And Gomer Pyle says "Surprise, surprise,

surprise!"
“Contrary to what America has been told for years—that Mexican crime guns are obtained illicitly from U.S. gun dealers thanks to lax gun laws here—it now appears the Mexican government may be a major source of those firearms,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Once again, it appears U.S. gun dealers and the Second Amendment have been taking the rap for violent crimes in another country, when the truth is staggering.”

Going back to 2010 and an Obama administration scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious, during which the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives office in Phoenix allowed some 2,000 guns to be “walked” into Mexico, American gun owners, retailers in the southwest, and our gun laws were ultimately blamed for drug cartel violence south of the border.

But now, veteran journalist Sharyl Attkisson and former ATF agent John Dodson have blown the whistle, again. Attkisson originally broke the story about the Fast and Furious scandal, and Dodson was the man who came forward 16 years ago to expose that debacle.

But now, the story has taken an alarming new twist, and CCRKBA is demanding full disclosure.
Who's surprised?

The media is still pushing the 'guns from America' crap

about the cartels.
The outlet also quoted authorities who documented the use of mines, rocket-propelled grenades and armored trucks with mounted machine guns, developments that have led to the death of civilians in the country.

Many of these weapons come from the U.S., with the Mexican government historically requesting its American counterpart to do more to stem the flow... etc. ad Bullcrap.  Sure, stores and gun shows are selling RPGs and mines and machine guns all over.

The cartels aren't just a criminal enterprise, haven't been for some time.  They're working at taking over Mexico, and they've got lots of connections in other countries to get stuff like that.

Ah, when unpleasant fact bites gun bigots in the ass

Take the Mexican  military 'losing' huge numbers of weapons, and add this:
The Central American countries, for example, often ask U.S. officials to trace the origins of suspected U.S.-supplied weapons. Over a four-year period, for example, 27,000 trace requests came in, and the federal agencies were able to show that about a third were U.S.-supplied.

The GAO also determined that not all are illegally trafficked, with some coming in legally because those countries do not manufacture firearms.

In one stunning section of the new report, the GAO said that many firearms go to police and military and are sometimes “rented” to drug gangs.

“Although U.S. agencies have no reliable data on criminals’ acquisition of firearms in Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, U.S. and foreign law enforcement officials said their experience had shown that criminals in those countries purchase firearms illegally in local black markets, steal them from legal firearm owners, and rent or borrow them from legal owners,” said the report.
Throws a bit of a wrench in the 'Iron River' bullshit.

While Mexico wants to sue US firearms makers,

it'd be nice if they'd at least attempt to clean up their own house.  

Of course, if they did it'd really cut down on the kickbacks and bribes.
Mexico’s Army (SEDENA) is losing approximately 30 percent of weapons purchased from the U.S., a report from Mexican journalist Carlos Loret De Mola revealed. The report comes as Mexico’s federal government litigates against firearm manufacturers in a U.S. court, blaming them for the raging cartel violence.

Those missing weapons are showing up in crime scenes. Mexico’s military has also allegedly misplaced weapons bought from Germany, Australia, Italy, Romania, Spain, and Belgium.
Which would explain all those automatic weapons that Mexico claims are somehow picked up at gun shows and such.

Tab clearing

Oh, we noticed.  Believe me, we did.


No, they damn sure aren't getting them from the US.


Learning red-dot pistol sights.


Homemade firearms used in Halle attack

Yeah, I'm real worried about the opinion of people who either can't or won't

deal with the cartels, and the corruption, and who lie about where the actual military weapons come from.
“Mexico’s Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu on Monday asked the U.S. Congress to restrict the sale of assault weapons as ‘they cause harm on both sides of the border,” China’s Xinhua News Agency reports. “Ruiz Massieu made this call at the Second Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.”
Not to mention the "We actively encourage, and help, Mexicans and others to violate your border, but if you object you're a racist" bullshit from you.

Madam, you are most cordially invited to kiss my ass.


Reason #537 to get rid of the EPA: if some mining company did this, they'd be screaming to put the people in charge in prison, but since it's the EPA
Local officials said this week's release was not large enough to warrant a public advisory.
Oh, of course not!


Yeah, that about the 2000 election tends to get glossed-over or just not mentioned.  You have two choices: those high-paid news readers are incompetent, and so is the staff, or they did it deliberately.

Mostly tab clearing

Some of the problems with psychiatry


Moral panics, and the BS they tend to be based on.
Connected: more on BS rape statistics


More on the administration lying about Benghazi


How're those gun bans and etc. working out in (fG)Britain and Australia?  Not so good.


