This is going to be a long one,

there's several posts at Sipsey speaking specifically of the last hearing, and more on just why the committee seems to be accomplishing so little: Boehner.

First:

Yesterday was the devil's own day in the Gunwalker scandal investigation and the search for the truth suffered as a result. Several sources tell Sipsey Street that the committee's work has been slowed by the intervention of Speaker of the House John Boehner, with some saying plainly that "the fix is in."

Several sources close to the investigation, have "gone dark," no longer speaking on conditions of anonymity because they have been warned that to do so will be at the risk of their jobs, Prior to the hearing, this silence was represented to some that the committee was ready to exercise a "nuclear option," in the phrase of one, so Holder would have no warning of any evidence said to have been gathered by the investigation.

Considered in the cold light of day, such reports have to be considered as the worst hyperbole, if not deliberate disinformation. "Some 'nuclear option,'" said one. "More like a Black Cat" (a small firecracker).

Said one person very familiar with the investigation:

As for yesterday . . . (it was) a plea bargain of sorts where both sides save face. The Committee will accept the scalps of Breuer and Wienstein, DOJ will release enough of the (documents) to condemn them, claim cooperation (thus giving the appearance of recognizing congress's oversight authority), and Holder will survive - looking like a "leader" for offering them up (along with a few lower level ATF and DOJ folk). The Committee will chalk one in the "Win" column for oversight and holding people accountable. DOJ will have the same for cooperating and accountability. All sides win, all checks and balance intact and working fine, all powers respected and then they move on to the next act of political theatre. The only ones left to sweep up the mess, are the American and Mexican peoples - ignorantly secure in our beliefs that the system works and that our government is actually for us, by us, and of us.

That John Boehner has now become the most useful tool to the White House outrages many gun rights activists and Tea Party members, who look upon this turn of events as just one more sell-out in a long line of sell-outs.

Asked by this reporter what Boehner would get from such a deal, called "logrolling" by the source, he said, "Whatever he wants most or fears most. Politicians do these deals all the time, but this one is unusual in its size and scope. . . and the fact that a whole lot of people are watching."

Another source confirmed the foot of Boehner on the brake pedal of the Issa Committee investigation and said, "the only thing that will stop him is if somebody chucks him out of the car."

As press inquiries begin to grow about what influence Boehner has had on the Issa investigation, reports out of the hard-core gun rights groups that I spoke with today say that, in the words of one, "if this is the game that Boehner is going to play, we can play, too," pointing out that Boehner is facing a primary challenge in his home district in the spring. "I can see a lot of people suddenly invested in the idea that Boehner has to be dumped," said one.

Yesterday a lot of people, including this writer and the whistleblowers, were frankly discouraged at the outcome of the hearing. Today, however, that sense of betrayal has turned to anger, and resolve.

Said one source of this writer very familiar with the investigation and unhappy with the latest turn:

The real question, for many of us, is what now? I'm reminded of that guy in the Matrix where he sold everyone out just so he could get plugged back in, to "taste a steak again," (to) go back to the ease of living the lie rather than the burdens of fighting the reality. I believe many of us find ourselves standing face to face with similar paradigms, and now, forced to make that same decision. So I ask you, do you prefer easy with a side of steak? Or like me, and I borrow from Capt. John Paul Jones, "Give me a fast ship, for I intend to go into harm's way."

As I readied this post for publication, I received another call from a gun rights activist in Ohio. "Boner," he said, using a derogatory term of Buckeye conservatives for the Speaker of the House, "is going to wish he never heard of 'Gunwalker.'"

LATER: Yet another gun rights activist has forwarded this link for the campaign of David Lewis, Boehner's opponent in the GOP primary.

Second, on some of the deceptions and deals going on, including that the FBI is in this up to their eyebrows:

As the Democrats in last Thursday's hearing sang the song of "permanent director of the ATF," specifically, Andrew Traver, I mentioned to "authorized journalists" seated around me that,

a. The Democrats controlled the House, Senate and White House from 2009-2011 and thus could have had any director they wanted, and,

b. Traver was an anti-firearm rights ideologue whose confirmation hearing in the present time would be more than problematic, even though they still controlled the Senate and could assure success.

In other words, they could have had Traver at any time in the past three years and elected not to do it.

As I wrote here back in July 2010, when I broke the story of Traver's long-postponed selection to replace Ken Melson:

So let's sum up: Traver has been an ATF agent for 23 years, starting out as an entry-level jack-booted thug ("an original member of the Entry Control Team, forerunner of the Special Response Teams"). Since then, he has risen through the agency hierarchy, all the while making friends of notorious Illinois anti-firearm rights politicians of both parties. He has had personal friendly contact with Barack Obama and Hizzonor, the King of Chicago Richard Daley. He has worked with the virulently anti-firearm Joyce Foundation and the IACP, putting his efforts and his name to a report which calls for more firearm bans and regulations that amount to the gutting of the Second Amendment. Traver is, then, an extremely politically well-connected, anti-firearm, pro-citizen-disarmament zealot.

Traver was even closer friend to Rahm Emanuel, Clinton adviser on gun policy, who later became a Congressman from Chicago and then Obama's Chief of Staff. He is now, of course, Mayor of Chicago.

And, as I wrote back in March 2011, an incident involving Eric Holder early in 2009 shaped everything that came later:

It is early March, 2009. Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States had walked into a buzzsaw a couple of weeks before when on 25 February, according to CBS News:

Attorney General Eric Holder was busy announcing the capture of more than 50 alleged members of the notorious Sinaloa Cartel yesterday when he unwittingly stepped into a larger debate about gun control.

Responding to a reporter's question on weapons' regulations, Holder said, "Well, as President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons. I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum."

Holder refused to speculate when legislation would move forward. "There are obviously a number of things that are -- that have been taking up a substantial amount of [Obama's] time, and so, I'm not sure exactly what the sequencing will be," he said.

Almost immediately, the Blue Dog Democrats went spastic, burning up the phone lines to the White House. Rahm Emanuel was reported to be "livid" at the faux pas. The long-time supporter of the Brady Bunch, citizen disarmament and specifically the ban on semi-automatic rifles of military utility (the misnamed "Assault Weapons Ban"), was not upset about the goal, just the impolitic nature of the public announcement.

CBS reported in the same story that even pro-citizen disarmament advocate Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, recoiled:

. . . "I think there are a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill cringing at Eric Holder's comments right now," Wayne LaPierre, president of the National Rifle Association, told ABC News.

Lending credence to LaPierre's claims, The Hill reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to Holder's remarks during her weekly press conference by stating, "On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now. I think it's clear the Bush administration didn't do that."

Pelosi's comments reflect the fact that Democrats may not now want a fight over gun regulations with so many other matters on the president's agenda.

So, that's Item One of our Gunwalker Conspiracy Time Line: February 2009, "Eric Holder handed his head by Pelosi and Emanuel on his public advocacy of a new AWB." Here's Item Two, from a story on Sipsey Street in October 2011:

Sources familiar with the congressional investigation into the Gunwalker Plot say that investigators are homing in on early conversations -- and meetings -- between ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix Field Division William Newell and his self-described "long-time friend," Kevin O'Reilly, a State Department employee then on the National Security Council. This is reflected, say the sources, in the subpoena issued this week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee seeking, among other things, "All communications to or from William Newell, former Special agent in Charge for ATF's Phoenix Field Division, between . . . March 16, 2009 to March 19, 2009."

The sources also say that Newell met personally with O'Reilly during this early period in the Obama administration and they believe that Newell may have "weaponized" the desire for more better statistics on the part of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others to support the "90 Percent" meme -- that 90% of weapons seized in Mexico from the drug cartels actually came from American civilian market sources.

Newell, who the sources say was familiar with the tactic of "gun walking" from the previous failed Operation Wide Receiver in Tuscon where Newell had participated in it, probably provided the germ of the idea that "walked" weapons could be used to "boost the statistics" of weapons found at crime scenes in Mexico, in the words of an early whistleblower in this case.

