Project Gun-walker and the ATF

[twoguns]

Perhaps Congressman Bilirakis should ask that Napolitano thing, the head of Homeland Security for some answers.

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/blo...st-and-furious

Gus Bilirakis Calls Out Eric Holder on 'Fast and Furious'
Kevin Derby's blog | Posted: September 14, 2011 3:59 PM

From his perch on the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, Florida Republican Congressman Gus Bilirakis is demanding answers from the Obama administration regarding the “Fast and Furious” program in which the federal government knowingly allowed criminals to obtain weapons -- which resulted in the death of at least two federal agents.

Bilirakis sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder demanding to know about the roles played by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in the failed program.

"It appears that the DOJ and ATF acted in an extremely misguided manner and that this reprehensible program has resulted in the loss of human life and property," Bilirakis said in a statement on Wednesday. "To date, the administration has not cooperated with this investigation, but we must get to the bottom of this problem, and that is why I will continue to investigate who knew what about these gun-walking schemes."

[twoguns]

Be sure to follow the link and read the comments section for this piece. Some good info there about this American Family Voices outfit.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive...left-works.php

Posted on September 13, 2011 by John Hinderaker in Liberals, Media Bias
Connecting the Dots: How the Left Works

We wrote here and in several follow-up posts about the New York Times’s outrageous front-page smear of Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Times reporter Eric Lichtblau falsely accused Issa of using his Congressional office to enrich himself. Lichtblau’s piece was so fact-challenged that it has given rise, so far, I believe, to four corrections. There should be several more, but the Times has dug in its heels and refuses to correct any more of its obvious errors.

The Times piece started with a left-wing web site; indeed, some have accused Lichtblau of plagiarism. This is common: reporters for Democratic newspapers like the Times and the Washington Post constantly troll far-left web sites for story ideas. When they come across a slander they think they can sell, they jump in. That is what happened here.

The Times story blew up like an exploding cigar. You might think that would cause the Left to abandon it in shame, but you would be wrong. Today The Hill reported that a left-wing group has asserted ethics violations against Issa, based on the Times story. That was the plan all along, of course. The Hill writes:

A liberal advocacy group is filing an ethics complaint against Rep. Darrell Issa, alleging that the California Republican has repeatedly used his public office for personal gain.

The group, American Family Voices, is planning to file the complaint with the House Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) on Tuesday.

So, who is “American Family Voices”? We have no idea, of course. They are a 501(c)(4) organization that does not disclose its donor list. But you can be confident that some of the same people who donated to the left-wing web site that got the ball rolling in the first place also donate to “American Voices.” This is all a well-coordinated plan. Those who lodged the ethics complaint make no secret of the fact that they rely on the discredited NY Times story:

Lux cites a 3,080-word investigative report published in The New York Times on Aug. 15 and reporting by Thinkprogress.org, a liberal media outlet.

There you have it. This is how the Left operates: they pay for lies to be published, and then demand investigations on the basis of those lies. Why are they out to get Issa? No secret there, either. His committee has embarrassed the Obama administration with its investigation of ATF’s Fast and Furious program. At this point, best case for the Obama administration is that the scandal ends with Attorney General Eric Holder. So Issa has become public enemy number one.

The word “corruption” is often tossed around in connection with politics, generally wrongly. In my opinion, this story illustrates the real corruption that infects our public life.

[middlefinger]

House Oversight Chairman Targeted By Ethics Complaint

Issa was right to demand that front page retraction from the New York Times.
The New York Times recently published an amazingly sloppy hit piece on House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa.

Confronted with over a dozen factual inaccuracies, the Times has been slowly squeezing a few “corrections” from the clogged bowels of its integrity, but they’ve refused to give Issa the front-page retraction he requested.

Now a “liberal advocacy group” called American Family Voices is filing an ethics complaint against Issa, and as The Hill reports, it cites the Times slander as one of its sources:

The five-page complaint, which was obtained by The Hill, accuses Issa of using his position as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to add to his multimillion-dollar fortune.

