Freedom Line Blog

Commentary from the National Rifle Association says new gun control legislation could be just around the corner:

…not long after Obama floated the idea of banning semi-automatic firearms, we learned that California Senator Dianne Feinstein was working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to draft new legislation that would ban semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and handguns, so-called “high capacity” magazines, and rifles and shotguns with pistol grips. Reportedly, Feinstein wants to make it illegal not just to sell your guns and magazines, but to leave them behind in your will.

Taking a step back, I can see the ATF’s point.  After walking more than 2,000 guns into the arms of Mexican drug lords, they need a new source for weapons.  What better way to get them than from the cold dead hands of law-abiding Americans?

Sounds like the Contempt of Congress citation and ongoing Fast and Furious litigation is getting to the Attorney General:

“That’s something that I’m in the process now of trying to determine,” Holder said. “I have to think about, can I contribute in a second term?”

…

“[I have to] really ask myself the question about, do I think there are things that I still want to do? Do I have gas left in the tank? It’s been an interesting and tough four years, so I really just don’t know,” Holder told [a group of law] students.

If Alberto Gonzalez can be hounded into resigning for firing federal prosecutors who work for him, then Eric Holder can be shown the door for hiding his role in a gun-walking program that killed dozens of Mexicans and at least one American Border Patrol agent.

Assuming Holder leaves, the next question is whether Obama can find his version of Michael Mukasey to replace him.

If so, it would be one of a series of smart moves the President could do to get his second term off to a bipartisan start.

H/T: CBS News

Politico: “A House committee’s lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder over his refusal to turn over some documents related to the fallout from Operation Fast and Furious will move forward at a faster pace than the parties requested, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

“The Justice Department moved on Oct. 15 to throw out the lawsuit brought by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and agreed with the House panel that it’s lawyers could have two months to respond to that motion. However, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected that proposal on Wednesday, saying that the House committee should file its response by Nov. 16.”

The quicker review means that the next step in the Fast and Furious scandal – whether President Obama can be compelled to hand over documents relating to the Mexican gun-running operation – won’t get buried in the last days of the lame duck session.

Good for Judge Berman.  America needs a timely resolution to this issue.

The Daily Caller reports that “Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan agrees with presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s call for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign, or for President Barack Obama to fire him, over Operation Fast and Furious.”

Ryan is now the 131^st member of Congress to say Holder should resign or be fired.

This is about more than politics.

Now that Univision has uncovered evidence that a massacre of 14 teenagers in Ciudad Juarez was perpetrated with Fast and Furious guns, and identified “57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings, and at least one other massacre,” it is now impossible to let Holder escape responsibility for a program he claims he knew nothing about.

Even though the Department of Justice’s non-partisan Inspector General could find no direct evidence of Holder’s knowledge, the same IG told congressional investigators that “we struggle to understand how an operation of this size, of this importance, that impacted another country like it did, could not have been briefed up to the attorney general of the United states.  It should have been, in our view.  It was that kind of a case.”

And let’s not forget that Holder’s Contempt of Congress citation was directly linked to the White House’s dubious extension of executive privilege to cover a cabinet member.

So, either Eric Holder is being shielded from culpability because of the White House’s refusal to provide the relevant documents, or the U.S. Attorney General didn’t know about a major program that could, and did, jeopardize America’s relationship with Mexico.

Either way, Romney and Ryan would do voters a service by highlighting this colossal failure of leadership by key people in the Obama Administration.  If Holder’s job is safe, and the President is reelected, no one should be surprised if we get more of the same for the next four years.