“A dog can perform basic arithmetic and can count to four or five,” Brown said. “They read body language, have an innate sense of basic fairness, and find their way through the woods. I challenge you to show me a first or second lieutenant who can do any of that.”
“To be fair,” Brown countered, “the lieutenants did display the ability to shit in a toilet and hold their bowel movements until an appropriate time, giving them a slightly higher ranking in that category than the military working dogs that haven’t been housebroken yet.”


In a good federal case for open carry of firearms, the 4th Circuit holds that the open carry of a firearm, alone, does not constitute probable cause to detain someone absent some other evidence that the person is engaged in criminal activity.


Obama in Mexico: "A lot of your problems are our fault."  Surprise, right?
No word on whether, to deal with this, he'll stop hiding documents for head gun-smuggler Eric Holder.


Waking the Dragon. Read it.  One excerpt:
Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they tell us they don’t want to ban guns, only enact what they call “common sense gun laws.” But like a magician using misdirection, they tell everyone else they want to ban every gun everywhere. While some are busy trying to placate us with lies, another anti-gunner somewhere submits a gun ban proposal — proposals that often would automatically make us felons for possession. Felons, for no good reason. And you anti-gunners can roll up your grandfather clauses and stuff them where the sun don’t shine. If it ain’t good enough for our grandchildren in 60 years, it ain’t good enough for us right now.


And from the NRA convention: my, the bigots are a-protestin' now, aren't they!

At least publicly, the Mexicans are pretending

Fast & Furious was 'botched'; and the Democrats are still lying about the numbers of guns. Anyone want to bet this crap shows up in "This is why the UN treaty is needed" speeches?


Know people who still insist the Bush tax cuts were 'only for the rich'; they won't like the results if they're dropped. And they'll blame Bush for the problems.


Why might the Poles be so upset about that idiotic comment? Besides having been betrayed by socialists/communists in the past, and the "No missile defense for you after all because it upsets the Russians" and such.
And I suspect the reason guys like this aren't much better known is they didn't like their communist 'saviors'; and wound up being murdered by them.


And Caleb likes the kilt.

If the judge allows this suit, he should be

stripped of that robe, then tarred and feathered. That he even has to THINK about it is amazing.


Occupiers maintain their sterling reputation. Hey, reverend, what did you expect from these clowns?

Should expect things like this:
Ms. Terrie, an 18-year-old activist originally from Florida, was treated at the hospital for a concussion just two nights ago, after being hit in the head with a chair at a meeting.


More peeing on the Taliban, please


Isn't this nice to have on our border?
According to the Mexican government, from January through September 2011 2,276 deaths were recorded in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico.

A Nov. 2011 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report states that over nearly the same period – January through October 2011 – 2,177 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led war against the Taliban is underway. It did not provide a breakdown of responsibility for that period, but said that in 2010, 75 percent of civilian deaths were attributed to the Taliban and other “anti-government elements.”

Per capita, a person was at least nine times more likely to be murdered in Chihuahua last year than in Afghanistan. (Chihuahua has 3,406,465 inhabitants, according to Mexico’s 2010 census; the CIA World Factbook reports that in July 2011 the estimated population of Afghanistan was 29,835,392.)
According to the reported numbers, the drug-related murder rate was about 67 for every 100,000 inhabitants in Chihuahua last year, while in Afghanistan the civilian killing rate was an estimated seven for every 100,000 people living there.

There were more drug-related killings in Chihuahua than in any other Mexican state, according to the government figures. Chihuahua, the largest state in Mexico, includes Ciudad Juarez, a border city located across from El Paso, Texas. It is the deadliest city in Mexico and is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world.
And that is an interesting question: spillover violence continues to come over the border, maybe use drones to whack cartel bigshots? Hit weapons dumps? Because if the pandering assholes and traitors in DC don't do- or get out of the way of states doing it- something to enforce our borders, we'll be seeing LOTS more of the crap listed in the story.
And you'll notice the NYEffingTimes is still pushing the Mexican Gun Lie; got to blame us and provide some cover for Holder & Obama, y'know.

Yes, the Gunwalker investigation- and the stonewalling

by ATF and DOJ- is still going on. Thanks to Sipsey Street found a link to this story; here's a few bits:
Here’s the problem

First, no one seems to know if Fast and Furious was, in fact, a legitimate operation, one built and played ‘by the book.’ No one at ATF, or anywhere else, seems to have any paperwork (that they want to share) on the operation.