An Issa spokesman on Monday said the allegations have absolutely no merit and are part of a smear campaign spearheaded by the White House.

The complaint alleges that Issa pressured the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to halt an investigation of Goldman Sachs shortly after he bought a huge stake in one of Goldman’s high-yield mutual funds.

It also claims Issa used his authority to improperly defend Merrill Lynch, a firm with “which he has a significant financial interest,” the document states.

“In fact and in appearance, Rep. Issa has repeatedly — and impermissibly — used his public position to promote his private financial interests,” Mike Lux, president of American Family Voices, wrote in a letter to former Reps. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) and David Skaggs (D-Colo.), co-chairmen of the [House Office of Congressional Ethics].

[…] “The symbiotic relationship he has established between his business interests and public responsibilities presents, on a continuing basis, the starkest example of conflict of interest,” Lux wrote.

“As disturbing as this would be in the case of any member of Congress, the conflict on display here is especially troubling because it involves the chair of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform — a committee charged with ‘proactively investigating and exposing’ waste, fraud and abuse,” he added.

Lux cites a 3,080-word investigative report published in The New York Times on Aug. 15 and reporting by Thinkprogress.org, a liberal media outlet.

It’s especially outrageous that Issa was able to funnel half a billion dollars of taxpayer money to his big contributors at Solyndra, a shaky company in a politically-created “market” which collapsed into bankruptcy, leaving his cronies to recover their investments while taxpayers get screwed.

I’m glad dedicated champions of the middle class like American Family Voices are all over that scandal! Oh, wait, my mistake. That was somebody else, not Representative Issa.

The bowels of integrity at liberal papers like the New York Times may be clogged, but at least the pipelines to nutroots blogs and far-left “advocacy groups” are flowing freely.

In April, American Family Voices president Mike Lux authored some conspiracy ravings for liberal rant site Crooks and Liars about Issa and another favorite lefty hate fetish, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Here’s a taste of his insightful analysis:

There is a certain rich irony in Darrell Issa bringing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to the Capitol for a hearing on how Moody’s has boosted Wisconsin’s credit rating because of the union busting measures Walker has been pushing in the state.

So in one sentence, you have a leader of the House Republicans that are trying to do away with Medicare and Medicaid, the governor who most personifies the attempt to crush collective bargaining in this country, and one of the principal companies at the dead center of the fraud on Wall Street that brought down the world economy.

They should take their show on the road. You could entitle it “Cruelty, Arrogance, and Fraud: How to Dismantle the American Middle Class in Three Easy Steps.”

Because the “American middle class” lives to pay for the collectively-bargained benefits of public employee unions. Fannie Mae? Barney Frank? Chris Dodd? Never heard of ‘em. Did you know the Republicans want to “do away with Medicare and Medicaid?” Oooga booga! If you’re willing to fall for stuff like this, you probably already know who Mike Lux is.

The tightly sealed information eco-system of the Left is a marvel to behold. The New York Times publishes a bit of front-page slander from a writer who has been accused of cribbing from liberal websites; a far-left group files an ethics complaint based on the lies; Darrel Issa suddenly becomes “the embattled subject of ethics complaints” in mainstream media coverage; American Family Voices gets to send triumphant fundraising letters to the kind of sucker who thinks the government had nothing to do with causing the subprime mortgage crisis.

No one involved has any questions about Obama’s corruption, much less the program that pushed thousands of American guns into Mexico, resulting in the deaths of both Mexican and American citizens.

Issa’s office categorically dismissed what it views as a politically motivated complaint:

“This complaint is entirely without merit. The White House has used an assortment of outside progressive groups in an effort to attack Oversight and Chairman Issa directly. This is just their latest salvo in an ongoing effort to obstruct oversight,” said Frederick Hill, Issa’s spokesman.

[…] In defense of his boss, Hill pointed to a memo on Issa’s website disputing reporting in the Times’s investigation.