Lachlan Markay of the Heritage Foundation excerpts the top five findings of the Justice Department non-partisan Inspector General’s Fast and Furious report:

1)      The report singles out top Department of Justice officials for wrongdoing

2)      The report appears to contradict sworn testimony by Attorney General Eric Holder

3)      The report faults top Justice Department leadership with failing to adequately respond to the murder of an American border patrol agent

4)      The White House refused to disclose any internal communications to the inspector general

5)      The report fails to consider evidence that a top DOJ official knew the department misled Congress

The fallout has been swift.  On the day the report was released Kenneth Melson, the former acting head of ATF – the DOJ bureau in charge of Fast and Furious – retired, while the DOJ’s Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, resigned.

So far, Attorney General Eric Holder has escaped culpability for the gun-walking program that originated on his watch.

We’ll see if congressional Republican investigators use the IG’s report to close the books on Fast and Furious, or use the Obama White House’s refusal to cooperate as proof that more sleuthing needs to be done.

In my column this week I explain the threat the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty poses to every Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

So, what’s the Obama Administration’s official position?

On the surface, the State Department has issued a series of “redlines” that claim to protect American Second Amendment rights to individual gun ownership, including the claim that “There will be no restrictions on civilian possession or trade of firearms otherwise permitted by law or protected by the U.S. Constitution.”

There are at least three reasons to suspect the Obama Administration’s motives.

First, the Obama Administration fought tooth-and-nail against interpreting the Second Amendment to guarantee the right of an individual to own a gun.  Only by a 5-4 decision from the United States Supreme Court in McDonald v. Chicago did the justices uphold the traditional understanding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, and not a collective right to self-defense provided by the government.

The gun control groups pushing the ATT side with the Obama Administration in seeing the right to self-defense as a collective rather than as an individual right.  After fighting a losing battle for years in Congress, gun controllers opted in 2001 to make their cause global and found willing partners in dictatorial regimes like Syria, Iran and Russia looking for any way to disarm dissident groups while preserving their right to buy and sell guns for national security (i.e. repressing dissidents).

Second, the Fast and Furious scandal where federal agents allowed 2,000 guns to “walk” into the hands of Mexican drug cartels – without the Mexican government’s knowledge – raises a serious question about the Obama Administration’s credibility on gun rights.  Already, one Department of Justice official has been caught in an email speculating how to use F&F as evidence to argue for stronger gun control laws.  Common sense says he wasn’t the only one.

Finally, there’s the Obama Administration’s presence at the ATT convention.

During the George W. Bush years the United States refused to participate in any discussions about an international arms treaty for fear it would lead to a step-by-step move to gut Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

In 2009, the Obama Administration reversed course and announced its support for the ATT.  That buy-in caused negotiations at the UN to accelerate, culminating in the month-long convention in New York this month.

Observers of the ATT convention expect the treaty’s final text to be filled with vague assertions and unattainable aspirations.  But as I point out in my column, the very existence of the ATT poses a serious long-term threat to Americans’ Second Amendment rights because future interpretations of its text can be molded to fit the gun controllers’ policy outcomes.

I suspect the Obama Administration knows this, and is aiding and abetting that very outcome by participating in the negotiations.

At National Review Online, Deroy Murdock urges us not to forget all the Mexicans killed as a result of Operation Fast and Furious. The estimate: 300 of them.

If The Obama administration wants to politicize immigration policy in order to gain Hispanic votes, somebody might wonder why the Romney campaign wouldn’t fight back by demanding why the Obamites are apparently so unconcerned or unapologetic about these dead Mexicans — especially when the administration falls all over itself apologizing multiple times to Pakistan for airstrikes gone wrong in that country, where unlike in Mexico) at least we have a decent reason (targeting terrorists) to be operating. The administration compounds the sin by stonewalling multiple legitimate requests for further information on this program gone wrong. One would think Hispanic voters would take offense at all this.

So here’s the deal: Dead Mexicans, killed by American guns deliberately allowed to “walk” by the U.S. government, are no concern of the Obama Administration. But if those same Mexicans come into the United States illegally, the administration will refuse to impose any sanction against them, plus will in many cases provide them with government assistance — all while those who DID come legally are left to wonder why they even bothered doing it all by the book.