If this is true, it places Kevin O'Reilly, a State Department employee responsible to Hillary Clinton, as the critical potential witness in the early history of the Gunwalker Scandal.

So, even before the Obama administration decided upon a new director for ATF, a State Department guy on the White House's National Security Council is chatting about guns and the border with somebody that now even the Democrats say -- as they try to blame the entire scandal on him -- is the Number One Gunwalker in the United States, William "Gunwalker Bill" Newell.

What happened next, you ask? What is Item Three on our Gunwalker timeline? Why the Obama administration finally settled on an acting Director for the ATF -- someone decidedly NOT Traver. Someone who was not even close to being an obvious choice: Ken Melson. The date was 8 April 2009. Why Melson? He was not Traver, certainly. He was not a friend of Obama or Emanuel and was not particularly known as much more than a career DOJ apparatchik, a non-entity. His last promotion had come from George W. Bush when he was named director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys in May 2007. The Obamanoids never put Melson up for a hearing as permanent director, either, although they certainly could have assured his confirmation. Yet they did not. This was always a mystery to many observers. In the light of what subsequently happened, perhaps the appointment of Melson is less mysterious -- if more sinister.

Since we can certainly see that they had the ability to confirm whomever they chose, why then did they choose Melson? In the light of what we now know about Gunwalker and the murder of Brian Terry, it seems obvious that they were hedging their bets with a designated schmuck.

Recall what we do know about events that led to Brian Terry's death. ATF was actually only trusted with two parts of the conspiracy --

1. They were to coerce American licensed firearm dealers into selling weapons to straw buyers who provided those weapons to the money-men/smugglers of the cartels. They were then to document to follow, but not arrest, the straw buyers and their superiors when the weapons were put in the smuggling pipeline. They were forbidden to follow of arrest the cartel middlemen/managers.

2. They were to count those weapons when they showed up in Mexico beside dead bodies, using the E-Trace system. That, and only that.

There was no attempt, unlike Wide Receiver, to coordinate with the Mexicans or track the weapons. There was no "sting gone bad" because THERE WAS NO STING. The purpose of pushing American civilian market firearms into Mexico was to push American civilian market firearms into Mexico. The evidence supports no other conclusion.

Those two things, and only those two things, were what the ATF was trusted to do. But that was not all that was going on. Recall this portion of the report released the night before Thursday's hearing by the Issa committee.

Shockingly, though, other federal law enforcement components of the Department of Justice were already aware of the two cartel associates that ATF had finally identified. Their names appeared frequently in DEA call logs provided to ATF – in December 2009.11 Inexplicably, ATF failed to review all the materials DEA had provided, missing these prime investigative targets.

Additionally, DEA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had jointly opened a separate investigation specifically targeting these two cartel associates.12 As early as mid-January 2010, both agencies had collected a wealth of information on these associates.13 Yet, ATF spent the next year engaging in the reckless tactics of Fast and Furious in attempting to identify them.

During the course of this separate investigation, the FBI designated these two cartel associates as national security assets.14 In exchange for one individual’s guilty plea to a minor count of “Alien in Possession of a Firearm,” both became FBI informants and are now considered to be unindictable.15 This means that the entire goal of Fast and Furious – to target these two individuals and bring them to justice – was a failure. ATF’s discovery that the primary targets of their investigation were not indictable was “a major disappointment.”

NOTE 12: Meeting with Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and Congressional Staff at Robert F. Kennedy Building, Justice Command Center, Oct. 5, 2011 10:00 AM [hereinafter FBI Meeting]. See also Head Shot, Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces [hereinafter Head Shot]. This reaction and lack of follow-through typify the serious management failures that occurred throughout all levels of the Department during Fast and Furious.

NOTE 13: FBI Meeting, supra note 7. See also FD-302 supra note 8.

NOTE 14: FBI Meeting, supra note 7.

NOTE 15: Head Shot, supra note 12.

NOTE 16: Transcribed Interview of James Needles, at 30 (Nov. 4, 2011) (going on to describe it as “very” frustrating)

The October meeting on Operation Headshot by committee investigators with DOJ, FBI, DEA and ATF personnel on 5 October came a month after the wider world learned of two "stone cold killers" who were paid confidential informants of the FBI in the FOX News report by William Lajeunesse entitled "EXCLUSIVE: Third Gun Linked to 'Fast and Furious' Identified at Border Agent's Murder Scene."

A third gun linked to "Operation Fast and Furious" was found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, new documents obtained exclusively by Fox News suggest, contradicting earlier assertions by federal agencies that police found only two weapons tied to the federal government's now infamous gun interdiction scandal.

Sources say e-mails support their contention that the FBI concealed evidence to protect a confidential informant. Sources close to the Terry case say the FBI informant works inside a major Mexican cartel and provided the money to obtain the weapons used to kill Terry.

Unlike the two AK-style assault weapons found at the scene, the "third" weapon could more easily be linked to the informant. To prevent that from happening, sources say, the third gun "disappeared."

. . . Months ago, congressional investigators developed information that both the FBI and DEA not only knew about the failed gun operation, but that they may be complicit in it. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, fired off letters in July requesting specific details from FBI director Robert Mueller and Drug Enforcement Administration chief Michele Leonhart.

"In recent weeks, we have learned of the possible involvement of paid FBI informants in Operation Fast and Furious," Issa and Grassley wrote to Mueller. "Specifically, at least one individual who is allegedly an FBI informant might have been in communication with, and was perhaps even conspiring with, at least one suspect whom ATF was monitoring."

Sources say the FBI is using the informants in a national security investigation. The men were allegedly debriefed by the FBI at a safe house in New Mexico last year.

Sources say the informants previously worked for the DEA and U.S. Marshall's Office but their contracts were terminated because the men were "stone-cold killers." The FBI however stopped their scheduled deportation because their high ranks within the cartel were useful.

In their July letter, Issa and Grassley asked Mueller if any of those informants were ever deported by the DEA or any other law enforcement entity and how they were repatriated.

Asked about the content of the emails, a former federal prosecutor who viewed them expressed shock.

"I have never seen anything like this. I can see the FBI may have an informant involved but I can't see them tampering with evidence. If this is all accurate, I'm stunned," the former prosecutor said.

To characterize , as the committee report does, the alleged "failure to deconflict" Operation Head Shot and Operation Fast and Furious as a "serious management failure" is akin to criticism of the Holocaust on the grounds that it was a serious misuse of the German railway system.

It is no wonder that observers, including this writer, are prepared to believe on the basis of this latest "memorandum" and the failed hearing that it preceded that "the fix is in" and in some ways has been from the very beginning.

To paraphrase Admiral Josh Painter in The Hunt for Red October, predatory federal bureaucrats and the politicians they serve don't take a dump without a plan. And senior policy executors don't start something this dangerous without having thought the matter through.

A contingency plan is a plan devised for an exceptional risk which is impractical or impossible to avoid. Contingency plans are often devised by governments or businesses who want to be prepared for events which, while highly unlikely, may have catastrophic effects. -- Wikipedia.

I submit that the selection of Kenneth Melson would not have been made without an eye to the series of events -- both before his nomination and those that were planned for after -- that became the Gunwalker Conspiracy. All planners, military, political or business, do contingency planning as part of the decision-making process. The people who planned Gunwalker at the highest levels of the Obama administration in early 2009 had to take into consideration a number of "what ifs" in the event of failure.

What little we know about Operations Headshot and Fast & Furious makes it plain that the Gunwalker Conspiracy and the murder of Brian Terry can only be explained as compartmentalized clandestine pieces of the same criminal enterprise to subvert the Constitution by building a predicate for more gun control atop the mountain of dead bodies in Mexico and the exaggerated threat that the cartels would do the same thing here.

