Moe Lane

And Twitter just started the resignation watch.

OBAMABUS being wound up. RT @moelane: Ohhhhhh sh*t: Barack Obama has ‘complete confidence’ in Eric Holder.He’s dead in the water.

— Aaron Gardner (@Aaron_RS) May 16, 2013

Eric Holder has Obama’s complete confidence even though he may have perjured himself yesterday by falsely claiming a recusal

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) May 16, 2013

“Billy Martin is my manager…” RT @hotlinejosh: Obama: “I have complete confidence in Eric Holder as Attorney General”

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) May 16, 2013

@melissatweets @moelane Obama: “I have as much confidence in him as I did in Rev. Wright.”

— SonnyGirard (@SonnyGirard) May 16, 2013

@moelane “I have complete confidence in the coach” = RIP

— Dome Beers (@DomeBeers) May 16, 2013

…Well, at least my Twitter neighborhood did.

I know, I know: you are wounded unto death about such a thing occurring. Wounded unto death.

Attorney General Eric Holder will testify before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, where Republicans say they’ll grill him about the Justice Department’s secret review of Associated Press phone records and the IRS targeting of conservative groups for extra tax scrutiny, among other issues.

The oversight hearing had already been scheduled for 1 p.m. on May 15. But Republicans now plan to use the time to address the two issues that came to light this week.

The real question is, though: will it just be the Republicans piling on? Possibly not: the National Journal is kind of hinting* that maybe Democrats on Judiciary will be wanting to put some distance between them and the Obama administration’s exciting new game Wheel of Scandal. The AP thing would be the place for House Democrats to do it, too. Of the (current) Big Three scandals going on right now (Benghazi, IRS, AP): the narrative on Benghazi is locked down among Democrats. No way are any of them going to admit that the White House deliberately lied about the origins of that attack because they were in the middle of a Presidential election. The IRS issue is kind of problematical: the Democratic progressive base simply seems intellectually incapable of understanding why it looks horrifically bad when the IRS confesses that they targeted the administration’s political enemies. Best not to push that one too far… but the AP? Yeah, that’s reasonably safe. Particularly since the House passed a federal shield bill in 2009 that would have protected all those fine, upstanding journalists. So, yeah, they’re on the side of the angels on that one. (more…)

From the New York Times’ glum realization that no, the President has no stomach for a fight with pro-gun civil rights activists over the 2nd Amendment comes two sentences that really did deserve a directed lightning strike.

In addition to limits on high-capacity magazines and expanded background checks, Mr. Biden’s group is looking at ways of keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and cracking down on sales that are already illegal. One possibility is tougher laws against straw purchasing with longer prison terms for those who buy guns for others.

Unless they work for the Obama administration, of course.  In that case there’s apparently no need for prison terms at all.

Moe Lane

PS: It must be distressing, having a President from one’s party who is also a coward.  I wouldn’t know, of course: I’m a Republican.

…in other words, the former is having the latter stay on as Attorney General.

President Obama is holding on to Eric Holder as the nation’s top law-enforcement official, The Post has learned.

The newly re-elected president asked his controversial attorney general to stay for the second term, and Holder has agreed despite enduring a firestorm of criticism from Republican lawmakers.

Because, of course, now that the election is over Democratic lawmakers no longer need to worry about offending the sensibilities of Mexican-American voters (I’ve had folks argue privately that they never were worried about offending said sensibilities; I see their point, but do not share it). So if you were hoping for any kind of justice, here, stop hoping that the Democrats will be involved.  It’s Issa or nobody, at this point.

(more…)

The below is not the entire Univision Operation Fast & Furious expose: it’s merely about ten minutes of it.  Ten very graphic, very infuriating, and very embarrassing ten minutes of it.  Don’t watch it if you have a physical/mental problem with seeing people being murdered on-screen, and for real:

(see also this ABC article)

It’s a useful primer for what happened: which is to say, Mexican drug cartels decided to buy guns from US shops and the US government (ATF Special Agent William Newell* is mentioned by name, but he’s not the only one caught up in this mess) decided to not only let them; they decided to track illegal gun sales by waiting to see when and where guns known to have been sold illegally showed up at Mexican crime scenes.