So, says the administration: Come here illegally, please. Because if you stay on your side of the border and get in the way of one of our guns, well, you’re just unimportant collateral damage to our effort-gone-wrong to make a case against Second Amendment gun rights. Come, and live well. Stay, and die. It’s your choice, sucka.

John Fund tossed in this nugget when comparing America’s scandal-plagued voting system with other countries:

Mexico — which just last week carried off a national election with a universal photo-ID requirement for voting — spends roughly 10 times more per capita on elections than the U.S. and has virtually eliminated charges of voter fraud or incompetence. We can vastly improve our system with much smaller investments. (Emphasis added)

I wonder how U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder would react if he knew this.

At CFIF, we’ve hammered Holder for equating photo-ID for voting with racism.

With his blessing, the Department of Justice denied photo-ID requirements passed in South Carolina and Texas on the grounds that they violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act, an Act ensuring minorities of their right to vote.  By refusing to sign-off on the South Carolina and Texas laws, Holder’s DOJ is saying the photo-ID laws are racist.

The fact that photo-ID laws have been supported by Jimmy Carter and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court as “unquestionably relevant to the State’s interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process” are of no importance to Holder & Co.

America is a nation of “cowards” and racists, says the AG, so requiring photo-ID must be just another name for Jim Crow.

And yet here we have Mexico, a country familiar with historic racial tension amongst descendents of the Aztecs, Spanish settlers, and their offspring, conducting a free and fair election that peacefully transitioned power between political rivals.

Could it be that Mexico’s photo-ID requirement – like South Carolina and Texas – had a purpose other than disenfranchising a racial minority?

Maybe the next time Holder gets blasted by the Mexican government for not informing them of Fast and Furious he can change the subject with some pointed questions about Mexico’s racist photo-ID laws.  I’m sure he’d get a fair hearing…

The following is an excerpt from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney’s media briefing earlier today, where he was dogged by questions about President Obama’s assertion of executive privilege in the Fast and Furious case:

Q: Jay, you said to an earlier question that there was no White House cover-up involved in these documents that the President had declared privilege on. And you also said that, just again, that the President is just trying to protect the constitutionally enshrined power of the executive power to make decisions independently. In the documents in question is there any information that if put on the public record would jeopardize national security interest or embarrass the White House?

MR. CARNEY: Well, those are — (audience laughter) — I’m not going to give you a readout of documents that are under question here and relate to the assertion of privilege. What I can tell you is that there is nothing in these documents that pertains to the Fast and Furious operation. And I would simply note and have you ponder the fact that the Attorney General referred this to the Inspector General for investigation, and the Inspector General has access to all documentation as a member of the executive branch.

Q I guess the question is are you declaring it mostly on principle to ensure the separation of power or is there an issue of national security –

MR. CARNEY: Thank you for phrasing that. This is entirely about principle. It has nothing to do — (audience laughter) — no, no, this has nothing to do — we have been absolutely clear about the fact that this operation used a tactic that originated in a field office that was flawed, that was wrong, and that had terrible consequences for the Terry family, and should not have been employed. And this Attorney General, when he learned about it, put an end to it and referred it for investigation.

There was a time when the Briefing Room media wouldn’t have laid a finger on the president over something like this. Now they’re laughing in his Press Secretary’s face.

Probably not a bad time to update that resume, Jay. And Barack, you might want to have a spare handy too.

Tim Stanley of Britain’s Telegraph explains how the argument can be made that President Barack Obama’s role in the Fast and Furious scandal – if proven – could be worse than Richard Nixon’s involvement in Watergate:

A lot of conservatives are writing at the moment that not only is Obama turning into Nixon Mark II, but Obama is worse because no one actually got killed during Watergate. The comparison is based on the myth that Nixon ordered the Watergate break in and that’s what he eventually had to resign over. But that’s not true. Nixon’s guilt was in trying to pervert the course of justice by persuading the FBI to drop its investigation of the crime. Mistake number one, then, was to involve the White House in covering up the errors of a separate, autonomous political department. Mistake number two was that when Congress discovered that evidence about the scandal might be recorded on the White House bugging system, Nixon invoked executive privilege to protect the tapes. In both cases, it was the cover up that destroyed Tricky Dick – not the original crime.