Plausible deniability is, at root, credible (plausible) ability to deny a fact or allegation, or to deny previous knowledge of a fact. The term most often refers to the denial of blame in (formal or informal) chains of command, where upper rungs quarantine the blame to the lower rungs, and the lower rungs are often inaccessible, meaning confirming responsibility for the action is nearly impossible. In the case that illegal or otherwise disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any awareness of such act or any connection to the agents used to carry out such acts. It typically implies forethought, such as intentionally setting up the conditions to plausibly avoid responsibility for one's (future) actions or knowledge. In politics and espionage, deniability refers to the ability of a "powerful player" or actor to avoid "blowback" by secretly arranging for an action to be taken on their behalf by a third party—ostensibly unconnected with the major player. In political campaigns, plausible deniability enables candidates to stay "clean" and denounce advertisements that use unethical approaches or innuendo based on opposition research. -- Wikipedia.

In Gunwalker everything would have of necessity been on a need to know basis, with those supervising a particular function only briefed with a back story that justified, legally and bureaucratically, what they themselves were doing. The old lie of fake necessity, national security, covers a lot of possible objections. Thus, the political types like Eric Holder and Kenneth Melson would not be briefed on "tactics" or the particulars of Fast and Furious and Headshot. To do so in a compartmentalized clandestine operation would have been foolish. The political appointees only needed to know what not to notice, what not to be too inquisitive about. "Plausible deniability" has been a popular concept for bureaucrats and politicians for a long time before anybody ever thought to call it that.

This reduces the number of critical players necessary to carry out such a plot, with each carefully selected ("Personnel is policy") and placed exactly where they can execute and supervise their portion of the larger plan. Certainly this would explain the March 2009 meeting with attendance of people like O'Reilly, Newell and, it is said, Burke (while he was still Napolitano's henchman at DHS) among others.

Deception planning. Contingency planning. Plausible deniability. All of these would have been taken into account by the Gunwalker conspirators before the first weapon was smuggled. And, with the inconvenience of the whistleblowers like John Dodson aside, their preparations have been working out pretty damned well.

The Issa Committee itself is buying into -- in ignorance or on purpose -- the deception that counts on the public's preconceived notions of the ATF as a bumbling agency that has given us Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Good O' Boys Roundup scandals. Going after Holder and others for "managerial failures" is like issuing Bonnie and Clyde a speeding ticket after a bank robbery. They will be happy to dispute the ticket before a local magistrate as long as you take no notice of the blood-stained cash on the floorboards.

The thing to remember about Ruby Ridge and Waco is that although both are considered ATF screw-ups, it was the FBI which racked up the body count and that agency's employees never paid a moments heed to the the casualties nor did they suffer the least inconvenience because of it. In this, the Gunwalker Conspiracy mirrors earlier deadly federal misadventures, perhaps because it also uses some of the same conspirators, including most especially Eric Holder. No wonder the DOJ staffers behind Field Marshal Holder at Thursday's hearing were smirking more often than not. The deception plan is working to a tee. Designated goats like Melson, selected beforehand for their weaknesses, are performing to the script.

Having watched all this Oversight Committee theater from both near and far now, I have to wonder why the principal players in the investigation think that we commoners are so stupid as to believe that THEY are so -- innocently, gullibly -- stupid to faithfully execute the Obama administration's own deception plan while pretending to investigate it. If there is some sort of "deep plan" that the committee is supposed to be executing here, I see no evidence at the moment that it is one which will lead to the truth and to justice for the many victims of Gunwalker.

What can we do about it? For one thing, we can insist that someone get to the bottom of what really happened with Operation Headshot and the FBI's role in the murder of Brian Terry and the subsequent cover-up to protect their "stone cold killer" snitches. More on that later.

Over at Daily Caller, they contacted Boehner's office about this:
TheDC followed up and asked Steel if his boss supports the 103 Republican House members who have either demanded Holder’s resignation or expressed “no confidence” in him via a formal House resolution, or both.

Rather than answer the question to quell concerns about the strength of Boehner’s leadership as the controversy gathers steam, Steel dodged it by responding with the same exact boilerplate message just nine minutes after he sent it the first time.

“The Speaker appreciates the hard work that Chairman Issa and many others have done to expose this scandal,” Steel emailed again. “President Obama’s Department of Justice needs to be accountable.”

Steel used identical language to respond when TheDC asked him the same question in mid-January at the House Republican retreat in Baltimore.

Steel would not answer, however, when TheDC asked him if Boehner supports House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa’s threat to hold Holder in contempt of Congress if he fails to produce subpoenaed documents by Issa’s Feb. 9 deadline.

Steel also wouldn’t answer when TheDC asked him if the speaker supports Issa’s call for Holder to apologize to the Mexican government, and to the families of the more than 300 victims of Operation Fast and Furious in Mexico.

I'm back. And Holder and Napolitano are still liars

Tony Coulson was the DEA official in charge of Tucson at the time. He says the problems ran even deeper than that.

"In 2009, 2010, I became aware that ATF was walking guns into Mexico,” Coulson said. “I also learned that Homeland Security Investigations, then ICE, actually interceded on more than one occasion where they seized weapons at the ports of entry when they were heading southbound contrary to ATF’s plans.

There was serious friction, Coulson claims, between ICE and the ATF in Phoenix. When Coulson took the gun walking to his bosses in Phoenix, he was told the lead law enforcement official in Arizona – U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke – was already aware of it.
And yet we're supposed to believe Napolitano and Holder knew nothing of it...

And on the Mexican Gun Lie(bold mine),
Coulson also claims politics played a role in how Fast and Furious unfolded. The ATF officials who supervised the gun walking out of Phoenix were telling the news media as early as 2008 that 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico came from the U.S. In other words, the same agency that was waging a public battle against gun smuggling was facilitating gun walking at the same time.

"Among federal law enforcement, that became somewhat of a joke,” Coulson said. “We all knew that was whatever weapons the Mexican government decided to follow or trace back to the U.S. And never took into account the weapons that come in from Central America, from other countries around the world.”

That 90 percent statistic was widely reported, but it was inflated. ATF officials quietly refuted those numbers. Later, they told auditors they were based on only a small portion of the guns seized in Mexico.

Yeah, Rahm, sign that check

and consider what the next one will cost if you keep screwing people around on civil rights.

Yes, the ice cream machine has been balky lately

Between odd hours, not enough sleep and a lot of general disgust, it's been hard to work up much enthusiasm to dig through all the crap going on. Weather's been ratty enough haven't been to the outdoor range to give the M1 Ultimak setup a real tryout, and not to the indoor range for a while, either. Still, general outrage has good points, such as thinking "I know the people who read my ravings know about this crap, but I have the need to yell some more anyway":
Operation Fast and Furious was specifically conceived so that “walked” guns would be recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Their serial numbers would be provided to the ATF by Mexican authorities for tracing. Regardless of motive, the entire operation was premised on weapons being recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, and law enforcement agencies are well aware that criminals primarily abandon weapons only after they’ve been used in serious felony crimes such as murder or attempted murder.

Operation Fast and Furious was conceived knowing that Mexican nationals would be sacrificed in significant numbers if the tracing operation had any chance of working.

Operation Fast and Furious allowed more than 2,000 weapons to “walk,” indicating that those in charge of the operation were willing to let thousands of Mexican nationals die in an effort to identify the ringleaders of a cartel’s weapon acquisition team.
And, put bluntly, I'm getting God-damned tired of not seeing people who lied to Congress, who committed perjury and apparently violated export laws and so on, charged with their crimes. If Issa and Grassley and the Stupid Party leadership let some people get fired and then turn loose of this, every damned one of them should be removed from office at the first opportunity. Preferably in a manner involving the use of tar and feathers. The Dutchman has a long post on his recent trip to Sodom on the Potomac for the most recent hearing; I'll put up something on that later today.


On to what happens in city controlled for decades by crooks and progressives: when LE goes to hell because the budget gets cut again, people are doing what they have the right to do: protect themselves.
You'll notice the web address includes 'detroit-vigilantes', and the article has numerous references to people arming for self-defense 'taking the law into their own hands'; either the author doesn't know the difference between vigilante and self-defender, or doesn't care. It being Detroit and a journalist, could be both.