Second, if one of the weapons that made its way into the hands of a Mexican gunman via the ATF operation was the same weapon used to murder US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, killed last December on US soil, it suggests that, at a very early stage, ATF lost control (to the Mexican military? To Federal Police? To the cartels?) of the operation. Why and how?

Third, if ATF Agent John Dodson had not blown the whistle and revealed that an ATF operation called Fast and Furious was in play, no one could have linked the weapon found at Terry’s murder site to an operation that had to have been initiated and approved by high-levels officials at ATF and DOJ—and that story would have benefited not just Mexico, but proponents of stronger gun regulation here in the US, and in the US government, as well. Win-win.

The straw that broke ATF Agent Dodson’s back? Why he ‘blew the whistle’?

The realization that the weapon used to kill a fellow agent had fallen into the hands of his murderers via an operation sanctioned and implemented by US authorities.
...
CBS News reports that Dodson was not the only ATF agent worried about Fast and Furious:

One agent called the strategy “insane.” Another said: “We were fully aware the guns would probably be moved across the border to drug cartels where they could be used to kill.”

On the phone, one Project Gunrunner source (who didn’t want to be identified) told us just how many guns flooded the black market under ATF’s watchful eye. “The numbers are over 2,500 on that case by the way. That’s how many guns were sold – including some 50-calibers they let walk.”

But here’s what’s really amazing: as much testimony as we have, and despite threats by Representative Issa (R-Calif) to cite principals at ATF and DOJ for ‘contempt,’ the investigation into Fast and Furious seems to be going nowhere.

Senior ATF officials, Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States, and, most importantly, President Barack Obama have discounted the need for Issa’s subpoenas, contending that an ‘in-house’ investigation by the Office of the Investigator General within Holder’s Department of Justice is all the situation warrants.
...
Calderon blames cartel violence in Mexico on 1) Washington’s lack of financial support and inadequate sharing of US intelligence, 2) the US government’s lax attitude toward cross-border arms trafficking, and 3) the drug habits of the American people.

In other words, send more money south, reinstate the ban on the sale of assault rifles in the US, and give America’s eight million drug addicts what they really need most–treatment and prevention (as opposed to prosecution and jail time).

Hmmmm . . .where have we heard this before? Could this be what they call ‘the intersection of politics and policy’?
...
Mexico’s president, says the WP article, was dead-on in his criticism of Mexico’s arrogant partner to the north, and it’s time for the US to eat humble pie—after it apologizes to Mexico and toughens its gun-control laws.

ATF, led by senior officials who, along with Eric Holder, share a predilection for tougher gun laws, also fell in behind Presidents Calderon and Obama when the report about Fast and Furious broke, presenting a strong and very silent front to the public.

Let’s not forget that one former ATF Acting Director, Michael Sullivan (an on-the-record advocate for stringent gun control) claimed his investigators were able to trace 90-95 percent of guns found in Mexico to the United States. (Note: the only ‘guns found in Mexico’ to which ATF eventually gains access are weapons we know can be traced back to the US, because they are cherry-picked and hand-delivered to US law enforcement by the Mexican authorities themselves.)

Another of Obama’s erstwhile nominees for ATF Director, Andrew Traver, who has headed ATF’s Chicago Office, is also an on-the-record spokesperson for tougher gun legislation. Speaking to Traver’s nomination, a few months ago, Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) said, “You might as well put an arsonist in charge of the fire department.”

And where this crap may well have been intended to lead:
But let’s say Agent Dodson hadn’t talked.

Let’s just suppose.

The AK-47 used to gun down fellow federal agent Brian Terry, once recovered, would no doubt have been identified by ATF as a weapon recently purchased from a US gun dealer on the southwest border (ATF would have had, after all, the serial numbers and other identifying documentation).

There would have been no need to mention the existence of any ATF ‘secret sting,’Operation Fast and Furious, or any links between these ATF endeavors and the movement of the weapon used to murder Terry across the US border and into the hands of his Mexican assailants.

Instead, the discovery and identification of the AK-47 used to gun down a US agent as one sold by a US gun dealer and then trafficked ‘illegally’ over the border into Mexico and into the possession of the cartels might have created a ‘perfect PR storm,’ neatly reinforcing the arguments put forth, first, by Mexico’s government, which contends there would be no gang violence in that country if the US didn’t supply gangs with guns; second, by higher-ups in the US government who favor tougher gun-control laws and non-intervention in Mexico (DOJ and the Obama Administration); and, third, by the public anti-gun lobby in America.

