Operation Fast and Furious News Catchup

[Jamie6.5]

It's obvious that you're reduced to personal attacks so this will be my last response to you.

If I offended you, I apologize. I certainly didn't intend to, so I'm sorry you took it that way.

I never said that there wasn't a cover up and that the BATFE did an incredibly stupid thing. But to hang this on one man who didn't even initiate the project is ridiculous. You're using uncorroborated statements like "We know F&F guns were lost on purpose." without citation and repeating them as fact.

You must have missed the first few hearings. My claim is not without citation, as that is precisely what the whistleblowers said. That they were told, under no uncertain terms, to let the guns go, when they KNEW there were no means involved to track the guns.
AKA: Lost on purpose.

Just because Speaker Boehner's press spokesman said that the WH use of an EP declaration "implies that White House officials were either involved in the ‘Fast and Furious' operation or the cover-up that followed. The administration has always insisted that wasn't the case. Were they lying, or are they now bending the law to hide the truth?" Doesn't make it fact. Posing a theory as a question is misleading at best, dishonest politics at worst.

Since you are obviously an obama supporter, please don't make references to dishonest politics. The specious attacks on Bush's admin persist to this day.
As far as: Should Holder be held responsible?"
OF COURSE he should. He's the head of the DOJ. Another famous Democrat has advice for ol' Eric,...
"The Buck Stops Here" as old Harry would say. And I'm sure he'd tell obama the same.
Hiding holder's complicity behind obama's claim of executive privilege is ridiculous. And obama's use of executive privilege smacks of his own involvement as well.
Please remember, that this is the man that claimed he would run "The Most Transparent Administration in American History."
Doesn't sound like transparency at the DOJ. It sounds like a cover-up. One that the admin is directly involved in.
And we wonder why he just promised to stop prosecuting Mexican students and workers. It sounds like he trying to make it up to them for giving guns to those that would kill their relatives back home.

I'm touched by your regard for human life but I seriously doubt that you want to begin comparing body counts due to government lies by Republicans as compared to Democrats, do you? If you want to do something to protect our Law Enforcement officers, do something about illegal, stolen and criminal straw purchases here that killed 72 officers in the US in 2011.

Want to compare deaths due to lies by admin? Sure! Look up the Gulf of Tonkin incident,... You don't stand a chance with that one. We can lay every death of a Viet Nam vet after 1964 at the feet of LBJ over that one.

Be careful what you ask for.
Or FDR's refusal to acknowledge the coming attack on Pearl Harbor?

So you want to lay all the domestically-straw purchased guns at the feet of republicans? How so?
And please tell us all how more, and more-restrictive gun laws would stop those purchases?
And then please tell us how many legal purchasers you are prepared to throw under the bus to accomplish your goals.
Because it sounds like every one of us.

 

[Doc Maker]

Please elaborate on what you consider a "personal attack", could it be simply stating the facts.

Can you provide actual data on straw purchased firearms linked to law enforcement deaths besides the ones covered here?

This is the 3rd time this has been explained to you,...
Do you have a learning disability we should know about?

I consider this personal.

Straw purchases make all of us law abiding gun owners look bad. As for statistics, the 2011 report is preliminary but here's a link to 2010. There are a lot tables that cover many data sets.
FBI — Officers Feloniously Killed

 

[Jamie6.5]

Brian Terry's family don't think much of "executive privilege":
Family of Slain Border Agent to Holder: We Deserve the Truth

Josephine Terry appeared on Philadelphia Talk Radio 1210 WPHT today. She was asked about President Obama asserting executive privilege over the Fast & Furious documents.
"The only thing I can say is, if he did that they apparently don't want Issa to get the documents to see what's in there. My son and I were very, very close," she said. "And my son was a person that believed in justice and he believed in telling the truth. He was a man of his honor. And if anybody knew him, they knew that. And I know he would be saying ‘you know what, I died for my country.' He was a true American and I think he deserves the truth and I think everybody should know the truth. And if this was a bad thing they did with Fast and Furious it should be acknowledged so it never happens to anybody else's son."

Well stated Mrs Terry.
Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

 

[Dave Workman]

I'm touched by your regard for human life but I seriously doubt that you want to begin comparing body counts due to government lies by Republicans as compared to Democrats, do you? If you want to do something to protect our Law Enforcement officers, do something about illegal, stolen and criminal straw purchases here that killed 72 officers in the US in 2011.

Who's being partisan here?
As a fellow who has covered this fiasco for the past 18 months, I can say without a doubt there is and has been a cover-up, and Eric Holder is the guy in charge of the Justice Department. Buck stops at his desk whether he knew or didn't, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that he did know more than he's acknowledged, or he has been asleep at the wheel for three years. There is no other option.