And, forty years later almost to the day, here we have Obama making the same mistake. Perhaps it’s an act of chivalry to stand by Holder; perhaps it’s an admission of guilt. Either way, it sinks the Oval Office ever further into the swamp that is Fast and Furious. Make no mistake about: Fast and Furious was perhaps the most shameful domestic law and order operation since the Waco siege. It’s big government at its worst: big, incompetent and capable of ruining lives.

As an update to my previous post, here’s the latest from The Hill:

A House panel voted Wednesday to place Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his failure to comply with a subpoena, defying an assertion of executive privilege from President Obama.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Republican Chairman Darrell Issa (Calif.), approved a resolution along party lines to place Holder in contempt after battling him for months over access to internal agency documents about the gun-tracking operation Fast and Furious.

…

All 23 Republicans on the committee voted for the contempt resolution, while all 17 Democrats voted against it. Every member of the panel was present for the vote.

There are still many off-ramps on the road towards Eric Holder being perp walked into federal prison for being found guilty of contempt of Congress.

Next week the full House will vote on the Oversight Committee’s contempt citation.  If it passes, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia will convene a grand jury to decide on an indictment.  If that is successful, then Holder would have to be found guilty by another jury.  Only then would he be eligible to serve the one-year sentence for refusing to comply with Issa’s repeated requests for documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal.

The process is lengthy, and anyway is beside the point.  The reason Issa and the Republicans are pushing the contempt process forward isn’t to see the U.S. Attorney General go to prison.  It’s to apply the necessary pressure on a recalcitrant Obama administration to release information about one of the dumbest and most tragic federal misadventures in recent memory.

Hiding behind eleventh hour claims of executive privilege won’t make that task any easier.  If Holder and President Barack Obama want to avoid letting Fast and Furious become this administration’s Iran Contra, Holder better personally deliver assurances to Issa that he’s ready to fully cooperate.

And if he can’t because there’s damning information about a DOJ-White House cover-up, get ready for a Watergate role reversal with Republicans in Congress making a Democratic president’s life miserable.

Today marks a dramatic turn in the Fast and Furious scandal with the Obama White House announcing this morning that the documents sought by House Republicans are protected from disclosure by executive privilege.

For the first time since news broke of the Department of Justice gun-walking fiasco, the President of the United States is claiming an interest in DOJ’s internal deliberations about a program that purposefully armed Mexican drug cartels and ultimately allowed a drug runner to murder a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

In the short term, the president’s announcement may make House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa’s contempt vote closer than it would have been, if some members decide that an executive privilege claim inoculates Holder from punishment.  My guess is that Obama’s announcement will embolden Republicans on the committee to go ahead with the contempt vote and give Democrats a talking point after they lose.

In the long term, today’s executive privilege claim finally elevates Fast and Furious into a surefire campaign topic for the fall.  As long as the scandal was defended as a policy decision gone bad – especially one that was until today linked to the previous Republican administration – it was unlikely that conservatives would make Fast and Furious into a campaign theme.

But now that’s changed for two reasons.  First, as of today DOJ has rescinded its claim that Bush’s Attorney General Michael Mukasey knew about Fast and Furious, thus admitting that the idea and its consequences belong completely to the Obama administration.  Second, Obama’s claim of executive privilege means that he is now claiming ownership of the program.

I suspect that the documents being withheld would make the case for the resignation or impeachment of Eric Holder or another high-ranking DOJ official.  Claiming executive privilege helps delay the reckoning, but it opens the door for Mitt Romney and others – most notably Issa and other congressional investigators – to ask White House officials directly – and President Obama indirectly – about the president’s knowledge, involvement, and approval of Fast and Furious.