Some of the nannies make it plain: to save us all from meth, they'd like to see ALL formerly over-the-counter cold/allergy meds banned. Howzabout we let anybody stupid enough to use meth kill themselves and let people go back to buying their stuff- in the original formula- as needed? And tell the nannies to kiss our collective ass.


On the recent "We don't care what your beliefs are, you church people will do what you're told" orders from The Lightworker, opposition builds. I'm wondering, do the clowns think they'll get enough support from the left that they can afford to piss off this many voters(including the ones that haven't voted in years, but this'll probably bring them to the polls this fall), or if they just don't care so long as they enact another stop in their agenda(and hope it'll stand challenges)?


Obama really doesn't like that Separation of Powers thing, does he?


Maria Corina Machado: someone to remember. And wonder how long she'll stay A: alive and B: out of prison.


From Hanson: Are you one of 'them'?


Stuff to do, more later as the outrage and general upset overcomes good sense.

So, once again, DHS is busy with the labels

they say they shouldn't use. But it's ok, because it's against people like us...
But not only does the “lexicon” target constitutionally protected activity, it specifically targets groups based on race, namely “black supremacist extremists” and “white supremacist extremists.” I have absolutely no problem targeting groups promoting violence based on racial supremacist ideology, but if DHS is going to proscribe the use of such terms and promptly turn around and use such — while in the same breath targeting private citizens for exercising their constitutional rights and freedom of speech in violation of DHS’s own standards — needless to say, that’s a serious problem.

It bears mentioning that an earlier incarnation of the DHS lexicon was the subject of criticism from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress for its targeting of “alternative media” and its shockingly broad definition of the “patriot movement.” A DHS spokesman later claimed that the “lexicon” was sent out prematurely.

Which raises the question of why these various “lexicons” published by the federal government exist in the first place.
Might be argued that this only refers to those who facilitate or engage in acts of violence; problem is, these clowns seem to consider us yelling at our congresscritters and/or saying non-pc things about bad guys as 'violence', etc. Do YOU want to trust them not to play with words?


I can't remember where I read it the other day, but I'll borrow: "Fuck you very much, Mr. Commander-in-Chief. Especially since son is shortly heading to A'stan, starting with a truly fucked-up prep for the movement(as in no pre-deployment leave and other idiocies I won't go into right now).


Screw it. It's chilly but the sun is shining and I'm tired; I think I'll find a book and a spot out of the wind

"What? Treat a TSA member as if he were one of the peasants?

We can't do that!"
You or I would've been hauled to jail; but
"I felt that this situation involving upper-management had the potential to give TSA Phoenix yet another public relations black eye. In an effort to avoid bad publicity for TSA, the TSA Manager, me and the checkpoint I told the X-ray operator to release the bag from the X-ray machine."
And of COURSE nobody got fired or demoted or any real punishment; they ARE official TSA Molester People, after all.


From the "We'll save you from Global Warmening!" people,
When I visited the House of Lords’ minister, Lord Marland, at the Climate Change Department a couple of years ago, I asked him and the Department’s chief number-cruncher, Professor David Mackay (neither a climate scientist nor an economist, of course) to show me the Department’s calculations detailing just how much “global warming” that might otherwise occur this century would be prevented by the $30 billion per year that the Department was committed to spend between 2011 and 2050 – $1.2 trillion in all.

There was a horrified silence. The birds stopped singing. The Minister adjusted his tie. The Permanent Secretary looked at his watch. Professor Mackay looked as though he wished the plush sofa into which he was disappearing would swallow him up entirely.

Eventually, in a very small voice, the Professor said, “Er, ah, mphm, that is, oof, arghh, we’ve never done any such calculation.” The biggest tax increase in human history had been based not upon a mature scientific assessment followed by a careful economic appraisal, but solely upon blind faith. I said as much. “Well,” said the Professor, “maybe we’ll get around to doing the calculations next October.”

They still haven’t done the calculations – or, rather, I suspect they have done them but have kept the results very quiet indeed. Here’s why.
Added: DaYUM, it's cold out there!


Schumer shows us- again- what a slimy little bastard he is.


Recent history, from PBS


Over the last couple of years I've seriously pissed off some people by pointing out what WUWT notes: a lot of the same people screaming "GLOBAL WARMERING!!" now were, when I was a teenager, screaming "GLOBAL COOLING!!"; and a lot of their 'solutions' then were the same as now. It's like they have a vision for which anything will do as a reason to implement it...


I haven't been around the 'carry & care for the baby' situation in a long time; this sure isn't something I'd have thought of: the Tactical Diaper Bag.


Ok, I have another possibility for the '5 if you had a pile of cash to spend': a Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon. Put that sucker on a trailer and take it to the range. And if I had the money to buy and feed this thing, I'd have the money for a suitable range, too.

Which brings to mind: if you've ever been to the 45th Infantry Division Museum, the start of the trail outside is flanked by a pair of these M3 37mm Antitank Guns(something else I'd love to have in operating condition). I once talked to the guy who brought one of them to the museum from where it'd been at the Altus Air Force Base: he hitched it to the back of a pickup(which had state markings) and drove it back. Said the drive was worth it just for the looks he got...


PBS had a show on wolverines the other day, interesting to say the least. However, they threw in a obligatory "But globular warmering will ruin the climate they require to survive", etc. Amazing how they will talk about how tough, capable and so forth the critters are, but assume a change in climate will do them in; how the hell do they think they survived all the climate changes of the past?


New Radom pistols? Cool; friend has one and says it's the best 9mm he's ever fired.


Ah, so Nanny and Mumbles are only putting on their commercial in the DC area; I'd imagine a conversation along the lines of "The commoners won't pay attention and do what we want, so let's target this on other politicians."


Pizza; I want pizza. But don't have proper pizza stuff here, and after the vehicle trouble really don't want to spend that amount of money on one(dammit, I LIKE Hideaway...). Also it's overcast and chilly out there, which is making my joints ache; to the kitchen it is.

Added: I could not pass up throwing this in:
Found at this guys' place; some post may be NSFW

She's right: they WOULDN'T

make this today

I do not claim to be a master mechanic, just the shadetree variety;

but I do read some questions and just sit in awe:
I stored my honda vfr 800 for two years. When I tried to start it, it would not start. It used to work alright before storage. It is quite new. What might be wrong with it?

Presented without comment because

I'm trying really hard not to break things:
Q: Would your honor's advice be to get a part or other countries' constitutions as a model, or should we develop our own draft?

A: You should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II. I would not look to the US constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary. It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the U.S. Constitution: Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. Yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world? I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

Ahhhhhh...

Click to animate

You know, if Eric Holder hadn't been such a lying dick

for so long, he wouldn't be hearing about things like this:
The mother of murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry had harsh words for Attorney General Eric Holder after Thursday’s House oversight committee hearing on Operation Fast and Furious.

“THIS IS FOR YOU SON,” Mrs. Terry posted on Facebook at about 3:30 p.m. “Mr. Holder. How come you can never say my sons name. You never have. All i ever hear you say is ‘i didnt find out or I cant say’ Im actually tired of hearing your double talk in answering questions. What a joke you are. You know my son was a real AMERICAN, a WARRIOR, and a HERO, who was also protecting COWARD POLITICANS like you.”

“Hope you remember that,” Mrs. Terry added in her message to Holder before signing it: “PROUD MOM OF BRIAN A. TERRY.”


Oh, did you know UNCC now has its' own SWAT team? Isn't that a freaking wonderful way to spend all that money?


President Levin and Deputy Provost Spangler and the once-proud Yale University; I hope this guy sues the ass off the place, and whoever leaked.



Not surprisingly, the person responsible for prioritizing armed raids on small dairies over holding agribusiness accountable is a former Monsanto attorney and chief super lobbyist. Monsanto's Michael Taylor is the second highest-ranking official at the FDA, and as Food Safety Czar is responsible for implementing the day-to-day policies that govern the food safety laws for the U.S.