You also asserted earlier that Fast & Furious was designed to stop illegal straw purchases. That's not true and never has been true. The operation was ostensibly set up to track illegal gun traffic up the food chain to cartel big shots in Mexico, which seems kind of stupid because the U.S. Government has no jurisdiction in Mexico, so how would any of these characters be prosecuted?

However, there is evidence that the DoJ folks involved in this mess wanted to use data on recovered F&F guns to bolster their argument for requiring multiple long gun sales reports.

What is irksome about this is that initially, the Holder Justice Department tried to blame Southwest gun dealers for all these guns being trafficked, when they KNEW that ATF was encouraging those dealers to make the sales. It was disingenuous at best.

I've interviewed Issa, Grassley and Trey Gowdy. Have YOU done that? Have YOU spoken to these guys? They're ticked off, and it's not because they are playing partisan games, it's because they have been LIED TO. Gowdy is a former federal prosecutor and he is a stickler for the rule of law. Grassley is outraged that his inquiries were met with a monumental lie and that he was lied to consistently for months.

Issa is mad because he has seen documents that he asked for but did not receive from Justice. He has seen documents in total that were delivered by DoJ has heavily redacted. I've seen some of those documents and they were blacked-out pages, period. I have copies of e-mails and reports, letter exchanges...

As I wrote Wednesday, there is growing sentiment that this whole executive privilege thing is a stall on Obama's part to bog this down in the courts until after the November election, and then it will be moot. Dick Nixon thought the same thing about Watergate.

But this is not like Watergate, as you noted. Fast and Furious has a body count. Watergate didn't get anybody killed.

Doc, you can live in denial about this all you want.

 

[Jamie6.5]

Straw purchases make all of us law abiding gun owners look bad. As for statistics, the 2011 report is preliminary but here's a link to 2010. There are a lot tables that cover many data sets.
FBI — Officers Feloniously Killed

Have you read the info at your link?
According to that, 55 officers were feloniously killed with firearms. Of those, seven were killed with their own weapons.
That leaves 48 officers killed with guns that were acquired by other means.
On page 27 it shows that 15 of those were killed with rifles, and 2 with shotguns.
So 17, or roughly 27% that were killed with the types of guns (long guns) that Fast and Furious was designed to stop.
How many were straw purchased?
Ho many were legally owned?
How many were stolen, and used by the thief?
How many were purchased illegally, after being stolen?

And new, more restrictive gun laws will stop these how?

Show me a law that will prevent the sale of stolen guns, or any stolen property for that matter, and I'll support it wholeheartedly.
There are tons of these laws out there, how will a new one, sponsored by the current admin, work better than the ones we currently have?
Will it work because Sarah Brady thinks it will?

 

[deadeye]

I consider this personal.

Straw purchases make all of us law abiding gun owners look bad. As for statistics, the 2011 report is preliminary but here's a link to 2010. There are a lot tables that cover many data sets.
FBI — Officers Feloniously Killed

Do you understand what the definition of straw purchase is?

 

[Doc Maker]

If I offended you, I apologize. I certainly didn't intend to, so I'm sorry you took it that way.


You must have missed the first few hearings. My claim is not without citation, as that is precisely what the whistleblowers said. That they were told, under no uncertain terms, to let the guns go, when they KNEW there were no means involved to track the guns.
AKA: Lost on purpose.


Since you are obviously an obama supporter, please don't make references to dishonest politics. The specious attacks on Bush's admin persist to this day.
As far as: Should Holder be held responsible?"
OF COURSE he should. He's the head of the DOJ. Another famous Democrat has advice for ol' Eric,...
"The Buck Stops Here" as old Harry would say. And I'm sure he'd tell obama the same.
Hiding holder's complicity behind obama's claim of executive privilege is ridiculous. And obama's use of executive privilege smacks of his own involvement as well.
Please remember, that this is the man that claimed he would run "The Most Transparent Administration in American History."
Doesn't sound like transparency at the DOJ. It sounds like a cover-up. One that the admin is directly involved in.
And we wonder why he just promised to stop prosecuting Mexican students and workers. It sounds like he trying to make it up to them for giving guns to those that would kill their relatives back home.


Want to compare deaths due to lies by admin? Sure! Look up the Gulf of Tonkin incident,... You don't stand a chance with that one. We can lay every death of a Viet Nam vet after 1964 at the feet of LBJ over that one.

Be careful what you ask for.
Or FDR's refusal to acknowledge the coming attack on Pearl Harbor?

So you want to lay all the domestically-straw purchased guns at the feet of republicans? How so?
And please tell us all how more, and more-restrictive gun laws would stop those purchases?
And then please tell us how many legal purchasers you are prepared to throw under the bus to accomplish your goals.
Because it sounds like every one of us.