The memo, which dubbed the article a “hit piece,” said the Times undervalued the purchase price of the Vista, Calif., medical complex Issa bought in 2008. Therefore, according to the memo, there’s no evidence the property appreciated significantly as a result of the earmarks Issa secured to improve the road serving it. The document notes that Issa did not own the property when he first sought the transportation funding for his district.

It also claims that Issa’s financial transactions through Merrill Lynch were properly disclosed in his annual ethics filing and disputed that Issa had a financial interest in Goldman Sachs’s performance.

Hill said Monday that Issa’s investment in the Goldman Sachs mutual fund does not depend on Goldman’s stock performance. He added that the returns are based on corporate debt payments. Hill said Issa did not try to stop the SEC investigation, but had concerns about its timing.

To clear up a bit of confusion that one suspects might be creeping into certain media coverage, this complaint has been given to the Office of Congressional Ethics, which is “an independent, non-partisan entity charged with reviewing allegations of misconduct,” established in March 2008. Information they collect is, sensibly enough, kept confidential until they release their final report, and decide whether or not to refer a complaint to the actual House Committee on Ethics. Referrals are meticulously posted on their web site for public review.

Anybody can send the OCE anything. It’s their job to evaluate it and decide whether it’s solid enough to warrant the attention of the House. Meanwhile, media coverage of the Issa complaint is originating with those who filed it, not the OCE. It will be interesting to see if the New York Times retracts its hit piece before the OCE issues its final report. I wouldn’t bet money on it.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46171

[middlefinger]

Veteran Cops Recognize ‘Fast and Furious’ as a Foolhardy Idea
To me, it is inconceivable that this operation ever made it out of the first meeting where it was discussed.

Cops expect to face risks on the job. What they do not expect, what they cannot accept, is when their superiors have a hand in providing the weapons that others will use to kill them.

I have withheld judgment on Operation Fast and Furious until now. Surely, I thought, there would emerge some explanation for what on first reading appeared to be a staggering level of stupidity and incompetence on the part of some in the ATF and the Justice Department. They could not possibly, I hoped, have been that obtuse. Having been a police officer for as long as I have, I should have known better.

Every front-line cop has had this experience: A change in command brings in some new suit eager to show he’s full to bursting with the right stuff, that he is not just another office-bound bureaucrat content with doing things the same old things in the same old way. He promises his full support for the troops as he speaks of his willingness to innovate in crime-fighting tactics and to “think outside the box.” All well and good, but as those front-line cops know, that box is there for a reason, and thinking too far outside it can get people killed.

And that’s what happened with Fast and Furious.

The details of the scandal have been amply documented elsewhere, notably here on PJMedia in the work of Bob Owens, but the goals of Operation Fast and Furious can be distilled thus: Allow the straw purchases of firearms in the U.S. and then track the weapons into the hands of members of Mexican drug cartels who can then be identified and arrested. It sounds so simple, what could go wrong?

As we now know, plenty could and did go horribly, horribly wrong.

I can appreciate the desire to use novel law enforcement approaches in confronting the violence attendant to drug trafficking in Mexico. Someone, displaying a bit of that outside-the-box thinking, came up with the idea of allowing thousands of weapons to be bought on this side of the border with the idea that they could be tracked as they made their way through the network of cartel members and facilitators and into the hands of Mexican outlaws.

This was a pipe dream. To me, it is inconceivable that this operation ever made it out of the first meeting where it was discussed. It goes to show how detached police executives can be from the reality of police work as it is actually practiced. There is simply no effective way to track a gun once it leaves the store where it was purchased.

Let’s say we are suspicious that straw purchases are being made at a gun store in Tucson. We can scrutinize the records of all the store’s sales in search of telltale signs of illegality, we can place undercover operators in the store, we can install surveillance equipment and remotely monitor the customer traffic, or we can do surveillance on people we believe to be straw purchasers in the hope they’ll lead us deeper into the criminal network.