Indeed, here’s how that story would have read: Mexico’s claim re the US fueling cartel violence is right, and worse yet, weapons trafficked from the US are no longer being used just to murder Mexicans, but to kill Americans as well.

We’re killing our own guys.
Anybody doubt that this was the real intention of Fast & Furious? I don't, not anymore.

Personal stuff to do the next few days

so the ice cream may stay in the freezer a while. In the meantime,
Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

Hena dropped after 70.

Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.
She was raped. And the local authorities tried to cover up her death as a suicide. And her family is being protected because they're under threat for daring to speak about the imam and elders and this disgusting display of-
I don't have the right words to cover this shit. I really don't.



United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon slammed Israel’s policy and called for the division of Jerusalem on Tuesday. In a message delivered by his assistant at a UN regional meeting in Uruguay, Ban said: “The target date for completing the Palestinian Authority’s two-year State-building program is fast-approaching.”

“The occupation that started in 1967 is morally and politically unsustainable, and must end,” he told the UN Latin American and Caribbean Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace.
The only words I can come up with are "Fuck you, you bastard. They took Jerusalem during a war started by people who want every Jew dead, and you want to hand half that city(now) and all the Israelis(later) over to the enemy? Fuck you twice you miserable little statist bastard."


Remember the Mexican Gun Lie?
Here’s a breaking story that’s only reported by Central American media and Fox.

The most fearsome weapons wielded by Mexico’s drug cartels enter the country from Central America, not the United States, according to U.S. diplomatic cables disseminated by WikiLeaks and published here Tuesday by La Jornada newspaper.

Inventory includes grenades and rocket launchers, necessary items for beating the Mexican army.

This corroborates an LA Times report from early 2009, which catalogued “hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets…”
But Obama & Co. insist they're coming from the US. Yeah. Right.


More on Gunwalker:
Dodson's account: "The gun shops were more concerned than the ATF about the multiple sales because they knew that those who were buying weapons did not want them for their personal use. With this approach, the gun shops thought they were doing the right thing, they had no idea that we (the agents) were not intercepting the weapons. "
. . . .
However, agents of the ATF in Phoenix seized only a couple of arms shipments to Mexico. "The other weapons that ended in ATF's possession were seized by other agencies and they informed us," says Dodson."

Man, Obama has a LOT of room under that bus,

doesn't he?
If I might make a point here.

Hey Breuer, Melson, Hoover, Chait and Newell. I don't know if you noticed but you've all just been burned, discarded, thrown under the bus by your boss of bosses. "The Secretary has disavowed all knowledge of your actions."

Pretty high pucker factor, huh? I betcha "Gunwalker Bill" Newell alone could make Hope diamonds out of lumps of bituminous coal with his anal sphincter right now.

From the end of the previous post:
Mike -- the obvious just hit me... if there's inter-agency participation in this mess, there's a coordinating agent, i.e., someone from the National Security staff at the White House making these horses pull together...

Add the foreign policy connection, and it's a "slam dunk" that the White House has had a key role...

and Obama probably did not sign off on any paper... something like USMC requests for artillery support: Silence implies consent... The question is not did he approve it. Did he disapprove it?

This kind of dirtbag behavior...

At the trial, ATF testified that they had ground away welds and replaced most of the gun's internal mechanism to finally get the gun to fire three rounds with a single pull of the trigger.
The whole case is disgusting; that someone who professes to be a lawman of the United States would take part in it is even more so. These people should be fired, and should be personally liable- as well as the agency being liable- for this idiocy.

They actually testified that they had to completely rework the rifle to make it behave as they wanted. And expected that admission to help them get a conviction. These people belong in cells for a few years as well as being sued into oblivion for this.



President Obama yesterday praised Brazil for its new offshore oil industry and said he wants to buy as much oil as possible in this new win-win partnership — although we have piled up $5 trillion in new debt, curtailed new petroleum exploration off shore and in the West, as well as kept Alaska off-limits. Our near-term energy future apparently lies in borrowing money to buy oil from those we praise for drilling where we never would ourselves.


More reason why PBS should be cut off from public money:
Someone at its Frontline website has been substituting fake biographies of conservatives written by an organization called Right Web for legitimate institutional biographies. Right Web is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a think tank whose scholars’ positions range from left wing to Marxist. When challenged about inaccuracies on the dossiers he compiles of “right wing militarists,” the editor of Right Web e-mailed that even when no evidence supports his allegations, corrections of his slanders would require proving his allegations wrong, an impossible standard that is also embraced by conspiracy theorists like the LaRouchies, 9/11 revisionists, and Birthers. Right Web is also among the worst Google manipulators in the political realm.


