Posts Tagged ‘Eric Holder’
A Great Quote
March 21, 2012“Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that will require every citizen to prove they are insured,but not everyone to prove they are a citizen!”
Holder Adopts “Sergeant Shultze Defense”
February 6, 2012Continues to claim ignorance that DoJ was helping send guns to Mexico
Appropriately, it’s Groundhog Day.
Because Attorney General Eric Holder has just testified that he spent another year hiding in a hole, oblivious to what was going on in his department or even what was in his inbox.
In testimony before Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Holder’s defense was — in the words of one DEMOCRAT — the “Sergeant Schultz defense”: “I know nooothing!”
This, notwithstanding the fact that there were no fewer than seven memoranda sent to Holder (as early as July, 2010) briefing him on the Fast and Furious Operation, and the fact that his department was intentionally allowing guns to go across the border to Mexican drug cartels.
Those guns have already resulted in the deaths of over 300 Mexican nationals, in addition to U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry.
Yet, Holder smugly asserted that he didn’t have time to read memoranda forwarded to him by his subordinates detailing criminal conduct by his department under his watch. (Never mind Holder’s assertion today that his management style was one that is “hands on.”)
Which leads to this question: Could a hedge fund manager escape culpability by arguing that he didn’t read letters from his subordinates or attorneys warning him of criminal misconduct?
And another thing: What was Eric Holder doing that was so important that the deaths of 300 people didn’t warrant any of his “precious” time?
Let Holder explain to the families of the dead that their lives were trivial because he was so busy promulgating illegal regulations governing multiple gun sales reporting, unlawfully banning shotgun importation, and unconstitutionally justifying non-recess recess appointments.
Holder protested that questioners were “disrespecting” his office. But Holder has dragged his office and his department into the cesspool. The proper response to him is: “Disrespect? What about 300 murdered Mexicans?” It is time for him to go.
ACTION: Click here to contact your senators and representative. Demand that they call for Holder’s resignation.
Related articles
- Rep. Gosar Continues to Push “No Confidence” in Holder Resolution (maddmedic.wordpress.com)
- Eric Holder to testify on ‘Fast and Furious’ – CNN (edition.cnn.com)
- House GOP threatens to hold Holder in contempt over Fast and Furious documents (mercurynews.com)
As Attorney General Eric Holder Continues to Sizzle on the Hot Seat …
February 1, 2012Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee tomorrow morning to answer for his failed leadership in regard to Operation Fast and Furious.
This operation, which was shepherded by Obama’s Justice Department, has led to thousands of guns being smuggled into Mexico — and to the deaths of two federal agents. Holder has already been caught in several lies and appears to be digging in his feet even further.
Committee Chairman Darrell Issa will be grilling Holder once again and has threatened the Attorney General with contempt charges if he continues stonewalling.
Issa warned that if the Attorney General continues to obstruct his investigation, “this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress.”
GOA staff has been working closely with House committee members, and we will be attending the hearings and reporting to you on developments — both public and behind-the-scenes.
Related articles
- AG Holder Threatened With Contempt (foxnews.com)
- Eric Holder’s ‘Fast and Furious’ woe (cnn.com)
“No Confidence” in Holder Resolution
January 28, 2012Attorney General Eric Holder — recently caught lying under oath concerning his knowledge of his department’s Fast and Furious program — may be moving a step closer to the inside of a jail cell.
On Thursday, February 2nd, Chairman Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold another hearing on the disastrous Fast and Furious operation.
Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, a member of that committee, is also pushing a resolution of “no confidence” in Holder’s management — or lack of management — of the Justice Department.
That resolution, H. Res. 490, provides a course of action for the momentum generated by that hearing.
H. Res. 490 finds that, as a result of “Holder’s failure to properly control, monitor, or establish Operation Fast and Furious, it is likely Mexican nationals were killed or wounded by weapons sold through this scheme” — and that the victims of Holder’s incompetence included U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
It goes on to resolve that the House has “lost confidence” in Holder, which is, basically, a call for him to resign.
Clearly, the Justice Department believes it can stonewall Issa’s inquiry and bull its way through questions concerning its criminal malfeasance. Adoption of the Gosar resolution would make it much, much more difficult to do so.
ACTION: Contact your Representative and urge him or her to cosponsor H.Res. 490. Click here to send a prewritten message to your Rep.