Taylor has been leading a departmental crusade against small raw milk dairy producers. So far several dairy farmers have been subject to a year-long undercover sting operation from the East Coast to California.


This prosecutor is a fool on multiple levels: Robert Mahler should be fired, and prosecuted for misuse of his authority.
After which he'll probably cross the border and be hired by Eric Holder.

THAT'S what she reminded me of!

Jennifer has a post on the lack of justice

for some of the dirtbags out there. I left a comment on the 'cycle of violence' idiocy a lot of gun bigots use as their reason why it's better for someone to be beaten to death and/or raped than to use a gun in self-defense. She sent me a quick note that included
Room temperature rapists don't re-offend. Their cycle of violence has ended.
If you can argue with that, I don't want to know you.

"How dare you fund cancer research

by means of which I do not approve!"

Peterson, Spangler, Everitt: screw you, you miserable little bigots. Having lost friends to cancer, I don't care if the funding comes from firearm sales or donations, but apparently you only like funding if it meets the test of your delicate sensibilities.

Of course, we are talking about these clowns, after all; they don't like women who won't stay in their place, either. You will notice, however, they seem to have no problem with lying and copyright violations(as long as they're committing them)

Let's see, so the FDA says your own stem cells

are a drug that they should control, and sugar should be treated like booze and tobacco; because you're too stupid to decide what you'll eat or drink.


A twofer: the CRU admitting they've been lying about warmening*, and hey, IQ really IS inherited!


There's a bunch of police departments who need to actually read those 9 Principles:
A: Understandably, some Ft. Lauderdale residents are concerned about the intimidating and privacy-invasive nature of these vehicles. In typical fashion, however, authorities have assured the citizenry that “[p]eople who are abiding by the law should have no problems with this.” George Orwell could not have said it better: Armored surveillance vehicles roaming city streets are there for your own good, and if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.
(This is where the officials who like this should have an officer show up to search their home: "If you have nothing to hide, why do you object?")
B: To the north, in Marietta, Georgia, local police officials are excited to acquire — with federal dollars — a new, “cutting edge” mobile fingerprint scanner that will give “officers in the field the opportunity to positively identify an individual who is suspected of committing or about to commit a crime.” Basically, when officers scan a suspect’s fingerprints through the device, the device provides them with detailed information about that suspect gleaned from state and federal databases. Authorities say such devices will make officers’ lives “easier” — which begs the question of whether it’s appropriate for police officers to stop a person they “suspect” is “about to commit a crime” and run their fingerprints through all manner of databases.
I want to know how the hell they plan on justifying in court "I forced him to give me fingerprints because I thought he was about to commit a crime" ? I see lawsuits in the future. Big, nasty ones. Plus, if they're using this to run people through the Interstate Identification Index, they're talking about violating federal and state laws: last I heard, an officer can only run someone through that database if
It's subsequent to an arrest(and traffic stops and trying to foresee the future don't count), or
As part of an ongoing criminal investigation. Again, I really doubt "I thought he was about to commit a crime" counts.
This crap, with a DoJ that was worth a damn, would involve warnings about proper use of the system, and prosecutions if they violate the laws.


If these are the Mora blades I'm thinking of, $15 for the pair is a pretty good price.


It's the concerned people that I worry about. They're never happy just standing around being concerned; they're always getting all up in your business, trying to "help" and generally only succeeding in screwing things up even worse.

Now that I think about it, it's a little creepy and stalkeriffic when that Harvard lawyer from Hyde Park claims he's concerned about me.

Short version of yesterdays hearing with Holder:

"I'm a good AG, and you better respect me; you flyover country hicks better calm down. And I didn't know anything about this. And you can't have anything I don't want you to have."

Well, Mr. Issa and Mr. Grassley, the ball's in your court: are you going to do what you should, or are you going to cave and let Holder & Co. walk away from this? If the latter, you should be thrown out of the offices you hold.

Sipsey Street had an interview the other day:
“I submit to you that it is entirely possible that the fix is in,” Vanderboegh told TPM. “It could be as simple as a picture of something like John Boehner with a sheep, you know. Because they’ve done that before. The FBI blackmails people routinely. They always have.”

TPM can't get out of their reflexive collectivist defense of a criminal administration but they pretty much quoted me correctly, although they can't seem to decide how to spell my name. The NRA is going to be pissed because they will

a. find out I'm still wearing the press credentials they gave me at the NRA convention, and

b. this irrepressively left-skewed schmuck thinks they were "home-made."

The failure of the committee to mention Operation Head Shot as the source of my anger -- and that of the whistleblowers who I had just talked to prior to the interview -- is not mentioned here, of course, for it is more important for this shady little puke to defend the federal state by leaving out the inconvenient facts in favor of the spin.

Actually, I mistakenly gave him the benefit of the doubt in the interview for being an honest, if misguided, human being. Lying by omission is, however, still lying.

No big surprise there, I suppose. However, he still couldn't spell my name right consistently and managed to screw up "sonsabitches," although I spelled that out for him too.

This also took place before I talked to some other sources close to the committee. I am still processing yesterday and seeking input from my sources, so I'll have more later on today, that is more informed and less reactive.

Oh, and let's not forget that the committee Democrats are trying to use this to 'prove' that ATF needs more money and power, and totally ignoring what the clowns actually did.

The level of stupid required to be a respected journalist

nowadays is just amazing; for instance, this one thinks Ayaan Hirsi Ali is morally equivalent to a convicted terrorist.

Of course, this is the same type of journalist who are doing their best to provide cover for Holder & Obama on anything and everything, so you can't really tell if it's outright stupidity or corruption. Probably a mix of both.

"How dare you be black and not think

like I say you should!"

Yeah, if a white host did anything approaching this, he'd be fired by the time the show ended. But this is a black guy, so he'll be protected.

Don't forget, today is Holder Day at the committee

And to really stir the pot,
The family of murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry has filed a $25 million wrongful death claim against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives claiming Terry was killed with AK-47s that were knowingly sold under the Fast and Furious gunrunning probe to a straw purchaser for drug cartels.

In a 65-page complaint, served on the government on Wednesday, attorneys for the family claim ATF “wrongdoing” in Operation Fast and Furious.

“ATF’s failures were not only negligent but in violation of ATF’s own policies and procedures,” the complaint claims.
Unfortunately they're also filing against Lone Wolf Trading Company; of course, they'll be able to show "ATF told us to as part of an investigation, and all was reported immediately to them".


PJ got hold of some of the prepared remarks("The lies and evasions I'll say today") Holder plans to give, goes over them here.


Some "Karma's a bitch, isn't it?" for Holder


On the other hand, over at Sipsey,
Late last night Sipsey Street received a copy of an Issa Committee Memorandum titled "Main Justice: Extensive Involvement in Operation Fast and Furious." The 22 page briefing paper was provided to other media outlets as well but was embargoed until this hour. In keeping with the Chinese water torture pace of this investigation so far, there is no obvious smoking gun here for Eric Holder and the rest of the Gunwalker Conspirators. Indeed, when I forwarded it to another analyst, he replied:

Just pathetic...

If this is all they have, it's a farce to even call Holder...

That's my take... Pls tell what I've missed and where the IED's are buried in this 22 pages of "oh, there's gross incompetence running amok"

Well... it is the f--king ATF... what do you expect???

However, if there is no obvious smoking gun, the accent is on "obvious." There is one hidden "IED" as my friend puts it, but the Committee is apparently too shy to make much of it.

Shockingly, though, other federal law enforcement components of the Department of Justice were already aware of the two cartel associates that ATF had finally identified. Their names appeared frequently in DEA call logs provided to ATF – in December 2009.11 Inexplicably, ATF failed to review all the materials DEA had provided, missing these prime investigative targets.

Additionally, DEA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had jointly opened a separate investigation specifically targeting these two cartel associates.12 As early as mid-January 2010, both agencies had collected a wealth of information on these associates.13 Yet, ATF spent the next year engaging in the reckless tactics of Fast and Furious in attempting to identify them.