The only proper response to this letter would be "Dear Detective & Captain: Fuck you. And no. Sincerely,"


And on that "Were do the cartels get weapons?" question, among other answers is

The El Paso Times has a story based on a Wikileaks leaked diplomatic message. It reports that businessmen in Juarez hired eight Zetas for protection, and Zetas got guns from the army in exchange for a truce with the Zetas and promises of assistance against rival cartels:

"According to the contact, (the source)," the cable states, " 'Zetas' paid a visit on local military commanders when they arrived in Juárez in September 2008, and purchased previously-seized weapons from the army garrison the former 'Zetas' pledged not to target the army, and made themselves available to the army for extrajudicial operations."

Two quotes that stand out: Holder in November

saying "The department is currently reviewing existing gun laws to determine how best to combat gun violence and keep guns out of the hands of criminals and others prohibited from possessing them."

And, in April (Obama had) "not backed off at all from my belief that the assault weapons ban makes sense."

Again, in April: "Not backed off."

In November: "The department is currently reviewing existing gun laws."

My sources tell me that at some point along this time, William "Gunwalker Bill" Newell's 2008 Tucson "pilot project" of walking guns within the US came to the attention of Holder and then Emanuel.
...
Reviewing policy: November 2009.

Recruitment of the FFL holder to begin active Gunwalker operations: 17 December 2009.

Remember one of my sources' analysis previously reported:

Let me tell you what this was, and where it came from, based on a conversation I had with a long-time, well-informed veteran of American government intelligence operations the other day.

"Do you think," he asked me, "that this happened accidentally in a vacuum?" Meaning that one day "Gunwalker Bill" Newell, Phoenix SAC, just got a wild hair and decided to invent his own foreign policy. "Things like this happen because of meetings. People sit in meetings and they decide what they want to happen. And then they take decisions, make policy and implement that policy to achieve those ends." He added, "That's why State is so nervous. They signed off on this. In a meeting."

...
My sources indicate that between March and December of 2009, there were a number of meetings, including Eric Holder, Rahm Emanuel and various subordinates. And the bloody-minded policy developed at those meetings proceeded along very nicely, thank you, until the death of Brian Terry, and would have after that, except for some brave ATF whistleblowers.

I do tend to think they might have had to damp out the sound

of his teeth grinding as he said this.

Couple of other thoughts:
Thank whatever deity you have fond thoughts of our founders didn't trust ANYONE or any single arm of government to be given overall power.
Can the Pres of Mexico veto a part of their Constitution? Or did the reporter not understand how ours works?
Don't you just love that the reporter basically blames us for all the dead Mexicans?


Pic stol- borrowed from Rob

The sun came out!

There is rejoicing! And while it warms a bit, I'm looking around.
Damn.
A third of the buildings in central Christchurch may need to be demolished and rebuilt, authorities in New Zealand have warned, following an earthquake.

Hundreds of suburban homes damaged in Tuesday's 6.3 magnitude tremor may also have to be pulled down, officials said.
Death toll currently 144 and about 200 missing. Bad.


Engineering a bacteria or virus to be harmless doesn't always work:
Casadaban’s illness is important because of the way the plague bacterium had been weakened. Yersinia pestis needs iron to survive. Normally it gets this iron by stealing it from a host’s body with proteins that bind to it and help break it down. To make the bacterium harmless, scientists genetically stripped it of the proteins needed to consume iron.

“It’s like having a lion, where we took out all its teeth and all its claws,” Alexander said. “But in the case of Dr. Casadaban, the lion didn’t even need to have teeth. There was so much iron that it was freely available and easy to get.”


The federal Education Department in Australia has banned Zumba, a fitness program, from its headquarters after a dance class caused the new building to shake violently.
The possible 'whole lotta shakin' goin' on' cracks are almost endless.


The mayor of LA wants a special six-foot security wall around the official house. Apparently he's bothered by those grubby citizens not being prevented from setting foot on the sacred grounds or something.
And originally, he wanted it to be 8.5' tall.


This crap with TSA is beyond the point at which people should start calling the police and charging them with assault. Maybe child molestation.
The only bad thing on our trip was TSA was at the Savannah train station. There were about 14 agents pulling people inside the building and coralling everyone in a roped area AFTER you got OFF THE TRAIN! This made no sense!!! Poor family in front of us! 9 year old getting patted down and wanded. They groped our people too and were very unprofessional. I am all about security, but when have you ever been harassed and felt up getting OFF a plane? Shouldnt they be doing that getting ON??? And they wonder why so many people are mad at them.
One more reason not to put a bunch of money into trains: the DHS and TSA want to molest you even AFTER YOU GET OFF THE DAMN THINGS.