Related articles
- Rep. Gosar Continues to Push “No Confidence” in Holder Resolution (maddmedic.wordpress.com)
- US Attorney Patrick Cunningham Refuses to Give More Than his Name and Title To Congressional Investigators…More Subpoenas Coming (nicedeb.wordpress.com)
- Holder Lied About Fast and Furious: E-Mails Provide Smoking Gun (treeofmamre.wordpress.com)
- Gunwalker: DoJ figure taking the 5th in Fast & Furious probe (tarpon.wordpress.com)
Legislation could potentially shut down gun websites; Big Brother knows best…
January 18, 2012Yet another attempt to control the free flow of information. Or is it the legitimate government function of enforcing laws against theft..?
I happen to agree with the principles involved, as far as theft of intellectual property goes. However, these laws, as proposed? No damned way period! Read on…
By now, you are no doubt aware that several websites have either gone totally or partially “dark” today in protest of the pernicious internet legislation that will be coming to a vote next week. Wikipedia and Google are just two of the websites which are protesting in this manner.
And while you may have not paid much attention to this story, you need to know that the “muzzle the web” legislation these sites are protesting could also affect your ability to get gun-related information on websites like GOA’s.
The reason is that S. 968 could, in its final form, allow the Brady Campaign to partially shut down our GOA website and our organization (plus many other pro-gun websites) with a series of factually accurate, but legally frivolous complaints.
The Senate bill and its House counterpart have accurately been called “a direct attack on the underpinnings of the web.”
True, many of the most serious “gun problems” are in the House counterpart. But the reality is this: We are within a few votes of killing the whole concept next week in the Senate with only 41 Senate votes.
But if we allow the so-called “anti-piracy” bill to go forward on the HOPE that the worst provisions will not make it into the final version -– and we fail to eliminate them -– the bill may be unstoppable.
Here are the “gun problems,” as we see them:
Section 103(b)(1) of H.R. 3261 allows any “holder of an intellectual property right” to demand that PayPal and other payment and advertising services stop providing services to organizations like ours, thereby shutting off our income.
How would they do this? Perhaps by arguing that we were stealing their intellectual property by quoting their lying misrepresentations in our alerts.
Is this legally frivolous? Sure it is. But the Brady Campaign is the King of Frivolous Complaints:
* Remember when the Brady Campaign asked the Federal Election Commission in 2007 to shut down GOA’s ability to post its candidate ratings on the Internet? They claimed that we were in violation of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act. Thankfully, the FEC ruled in GOA’s favor, thus enabling us to continue posting candidate ratings without restraint.
* Remember when the Brady Campaign got 36 state and local jurisdictions to bring frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers –- not in the expectation of winning, but to drain the resources of the manufacturers in order to halt the manufacture of guns in America?
This “muzzle the web” legislation will throw the doors open to even more frivolous complaints. Could we defend ourselves? Yes, we could. We could file a counter notification under section 103(b)(5) and spend years defending ourselves. But the one thing we did learn during the 36 frivolous lawsuits is that the anti-gun forces in America have very deep pockets.
And the other problem is that, under section 104, our Internet providers would be insulated from liability for shutting us down. But they would receive no comparable insulation from legal liability if they refused to cut us off.
The Senate version, S. 968, has been amended, at the behest of Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley and others, to provide many protections which were not in its initial form.
Under section 3, the Attorney General would go to court and would have to claim that, because of a hyperlink to an offending site, we were “primarily” engaged in the theft of intellectual property.
We would feel a lot better about these protections if the Attorney General were not Eric Holder, a ruthless ideologue who has demonstrated that he will go to any lengths to destroy the Second Amendment.
So the bottom line is this: H.R. 3261 and S. 968
would potentially empower the Brady Campaign and Eric Holder to go after our Internet site. To do so, they would have to make the same frivolous arguments and engage in the same lawless activity that they have done so often in the past.
But -– given that we’re within a few votes of snuffing out that risk by killing the bill in the Senate -– we believe it’s the better course of action to do so.
Click here to contact your senators.
Related articles
- Governor Schwarzenegger Joins Brady Chapter Leaders to Celebrate Signing of Ammo Bill (prweb.com)
- Brady Campaign State Scorecards: Most States Have Weak Gun Laws (prweb.com)
- A Tough Year for Gun Control’s Brady Campaign (pjmedia.com)
- Brady Campaign Mis-Information Continues (2ndamendmentright.org)
- Dealers say gun sales are strong; background checks hit a record (philly.com)
- Question of the Day: What’s the Right Age for Concealed Carry? | The Truth About Guns (2ndamendmentright.org)
- Leader of Park Service Retirees Laments Shooting (abcnews.go.com)
Grilled Holder for lunch? Fast and Furious; Dead Americans and dead Mexicans. All for political gain.