But once a straw purchaser leaves the store with his cargo of guns, we have no hope of tracking those weapons beyond the point where that car first leaves our view. Surveillance is a tricky business. Cops following criminals can and do lose them in traffic, even when sophisticated equipment like GPS trackers and aircraft are used. A group of cops might have every confidence of success as they follow a suspect in whose car they have planted a GPS device. Add to the scenario a helicopter or airplane equipped with a camera and the means to monitor the GPS device and you have the ingredients for what should be a foolproof surveillance operation. And then the unexpected happens. It always happens.

You follow the car to a shopping mall with an indoor parking lot, which defeats both the GPS device and the aircraft as the satellite signal and visual contact are lost. You scramble into the parking lot to look for the car, but the structure is large and has several floors, making it impossible to do a thorough search as quickly as is required. And it never fails that when you’re following a green Toyota, dozens of similar cars will appear as if by magic to confuse you. If you’re lucky enough to find the car, how do you then know if the guns that you saw being placed in the trunk outside the gun store are still there?

You assume they are, and you then manage to follow the straw purchaser from the mall to his home, where he parks the car in an enclosed garage. Did he leave the guns in the trunk or did he take them inside to be picked up by someone else? Now every person who visits the home has to be suspected of carrying away one or more of the weapons you hoped to follow. How many people, how many GPS devices, how many helicopters and airplanes, can you commit to surveillance so as to make this happen? And even if you’re lucky enough to maintain your surveillance on the guns through all of this, what happens when you follow them to the Mexican border? Can you trust the authorities on the other side to do their part in the investigation?

There is only one way to track a weapon after it’s left the seller’s hands, and that’s to wait for it to turn up at a crime scene or in the pocket of someone so unlucky as to be caught with it during a traffic stop. I suspect none of this entered the minds of those who, from the safety and comfort of their offices, hatched Operation Fast and Furious.

Sometimes what appears to be stupidity and incompetence is exactly that. All that remains to be seen is how far into the federal law enforcement apparatus that stupidity and incompetence reached. Anyone who allowed this to happen has no business remaining in law enforcement. Let the heads start rolling.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/veteran...oolhardy-idea/

[twoguns]

From the above article:
"Sometimes what appears to be stupidity and incompetence is exactly that. All that remains to be seen is how far into the federal law enforcement apparatus that stupidity and incompetence reached. Anyone who allowed this to happen has no business remaining in law enforcement."
************************************************** *********

I am long past the belief that this operation was a "mistake" or it "failed" or that it was somehow "botched". Let's be real here. In my mind there is just no way this was expected to be a success in terms of catching bigger fish.

After following this story for 10 months, it is my firm conviction that this was nothing short of a calculated scheme, a conspiracy to bolster the lie about the "iron river flowing across the border" from American gun shops. There is just no way this could have had any other objective. We are talking about an anti-gun administration that is adept at under-handed tactics. Couple that type of "leadership" with a federal agency with a long history of abuse of authority and playing loose with the law combined with a justice department headed by a former Clintonista involved in the Waco debacle and it reeks to hell of a corrupt plan to undermine the Constitution and destabilize the a neighboring nation.

We need to call bullshit every time we here some politician say mistake, or botched or ill-conceived, etc.

[The_War_Wagon]

Primary Suspect.

[Brick]

From the above article:

I am long past the belief that this operation was a "mistake" or it "failed" or that it was somehow "botched". Let's be real here. In my mind there is just no way this was expected to be a success in terms of catching bigger fish.

After following this story for 10 months, it is my firm conviction that this was nothing short of a calculated scheme, a conspiracy to bolster the lie about the "iron river flowing across the border" from American gun shops. There is just no way this could have had any other objective. We are talking about an anti-gun administration that is adept at under-handed tactics. Couple that type of "leadership" with a federal agency with a long history of abuse of authority and playing loose with the law combined with a justice department headed by a former Clintonista involved in the Waco debacle and it reeks to hell of a corrupt plan to undermine the Constitution and destabilize the a neighboring nation.