'Security theater' doesn't even begin to cover this idiocy; the only possible reason I can think of for this is that they want to force people into the habit of being sheep at any time, any place. Thought occurs, what do they charge you with if you say "I'm calling the police, you're holding me against my will"? YOU'RE GETTING OFF THE THING.


Some questions from Doc Helen on one of the latest "You men should grow up!" books:
Though she reluctantly admits that the “materials available to young men are meager, and what is available contradicts itself,” she comes up with this ridiculous conclusion: “At bottom, they are too free, a fact epitomized by their undefined, open-ended, and profoundly autonomous pre-adulthood.” She ends the book suggesting that young women will have to get a better understanding of the limitations imposed by their bodies (Huh?) and young men need to man up.

My question to her: Why should they?

What do you have to offer these men you call child-men if they do man up? Are you going to ensure that they have fair access to their children should they divorce? Will you make sure that they aren’t hauled off to jail if the wife makes false accusations of domestic violence? Will you let them keep the earnings and property that they worked for over years rather than have them turned over to their wife, even if she cheated and was abusive? Will you shield the millions of men who live in fear of their significant other but have nowhere to turn for help? Will you make marriage, in other words, as valuable to men as you think it is for women?


Some questions and possible answers as to why the Mexican government doesn't seem bothered by the Gunwalker revelations(long excerpt):

So why the deliberate indifference?

Possibly, it’s because they want to minimize scrutiny of their own corrupt role in arming cartels:

A Mexican army officer assigned to guard President Felipe Calderon leaked military intelligence to drug cartels, trained hit men and supplied military weapons to Los Zetas, according to a U.S. Embassy cable recently released by Wikileaks.

There’s another piece of the puzzle for that State Department tie-in mentioned the other day that could expand the Grassley Senate investigation.

St. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann makes a particularly relevant observation about timing:

As Charlotte Gun Rights Examiner Paul Valone pointed out in private correspondence, that U.S. Embassy cable is dated January, 2009, meaning that when, a couple months later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blamed violence in Mexico on "[o]ur inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals," she was well aware that the drug syndicates were not depending on the U.S. commercial gun market for their weapons.

So Hillary knew at the time that Calderon’s own inner circle was neck-deep in profiteering from cartel connections and military arms supplying. As did Calderon, of course, who still continued to demand a ban on semiautomatic firearms be imposed against United States citizens.

Other day, in one of those stupid arguments on Facebook(I know, sometimes just can't seem to help myself) I was faced with a truly amazing thing: a bunch of the progressives and liberals actually believe ALL our current problems stem from Ronald Reagan having been President. Yeah, not good enough to blame Bush, in the end "IT'S BECAUSE OF THAT BASTARD REAGAN!!!" I mean, these people literally do not see that a Democrat or Socialist ever did ANYTHING wrong. Just flat amazing.


Paul Helmke really doesn't want people to pay attention to Gunwalker, does he?


And that's it for now; cleaning and maybe some handloading to do.

What? A bunch of Fed bureaucrats and politicians and media weenies

lied? Whoda thunk such a thing?
Another series of leaked State Department cables made public this week by WikiLeaks lend credence to investigative reports on gun trafficking and the drug war published by Narco News as far back as 2009.

The big battles in the drug war in Mexico are “not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns,” Narco News reported in March 2009, against the grain, at a time when the mainstream media was pushing a narrative that assigned the blame for the rising tide of weapons flowing into Mexico to U.S. gun stores and gun shows.

Rather, we reported at the time, “the drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.”

Those weapons, found in stashes seized by Mexican law enforcers and military over the past several years, include U.S.-military issued rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and explosives. . .
Which, despite the hysterical vapors of Japete and Helmke & Co., are not things you buy at the local gun show or shop.

This is going to stir some things up

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has announced the state will sue the federal government for its failure to secure the border and enforce immigration laws.

Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne held a news conference Thursday to announce their fight in the face of a federal judge’s ruling that parts of SB1070, the state’s controversial immigration law, are unconstitutional.
Well, if the feds had been enforcing these laws, there wouldn't have been any need for 1070, so why not?


What? Hezbollah committed nasty crimes to raise money, and a Lebanese bank helped? Such a surprise, right?


Looks like that next-generation grenade launcher is working pretty well. Which means Obama & Co. will probably want to drop funding for it.