December 13, 2011Nearly a year ago I posted here about Operation Gun Runner, also known as Fast and Furious. I speculated at the time that the real reason for this botched operation was not for any noble cause. Nope, it was to justify the passing of ever more restrictions on your inalienable rights. Well, I suppose that the usual suspects had to come up somehow with a justification for their ninety percent lie…
The government’s “gun walking” scandal heated up a Capitol Hill hearing this week.
Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing on the Department of Justice, but Operation Fast and Furious dominated the discussion.
Holder, as he has already done numerous times in testimony before Congress, coninued his practice of stonewalling and deflecting blame for the failed scheme that led to thousands of firearms “walking” across the border into Mexico and into the hands of violent drug cartels.
Committee members grilled Holder on misleading Congress, not dealing appropriately with the individuals who called the shots on Fast and Furious and, even worse, for using the guns that the government allowed to “walk” to Mexico as an excuse for greater gun control in the U.S.
Fast and Furious Leading to More Gun Control
From his opening statement, Rep. Daryl Issa (R-CA), a chief congressional investigator looking into Fast and Furious, made clear that gun control, not crime control, is really the main objective of the Obama administration.
Rep. Issa pointed to recent ATF regulations to register many long-gun purchasers in southwest border states:
The idea that regulations, without any approval of Congress, to create databases in the southwestern states…clearly shows that, in fact, this administration is more interested in building databases, more interested in talking about gun control than actually controlling [the Fast and Furious guns].
Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), a strong ally of gun owners, further pressed the point, assuring Holder that:
If the American people learned that the motivations for [Fast and Furious] was somehow to make a case to deprive them of their Second Amendment rights or to make a case to further the Department’s ability to further regulate gun rights within the United States, that would make them very angry.
Rep. Franks went on to read from an email between Mark Chait, ATF Field Operations Assistant Director, and Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious. Chait wrote:
Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same [licensed gun dealer] and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.
The demand letter Chait was referring to is a regulation (which is in violation of federal laws protecting gun owners’ privacy) requiring more than 8,500 firearms dealers in four states to report multiple sales of long guns to the ATF.
In other words, the Justice Department helped to create a huge mess, and is now seeking more authority to regulate firearms to clean it up. At the same time, the Department has taken no action to hold anyone accountable within the government.
No Accountability at ATF
Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) questioned the Attorney General about holding specific people responsible for the government’s actions.
“Who is the person in the United States government that made the decision…to facilitate the guns going to Mexico,” Rep. Poe asked Holder, who claimed not to know.
After the hearing, Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren brought up that question to committee member Steve King (R-IA).
“Whoever was so stupid to authorize this operation…is still sitting there with the Justice Department because no one will tell us who the one is with such flawed judgment,” Van Susteren said.
King replied that, “If Eric Holder will not identify that person or answer that question, you have to wonder if Eric Holder isn’t the person.”
Holder remains defiant, and has rebuffed calls to step down or to fire those involved.
GOA Petitions Congress to Get ATF off the Backs of Gun Owners
President Obama and his Attorney General are clearly going after American gun owners, and they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of more gun control.
Eric Holder should be fired immediately for his mishandling of Fast and Furious, and then further investigated for possible criminal wrongdoing.
But there needs to be more done, which is why GOA is urging Congress to take firearms out of the ATF’s jurisdiction.
The Fast and Furious scandal is not an isolated incident, but just the latest in a long string of abuses by the agency. As far back as 1982, a Senate committee noted that ATF “has trampled upon the second amendment by chilling the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms by law-abiding citizens.”
But even in light of its many documented abuses, the agency has continued to grow in its budget, personnel, and mission.
This rogue, unconstitutional agency is dedicated to infringing on Americans’ fundamental right to keep and bear arms. And left unchecked, they will regulate it right out of existence.
If you haven’t already signed the petition, please do it today. Citing a long string of agency abuses, it asks the Congress to exercise its constitutional authority to get the ATF out of the firearms business. The petition goes directly to your Representative and two Senators.
The ATF has abused the rights of gun owners for far too long. If enough Americans make their voices heard, we can do away with this unconstitutional agency.
So please, click here to sign the petition today, and then help spread the word.