Difficult to take a statement about learning disabilities any other way. And I would thank you for the apology but you seem bound and determined to paint me with your broad blue brush by suggesting that I would throw legal gun owners like me and my friends under some proverbial bus.

I'm not going to rehash the mistakes of the Bush Admin, just too many for this forum. This is no longer a second amendment debate. Since the vote this afternoon, it's been about the separation of powers between the House and the WH. It is the exact same argument Bush had with the Democratic Congress. Well, he did it six times. The first, less than a year after he was in office. You say that you'd have been screaming just as loud if Bush had done the same thing. Please provide a link to your statements of disapproval from that time period.

As for the Tonkin incident, I'll agree with that one. But FDR? c'mon, that's tinfoil hat stuff right there.

I dare you to find ANY statement by me that advocates additional, stricter gun laws. You won't find it. We have laws on the books that our agents can't enforce because they're stretched too thin. Frankly, the accusation that I would give away my right to participate in my chosen sport AND business (I own a firearms business in WA, by the way) is troubling. This is another example of your tendency to present blatantly false statements as fact. That you actually tried to confront me with something I never said boggles the mind.

BTW: who's using the family for politics now?

 

[Doc Maker]

Do you understand what the definition of straw purchase is?

Straw Purchase: using another individual, who is legally able to purchase a firearm, to obtain a firearm for someone who is not legally authorized to own one.

Don't patronize me deadeye. I gave you the link. Do your own homework.

"According to the FBI, last year, more police officers died in the line of duty than at any time since the terrorist attacks of 9/11: 72 officers lost their lives at the hands of criminals, a 25% increase from the year before."- NY Daily News
ATF- 46% of illegal guns are straw purchases.

 

[Doc Maker]

This is not a firearms issue anymore. This is now a separation of powers issue and has no bearing here. No 2A rights are being debated.

Mr. Workman, I'm not living in denial, I just happen to look at both sides of the issue. Bold lettering aside, have you interviewed both sides? Please provide a link to your interview with Eric Holder or the DOJ, if so. I never said that there wasn't a cover up, there was and it's blowing up. But Issa is not entitled to every document he thinks he wants. You can keep invoking imagery of Watergate and body counts but it only serves to weaken your factual argument when you resort to the cheap one liners. You've done some good reporting on this issue but I still think that you're biased in your analysis. A good journalist gets the story both sides, sorts out the facts and reports the conclusions as objectively as possible. To do otherwise makes responsible gun owners like us look like idiots in a public debate.

 

[deadeye]

Straw Purchase: using another individual, who is legally able to purchase a firearm, to obtain a firearm for someone who is not legally authorized to own one.

Don't patronize me deadeye. I gave you the link. Do your own homework.

"According to the FBI, last year, more police officers died in the line of duty than at any time since the terrorist attacks of 9/11: 72 officers lost their lives at the hands of criminals, a 25% increase from the year before."- NY Daily News
ATF- 46% of illegal guns are straw purchases.

Please point out the info in the FBI report that states that the firearm used was from a straw purchase, I must be blind or there isnt any factual statement contained in it. If you are going by ATFE statements rather than the FBI data you linked to then I would suggest that you shouldnt believe anything from the ATFE after all we are discussing their leader and his factually supported lies.

 

[deen_ad]

ATF- 46% of illegal guns are straw purchases.

What are "illegal guns"?

 

[MikeSettles]

What are "illegal guns"?

Anything that the gubrment doesn't want We the People to have in order to protect ourselves from criminals (in or out of uniform) and tyrannical politicians.

You know: Selective-fire rifles, short-barrel shotguns, machine guns, tanks, howitzers, cop-killer bullets, guns with the shoulder thing that goes up, etc.

 

[deen_ad]

Anything that the gubrment doesn't want We the People to have in order to protect ourselves from criminals (in or out of uniform) and tyrannical politicians.

You know: Selective-fire rifles, short-barrel shotguns, machine guns, tanks, howitzers, cop-killer bullets, guns with the shoulder thing that goes up, etc.

So 46% of illegal guns are straw purchases then? If the gun is illegal no one can purchase it let alone straw purchasers.

 

[Bigfoot]

I don't buy the 46% straw purchase figure either, they must have added in the thousands that the Feds themselves supplied.

 

[One-Eyed Ross]

"There's been a tendency on the part of this administration to try to hide behind executive privilege every time there's something a little shaky taking place. The administration would be best served by coming clean on this."
Sen. Barack Obama during a CNN interview on March 19, 2007.

 

[Jamie6.5]

ATF- 46% of illegal guns are straw purchases.