You might remember Algore jumping up and happily proclaiming the nasty winters are proof of globular warmering, and... increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming,”, etc. Slight problem:
Unfortunately for Gore and others who have claimed that the snow this winter is a global warming byproduct, their own authorities have said climate change will result in less snow.

Both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have predicted warmer, less snowy winters.

A sampling:

• “Snow season length and snow depth are very likely to decrease in most of North America … except in the northernmost part of Canada where maximum snow depth is likely to increase (Christensen et al., 2007).” (EPA)
• “Decreases in snowcover and increases in winter rain on bare soil will likely lengthen the erosion season and enhance erosion intensity.” (EPA)
• “Rising temperatures have generally resulted in rain rather than snow in locations and seasons where climatological average temperatures for 1961 to 1990 were close to freezing (0 °C).” (EPA)
• “As temperatures rise, the likelihood of precipitation falling as rain rather than snow increases, especially in autumn and spring at the beginning and end of the snow season, and in areas where temperatures are near freezing. Such changes are observed in many places, especially over land in middle and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, leading to increased rains but reduced snowpacks.” (IPCC)

Algore, you're so full of crap you should be rented out to stand in the fields to fertilize them.


Ah, the fierceness of the Hope! and Change!!
The Obama administration's Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy.

That assertion was revealed — perhaps inadvertently — by the department in its response to a McClatchy request for a copy of a secret Justice Department memo.
Kind of like how Gitmo is closed and all those civil trials for terrorists and illegal combatants and- oh, wait...


Heard about this the other day, I guess New York doesn't want people owning vacation homes and cabins in their lousy state:
A New York court ruled last month that all income earned by a New Canaan, Conn., couple is subject to New York state taxes because they own a summer home on Long Island they used only a few times a year. They have been hit with an additional tax bill of $1.06 million. [In re Barker, No. 822324 (NY Tax App. Jan. 13, 2011).] ....
...
[The judge] ruled that the couple's Long Island vacation home qualifies under the law as a permanent abode because it was suitable for living year-round—whether or not the couple actually stayed in the home wasn't relevant. Under the ruling, if an owner doesn't spend a single a day in a home it could still count toward a permanent residence.
Way to go, NY; I wonder how many people called a realtor to sell their property when they heard of this? And how many are doing it now?


On the Mexican Gun Lie, here's some information to use in dealing with anyone who brings it up. One of the key- maybe THE key- points:
This means that the 87 percent figure relates to the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by Mexican authorities or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. In fact, the 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.
Wonder how Japete will decide to spin this?


A take on the upset at Glenn Beck for daring to slander Piven by actually(gasp!) reading her words on the air:
This controversy might in principle have remained in the popular press, but it has in fact rather quickly become a topic of academic debate too. The Chronicle reported this week that Cary Nelson, president of the AAUP, issued a statement saying that Piven is the victim of “what nearly amounts to an American Fatwa,” from Beck’s “virulent attacks.” Nelson says, “Amid these relentless tirades, Professor Piven has herself begun to receive threats of violence.” And he concludes by calling for—what else?—civility: “We join others in strongly urging those who are critical of Professor Piven’s writings to advance their positions in ways that foster responsible criticism and debate.”

“Responsible criticism and debate.” These are the cynosures of academic discourse. Who would be opposed?

Actually, it would seem, quite a few, perhaps beginning with Cary Nelson himself, who, by invoking the idea of “an American Fatwa,” indulged in the kind of rhetoric that can hardly be called responsible or conducive to debate. If you imply that someone is seeking to kill his opponents, you have pretty much ruled out the grounds for a respectful airing of differences of opinion.
...
Higher education has no special immunity from the angri-culture. On the contrary, it is a privileged haunt for those who delight in scorn, derision, and wrathful dislike of mainstream American culture. We cite academic freedom as guaranteeing our right to be vitriolic.

I don’t know of any simple remedy for that, but I do think it comes across to most Americans as hypocrisy. To claim academic freedom as a protection of one’s own diatribes while crying “no fair” when someone aims a diatribe back at you requires a clownish degree of self-regard. Unfortunately, what most Americans will take from this affair is that higher education has an abundance of that particular quality.
No kidding.


Oh my. It's 55 outside, the third day after the last blizzard. And most of the snow is gone, and the bike wants exercise. I'm going to get the stuff 'round the house done and ride a bit. Without it being a trip to the intersection of Frostbite & Hypothermia.

Ref Project Gunwalker, one hell of an admission

LA Times confirms guns used in the gunfight where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed came from sales being 'monitored' by ATF.