Game on.

Robert VerBruggen at National Review Online today reports that DoJ official Ronald Weich, who authored a false letter regarding the “Fast and Furious” gunwalking schedule, is leaving his job. What needs to be added for the record is that his F&F gaffe (or perhaps a lie) was far from his only screw-up of absurdist proportions.

Weich also was the official who tried to excuse DoJ’s dropping of the voter-intimidation charges against New Black Panther Jerry Jackson by claiming that Jackson was allowed to be at the site because he lived in that building. Oops! The building hosting the polling place was a senior citizen center — and Jackson is anything but a senior citizen, and his actual home address, a number of blocks away, was readily accessible on other documents. To this day there is no good explanation for how Weich managed to screw up so badly as to assert that Jackson lived in that senior center. Indeed, throughout the investigation into the Black Panther matter, Weich’s responses to congressmen were riddled with assertions of dubious merit.

Therefore, the American people should wish Mr. Weich good riddance. He did not serve us well.

It’s not just on “Fast and Furious.” Eric Holder and his politicized Justice Department, along with the Obama administration overall, has consistently evaded the law and refused to provide documents on a number of controversial fronts, all while claiming privileges that don’t even exist. Peter Kirsanow details some of the ways in a great NRO post today, here. Please do follow that link; it’s important.

I wrote on the broader topic of Obama stonewalling (at DoJ and elsewhere) at the Washington Times nearly three years ago, here. Others, too, have chimed in on this topic. It all adds up to a pattern of obstruction, prevarication, and lawlessness. That’s why U.S. Sen. John Cornyn today was moved to demand Holder’s resignation.

It is a call that surely will be echoed by others in Congress in days to come.

Reason has a great review of a new book on the Obama economic advisers who tried and failed to spend and regulate the economy into recovery.  But for all the space devoted to those around President Barack Obama, it’s the way he treats them – and wants them to treat him – that is most disturbing:

But Obama was not exactly a man without a team. He was loyal to the cult of policy smarts. He may have even been its high priest. As Scheiber reports, outside analysts reporting to the president were advised to highlight their expert credentials so he would know he wasn’t talking to cranks and dummies. Obama also wanted his inner circle to credit his own abilities: The president, Scheiber writes, “craved intellectual affirmation” and often badgered his lieutenants into acknowledging when his own ideas were perceived to have succeeded. Obama “had a habit of prompting his aides to acknowledge his wisdom and foresight,” Scheiber writes. The president would sometimes wonder aloud, “Whose idea was that?” when he deserved credit.

Whatever is Obama’s conscious motivation for overemphasizing credit and credentials at every turn, this window into his personality reveals a deeply insecure person.

Remember, this is the same man who’s boasted about being a better campaign manager than the one he employs, a better speechwriter than his scribes, and so on.

If this is the way the President wants to play it, why not let him own every decision by his administration?

$787 billion in stimulus spending and no change in the unemployment rate – Whose idea was that?

A federal takeover of the health care industry that raises the deficit while reducing services – Whose idea was that?

Selling thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels so they could be traced to crime scenes – Whose idea was that?

The list could go on and on and on…

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) explains on the House floor why his bill to cut $1 million from the Department of Justice’s appropriation is justified in light of Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to hand over documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal:

“For those watching at home, what would happen to them if they ignored a summons for jury duty? What would happen for them if they ignored a grand jury subpoena? What would happen if a committee of Congress demanded documents [from them] and they summarily refused to cooperate?”

Gowdy said that if any ordinary American citizen obstructed subpoenas the way Holder has, they “would be sanctioned, fined and probably jailed.”

America is a nation of laws, not men.  It reflects well on the House of Representatives that Gowdy’s bill passed by voice vote, indicating it had lots of support.