We need to call bullshit every time we here some politician say mistake, or botched or ill-conceived, etc.

Verily thou speaketh the truth and amen!

And I wish my damn rep button wasn't broken!

[twoguns]

Thanks, Brick. It is the thought that counts.

and now this from the American Spectator. It speaks directly to the rampant corruption of this administration.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/0...at-the-obama-j

Deep Corruption at the Obama Justice Department

By Quin Hillyer on 9.15.11 @ 6:08AM

Americans should get furious, and fast, about the abuses.

Start rattling the chains. Start ratcheting up the hue and cry. Fire up the masses. It's long past time to force mass resignations at, and possible prosecutions of members of, the Obama Justice Department -- and, more broadly, of the West Wing itself.

Forgive all the links, but the scope of the corruption is so large as to defy adequate descriptions, in a single column, of each abomination. The reality is that these Obama/Holder minions at DoJ are dangerous to the very heart of constitutional, republican (small 'r') government. Last fall in the Spectator's print edition I did a broad overview of the problems. In the September issue of The New Criterion, Andy McCarthy does a wonderful job outlining the problems with the Holder department and with other examples of Obamite executive overreach. Of course the Black Panther case, the dismissal of which I (on the Washington Times editorial page) and the Times' ace reporter Jerry Seper on the news side were the first to report in print (I later discovered that the fabulous Michelle Malkin wrote on it online a day or two earlier), still hasn't been adequately handled. And the outrageous DoJ blocking of non-partisan elections in Kinston, N.C., solely to benefit the Democratic Party , is now being examined in the courts, with the administration having lost, big, in the latest round.

More recently, the burgeoning scandal of the "Fast and Furious" gun-running blow-up, already a huge embarrassment for the Justice Department, keeps moving closer to the White House. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, for her part, denied direct knowledge of this dangerous idiocy but as Dexter Duggan reports at the Wanderer (sign-in required), the U.S. Attorney who ran the moronic program, Dennis Burke, has been sponsored throughout his entire career by Napolitano. First he worked for her when she was a prosecutor; then (quoting Duggan), "After Napolitano ascended to the governorship in 2003, her chief of staff was none other than Dennis Burke, who went on to be a senior adviser to Napolitano when Obama made her his secretary of Homeland Security in 2009. Obama, however, soon put Burke into Napolitano's old U.S. attorney job in Phoenix. Like Napolitano, Burke got the post as a political plum. It was expected the plum would ripen into bigger fruit, as it had for Napolitano."

This week, meanwhile, Christian Adams continued Pajamas Media's mind-boggling series of stories on blatantly illegal hiring practices at DoJ. Please read that linked story, and all the previous stories linked therein. This is amazingly disturbing stuff. Of 106 supposedly apolitical hires by the Obama/Holder Civil Rights Division, all 106 are demonstrably, irrefutably leftist activists. Again, these are for "career" slots for which no political bias is supposed to be used to hire them. Simple random distribution would assure than in a center-right country, at least a couple of dozen of these hires would be either right of center or at least apolitical -- but not a single one has been anything but a hard-left radical. Look in particular at the summary of the background of Nicole Ndumele, who in addition to a host of other left-wing causes managed "to find time to co-author a wacky 'shadow report' for the United Nations blasting the United States' efforts to combat race discrimination. The report -- titled 'Unequal Opportunity: A Critical Assessment of the U.S. Commitment to the Elimination of Racial Discrimination' -- reads like exactly what it is: a product of the professional racial grievance culture."

As I noted a few weeks ago when writing about this scandal, "These people were members of groups like 'Queer Resistance Front,' 'Intersex Society of North America,' and of course People for the American Way. Their published essays focused on issues such as 'Genital Normalizing Surgery on Intersexed Infants' and on arguing that providing material support for terrorism isn't a war crime. They, or those promoted, have histories of extracurricular activities that include getting arrested at a World Bank protest, going on a hunger strike while chaining oneself to an oak tree and doing advocacy work for 'the rights of incarcerated native Hawaiians to dance the hula and perform Hawaiian chants and rituals in privately owned prisons in Arizona.' A large number of them have donated significant campaign funds to Barack Obama, and some to other liberal candidates."