From Hardy: The spin is now -- this happened because we didn't have enough resources to do more. In other words, "give us more money and we won't ____ up again."
Yeah. Because it was lack of money that was behind this. Sure.

More from Codrea:

[A] former ATF agent told FoxNews.com on condition of anonymity that ATF Headquarters allowed guns to cross the border, for the reason that ATF wanted to glean more intelligence about who would come to possess the guns and what regions of the country they would end up in.

Naturally, ATF spokesmen are dismissing allegations that guns were intentionally allowed to go across the border. I have come to understand they aren’t supposed to do that with large quantities of firearms the same way they might with a small quantity of drugs. Too many things could go wrong.
Gee, ya think maybe?
Also,
A source who has been providing information that has consistently panned out in the ongoing “Project Gunwalker” investigation is claiming that Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, Lanny Breuer, was party to the decision to overrule the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive’s representative to Mexico. Former attaché Darren Gil reportedly advocated informing the Mexican government of gun monitoring operations that resulted in “Project Gunwalker” allegations, and has since resigned his post, one sources say is now to be filled by current ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge William Newell.

Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Streeet Irregulars has posted a detailed background on Breuer along with his analysis of this latest allegation. Might this new allegation help explain why whistleblowers would want to avoid normal Department of Justice channels and seek Congressional protections?

If you want to go through all the Examiner pieces on this, go here.


From Sipsey Street,
Jeff Knox laid it out this way:

"There are actually four separate but connected accusations against ATF officials:

First, that they intentionally arranged to have hundreds of firearms "walked" across the U.S. border into Mexico.

Second, that they instructed U.S. gun dealers to proceed with questionable and illegal sales of firearms to suspected gunrunners.

Third, that they intentionally withheld information about U.S.-sanctioned gun smuggling from the Mexican government.

Fourth, that one of the guns ATF allowed or helped to be smuggled into Mexico was involved in the death of Agent Terry."

I would a fifth: that ATF, FBI, DHS and DOJ officials are covering up the true circumstances of Project Gunwalker, the decision not to inform the Mexicans, and the death of Brian Terry by threatening whistleblowers and others to remain silent "or else."
I'd suggest scrolling down from the top at Sipsey Street; lots of links and information, and on page 2(currently) is his take on the involvement of Breuer.

If this is true, heads at BATFE need to roll.

Possibly literally if people are dead because of it.
Coming next will be more info on what the agents refer to as the Phoenix ATF office "walking across" ARs and AKs to pad their statistics and especially the one that may have killed the BP agent.
For the moment ignore the other stuff in that article and focus on this; followup here and here. From the last,
I’ve just been provided some additional details. The essence of what I’ve been told:

ATF’s Phoenix office allowed the guns to go across the border.

The ATF office in Mexico was denied permission to share this information with their Mexican counterparts. Believing this was wrong, they went over the heads of the Phoenix office and requested permission directly from headquarters in DC.

The higher-ups sided with the Phoenix decision to withhold the information from Mexican authorities.

That would make this an international law enforcement incident, would it not?
Uh, yeah, at the very least. Hey, new Congress, you want something else that needs real investigation? Here it is.


I'll now make note of something else from the first article:
Then there's this: An ATF Special Agent who went undercover in the Hells Angels is compelled to inform a dozen U.S. Senators of his ongoing legal battle against ATF senior management, including some startling and disturbing (to put it mildly) allegations:

[I]n retaliation for a settlement with the government, ATF recalled covert identification documents from me and my wife, and as a Significant Investigative Report, obtained only through discovery, demonstrates, the Hells Angels became the lead suspects in discovering the location of my home and burning it down with my wife and children inside. In the process, ATF scuttled the investigation and let the suspects go, never even questioning them. ATF has taken the process of retaliation to a new level, letting go of suspects of attempted murder against an agent’s family.

This mess has been around for a while. This guy managed to actually become a patched member of the Hells Angels, gathered evidence and testimony of everything from murder to drugs to prostitution to illegal arms dealing; then the BATFE brass and prosecutors managed to screw up the cases so badly that many of the accused went free, and some who were convicted were able to plead to much lesser charges. And then the HA found out who he was and went after him and his family, and BATFE did- well, I'd say 'squat to protect them' but that would give the agency too much credit. Considering how this agency treats honest cops, it's amazing there are still any in it.

No, I can't say "A few bad ones in the agency cause this" because it's been going on for too long in, from the sound of it, just about all branches; that's not a few bad apples, that's an agency with a very bad attitude.