During the course of this separate investigation, the FBI designated these two cartel associates as national security assets.14 In exchange for one individual’s guilty plea to a minor count of “Alien in Possession of a Firearm,” both became FBI informants and are now considered to be unindictable.15 This means that the entire goal of Fast and Furious – to target these two individuals and bring them to justice – was a failure. ATF’s discovery that the primary targets of their investigation were not indictable was “a major disappointment.”

Say what?!? Compare the text above with the footnotes:

12 Meeting with Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and Congressional Staff at Robert F. Kennedy Building, Justice Command Center, Oct. 5, 2011 10:00 AM [hereinafter FBI Meeting]. See also Head Shot, Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces [hereinafter Head Shot]. This reaction and lack of follow-through typify the serious management failures that occurred throughout all levels of the Department during Fast and Furious.

13 FBI Meeting, supra note 7. See also FD-302 supra note 8.

14 FBI Meeting, supra note 7.

15 Head Shot, supra note 12.

16 Transcribed Interview of James Needles, at 30 (Nov. 4, 2011) (going on to describe it as “very” frustrating)

So, since October the committee staff have been aware of the FBI sanitized version of the "one-armed man" and his brother who were their confidential informants, who provided the money to the straw buyers and whom the FBI have been protecting ever since Brian Terry was murdered. But does the Committee draw the obvious conclusion? Have they aggressively probed the FBI on Operation Head Shot? If this pathetic entry is any indication, no, they haven't. The FBI, it seems, is off limits.

Yet, they mention it as if we are supposed to guess. Too cute by half. They remind me of the old one about the society matron who is having a garden party and a naked man sporting a huge erection walks in. She motions the butler over and whispers in his ear, "Does he have an invitation?" When assured that the naked man and his tumescence did in fact have the proper credentials, the matron says, "Oh, it must be alright then," and goes back to talking about orchids.

I hope this report is not indicative how timid this hearing is going to be.

We'll see. And yes, NO agency involved in this crap should get a pass; not FBI, not DHS, not IRS, not DEA, nobody.

I guess it's the new fashion statement

Black kid in the grocery store with the obligatory pants below the ass, and wearing in a clear plastic pocket on a neck lanyard, a condom.

These aren't silly times, 'stupid' fits much better.

Emily Miller is a report who's been writing about

just how hard DC makes it for a citizen to try to buy a handgun. Apparently her not only covering this but being honest about it has upset the delicate constitutions of the CSGV clowns. As Weer'd puts it,
Many have said you can judge a person by who hates them. Well Emily you’ve attracted the attention of a wild-eyed scumbag…and he hates me as well as many of my close friends, so you’re in good company.

Also keep that new SIG of yours handy, you never know what depraved people like Mr. Everett are capable of.


There are people who truly deserve a death penalty; this bastard appears to be one of them. Be warned, RCOB warning is in effect


As I recall, Obama's handlers wouldn't even let any Gunwalker questions get to him, they considered such to be 'inappropriate'. So no surprise he doesn't want to talk about other questions that actually do reach him.


A lady speaks to the 'racial code words' bullshit, including
I was on twitter the other night with a young black woman who was a Democrat. She was asking me why Newt or any GOP candidate would bring up the black community at all? I said because it’s an issue with the breakdown of the black family, incarceration rates, and single mothers. She argued that that is an issue with whites as well and in even greater numbers. I said she was right, but the reason people like Obama, Bill Cosby, and any number of preachers and politicians on both sides bring it up is because it affects the black community in a disproportional way. Blacks only make up 12% of the population, but the ills of society have affected them in a greater percentage than whites. This was the first time ANYONE had ever explained that to her. No wonder she thought any candidates addressing it were being prejudice! I wondered how many others like her don’t understand this?

The ironic thing is that I have for years said that the GOP did not do anything to reach out to the black community. I said they had given up on their votes, and so they didn’t want to waste resources reaching out. There were exceptions like Jack Kemp and George Bush, but to me, they just didn’t care. Now, that high profile candidates finally talk of solutions to the problems of the inner city, they are accused of using “code words.” So, they are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.


Sometimes they just don't really think through those warning signs...


Things to do, stuff to think about; see you later

In the 'Muzzle flash is the worst part' category,

daughter found this
French, 5mm pinfire, six-shot. A quick search turned up this site, which has some video of a five-shot(not being fired, unfortunately). That big 'cover' on the right is the hammer, tab on the left trigger, piece on top is the spring that indexes the cylinder, which you turn manually.

People have come up with the damndest things

Issa to Holder & Co.: "You're liars, and we're about to hold you in contempt."

Legally, as well as morally. Letter here(pdf document). Pretty flatly says "You're stonewalling, you've lied repeatedly, get the documents to us or else." We'll see if it's actually followed through.(found at Sipsey)

More at Examiner here and here, the second on the Democrats' current attempt to say "It's all the responsibility of those idiots in Phoenix. And besides, Bush started it!"


So the University of Chicago Crime Lab is a Joyce foundation-connected 'gun violence' group that had connections to Newell at ATF; incestuous groups, aren't they? Another big borrow from Sipsey here for those who can't go there:

And who is Roseanna Ander?

Why she is Executive Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, which has nothing to do with forensics or CSI and everything to do with laying the "scientific" predicate for more gun control. From the UCCL website:

Each year around the world, roughly 500,000 people are murdered. Millions more are the victims of other crimes, and billions of dollars worth of property are stolen. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about how best to address this major social problem. For example, a 2005 report from the National Academy of Sciences argued there is surprisingly little good evidence about effective ways to reduce gun violence in America. This is true despite the fact that countless new programs have been launched all over the world the past several decades to try to reduce violence. Yet programs are almost never implemented in a way that facilitates rigorous evaluation; this lack of feedback makes it difficult for policymakers to learn from experience.

The University of Chicago Crime Lab seeks to improve our understanding of how to reduce crime and violence by helping government agencies and non-profit organizations rigorously evaluate new pilot programs. . . . The Crime Lab began in April 2008 in partnership with the City of Chicago, and has been made possible by generous seed funding from the Joyce Foundation, the University of Chicago Office of the Provost, and the School of Social Service Administration through the Center for Health Administration Studies.

Among the Crime Lab’s ongoing projects is the Chicago Initiative to Reduce Gun Violence Among School Age Youth. Our recent "design competition" identified one promising project, out of more than 30 applications, that has the potential to reduce youth gun violence in Chicago.

The UCCL describes her bio thusly:

Prior to joining the Crime Lab, Ander served for 10 years as Program Officer for the Gun Violence program at the Joyce Foundation in Chicago, responsible for the foundation's $3 million in grant-making each year for research and other activities to understand and reduce gun violence. In addition she developed and implemented the Foundation's $6 million, three year Early Childhood Education initiative. Ander spear-headed a number of new Joyce Foundation initiatives to reduce youth gun violence including working with the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) to convene a national summit of law enforcement leaders around gun violence prevention. In addition, she oversaw the Foundation's work to promote the development and implementation of the National Violent Death Reporting System, which is now housed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and being implemented in 17 states. Prior to joining the Joyce Foundation, she served as the Public Health Liaison for Attorney General Scott Harshbarger of Massachusetts. She holds a Master of Science degree in health policy from Harvard School of Public Health.

Ah, yes, the Joyce Foundation. From Wikipedia:

Since 2003, the Joyce Foundation has paid grants totaling over $12 million to gun control organizations. The largest single grantee has been the Violence Policy Center, which received $4,154,970 between 1996 and 2006, and calls for an outright ban on handguns, semi-automatic and other firearms, and substantial restrictions on gun owners. The Joyce Foundation's position on gun control has led to frequent opposition and criticism from gun rights groups, particularly the National Rifle Association, which calls the Joyce Foundation an activist foundation whose "shadowy web of huge donations" leads "straight to puppet strings that control the agenda of gun ban groups".