H/T: The Daily Caller

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano may have perjured herself twice in testimony before Congress about what she knew about the Fast & Furious scandal, and when she knew it.

In a new book by Human Events political editor Katie Pavlich, sources tell the author that Napolitano was lying when she told Congress – twice – that she never discussed the illegal gun-walking scandal with Attorney General Eric Holder and Dennis Burke, the U.S. Attorney for Arizona.

According to Pavlich’s sources…

• “There are five emails linking [Napolitano] to [Attorney General Eric] Holder.  They go back two days after it happened – the first email was two days after Brian was killed.” (Referencing the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s by Mexican drug cartel members armed with at least one Fast & Furious gun.)

• “…Napolitano was briefed regularly by an agent from another of her agencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.” (ICE was involved in Fast & Furious because it has jurisdiction over the U.S.-Mexico border and thus had to sign-off on guns walking over the border.)

• “There was an ICE agent assigned specifically to be the co-case agent of Fast & Furious.  He had to [file] an ICE report that either mirrored or referenced every ATF report that was done.”

Based on the preview, Pavlich’s book seems like a must-read for anyone appalled by the disregard for the rule of law and basic safety manifested by the Secretary for Homeland Security and the Attorney General.

When all the facts are known, the fall-out from the Fast & Furious fiasco will likely be huge.  From Human Events:

Pavlich makes a strong case that when people are finally charged with crimes, Napolitano will have to answer for her perjury to Congress.

“Let me tell you something about Janet,” another source said to the author. “Janet will be lucky not to go to prison.”

Another weekend, another document dump from Eric Holder regarding Fast and Furious.  Last Friday Holder’s Justice Department released information about 500 emails that show Holder knew about Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder on the day Terry died.  Other emails indicate Holder was aware of the botched gun-tracking program’s connection to Terry’s death.  Per Michael Walsh at the New York Post:

That information came in a series of e-mails in which the former US attorney in Arizona, Dennis Burke, discussed the F&F’s first fatality, agent Brian Terry, with a Holder deputy. The e-mails were sent in the early hours of Dec. 15, 2010, the day Terry died of wounds received the day before in a shootout 18 miles inside the US border, near Nogales.

The deputy, Monty Wilkinson, responded: “Tragic. I’ve alerted the AG.”

Burke, an anti-gun fanatic whose appointment as US attorney in 2009 roughly coincided with the start of F&F, goes on to tell Wilkinson later that day: “The guns found in the desert near the murder of the BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.”

That’s right. The government’s top law-enforcement officer has been turning a blind eye to a cancer in his department for more than a year.

In what Fox News calls “the first big break in what has been a unified front in the [Eric Holder’s Justice Department’s] defense of itself in the [Fast and Furious] gun-running scandal,” the number two DOJ official in Arizona is claiming through his lawyer that Holder & Co. are making him the fall guy.

“Department of Justice officials have reported to the Committee that my client relayed inaccurate information to the Department upon which it relied in preparing its initial response to Congress. If, as you claim, Department officials have blamed my client, they have blamed him unfairly,” the letter to Issa says.

Read the entire article here.

Here at CFIF, we’ve spent months chronicling the confluence of incompetence, deceit, and political opportunism that is Eric Holder’s Justice Department, whether it takes the form of the Fast and Furious scandal or the administration’s transparently partisan staffing of the department’s Civil Rights Division. Now, without a coherent counterargument, the Attorney General is essentially pulling the fire alarm. From the Daily Caller:

Attorney General Eric Holder accused his growing chorus of critics of racist motivations in a Sunday interview published in the New York Times. When reached by The Daily Caller Monday morning, the Department of Justice provided no evidence to support the attorney general’s claims.

Holder said some unspecified faction — what he refers to as the “more extreme segment” — is driven to criticize both him and President Barack Obama due to the color of their skin. Holder did not appear to elaborate on who he considered to make up the “more extreme segment.”

“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” Holder said, according to the Times. “Both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”