Can Holder’s Own Inspector General Objectively Investigate Him?
Operation Fast and Furious (also known as Gunwalker) is slowly being investigated by the Executive and Legislative branches of the government. Both President Obama and Attorney General Holder deny any knowledge of the operation before the story broke in the news. The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General is conducting an investigation but can it objectively investigate its own boss, Eric Holder?
Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa are investigating Fast and Furious for the Legislative branch. On July 4th they held a secret meeting with Ken Melson, acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the entity most involved with implementing Fast and Furious.
Oddly, Eric Holder requested a copy of the transcript of the secret July 4 meeting on behalf of his Office of Inspector General (OIG). This personal request came before any OIG request was made of the July 4 meeting. Does Mr. Holder want to read the secret transcript himself?
“Since the OIG is supposed to be conducting an independent inquiry, it seems odd that the Department would make a document request on behalf of that office,” Grassley and Issa wrote to Holder on Tuesday. “We presume that if the OIG would like to make such a request, it is capable of doing so on its own initiative. However, we have not received any such request from the OIG.”
Rep. Darrell Issa may be leery about releasing any secret meetings because of some half-truths used against him politically by likes of the Washington Post and other pro-administration outlets. In a Washington Post story it was claimed that Issa and others were briefed on the ATFs’ Operation Fast and Furious in 2010 and that at the time he didn’t raise any objections. He was made to look like a hypocritical political hit man when he later attacked Fast and Furious.
What the story didn’t include was that Issa and the others were lied to. They were told that Fast and Furious was instigated by rogue low level agents. Conclusive evidence proves that Fast and Furious went at least as high as acting director Melson, who watched illegal straw purchases in his office live via the Internet.
Being lied to and then having that lie used against Rep. Issa politically probably makes him much more skeptical when it comes to investigating the Executive Branch. In Tuesday’s letter, Grassley and Issa also asked Holder to provide complete answers to the questions they sent him on July 22. The Attorney General, our highest federal law enforcement officer, appears to be stonewalling an investigation with international consequences.
The lies, half-truths, red-tape and political thug tactics that the Executive has used to stop or slow an investigation into Fast and Furious is enough to warrant a special investigator who reigns outside the reach of Holder or President Obama. This rocket may take the administration all the way to Mars but not back.
WaPo on the Defensive Over Fast and Furious
One rule in the media is that reporters and editors shouldn’t be part of the story, but last Friday The Washington Post offered an editorial that showed that the paper is very much now part of the news. Patrick B. Pexton offered an editorial titled, “Slow on the Draw on Fast and Furious?” He offered this thought on how the paper covered Fast and Furious, the ATF debacle that allowed guns to flow into Mexico:
“Conservatives have alleged that The Post has ignored this story because the paper’s editorial board, or more generally Post reporters, are liberal and pro-gun-control. The more outrageous conservative critics have even accused Post reporters of somehow being complicit in Terry’s death because an award-winning series The Post published in December, “The Hidden Life of Guns,” did not reveal Operation Fast and Furious and its missteps.”
Just the fact that the Post says, “conservatives” instead of critics suggests to us at FirearmsTruth that WaPo acknowledges that the editors are in fact “liberal.” Read more
NRA More Powerful Than ATF?
The Washington Post ran a so-called news story today that is little more than a hit piece aimed at the NRA. To stem the flow of illegal weapons moving south of the boarder, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATFE) wants to require dealers to report multiple sales of rifles and shotguns to the federal agency.
According to anonymous sources inside the Justice Department, the plan languished for months because it feared the power of the NRA. It is possible that the administration feared the public’s backlash from such a move during November’s elections. Changing the law as proposed should require an act of Congress signed into law by the President. But the NRA fears that the plan will be enacted with an executive order.
The Post story goes on to say how the NRA is a powerful organization that uses “political muscle to intimidate lawmakers.” Of course when the organization seeking influence is a union or environmental group The Post doesn’t use such language. Those groups only seek what is good and pure.
The only way the NRA intimidates law makers is by withholding campaign funds and asking its meager 4 million members to vote for or against candidates. Isn’t that how a democratic republic is supposed to work? Aren’t elected figures supposed to carry out the will of the people?
Groups like the NRA look out for our interests, as they are set up to watch what government is doing. Most of us are too busy with other things to be watchdogs, which is why groups like the NRA exist. Perhaps the NRA is so influential because our elected officials agree with most of what it advocates and that’s why the Washington Post is so full of hate.
WaPo Blames American Guns Again, but Logic Is Again Missing
With less than three weeks left to the year we almost thought we could make it without hearing that American guns are fueling the cartel violence in Mexico. That would of course take a full-fledged Christmas miracle. So this week the miracle did not occur, as The Washington Post and other outlets that picked up on the story noted that gun shops in Texas might be the source of guns used in crimes in Mexico.