Related articles
- The Hearings on Holder’s ‘Fast and Furious’ Gunrunning: More Lies and Dem Grandstanding on ‘Gun Control’ (sfcmac.wordpress.com)
- Issa: Holder misled Congress on Fast & Furious to cover for staff (hotair.com)
- Bloomberg Offers Little On Attorney General Holder, ‘Fast And Furious’ Debacle (newyork.cbslocal.com)
- Taking Heat for ‘Fast and Furious’ (thedailybeast.com)
- Issa says administration using Fast and Furious for stricter gun laws (thehill.com)
- Reason Morning Links: Emails: ATF Used “Fast and Furious” to Push Gun Control, Elizabeth Warren Leads Scott Brown in New Poll, Jon Corzine “Simply Does Not Know Where The Money Is” (reason.com)
- Documents: ATF used “Fast and Furious” to make the case for gun regulations (yourdaddy.net)
- The US, Mexico & Guns (gadabout-blogalot.com)
- ATF wanted Fast & Furious fiasco to push for more gun control (crushliberalism.com)
- An Open Letter To Eric Holder From An ATF Agent in Mexico (nicedeb.wordpress.com)
- Prison Planet.com ” Ron Paul: Fast & Furious a Criminal False Flag (gunnyg.wordpress.com)
- Ron Paul: Fast & Furious a Criminal False Flag (teapartywpbfl.wordpress.com)
- Gun Runner get’s really Fast and Furious (patricksperry.wordpress.com)
- Grilled Holder on the menu..? Democrats commit murder to further agenda (patricksperry.wordpress.com)
Grilled Holder on the menu..? Democrats commit murder to further agenda
December 10, 2011The government’s “gun walking” scandal heated up a Capitol Hill hearing this week.
Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing on the Department of Justice, but Operation Fast and Furious dominated the discussion.
Holder, as he has already done numerous times in testimony before Congress, coninued his practice of stonewalling and deflecting blame for the failed scheme that led to thousands of firearms “walking” across the border into Mexico and into the hands of violent drug cartels.
Committee members grilled Holder on misleading Congress, not dealing appropriately with the individuals who called the shots on Fast and Furious and, even worse, for using the guns that the government allowed to “walk” to Mexico as an excuse for greater gun control in the U.S.
Fast and Furious Leading to More Gun Control
From his opening statement, Rep. Daryl Issa (R-CA), a chief congressional investigator looking into Fast and Furious, made clear that gun control, not crime control, is really the main objective of the Obama administration.
Rep. Issa pointed to recent ATF regulations to register many long-gun purchasers in southwest border states:
The idea that regulations, without any approval of Congress, to create databases in the southwestern states…clearly shows that, in fact, this administration is more interested in building databases, more interested in talking about gun control than actually controlling [the Fast and Furious guns].
Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), a strong ally of gun owners, further pressed the point, assuring Holder that:
If the American people learned that the motivations for [Fast and Furious] was somehow to make a case to deprive them of their Second Amendment rights or to make a case to further the Department’s ability to further regulate gun rights within the United States, that would make them very angry.
Rep. Franks went on to read from an email between Mark Chait, ATF Field Operations Assistant Director, and Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious. Chait wrote:
Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same [licensed gun dealer] and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.
The demand letter Chait was referring to is a regulation (which is in violation of federal laws protecting gun owners’ privacy) requiring more than 8,500 firearms dealers in four states to report multiple sales of long guns to the ATF.
In other words, the Justice Department helped to create a huge mess, and is now seeking more authority to regulate firearms to clean it up. At the same time, the Department has taken no action to hold anyone accountable within the government.
No Accountability at ATF
Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) questioned the Attorney General about holding specific people responsible for the government’s actions.
“Who is the person in the United States government that made the decision…to facilitate the guns going to Mexico,” Rep. Poe asked Holder, who claimed not to know.
After the hearing, Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren brought up that question to committee member Steve King (R-IA).
“Whoever was so stupid to authorize this operation…is still sitting there with the Justice Department because no one will tell us who the one is with such flawed judgment,” Van Susteren said.
King replied that, “If Eric Holder will not identify that person or answer that question, you have to wonder if Eric Holder isn’t the person.”
Holder remains defiant, and has rebuffed calls to step down or to fire those involved.
GOA Petitions Congress to Get ATF off the Backs of Gun Owners
President Obama and his Attorney General are clearly going after American gun owners, and they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of more gun control.
Eric Holder should be fired immediately for his mishandling of Fast and Furious, and then further investigated for possible criminal wrongdoing.
But there needs to be more done, which is why GOA is urging Congress to take firearms out of the ATF’s jurisdiction.
The Fast and Furious scandal is not an isolated incident, but just the latest in a long string of abuses by the agency. As far back as 1982, a Senate committee noted that ATF “has trampled upon the second amendment by chilling the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms by law-abiding citizens.”
