Doing What the Legacy Media Won't

Preview of Univision’s “bombshell” report on Fast & Furious.

Immigration Agents File Suit Against Napolitano Over 'Amnesty' Program

Fox News: 

Kris Kobach, lead attorney on the case, equated the move to give thousands of illegal immigrants a reprieve to the failed Fast and Furious gun-walking operation.

"In both instances, the Obama administration ordered federal law enforcement agents to break the law, to ignore the laws that they're supposed to enforce, and, in the case of the ICE agents, to actually break federal laws that say you're supposed to deport certain people," he said. "And in each case, the Obama administration seems to be doing so for political reasons."

House Sues Holder

The Washington Times:  "A civil lawsuit filed Monday by House Republicans asks a federal court to enforce a congressional subpoena of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in his refusal to turn over documents sought in an investigation by a House committee into the failed Fast and Furious gunrunning operation."

Report Faults ATF Officials for Fast and Furious

Susan Ferrecchio:  "But the investigation concluded the Obama administration also bears responsibility for Operation Fast and Furious, which has been at the center of politically charged dispute between the White House and congressional Republicans."

Keep in mind that this is just the first of three reports and that the next two will focus on the failures within the DOJ.

Holder Held in Contempt

Checking in from my vacation in Vermont, to note that that, yesterday, Holder became the first U.S. Attorney General to be voted in contempt of Congress.  17 Democrats joined the Republicans in voting to hold him in contempt.

Bill Whittle Takes on Fast & Furious

Bill Whittle pulls no punches in the latest Afterburner.

Good Question

What If Walmart Sold 2500 Guns Illegally, Walked Them into Mexico, and Hid the Documentation from Congress?

Fast and Furious

If you are still trying to wrap your head around the facts of the Fast and Furious scandal, this podcast with David Kopel will tell you what you need to know.

Even Jon Stewart Isn't Buying Obama's Claim of Executive Privilege

Ed Morissey:  Not only does Jon Stewart tell an audience inclined towards supporting Obama in November exactly why Operation Fast and Furious was so important to investigate, he also explains that the Obama administration has been refusing to cooperate with subpoenas, giving false information to Congress, and generally stalling for the last several months. On top of that, Stewart then skewers the same Democrats who blasted George Bush in 2007 for hypocrisy in defending Obama’s executive privilege claim in 2012.

Follow the link for the clips.

If He's Lost the Media, Who's Left?

WH embarrassed during Fast and Furious Press Briefing:  "And when Carney said that Obama’s decision to assert executive privilege over documents subpoenaed by Congress was 'entirely about principle,' reporters openly laughed"

White House Asserts Executive Privilege over DOJ Fast and Furious Documents

In a surprise move, the Obama Administration today invoked executive privilege as a justification for withholding the DOJ's Fast and Furious documents.  Bryan Preston has been following the story with periodic updates all day.

Despite the Obama Administration's move, Issa's House Committee moved forward and voted to hold Holder in contempt (Plus, the family of Brian Terry comments that Obama has compounded their personal tragedy).

Plus, Vodkapundit considers the broad scope of the executive privilege assertion.
And Mark Levin looks at where the House should go from here.

House Moving to Hold Holder in Contempt

Washington Times:  House Republicans said Monday that they will move to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress, escalating a separation-of-powers battle over Fast and Furious, the Obama administration’s botched gun-walking operation.

With the blessing of Republican leaders, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa will hold a vote next week to recommend contempt proceedings, and a House floor vote could follow soon after as the GOP seeks to keep the pressure on President Obama ahead of November’s elections.

Plus, Issa says that he expects 31 Democrats will join Congressional Republicans in the vote.

Glenn Reynolds Interviews author of Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Biggest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up

The Obama Adminstration's Top 15 "Achievements"

To counter conservative claims that the Obama administration has failed to achieve anything in three plus years, The Lid has compiled an entire list of notable achievements:

