homophobic, ignorant, bitter, tin-foil crazy and hate-filled. However this name calling kill-the-messenger campaign eventually backfires.

As the old children's retort proclaims "I am rubber you are glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you" the public is becoming weary of the Democrats and their constant pompous palliation. 

Because with the rise of independent voters, what is growing painfully obvious to party politicians is that Americans do think outside of the partisan box, and the Democrat Party is the party that fears the truth. In every scandal their party has hurled distractive insults toward legitimate questions using absurd analogies to congressional fact finding as witch-hunts and circuses. 

When Democrat Party members are asked simple pointed questions that Americans deserve answers to, they shrug them away as either administrative mistakes or obfuscate using the immature game of "He or she did it too." (George Bush) 

America was once an honorable country that took pride is always seeking, finding and exposing the truth even if it hurt our reputation. The lesson of Watergate wasn't that all Republicans were corrupt (as Democrats might want you to believe) but rather that our Constitution and rule of law is only as strong as We the People demand it to be.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are the faces of a party that not only  ignores the Constitution (Obamacare) but they and their members have been perpetrating a campaign with a complicit media to hide the truth from the American people. The Democrat Party's representation has dissolved to become an Obama shield party. 

We should be asking the Democrats and those supporting the left why doesn't America have the right to know the truth. Why doesn't America deserve the truth about Benghazi, IRS, Fast and Furious and any and all administration and government scandalous behavior? Why are you supporting deceitful secrecy when you claim to be in favor of transparent government?

Why don't we know who, what and for what purpose was there a gun running sting operation that illegally allowed weapons to be bought by criminals and cross our border without any effort to interdict them? Who has been held accountable for the deaths of law enforcement officials killed by the Fast and Furious guns? 

If there is nothing to hide, then why are people exercising the fifth Amendment?  Who in the White House directed the IRS to target conservative groups? Why is the IRS being allowed to continue to harass conservatives by subjecting Tea Party donors to audits ten times the normal average? Why did Nancy Pelosi appoint Elijah Cummings to sit as vice Chairman on the IRS oversight Committee to so-call investigate wrong-doing, when we now know he and his staff co-conspired with Lois Lerner to harass True the Vote?  

For Democrats to continue to defend the indefensible actions of this administration and provide cover for such dishonorable service leads one to only two conclusions. Either the Democrat Party have no propriety and dignity left or they were involved more closely with these scandals then is yet known. In the case of the IRS targeting we are starting to discover that some members of Congress (Cummings) were playing  the role of judge, jury, and  defense lawyer while cynically caught being one of the defendants.  

Why don't we know why Ambassador Stevens was put in harm's way in Benghazi, without security, by our then Secretary of State? Why don't we know who promoted the bold faced lie about a protest caused by an obscure video? Why didn't we try to save our personnel under attack? Why was there a young green gilled "Dude" in the situation room (National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor) while the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, has yet to account for his whereabouts during the attack?
 
It seems that the cover-ups  and the closed curtain on the truth is the only thing transparent in our current government run by ideologues committed to transforming America by savaging all vestiges of honor and accountability.

The media has been absent at best and a tall tale teller for the elites in power at worst. However, as much power as the news media has over some Americans who are politically half asleep, truth is a powerful bestirring stimulant.

Americans deserve full discloser, candid testimony from government officials and real consequences for any in our government that acted either illegally or failed to act honorable under their oath of office. When either political Party engages to cover up the facts, lie to the American people or refuse to investigate wrong doing in our government , then they are violating their oath " faithfully discharge the duties of the office," and the public's trust.

                "Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men."
                                                      (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Sunday, June 24, 2012

DEMOCRATS FAST AND FURIOUSLY DON’T CARE

The Fast and Furious scandal has yet to be exposed, explained, detailed, documented and fully disclosed to the public. It seems that the only information known about this Gun Running operation is the when, it occurred while the questions of what, how, who and why remain shrouded in secrecy.


This scandal has graduated from a failed sting operation being investigated by Congress to a corrupt conspiracy between the ATF, DOJ and the White House that now has the President involved by invoking Executive Privilege.

The Democrats sitting on the House Committee claim that the Republicans are on a witch hunt to embarrass Eric Holder and the Obama administration. Are they serious? They claim that Holder has released all the relevant documents pertaining to this investigation even though most of the documents turned over by Justice contain a visible letterhead while the rest of the words on the pages are “blacked out” or redacted. Do they think that reflects supplying information?

Further the Democrats continue to play the blame George Bush game by comparing a previous gun-running covert ATF sting named operation “Wide Receiver” as though they were kissing cousins. That could not be further from the truth. They know it and we know it.

First operation “Wide Receiver” had the full knowledge and cooperation of the Mexican government in a joint effort to uncover the gun running network of the cartels. The guns that initially went across the border were interdicted because those guns were outfitted with tracking devices. Eventually, however the cartels criminals realized that the guns were being traced and they were able to disable the tracking devices. When both the ATF and the Mexican authorities started to lose track of the guns the operation was shut down by the Bush Administration in 2007.

