Freedom Line Blog

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Tracy Schmaler, top spokesman at the Eric Holder (in)Justice Department, has a hair-trigger temper that doesn’t even seem to need a good reason to go off. At The American Spectator today, I described my first encounter with her.  It didn’t even end with her yelling at me on the phone; it almost started that way.

Now comes Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News to tell a similar story:

In between the yelling that I received from Justice Department yesterday, the spokeswoman–who would not put anything in writing, I was asking for her explanation so there would be clarity and no confusion later over what had been said, she wouldn’t put anything in writing-…. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming.

I’m not sure what the difference is between yelling and screaming, but either one is highly unprofessional, especially coming from a press secretary.

I’ve heard a number of similar stories about Ms. Schmaler. She gets furious awfully fast. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t have the truth to rely on.

It certainly looks like U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress when he said on May 3^rd of this year that “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”  The most generous accounting would limit Holder’s knowledge of the international gun scandal to no earlier than the beginning of 2011.

Not so reports CBS News.

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

Specifically, memos dating from July, October, and November of 2010.  Spinners at Holder’s Department of Justice are trying to cover their boss by saying he misunderstood the question about when he first heard about Fast and Furious and its criminally negligent gun-walking element.

Spare us the feigned stupidity, Mr. Attorney General.  Among your many derelictions of duty, the gun-walking scandals offer the strongest rationale for your resignation.  Failing that, it may be time to consider impeachment proceedings.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino points to the mounting scandals – Solyndra, Fast and Furious, Lightsquared – hitting the White House to refute claims that the Obama Administration has been “scandal free.”

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

So the acting head of the ATF has been given a parachute. As night follows day, he’ll now take ALL the blame for unspecified “mistakes in implementation” of the Fast/Furious gun-running scandal, after which the administration will announce that all has now been taken care of, nothing more to see here, keep on walking, keep on walking, nothing to look at, everything is peachy-keen and the problem (what problem?) has been fixed……

Attorney General Eric Holder’s stint at the Justice Department has been ignominious. It seems anytime the DOJ is in the news these days it’s either for incompetence (the Mexican gunrunner scandal) or nefariousness (turning a blind eye towards Black Panther voter intimidation). Time to add another brick to the wall being built around the justice system, with the news that the DOJ recently released a radical leftist terrorist from prison. J. Christian Adams, the former DOJ attorney who brought the Panthers intimidation case has the story at Big Government:

Marilyn Buck was a Marxist terrorist who participated in conspiracies that led to the deaths of multiple police officers.  Buck helped the Black Liberation Army, a violent Marxist offshoot of the black panthers, acquire weapons and ammunition.  She participated in the robbery of an armored car where a guard was murdered.  If that wasn’t enough, Buck was also charged with the bombing of the U.S. Senate, Ft. McNair, the Washington Navy Yard Officer’s Club and a New York City federal building.  In many states, Buck’s behavior might have led to a midnight reservation in the electric chair.

Yet Holder’s DOJ unlocked Buck’s jail cell and set her free last summer. Justice concluded that Buck “expressed a dramatic change from her previous political philosophy.”

Adams’ piece goes on to chronicle how a stunning amount of vacous letters written on Buck’s behalf by leftist elites, primarily from academia, secured her release. Sadly, it’s no suprise that the insular world of the university was able to produce so much sympathy for Buck. What is shocking — and inexcusable — is that such pabulum was enough to convince the federal government to put a terrorist back on the streets.

Marilyn Buck doesn’t deserve her freedom. And Eric Holder doesn’t deserve his job.

Amid calls for more information about its failed oversight of a growing number of deadly “gun walking” schemes, the Department of Justice has found a new reason to stonewall congressional investigators: DOJ needs to divert manpower and resources to investigating Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for possible criminal charges.

Even though all of the alleged criminal activity attaching to News Corp. is in the United Kingdom, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sparing no time in making a public show of his department’s willingness to discover some stateside.

Those investigating the Fast and Furious, Gunrunner, and Castaway scandals – Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) chief among them – shouldn’t let Holder lessen the pressure for answers by changing the topic.  The message to Holder should be clear: Investigate if you must, but comply with the next information deadline or be in contempt of Congress.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that a raid of an arsenal in Mexico identified at least five guns traced back to a controversial program allowing guns to “walk” across the border into the hands of drug cartels.  The guns were part of the “Fast and Furious” program run out of the Phoenix, AZ office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to catch higher level criminals.

CFIF and others have reported on the presence of another ATF-tracked gun at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.  The confirmation of five more guns linked to illegal activity will heighten pressure by House Government Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to break through Justice Department stonewalling on an operation that went predictably out of control.

Unsurprisingly, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on Issa’s committee, is not joining the growing bipartisan chorus for more answers from Attorney General Eric Holder, whose administrative portfolio includes oversight of ATF.

One American is already dead because of ATF’s misguided sting operation.  With more than 1,000 “Fast and Furious” guns still unaccounted for, let’s hope it doesn’t take more deaths to convince Holder that political considerations should take a back seat to our Border Patrol Agents’ personal saftey.

National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre has a clever response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim he didn’t authorize an agency he oversees to sell guns to known criminals and “let them walk” into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

“He’s the attorney general of the United States of America — the highest law-enforcement officer in our land,” LaPierre said. “Who’s in charge? If he didn’t know, then who’s minding the store? If Holder didn’t know, Holder has got to go.” (Emphasis added)

The programs at issue, Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious, are initiatives run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) that attempted to track the post-sale movement of guns used in violent crimes.

Disastrously, at least one U.S. Border Patrol agent has been killed with a gun linked to the ATF initiative.

With all his other missteps, this could be the fiasco that ultimately removes Eric Holder from power.