Buried in Christian Adams' latest story on this scandal comes what should be an incredibly explosive allegation: "Worse, Loretta King, while serving as the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights at the outset of the Obama administration, ordered the resumes of highly qualified applicants to be rejected only because they didn't have political or left-wing civil rights experience. Multiple DOJ sources with direct knowledge of hiring committee practices have confirmed this to me."

Where, oh where are the New York Times and the Washington Post? This is a direct violation of the law that these "news" organizations are deliberately ignoring.

Then there is the continuing failure of systems that are supposed to ensure that military personnel abroad can get ballots cast and counted, which is part of a seemingly deliberate pattern of obstruction by the Obama/Holder Justice Department.

The Obamites at Justice (and elsewhere in the administration) stonewall and prevaricate repeatedly (with spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler also known for one of the most unprofessional and witchy tempers, along with ongoing lack of truthfulness, that some of us have ever seen in decades of dealing with government public relations officials), and they (again illegally) don't even comply with legitimate Freedom of Information requests.

And, of course, their ranks have been filled with an unusually high number of lawyers who considered it pro bono (literally, for the public good!) to represent terrorist detainees held in Guantanamo. When a lawyer or two take up a constitutional issue, it's one thing; but when a whole department is lousy with such lawyers, one starts to see an ideological identification with detainees as supposed "victims" of the very system of justice and ordered liberty that the terrorists have dedicated their lives to destroying.

In the weeks before Eric Holder was confirmed as Attorney General, Jennifer Rubin kept up a steady drumbeat of blog posts warning us all what a dishonest, radically leftist problem he would turn out to be. Rubin was absolutely right. Somehow, though, Holder's dastardliness has outstripped even the stern warnings Rubin issued. Under Richard Nixon, John Mitchell was as corrupt as they come. But that was all for protecting political power. The Holder Justice Department is equally as corrupt, but in worse ways even than Mitchell. Holder's team is out for raw political power unmoored from the law, of course -- but also for hard-leftist ideological ends that undermine the entire tradition of American jurisprudence and legal practice. They are a menace, and they must be stopped.

Letter to the Editor
Thank you for reading. Please consider making a contribution.
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About the Author

Quin Hillyer is a senior editor of The American Spectator and a senior fellow at the Center for Individual Freedom.

[twoguns]

http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-i...alerts_article

Progressive’ group ramps up attack on Issa

David Codrea
Gun Rights Examiner
September 15, 2011

“A liberal advocacy group is filing an ethics complaint against Rep. Darrell Issa, alleging that the California Republican has repeatedly used his public office for personal gain,” The Hill reported Tuesday.

The group, American Family Voices, is planning to file the complaint with the House Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) ...

“This is all a well-coordinated plan,” John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog asserts. “Those who lodged the ethics complaint make no secret of the fact that they rely on the discredited NY Times story.”

That would be the hit piece discussed a month ago in this column that showed the desperation of the left to shield the administration from “Project Gunwalker” investigations.
Advertisement

“So, who is ‘American Family Voices’?” Powerline continues. “We have no idea, of course. They are a 501(c)(4) organization that does not disclose its donor list.” [Link added to quoted text.]

It’s true, they don’t. A search of the nonprofit reporting site, GuideStar, shows an income of $358,437 and Form 990 filings for 2007 through 2009. The program description for this organization claims they are a “[v]oter registration and voter turn-out, non-partisan issue advocacy including research, coalition builing [sic] and advertising.”

“Non-partisan issue advocacy.” Right. Let’s see the types of American families represented by their leadership.