Unlike Fast and Furious we know what the goal was in “Wide Receiver” that being to uncover the network.

We know the how of the operation, which was the tracking of weapons to allow Mexican police to make the arrests and gather intelligence on the network.

We know the who which was a cooperative law enforcement effort between the Justice Department, (AG Mukasey) the Alcohol and Firearms Agency
(Todd Jones)and the United States and Mexican Government.

We also know the why of the operation, which of course was to stop gun traffic across the border and help the Mexican government by disrupting the drug cartels ability to outgun their military and police with American made weapons.

Lastly we know why the program was shut down. The reason was that the Mexican criminals figured out how to disable the tracking devices and guns were then lost by both ATF and Mexican authorities. It was a program with good intentions to stop violence by thugs that initially yielding better intelligence but when guns were lost Bush’s Justice Department did the right thing and shut down the program.


We also know that this type of sting operation used in law enforcement is pretty S.O.P (Standard Operating Procedure) in most covert criminal investigations. Whether it is money laundering, drug trafficking or any other network of transferring contraband the tracking of the low man (bag man) in the point of sale or transfer and following them to a larger player (bigger criminal) in the illegal network allows law enforcement greater effectiveness to halt the criminal operations.

Conversely what do we know about operation “Fast and Furious”?

We know the when. Fast and Furious was started in 2009. We know that both the American people and the Mexican government did not know about Fast and Furious gun-running until Border agent Brian Terry died December 14, 2010.


We have yet to learn who authorized Fast and Furious in the Justice Department and whether AG Holder knew and the President knew about this unethical operation.

We don’t know what Fast and Furious intended to accomplish. In fact, it seems a shrouded mystery that ATF law enforcement would solicit gun store owners to sell to customers it would otherwise turn away then watch the gun buyers take their booty across the border while they watched and did nothing.

Therefore we don’t know why this operation was conceived. Why would you allow guns across the border without tracking devices and without any way to interdict and recover those weapons?

Perhaps most importantly we don’t know how any responsible officials in our government could have allowed this operation both to become operational.

How does a law enforcement agency get authority from our Justice Department to arm criminals without a plan to recapture both the weapons and the criminals? What was the plan?

The Terry family deserves answers from this administration. The American people deserve answers from this administration.


For Holder and the Democrats to say “Fast and Furious” was a botched gun-running operation that was similar to “Wide Receiver” under George Bush is not just a bold faced lie it is a purposeful marginalization of a serious breach of ethics, law and morality.

The idea has been floated that the real agenda for “Fast and Furious” was to allow these weapons to be found at crime scenes both in Mexico and the United States and then blame America’s gun store owners and State’s weak gun laws as being responsible for arming criminals. That would be outrageous!


Yet, is it crazy given that this operation came at the heels of President Obama making the public claim that 90 percent of the guns used by Mexican criminals came from the United States? That the ATF’s own statistics report that only 12% of American guns come from across the border making Obama’s statement wildly inaccurate and embarrassing?

Is it crazy when the operation came at the heels of the Obama administration suing Arizona for its new immigration law?

Is it crazy when we know that Mexican President Calderon has consistently accused the United States of not doing enough to stop the flow of American weapons across the border and was invited by President Obama to chastise Congress over Arizona immigration policy in May of 2010? Was Obama setting the table by having Calderon chastise Congress to reinstate the assault weapons ban?

There is a lot of smoke. There is a lot of mystery. There is a lot of conspiratorial ducks lined up and quaking while A.G. Holder refuses to release the documentation to answer all the questions.

Now the administration has imposed Executive Privilege to further shroud the discovery of the truth.

Why is the truth being withheld? What are Holder and Obama afraid of revealing to the public? What was the ultimate plan of the “Fast and Furious” operation? Why after eighteen months since the death of Brian Terry are his family and Americans still in the dark about who, what, why and how this happened?



If the Democrats want to suggest this is a witch hunt then they should come to the podium before the American people and tell us what they know. Otherwise they should be as furious and curious over the secrecy and stop playing politics over this lawless, immoral and deadly scandal!

How dare they not care! How dare they not want answers? How dare they call the search for the truth for the Terry Family a witch hunt!

All Americans should be FAST and FURIOUSLY demanding full and complete disclosure!


List of links to read further;



Tuesday, December 13, 2011

FURIOUS CURIOUS AND MORE CONTEMPTUOUS

 The Fast and Furious scandal involving the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) and the DOJ (Department of Justice) over gun running has just spread out to uncover money laundering by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration).

The DOJ has apparently been very involved in approving both the ATF gun running and now the DEA program of money laundering. The DEA stands by its laundering monitor program that it claims has operated for many years involving many countries. Yet, it has only been in operation for two years in investigating the Mexican drug cartels and recently Mexican President Calderon denies knowledge.