But the Executive Director of the University of Chicago "Crime Lab" is only one of the hats Ander wears. She was appointed to the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission by Governor Pat Quinn and just two months after this email exchange she was named to Rahm Emanuel's Chicago mayor transition team's Committee on Public Safety, along with Father Michael *Snuffy" Pfleger, dubbed Snuffy by David Codrea for having infamously called for a Chicago gun store owner to be "snuffed out." Hey, Jake, as David routinely asks, "Whaddaya expect, it's Chi-town."

So Ander is a long-time, highly placed anti-gun zealot, a critical cog in the efforts of the citizen disarmament lobby. Yet ATF senior manager Hayes has apparently more than a passing acquaintance with Ms. Ander. And she, it seems, expects to be queried out of the blue by Hayes. Her reply:

From: Ander, Roseanna

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 03:25 PM (Eastern)

To: Benjamin.R.Hayes (REDACTED)

Subject: Re: Gun Running Operation Uncovered in Arizona

Are the names in the indictment public? I want to pull up the actual indictments and can't with first and last names.

Roseanna Ander, Executive Director

University of Chicago Crime Lab

55 East Monroe, 30th Floor

Chicago, IL 60603

(LARGE BLOCK REDACTED)

Two minutes later, in a move that bespeaks remarkable inside knowledge of and familiarity with the ATF chain of command, an impatient Ander goes straight to the horse's mouth -- William "Gunwalker Bill" Newell, then ATF SAC of the Phoenix office, responsible for Fast and Furious.

From: Ander, Roseanna (REDACTED)

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 2:27 PM (Central)

To: Newell, William D.

Subject: Fw: Gun Running Operation Uncovered in Arizona

Do you have this info?

Roseanna Ander, Executive Director

University of Chicago Crime Lab

55 East Monroe, 30th Floor

Chicago, IL 60603

(LARGE BLOCK REDACTED)

Gunwalker Bill responds, and seems to know Ms. Ander quite well also:

From: Newell, William D. (REDACTED)

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 03:30 PM

To: Ander, Roseanna

Cc: Hayes, Benjamin R. (REDACTED)

Subject: Re: Gun Running Operation Uncovered in Arizona

They were all just posted on the site below. There are several indictments, the main one being the "Avila" one.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/az/index.html

Bill Newell

Special Agent in Charge

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)

Phoenix Field Division (Arizona and New Mexico) (REDACTED)

(LARGE BLOCK REDACTED)

Ms. Anders seems appreciative as well as very knowledgeable about the arc of Gunwalker Bill's career, for she seems to know about his then expected reward of the promotion to to ATF Attache in Mexico City, a job which Newell had long coveted, and which was vacated by the forcing out of Darren Gil, who had objected to being kept out of the loop of Fast and Furious (after the scandal blew up a few days later with Senator Grassley's first letter on the subject, Newell's promotion was first put on hold, and then withdrawn).

From: Ander, Roseanna

To: Newell, William D.

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 4:38:40 PM

Subject: Re: Gun Running Operation Uncovered in Arizona

Thank you. I guess you are leaving town on a high note!

Roseanna Ander, Executive Director

University of Chicago Crime Lab

55 East Monroe, 30th Floor

Chicago, IL 60603

(LARGE BLOCK REDACTED)

That celebratory high-five prediction would turn out to be premature.

The central point of this email exchange is this. The ATF has always denied that it plays one side of the policy debate or the other, claiming that it is only "enforcing the laws passed by Congress" without bias or favor. Here we see, in the easy familiarity between two high-ranking ATF senior managers and one of the most energetic anti-firearm zealots in the United States, the real truth -- that any pretense of impartiality is just that, a lie. The ATF senior management has a symbiotic relationship with the citizen disarmament lobby and evidently has had for many years. They are, in fact, joined at the hip. More scandalous grist for the upcoming ATF oversight hearing mill, no doubt.

Last, not related to Gunwalker(that we KNOW of...) but very important, Linoge notes the 'National Gun Victims Action Council' letting the cat out:
Any sane gun law will lead to the government being able to take your guns away.
...

But the second italicized line… well, that is the money quote, so to speak. "Any sane gun law will lead to the government being able to take your guns away." The NGVAC seems big on "sane gun laws", with the phrase, along with "insane gun laws" (referring, of course, to anything the big, bad NRA proposes), occurring somewhere around once every two sentences on their webpage – can you say, "SEO-whoring"? I knew you could. But Google-bombing or not, that single sentence, right there, is a seven-inch, ivory-handled KA-BAR shoved between the third and fourth ribs of the dorsal side of "gun control".

Why? Simple: one of the favorite talking points of "gun control" extremists – especially when someone accurately observes that registration leads to confiscation – is that no modern "gun control" organization wants to take your guns away.

ORLY?

Well, then, thank you Elliot and thank you Andrew and thank you to the rest of the National Gun Victims Action Council for providing us such an easy counterpoint to that claim – after all, why would people so viciously obsessed with firearms and the demonization of them want the government to have the ability to take our firearms away if they did not actually want the government to do exactly that?

And look at the phrasing of the sentence – note how they simply say "take your guns"; not "take criminals’ guns", not "take convicted persons’ guns", not "take some people’s guns". Nope, take your guns – as in every single firearm-owning person who happened upon their webpage and happened to read that sentence. Nevermind the "why" of the situation (especially because it boils down to nothing more complicated than their deep-seated, pathological, uncontrollable fear of an inanimate object) – these people want to empower the government to whimsically and capriciously confiscate your private property… ironically, at the point of a gun.

Loose translation: "Screw you infantry clowns,

we never liked that ugly airplane." And this gives the AF a reason to get rid of it, in favor of a more sexy airplane that's not even available as yet.


"Give your proper name to the minion, peasant! Or else!" Yeah, I'll bet that educated the hell out of people.


Ah, those "We sit at God's right hand and give advice" professionals of the EffingBI: investigate for two years, then attack the wrong address.
With a chainsaw.
Just how many levels of 'Fail' can you find in this story?


Zombie thinks the current string of 'It's not warming after all' is in part due to the greenies and socialists cycling back to the 'global cooling' I grew up with. But with the same "Change everything!" 'solutions'.


It appears a bunch of Catholics(in particular) who believed Obama are rather pissed off right now. With reason. Here's an example:
Consider Catholicism’s highest-ranking elected official, Vice President Biden. Biden had encouraged engagement with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on conscience rights. Now he will be remembered as the Catholic cover for the violation of Catholic conscience. Betrayal is always an inside job.
I wonder if Biden'll threaten to punch them out?


Yeah, I imagine this educated the hell out of people.


And a bunch of people in Mexico are tired of being preyed on by the dirtbags and left unprotected by the government.


Added after I saw this at Ace: Juan Williams basically says EVERYTHING Republicans and conservatives say is racially-based. You know, for someone who was canned and slandered at NPR for saying something non-PC, you'd think he'd be a little more careful about throwing this kind of bullshit around.

In local news, we had a city councilman named Skip Kelly who got busted

for drunk driving for the second time.
A: He's not resigning, 'I work very hard', etc.
B: The rest of the coucil is being 'very supportive', including this from Ed Shadid:
“Much of the public does not understand the magnitude or the nature of these problems, (and people) do not understand how commonplace this is (and), how it is affecting all of us,” Shadid said. “I have seen exceptional courage and bravery on Skip Kelly's part in the last few days. I'm very proud to call him my friend, and I'm very proud of him. ... He's been very high-functioning, in my opinion, with one arm tied behind his back. I'd like to see what happens in the future when he has an even playing field.”
Awww, isn't that sweet and sensitive? I wonder if he thinks the same way about people not council-members or friends caught driving drunk? Twice?

Effing politicians.

True: according to the gun bigots it only counts as 'self-defense'

if
The criminal isn't badly hurt,
No guns are involved,
And the defender is worried about going to jail for his self-defense.
Otherwise it's settling their own scores with criminals and extreme self-defense tactics and vigilante-minded.

The thing this 'award-winning writer' does get right: if people know the police aren't going to be there, CANNOT be there, they'll damn well act to protect themselves.