The president of this group is Mike Lux, “co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies.” Importantly, “[i]n November 2008, Mike was named to the Obama-Biden Transition Team. In that role, he served as an advisor to the Office of Public Liaison on working with the progressive community.”

The secretary-treasurer is Amy Pritchard, a self-described “Progressive Democratic Political Consultant and entrepreneur” and a chronic donor to leftist politicians, including Obama.

Board members include:

Phyllis Cuttino, a well-heeled environmental case cosmic ray denier who would have us believe her bachelor’s degree in political science and history from an exclusive liberal arts college beyond the means of most American families qualifies her to demand emissions standards of those who are actually educated, competent and experienced at designing, engineering and manufacturing automobiles. Naturally, she’s a big supporter of Dianne Feinstein and the UN, and argues that Obama is in sync with America on standards—evidently he’s every bit the car design expert Cuttino would have us believe she is.

Then there’s Bernard Craighead, who lists his employers as the Democratic National Committee and Urbanomics Consulting Group (which includes The Bell Campaign/Million Mom March among its clients). He was also a panelist on "The Progressive Potential of Chicago City Politics…sponsored by the University of Chicago DSA Youth Section and the Hispanic Association for Cultural Expression and Recognition.” Long-time readers will recall the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America)—they’re the ones who endorsed Obama and promoted a “solidarity song” that includes the lyrics “When the revolution comes, we’ll kill you all with knives and guns…”

You know, typical “American families.”

Next we have businessman and “philanthropist” Leo Hindery, Jr., “an economic adviser to the Obama campaign.” Funny that he should be involved in an ethics complaint against a Republican politician, when former Senate Majority Leader and Democrat Tom Daschle, whom Hindery provided a Cadillac and driver for as part of the compensation package for being a “consultant” with his private equity firm chalked up ”$101,943 in back taxes plus interest” for violating the law by not reporting it as income. That would be the same Tom Daschle who “pushed Hindery for [an] Obama job.”

Victoria Duffy-Hopper? Aside from being a big Obama supporter she…well, see for yourself if she appears to be representative of any American families you know.

And then we have Joe Velasquez, a “former White House deputy political director and longtime union organizer, [who] directs Moving America Forward, a 527 organization dedicated to registering and mobilizing Latinos.” It's a shame that Mr. Velasquez is apparently more concerned with running interference for Obama than getting justice for the rising Mexican death toll being attributed to the administration’s “Project Gunwalker” covert operations.

Because this is what Rep. Issa, the man American Family Voices is attacking, is trying to get to the bottom of. And had the Democrats, who at the time headed up the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, heeded accusations raised by veteran ATF agents when they were first brought to their attention—instead of arrogantly ignoring them with deliberate indifference—current Chairman Issa would not now be holding “Gunwalker” hearings.

As for Mike Lux rejecting accusations his group’s attack on Issa is politically motivated, he and his board—and those behind the tentacles extending to all of them—are demonstrable agenda-driven political operatives on a mission, and this is but another front in the ideological war—in actuality a cold civil war—they are waging on the freedoms of American families.

The very name “American Family Voices” is a calculated deception, as is the term “progressive” to describe those who wish to regress the Republic to iron-fisted centralized rule. That they would question anyone’s ethics is in itself a sick, subversive joke.

[twoguns]

It is clear that this administration continues to try and cover-up the crimes they have committed, attempting to minimize the perception of their widespread involvement in these crimes and using subterfuge to draw attention to anything but the ongoing investigation. Only guilty people engage in such behavior as a desperate ploy to save themselves from the inevitable consequences of their wrongdoing.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gunwalk...inglepage=true

Gunwalker Linked to Three More Murders
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice attempts to narrow the definition of a Gunwalker gun.
September 15, 2011 - 12:00 am - by Bob Owens

CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson has revealed a recent document submitted by the Department of Justice to congressional investigators. The document shows that guns linked to Operation Fast and Furious are responsible for at least three more murders in addition to the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry:

Weapons linked to ATF’s controversial “Fast and Furious” operation have been tied to at least eight violent crimes in Mexico including three murders, four kidnappings and an attempted homicide.