Please pause for a moment to think about it.  And possibly participate in a calming exercise. (more…)

…that I spent the time period from 7 to 8 being heavily impressed with Univision’s coverage of Operation Fast & Furious, despite the fact that I don’t speak Spanish and I was counting on people doing running translations for me.  I will have to sit down and watch the whole thing again once it’s subtitled, but this is my first takeaway: Univision made a compelling case that the US government is stonewalling any kind of meaningful investigation into what the hell happened, and it did so all the more powerfully by not taking a partisan political side.

But I will. I am with Paul Ryan on this:  FIRE ERIC HOLDER.  NOW.  And note that we’ve all been saying this for over a year at this point.

Background: the Spanish-language media organization Univision has apparently been building up quite the head of steam over Operation Fast & Furious, which was an operation where we blithely let guns get handed over to Mexican narco-terrorist gangs with precisely zero oversight, hesitation, or interest in what said gangs would do with said weapons.  What they did with them, of course, was to use those guns to murder Mexican nationals.  The administration is stonewalling the investigation into all this (particularly the investigation into US Border Agent Brian Terry’s murder, as OF&F guns showed up at the murder scene); and Univision is promising a long, hard look at the ongoing debacle tomorrow.

And that look promises to be a doozy.  From the Christian Science Monitor: (more…)

It’s a miracle that we got three Pinocchios out of them, frankly.  Anyway, here are three things missing from the WaPo critique:

1. Operation Wide Receiver attempted to track the guns that had been allowed to be sold to suspected gun-runners; Operation Fast & Furious did not.
2. Operation Wide Receiver was done in cooperation with the Mexican government; Operation Fast & Furious did not*.
3. Several hundred Mexicans (minimum) also died because of Operation Fast & Furious.

These are all significant details – and the lack of mention of Mexican casualties is particularly egregious, given that Obama’s original lie was made in a Latino forum hosted by a Spanish-language television network. Poor form, Washington Post: poor form.  C-, and do better next time.

Moe Lane

*The source for those two differences? Eric Holder.

Via:

WaPo Fact Check: “Obama’s Univision denial that Fast and Furious started on his watch” washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-che… #tcot

— Ryan Williams (@RyanGOP) September 22, 2012

A ways down below the fold is a description of a wiretap application by the Department of Justice (not the wiretap application itself) that had been provided to the House Oversight Committee by a whistle-blower, in response to Oversight’s investigation of the Justice Department’s Operation Fast & Furious debacle.  The information found in it would normally be not accessible to anybody outside of the committee – the information that it is describing is under court seal – but Oversight Chair Darrell Issa put said description in the Congressional Record, secure in the knowledge that the Speech & Debate Clause of the Constitution almost certainly protects him from any sort of retribution.  And, since it’s in the Congressional Record, it’s now by definition in the public record.

So let’s go. (more…)

“Treason doth never prosper*…?“

And what a fascinating rogues’ gallery they are, too.  Via @GeorgiaTipsheet, meet the seventeen Democrats who voted to hold Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his ongoing coverup of the Fast & Furious gunrunning schedule:

(more…)

I’m not sure why I missed this at the time – the letter’s dated June 20th – but it’s official: “the NRA will consider this vote in [their] candidate evaluations.”  That doesn’t guarantee a contempt charge passing the House, but only because a contempt charge was already guaranteed.  For all the loose and charged rhetoric going around, if Speaker Boehner wasn’t going to let Oversight Chair Issa go forward with this it wouldn’t have gone forward, and Boehner wouldn’t have let this gone forward if the votes weren’t there in the first place.  What this does guarantee is that a lot of the House Democrats who bitterly cling to their high NRA scores like so many floatation devices are now going to have to choose what’s more important; the President, or their own careers.  Jim Matheson of Utah is merely the first to break under the strain (via Hot Air).  Seeing who else similarly back-stabs the President tomorrow should be entertaining. (more…)

[UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers.  Come, I will conceal nothing from you: it's been a rotten week (the whole family's been down with colds, which is precisely as much fun as it sounds when your youngest is two and a half). Retail therapy would be nice: hit the tip jar to the side and I promise to spend it on wargame miniatures.]

This is going to be a very visual post, and, as usual, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney provides little if any actual semantic content, so I will simply summarize each video. First off, we have the standard obfuscation:

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