But even in light of its many documented abuses, the agency has continued to grow in its budget, personnel, and mission.
This rogue, unconstitutional agency is dedicated to infringing on Americans’ fundamental right to keep and bear arms. And left unchecked, they will regulate it right out of existence.
If you haven’t already signed the petition, please do it today. Citing a long string of agency abuses, it asks the Congress to exercise its constitutional authority to get the ATF out of the firearms business. The petition goes directly to your Representative and two Senators.
The ATF has abused the rights of gun owners for far too long. If enough Americans make their voices heard, we can do away with this unconstitutional agency.
So please, click here to sign the petition today, and then help spread the word.
Rep Walsh Calls for Attorney General Holder to Resign
October 28, 2011Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) sent a scathing rebuke to Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday and called on him to resign his post at the Justice Department.
Noting that Holder needed to “take responsibility” for implicating the United States as an accessory to violent crimes committed by the Mexican drug cartels, Walsh blasted the Attorney General for the role he played in the “subsequent cover-up” of the failed Fast and Furious operation.
As detailed by Gun Owners of America on many occasions, Operation Fast and Furious is the gun-running scheme where the Justice Department has approved — and in some cases, helped fund — the purchase and smuggling of firearms into Mexico.
The apparent purpose of this gun running scandal was to use the increased violence south of the border as a pretext for more gun control in this country. Sadly, two U.S. federal agents — and hundreds of Mexican citizens — have died as a result of these illegal sales which the FBI approved under the direction of the Obama Administration.
Rep. Walsh takes Holder to task for “knowingly [forcing] licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to violent criminals” and for claiming that he was “not aware” this happening. As Walsh notes, Holder “received no less than seven memos” detailing the creation and progress of Fast and Furious.
“The American people deserve to know the truth regarding Attorney General Eric Holder’s knowledge and role in the Fast and Furious operation,” Walsh said in a statement. “This program was deliberately designed to attack law-abiding American gun-owners and gun-dealers. Why else would an anti-gun Administration force licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to violent criminals?”
Rep. Walsh told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto that Holder “needs to be held accountable.”
Gads…
October 18, 2011This only cost the people of America and Mexico how many lives..?
Note: The amendment’s sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called the vote “just the first step towards ensuring that such a foolish operation can never be repeated by our own law enforcement.”
Senate Votes to End ‘Fast and Furious‘ Gun Program
By ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-bc-us–senate-fastandfurious,0,1479153.story
The Senate voted Tuesday to effectively block the Justice Department from undertaking gun-smuggling probes like the flawed “Operation Fast and Furious” aimed at breaking up networks running guns to Mexican drug cartels but that lost track of hundreds of the weapons, some of which were used to commit crimes in Mexico and the United States.
The 99-0 vote would block the government from transferring guns to drug cartels unless federal agents “continuously monitor or control” the weapons. The amendment’s sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called the vote “just the first step towards ensuring that such a foolish operation can never be repeated by our own law enforcement.”
The Justice Department has already stopped the program.
The vote came as the Senate debated a $128 billion spending measure that would fund Justice Department operations and those of several other Cabinet agencies for the 2012 budget year already under way.
Operation Fast and Furious was a gun-smuggling investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives aimed at tracking small-time illicit gun buyers up the chain to major traffickers in an effort to take down arms networks. In the process, ATF agents lost track of many of the weapons.
Fast and Furious came to light after two assault rifles purchased by a now-indicted small-time buyer under scrutiny in the operation turned up at a shootout in Arizona where Customs and Border Protection agent Brian Terry was killed.
The operation has caused something of a firestorm in Washington and is the focus of an investigation by House Republicans, who have questioned whether Attorney General Eric Holder has been candid about all he knows about the botched operation.
Holder already has called a halt to the practice of allowing guns to “walk” in an effort to track them to arms traffickers, saying in a recent letter to lawmakers that “those tactics should never again be adopted in any investigation.”
The operation was designed to respond to criticism that the agency had focused on small-time gun arrests while major traffickers had eluded prosecution.
As recently as 11 months ago, the Justice Department’s inspector general criticized ATF for focusing “largely on inspections of gun dealers and investigations of straw purchasers, rather than on higher-level traffickers, smugglers and the ultimate recipients of the trafficked guns.”
The IG said some ATF managers discourage agents from conducting complex conspiracy investigations that target high-level traffickers.
This is far from over folks. Necks need to be stretched over this fiasco. Talk about political correctness on steroids..?
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