According to a letter from U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the disclosed incidents may be only a partial list of violent crimes linked to Fast and Furious weapons because “ATF has not conducted a comprehensive independent investigation.”

The letter is specifically worded, tailored to answer congressional questions about a narrow range of “walked” firearms using a very specific definition of what constitutes an Operation Fast and Furious gun:

For the purposes of responding to this question, we consider a firearm to be associated with Operation Fast and Furious if it was purchased by an individual who is a target of that investigation. It is important to note that many of the purchases described below took place before ATF opened the case that became know as Operation Fast and Furious on November 16, 2009; before the purchaser had been identified as a target of the investigation; or without the ATF’s knowledge at the time that a firearm was purchased.

Some amazing caveats that the Department of Justice has chosen to ignore and not count:

Weapons that were purchased by both targeted and untargeted straw purchasers if the ATF was not aware of the purchase in real-time as the buy occurred;
If the straw purchaser was not on a pre-approved and narrow (roughly 20 suspects) list of acceptable targets (some of whom were FBI informants who bought weapons and armed the cartels using taxpayer dollars);
Any suspect or weapon that was not officially part of Operation Fast and Furious before its “official” Nov. 16, 2009, launch date;
Any suspect or weapon from other suspected gunwalking programs alleged to originate from Houston, Dallas, Tampa, or the Midwest;
Related scandals involving some of the same co-conspirators, such as the grenade-walking debacle.

This extremely narrow — and self-serving — definition provided by the Department of Justice notably excludes the third rifle (and possible murder weapon) recovered at the scene of Agent Brian Terry’s death. That gun, while “walked” and used by the cartels in a violent crime, was purchased in an unnamed Texas gun-walking operation. Further, the DOJ — and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in particular — tried to make that SKS carbine “disappear.”

The weapons used to ambush ICE agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were also not included in the DOJ’s figure, as these guns were also “walked” from Texas.

For the first time, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano officially denied having any knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious as it was being run. She testified under oath before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Napolitano made her statement while being grilled by Senator John McCain (R-AZ).

While plausible, Napolitano’s claimed ignorance of the operation is highly suspect. She served as both Arizona attorney general and governor before she joined the Obama administration, and her long-time chief of staff, Dennis Burke, ran Operation Fast and Furious as the U.S attorney for Arizona — a post she helped him acquire. She had a personal stake in operations in her home state, and a professional obligation as the executive in charge of Homeland Security, one of the agencies involved in the operation.

Another senator, John Cornyn (R-TX), asked the Department of Justice weeks ago if there were any gun-walking operations like Operation Fast and Furious running in his home state of Texas. To date, the Department of Justice has not answered. Rep. Gus Bilirakis and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida have similarly asked DOJ about the 1,000 guns allegedly run to drug gangs out of Operation Castaway in Tampa, and have also met a stonewall of silence.

The Obama administration has launched a series of smears against Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chair of the committee investigating the gunwalking scandal.

Issa was first attacked in an article published by the Washington Post after it had been shopped by the White House to several other news outlets and at least one liberal blog. Those outlets turned the story down because it was not credible.

Later, the New York Times published a front-page hit piece of its own on Issa that was factually wrong on almost every point and may have been plagiarized as well. Issa pushed back forcefully against the White House-orchestrated smears and forced the Times to issue corrections, but the editors refuse to issue a full retraction nor discipline an author.

It now appears the Obama administration is using front groups and radical leftist bloggers to parrot the debunked Times article, their further actions possibly the reason the Times will not issue a full retraction.

Both attempted character assassinations in the media have failed in tarring Issa or derailing this and other congressional oversight investigations — indeed, the revelations of more murders and DOJ semantic games show an investigation that remains on track.
Bob Owens blogs at Confederate Yankee and Bob's Gun Counter.