Therefore the expansion of the DEA’s money laundering involving Mexican drug cartels has occurred under Holder’s DOJ watch alone. Given the fiasco of the gun running operation how confident can we be that the money laundering program under this inept Department of Justice has no “walked money”.

We all know that sometimes to investigate and catch the “bad guys” especially organized crime the authorities need to use covert operations with undercover agents to both gather information and expose
 a criminal transaction.

However, there is a line between pretending to be criminal versus engagement in criminal activity on the part of any law enforcement agent or agency. This line cannot be crossed for two reasons, one there is no immunity for law enforcement and they must act within legal boundaries and two, any evidence gathered by law enforcement will be scrutinized by the court for its lawful attainment per the Exclusionary Rule.

When the ATF allowed the illegal sales of guns to unlawful intermediaries to walk across the Mexican border without arresting the individual and confiscating the guns (evidence) they violated the law. Worse of course is that as a result of that inept and illegal plan to wait until the guns arrived at their final destination in the sweaty criminal hands of the Mexican drug cartels the ATF lost track of the guns.

The results have been murderous to both hundreds of Mexican nationals and an American Border Control Agent killed by those “walked guns” that will continue to be used by criminal thugs for years to come. Congress should not rest its investigation until the victims of this government corruption is totally exposed from top to bottom.

The ATF crossed the lawful line in its “Fast and Furious” gun running sting operation and with the help of Holder’s DOJ tried to cover up the fiasco. However, the ultimate question has yet to be answered; under whose authority did these guns get the green light to “walk” across the border?

Now we have discovered that a program styled similar to the gun running but involving money laundering is being carried out by the DEA. Mexican cartels are using intermediaries to launder money in the United States to clean it from its illegal history.

Why is California Representative Darrell Issa probing into this DEA sting operation? Simple, when you have a Holder Justice Department that has failed to be straightforward with Congress, dragged his feet on adherence to subpoenaed material and has made every effort to conceal the truth about knowledge about a high risk covert operation there is no confidence in the federal enforcement system.

Will we discover that DEA is helping to facilitate the multi-million dollar Mexican cartel drug racket by also losing track of the laundered money used to aggrandize the growing criminal organizations that control Mexico where America shares close to 2,000 miles of an unprotected border?

What’s next? Will we discover that perhaps the Department of Homeland security has a program infiltrating Hezbollah in Mexico where undercover Homeland security agents are helping by digging tunnels to the United States? Perhaps maybe the FBI might have a sting operation involving sex trafficking of American prostitutes to Mexican drug cartels?

The idea that in order to stop crime we criminalize rather than deputize our law enforcement is another reason Americans need to be wary of corruption and politics insinuating itself into the executive branch of our government.

The office of the Department of Justice needs to be apolitical and operated by a constitutionally loyal and competent Attorney General.


If Eric Holder was Attorney General for the LAW and the interest of the United States and its citizenry then when his president Obama called for ignoring the Defense of Marriage Act he should have refused to comply.
He did not.

If Eric Holder understands that lady Justice is blind then the men in the Black Panther organization that stood outside the polling place in 2008 in Philadelphia intimidating voters should have been prosecuted by his
department. They were not.

If Eric Holder claims no responsibility for the Fast and Furious fiasco then when Congress asked for information regarding the covert operation he should have supplied every detail and quickly. He did not.

If Eric Holder has respect for the power and responsibility of the office of AG then when newspapers (Daily Caller) report that 52 members of Congress are calling for his resignation he should never brandish a threatening finger at the free press. He instead wagged his finger and scolded the Press to stop reporting.

This Attorney General is by far America’s most disrespectful and contemptuous top officer to ever be in charge of the foundation of our Republic’s system of law and order. At the House Judiciary Hearing
Thursday December 8th Darrell Issa (Rep of California) leading the Fast and Furious investigation warned Holder that he would be in contempt if his office if did not hand over particular e-mails to the committee unless he cited a constitutional basis exempting his office from compliance.

Holder ignored the admonition to which Issa then referenced another Attorney General that ignored Congress John Mitchell under Nixon.

Incredibly Holder’s liberal persecution complex caused him to cite another name in history that liberals liken to witch-hunting that of McCarthy by intoning the response to Issa “Have you no shame?” Part of a famous response at the McCarthy hearings by the Army lawyer Joseph Welch defending a Boston lawyer accused of communist association named Fred Fisher.


For Eric Holder to depict Issa as McCarthy or the public’s right to know (Judiciary Hearing) as a political exercise of defaming grandstanding, knowing that our government is duplicitous in the act of arming drug thugs across the border that have killed innocent Americans and Mexicans is both repugnant and deeply disturbing. Consider the insensibility
worse as Holder continues to refuse to apologize for the deaths.

Issa reference to Mitchell was far more connective of the present stonewalling by Holder and this A.G. should take note that Mitchell was prosecuted and sent to jail for 19 months.