So, assuming The NY Daily News is correct, that 72 LEOs "lost their lives at the hands of criminals" I wonder how many did so due to gunfire? Your quote doesn't say.
But lets follow your *logic* and like you, assume they all did.
According to your link above, 27% (long guns) of 72 deaths would be less than 20. Following that up with 46% (straw purchases) of those <20 would be roughly 9.
But of course, since nowhere in this data is there info on the percentage of guns that were illegally acquired, it's pretty much moot.
But speculating further that 2/3rds or 66% of these are "illegal" guns, brings us down to <6 death attributable to straw purchased long guns.
Now considering that Eric Holder's plan was to restrict long gun sales in southern border states, this misguided plot to restrict sales of guns to law abiding citizens involved guns responsible for less than 1/2 of 1% of all LEO deaths (4/50)*6 =.48. Less than 1/2 of 1% of the guns involved in LEO deaths!
Even if ALL the guns in the FBI data were illegally acquired it would still be less than 1 death per year that E.Holder's grand plan would EVER have stopped. Even if border state long gun sales are twice what the national average is, it would still be less than 2.

Meanwhile, 30+ people were killed or wounded in Chicago, obama's home district and the city with the most restrictive gun laws, last weekend.
I won't speak for you, but by ANY measure, it certainly appears Mr. holder's plan as America's "top cop" leaves a lot to be desired. I.e. Woefully inadequate, to the point of stupidity.

I don't know about you, but I believe we can do a lot more to help our LEOs survive their daily tasks than <.5%, and I believe we can do it without restricting law abiding citizens and their 2ndA rights.

But it is going to take DOJ and ATF policies that go beyond blaming the guns, and penalizing legal gun owners.

But then again, I contend that Fast and Furious was never about preventing needless deaths.
It was/is about restricting law abiding citizens right to keep and bear arms.
Just like holder said he wanted to do in his very first press conference as AG.

 

[Jamie6.5]

This is not a firearms issue anymore. This is now a separation of powers issue and has no bearing here. No 2A rights are being debated.

Well, that may be how you feel, but it seems you have come down on the wrong side of that argument also:
Obama raises legal eyebrows with executive privilege claim - Washington Times

Louis Fisher, a former specialist on the separation of powers at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, said he found the administration's arguments "extremely unpersuasive."

Mr. Fisher noted that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., in a letter to the president, cited the need to protect the Justice Department's "deliberative process" in responding to the congressional inquiry into a botched gun-running operation.

"Yet he admits throughout his letter to Obama that the department has regularly provided the House committee with documents" involved in drafting a particular letter to the committee on Feb. 4, 2011, Mr. Fisher said.

"He states that the department &#8216;has already shared with the committee over 1,300 pages of documents concerning the drafting of the Feb. 4 letter,' " Mr. Fisher said. "In short, Holder was willing to release documents about that deliberative process."

Mr. Fisher, who has testified before Congress and written a book about executive privilege, also said Mr. Holder repeatedly cites "the fundamentally false notion that when Congress wants information from the executive branch, it must be in furtherance of a &#8216;legitimate legislative responsibility.' "

"The constitutional right of Congress to pursue oversight is as legitimate as its legislative function," Mr. Fisher said. "Oversight is also essential in investigating corruption and illegal activity in the executive branch."

I believe that a cover-up falls under the legal heading of "corruption" and/or "illegal activity."
And since it involves a program implemented by our own DOJ to make a case for restricting gun sales to law abiding citizens, it was/is ALWAYS about the 2ndA, and "Eric the oathbreaker's" disregard for it, and obama's attempts to shield him from accountability for that disregard.

 

[Jamie6.5]

Marco makes 5 6 (oops) on the Senate side:
Marco Rubio calls for Eric Holder to resign | The Daily Caller

 

[Jamie6.5]

Grassley calls for the "privilege log."

Grassley: WH must provide Congress with a

"The White House has already produced documents in Fast and Furious involving communications between White House staff and personnel from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, so it's ironic that this claim comes up only now," Grassley said. "Either way, the White House must produce a privilege log to make clear which documents they are asserting executive privilege to protect."

So obama must show which 1,300 docs he's claiming EP over,...
I guess that makes the rest of them fair game!

"The attorney general repeatedly claimed that the Justice Department was making an &#8216;extraordinary offer' Tuesday night," Grassley continued. "The only thing extraordinary is that the attorney general offered a promise to produce documents one day and then asked the president to claim executive privilege over them the next."

Mr witHolder's "extraordinary" actions have gotten old.
He needs to go.

 

[swoop]

Marco makes 5 on the Senate side:
Marco Rubio calls for Eric Holder to resign | The Daily Caller