#rsrh If you follow me (@moelane) on Twitter then you know…

…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.

More details about tomorrow’s Univision expose of Operation Fast & Furious.

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: Continue reading More details about tomorrow’s Univision expose of Operation Fast & Furious.

#rsrh The missing pieces of the WaPo’s ‘fact-checking’ of Obama’s Operation Fast & Furious remarks.

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:

Oversight Chair Darrell Issa makes Justice Department perfidy part of the official Operation Fast & Furious record.

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. Continue reading Oversight Chair Darrell Issa makes Justice Department perfidy part of the official Operation Fast & Furious record.

Meet the Seventeen… Erm. “Not-Traitors”… to Eric Holder.

“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:

Candidate District Opponent
Mike Ross AR-04 Tom Cotton
John Barrow GA-12 TBD
Leonard Boswell IA-03 Tom Latham
Joe Donnelly IN-SEN Richard Mourdock
Ben Chandler KY-06 Andy Barr
Tim Walz MN-01 TBD
Collin Peterson MN-07 TBD
Mike McIntryre NC-07 David Rouzer
Larry Kissell NC-08 TBD
BIll Owens NY-21 Matt Doheny
Kathy Hochul NY-27 Chris Collins
Dan Boren Retiring TBD
Mark Critz PA-12 Keith Rothus
Jason Altmire Retiring
Jim Matheson UT-04 Mia Love
Ron Kind WI-03 TBD
Nick Rahall WV-03 Rick Snuffer

Continue reading Meet the Seventeen… Erm. “Not-Traitors”… to Eric Holder.

Reminder: the NRA will score Holder contempt vote.

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. Continue reading Reminder: the NRA will score Holder contempt vote.

Jay Carney pretty much flubs everything about Operation Fast & Furious.

[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:

Continue reading Jay Carney pretty much flubs everything about Operation Fast & Furious.

#rsrh If you missed Oversight’s Holder Contempt Hearing…

…you can find it here. After C-SPAN finishes processing it, people should be able to clip and embed sections.

Meanwhile: Trey Gowdy probably had the single most epic exhibition (H/T: @DLoesch) of angry, truly righteous indignation, but he had a lot of competition. There are a lot of Republicans out there who stopped listening to administration excuses at about the time that it became clear that the Department of Justice GOT PEOPLE KILLED.

Meet Ronald C Machen, US Attorney for the District of Columbia.

He hates his life – or at least, he’s about to hate his life. You see, if Congress votes today to hold US Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal contempt of Congress today for Holder’s stonewalling on providing documents on the botched Operation Fast & Furious botched gunrunning scandal* then Mr. Machen is apparently the lucky individual who gets to bring charges up for a grand jury.  Assuming, of course, that Holder doesn’t blink before then and give House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa the documents that Issa’s been demanding ever since Holder got caught lying about the Department of Justice’s oversight of Operation Fast & Furious.

All of this puts Machen in an absolutely no-win situation: if the US Attorney brings charges, Machen will get an unbelievable amount of push-back from both the administration (which will be passive-aggressive) and the DC local political structure (which will just be aggressive). But if Ronald Machen does not bring charges then his career is over; the DC federal power structure values obedience to Congressional prerogatives a heck of a lot more than they value obedience to Presidential ones.  Presidents are ephemeral; even the successful ones have less than a decade of true power. Congress endures, and it gets mean when it’s crossed. Continue reading Meet Ronald C Machen, US Attorney for the District of Columbia.

War.

Sen. John Cornyn (R, TX) announced today that it’s time for Attorney General Eric Holder to go.

You know, Eric Holder… you better hope President Obama has you on his short list for pardons.  Or that the President is even ready to put such a list together.  But, hey, thanks for the material! The House is going to love having it.

Moe Lane

PS: Actually, AG Holder, what makes people tired with Washington DC is seeing partisan officials ignore the deaths of hundreds of people that took place as a direct result of those officials’ partisan domestic policies.  Even if the dead people are Mexicans.

Mister Holder.