• Going to war in Libya without first seeking congressional approval.
• The administration's screwing of the primary GM investors so he could give the company to his buddies in the UAW.
• Offering Joe Sestak a White House job to drop out of the Senate race against Arlen Specter 
• Offering Andrew Romanoff a White House job to drop out of the Senate Race against Michael Bennett.
• Dropping an already won case against the New Black Panther's.
• Refusing to prosecute African Americans for Civil Rights violations. 
• Ignoring a court order to ease up on restrictions against deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, instead issuing tougher restrictions.
• Circumventing the Senate by setting up a "shadow cabinet" of Czars.
• Obama's Justice Department’s refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Ignoring his constitutional responsibility to defend laws passed by Congress.
• Firing (and slandering) AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin after because he was investigating Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson a friend of the Obamas.
• Practicing crony capitalism and wasting taxpayer money with Green energy loans to Solyndra and other failing companies. 
• No bid contract given to a company owned by major Obama donor for a small pox vaccine that doesn't work.
• Fast and Furious: Giving guns to Mexican drug cartels in an attempt to take away guns from law abiding Americans. 
•  Making recess appointments when congress was not in recess.
• Trampling on the Catholic Church's first amendment rights by forcing them to pay for procedures and drugs that their faith bans.
• The GSA and Secret Service scandals neither of which should be blamed on Obama directly, both of which show his poor management of the federal government.

Hat tip to the Astute Bloggers.

Smart Diplomacy Not Very Neighborly

Investors Business Daily reports:

Obama's neglect of our nearest neighbors and biggest trade partners has created deteriorating relations, a sign of a president who's out of touch with reality. Problems are emerging that aren't being reported.

Fortunately, the Canadian and Mexican press told the real story. Canada's National Post quoted former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson as saying the North American Free Trade Agreement and the three-nation alliance it has fostered since 1994 have been so neglected they're "on life support."

Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier.

The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Obama the U.S. will have to pay market prices for its Canadian oil after Obama's de facto veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada is preparing to sell its oil to China.

Until now, NAFTA had shielded the U.S. from having to pay global prices for Canadian oil. That's about to change. . . .

Things were even worse, if you read the Mexican press accounts of the meeting.

Excelsior of Mexico City reported that President Felipe Calderon bitterly brought up Operation Fast and Furious, a U.S. government operation that permitted Mexican drug cartels to smuggle thousands of weapons into drug-war-torn Mexico. This blunder has wrought mayhem on Mexico and cost thousands of lives.

The mainstream U.S. press has kept those questions out of the official press conferences, while Obama has feigned ignorance to the Mexicans and hasn't even apologized.

In short, the summit was a diplomatic disaster for the U.S. and its relations with its neighbors north and south.

It should have been the easiest, most no-brainer diplomatic task Obama faces.

Instead, it underscored the Obama administration's indifference to anything more than its own political interests.

It's a shame the American media didn't tell us. Instead we had to learn of it in the foreign press.

 Well, at least Obama still seems to be getting along swimmingly with Russia.
Hat tip to Instapundit.

The Obama Administration and the Second Amendment

Attorney General Eric Holder in 1995:  We need to "brainwash" people against guns.

And 15 years later, his DOJ oversees Fast and Furious . . . .

Fast and Furious

Powerline points us to an excellent column by Michael Hayden, the retired Air Force General and former director of both the NSA and CIA.  In his column, Hayden brings illustrates the irony of Holder's claim that "he has been subjected to a heavily politicized process over Fast and Furious," when Holder himself previously led a heavily politicized witch hunt against the CIA and its officers for its renditions, detentions, and interrogations of terrorists.

Fast and Furious Update

Emails found in a Department of Justice document dump made late last Friday suggest that Attorney General Eric Holder may have perjured himself regarding when he knew about Operation Fast and Furious:

In testimony in front of Congress on May 3, 2011, Holder insisted he’d only heard of Operation Fast and Furious “a few weeks” before he testified; a story he later change to “a few months.” These emails strongly suggest that Holder was aware of Operation Fast and Furious within 48 hours of Brian Terry’s death, if he did not know already about the operation well before then from the memos he began receiving in July of 2010, six months before the firefight that ended Agent Terry’s life.

Holder’s expected appearance before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday, February 2, is further complicated by the actions of Patrick Cunningham, the chief of the Phoenix office’s criminal division within the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona. Cunningham invoked his Fifth Amendment rights in an effort to avoid testifying in front of the Oversight Committee — you can only invoke the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination. The invocation makes it even less plausible for Holder to claim that DOJ was acting lawfully with the Operation. Cunningham resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Friday, January 27.

The question is starting to become what will happen first: Holder resigns as a result of the Fast and Furious scandal or the "mainstream" media actually starts covering the Fast and Furious scandal?