As they have the right to do.

Remember Liz Warren?

This Liz Warren? The "Nobody got rich without owing everybody else" clown? Turns out she's worth something like $14 million, but insists SHE'S not rich, not one of those evil 1%...


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

Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa reserved the right to call Cunningham before the committee, and also indicated that he has informed Holder that he will seek a new witness to testify, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Morrissey. Morrissey directly reported to Cunningham.

Previously, the Department of Justice had refused to allow Morrissey or Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley (who reported to Morrissey) to testify.
Like that 'refused to allow' bit? I do, too.
Also a whack at the Mexican Gun Lie:
Their former boss, Dennis Burke, is also undergoing renewed scrutiny. Burke’s 23-year career as the architect of anti-gun legislation lends credence to theories that Operation Fast and Furious and other alleged gun-walking operations were imposed by the Obama administration to help support the 90 percent lie. The 90 percent lie was a manipulation of gun trace data restated on numerous occasions by President Obama, Attorney General Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, and other administration officials as they argued for more restrictions on gun sales. The claims seem particularly vicious and deceptive at this time, as we now know that the ATF was forcing gun dealers to supply cartel straw purchases with weapons.


Watts Up With That looks at the "Yes, we've been lying to you" release from the CRU and Met. And I got curious and looked around a bit; yes, the major media(if MSNBC counts) is now covering it. To borrow:
"If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again," Scafetta said, "the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories."
Except the True Believers will still be claiming the cooling proves their theory.
Professor Judith Curry agrees. She is one of America’s most eminent climate experts and works at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Which has been pointed out by scientists before; they were attacked, slandered and called names for doing so.
"The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings," Curry said. As for the lack of warmer in the last 15 years, she said that many scientists "are not surprised."
But accepting the models are so flawed would mean admitting they've been lying about them being wonderful, for years.
"When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled," Curry said. "The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years."

Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists underestimate the importance of water cycles when considering global temperature trends.
'Underestimated' often meaning 'dismissed' by the Believers. And the politicians using them to grab more power.
"Doing so means admitting that the oceans - not CO2 - caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997," Brekke said.
Heresy! Denier!!
"We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. "If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious."
They damn well should be serious. These people have been lying and threatening and trying to destroy the careers of people who asked inconvenient questions; there BETTER be 'implications'.


The doggy gentleman takes a shot at the SOTU address:

For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq.

CLAUDIUS: What’s that s-s-strange thing he’s d-doing up th-there?

EMPEROR MISHA I: It’s called an “end zone dance”, but usually it is only done by the person who actually accomplished the thing being celebrated.

For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.

CALIGULA: Drink!

TIBERIUS: It’s going to be a looong night. Do you have enough of those wondrous pills you call “aspirins” for all of us, Emperor?

Most of Al Qaida’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken. And some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.

AUGUSTUS: And you’re negotiating the best terms of surrender with the rest of the Taliban and al Qaeda even as we speak. Only it’s not their surrender you’re talking about.

TIBERIUS: “Remember: The Germanic tribes are not our enemies per se!”

AUGUSTUS: If only somebody had told Publius Quinctilius Varus.

History geek points if you know who Varus was.


Speaking of backstabbing, jealous politicians, heard about this yet?
Just in case anybody is still believing that the RINO Gentry Club is any less of a fanatical enemy than the NSDWP, we learn that the RINOcracy is pretty much done with an effort to redistrict LTC Allen West right out of Congress (h/t Bill Quick).

This has not received a lot of national attention, but the Republican legislature in Florida is about to push through a plan which puts Allen West at serious risk, and the person leading the effort is one of Mitt Romney’s spokemen.

More and more, I think 'Get Obama out of office; and the day after the election the Third Party begins.' Because the upper reaches of the Stupid Party suck diseased donkey dick, and cannot be trusted. At all. In ANYTHING.


You've got your choice here: the clowns either don't know what the hell they're doing, or this worked just fine: because they want people to get the idea that the Touching Special Areas molesters can screw with you anytime, anywhere. Or a bit of both, which I tend to go with.


Yeah, who is paying the gun bigots bill on this?
Of course, they're probably so busy trying to ban guns and get rid of dealers that they need some help.
Financial as well as mental

First: since the CDC has so much free time and money

they can afford to play games with this, I'll say the same thing when they were funding studies pushing personal disarmament laws: next time they whine that they need more funding to do their job, tell them to drop the social-engineering crap and use that money the way it was supposed to be done; if they don't cut their budget.


Gee, so Buffett is another very rich dirtbag wanting taxes raised 'for the public good' while he's making sure he'll avoid them; isn't that just wonderful?


Ok, Californicated, you can demand that and screw people over all you want, but I still have the question: WHERE THE HELL IS THE ELECTRICITY TO CHARGE THEM GOING TO COME FROM? Especially with The Lightworkers' EPA minions working to cut electrical generation capacity in the holy name of Saving Gaia?


A fine argument for concealed carry; anybody think these racist thugs would've continue the attack if they'd been faced with an armed opponent?


This doesn't surprise me. Second wife worked at a federal agency here in OKC, and one day told me there were signs posted in the office that "Just because you work for the federal government doesn't mean you don't have to file your taxes." One guy she worked with hadn't filed his for four or five years at that time.

When your protesters are burning American flags,

fuck 'em. They're not on my side.

If Brandeis said this today, Napolitano would launch

an investigation. And stick him on that terrorist watch list.
Brandeis told Sir Ronald “that it was wholly contrary to any conception of civil rights with which I was familiar, through study of the Anglo-Saxon institutions and the American experience, that when a government found itself unable to afford protection, citizens should not be permitted to protect themselves.”
...
It is not good for us that we should ever lose the fighting quality, the stamina, and the courage to battle for what we want when we are convinced that we are entitled to it, and other means fail. There is something better than peace, and that is peace that is won by struggle. We shall have lost something vital and beyond price on the day when the State denies us the right to resort to force in defense of a just cause.
I get the feeling that this is an 'early 19-century American progressive' Hillary Clinton would not really like.

AG Eric Holder: Lying bastard and perjuror

That email was sent at 2:31 a.m. on the day Terry was shot. One hour later, a follow-up email read: “Our agent has passed away.”

Burke forwarded those two emails to Holder’s then-deputy chief of staff Monty Wilkinson later that morning, adding that the incident was “not good” because it happened “18 miles w/in” the border.

Wilkinson responded to Burke shortly thereafter and said the incident was “tragic.” “I’ve alerted the AG [Holder], the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.”

Then, later that day, Burke followed up with Wilkinson after Burke discovered from officials whose names are redacted that the guns used to kill Terry were from Fast and Furious. “The guns found in the desert near the murder BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about – they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store,” Burke wrote to Wilkinson.

“I’ll call tomorrow,” Wilkinson responded.
Wilkinson, Holder's Chief of Staff.
Take note of this at the bottom:
This article was updated after publication. A previous version reported Holder was informed that the weapons used to kill Terry were linked to Operation Fast & Furious. But a letter to Congress provided by the DOJ suggests only that Monty Wilkinson was made aware. That letter states Wilkinson does not recall telling Holder. Reached Sunday, a spokesperson for Holder relied only on that letter, and declined to confirm that Holder himself was not informed.
So; we're supposed to believe that Holder's CoS DID NOT tell him about this? That the bastard 'cannot recall if he told Holder'? Really?

Please take note of that 'declined to confirm'; can you think of a more lawyerly-weasel way of saying "You can charge us for 'Yes', you can charge us for 'No', but you can't charge us for "We don't remember"?

If this information is correct, even more reason

to home-school your kids if you can.

A 'sexual battery' charge? In his school records? From a game on the playground?

If I were them I'd go back later and get his records; make sure they didn't put it back in.

Some things just don't ring true in this story

Go take a look.

From the same people who've been screaming "GLOBAL WARMING!!

DENIERS!!!", we get this:
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
The same people who've been trying to destroy the career of anyone casting doubt, or even asking questions about the 'global warming' religion.