And just like hearing ringing bells at the mall, we came across the typical misinformation and twisted facts. If, we ask, American gun shops are the source, how does the writer of the story explain this passage:
“What is different now, authorities say, is the number of high-powered rifles heading south – AR-15s, AK-47s, armor-piercing .50-caliber weapons – and the savagery of the violence.”
Yes Virginia there is a strange twist of logic in this writing. American gun shops are being blamed in this story, and somehow they’re selling “armor-piercing .50-caliber weapons.” Yeah, every shop I go to has a nice .50-caliber waiting for me. The retailers must have expected this to be the new Elmo must-have toy for this season.
The WaPo story goes on for pages, dropping nice catchy phrases such as “sniper rifles,” and “military-style tactical weapons.” The question we’d like to also ask is that if Texas and Arizona sell so many of these weapons, why is the violence “south of the border?”
Richmond Times-Dispatch Questions “Gun Show Loophole”
Apparently not everyone in the mainstream media is buying into the reporting from The Washington Post and other anti-gun agenda based news outlets. The Richmond Times-Dispatch offered an editorial titled “Gun Shows: Some Loophole,” noting:
“Since an individual who is not a licensed gun dealer can sell a firearm to another individual without a background check — the “loophole” in question — it might be the case that some of the 107 legally obtained guns were bought through person-to-person sales at gun shows. Or not. There is no more hard evidence for that hypothesis than there is for the hypothesis that half of the 107 legally obtained guns were bought by blond men with tattoos.”
The paper further notes something that many anti-gun zealots refuse to acknowledge, namely that states with less restrictive gun laws are the source of “crime guns.” This is a fact that is stated time and time again, yet with little proof. The Times-Dispatch offers this though:
“Yet gun-control advocates continue to insist that ‘states that have not closed the gun-show loophole are far more likely to be the source of crime guns.’ But were those crime guns bought at gun shows — or from crooked dealers, or perhaps stolen? Gun-control advocates don’t say.”
It is refreshing to see that some newspaper editors aren’t just going with the standard line on guns and gun show loopholes.
Firing Back: NY Times Cites WaPo
Isn’t The New York Times anti-gun enough already? Apparently not, as the Old Gray Lady’s editors referenced a recent Washington Post anti-gun editorial. But the NY Times is also showing a bit of sour grapes as well, offering this editorial the weekend before election day, knowing that the new congress will likely be even friendlier to the Second Amendment supporters.
In it, the editors offer this thought:
“As a new Congress looms, we suggest lawmakers travel to Washington by way of West Virginia and an obscure federal building called the National Tracing Center. There they can see workers laboring through unmanageably high backlogs of handwritten paper records submitted by the nation’s gun dealers. This is Congress’s handiwork — at the behest of the gun lobby and to the detriment of public safety.”
What this editorial doesn’t say is that there are more guns in private hands and yet less crime. But this editorial is notable for what it doesn’t say. It never draws attention to the fact that the gun lobby is powerful because it speaks for the people on election day, in other words this is what people west of the Hudson River really want.
As we’ve noted previously, too often editors at the Times and WaPo seem to think that from the extreme east coast they tell what they believe is right for the country, but never see the country. They don’t see the hunters, they don’t see the collectors and they don’t see the gun shows. They don’t see these things because their respective cities, New York City and Washington, D.C., have had such harsh gun laws that private citizens were all but stripped of their Second Amendment rights, and thus the gun lobby has ensured as goes New York and D.C. so won’t go the rest of the country.
WaPo Shows More Anti-Gun Bias in Tracing Flow of Illegal Guns
The Washington Post is looking to “investigate” the national flow of guns as part of a new series on “The Hidden Life of Guns.” This includes photo galleries, video of the ATF tracing center and a nifty (but very buggy) Flash presentation that shows which states are exporters and which are importers.
As expected this report draws the conclusion that states with so-called “weak” gun laws export more guns, and those with “tough” gun laws import more guns. This of course, according to the report, is how criminals get guns.
The report further notes that the gun lobby continues to block the ATF from conducting tracing. And while the report does offer insight from both sides of the issue, this is still WaPo and there is plenty of subtle (and not so subtle) bias thrown in with a multimedia report titled, “A Source of Crime Guns,” and a video that shows how the ATF is protecting “us” from those crime guns. In other words, the agenda is still clear.
WaPo Blogger States the Obvious
While citing the recent “study” from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Martin Austermuhle of the DCist blog, via The Washington Post, writes “A report, published today by the coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns, finds that 98.2 percent of all guns used in crime in the District come from other states.” Read more
WaPo Letter to the Editor is as Uninformed as Usual Editorials
Typically we don’t report on “letters to the editor,” but the recent letter from Eliot L. Engel to the editors of The Washington Post is no ordinary letter. Rep. Engel (D-N.Y.) is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcomittee on the Western Hemisphere, so it is essential that readers – and more importantly all voters – know his stance. Read more
Paul Helmke Huffs and Puffs and Cites WaPo
Need any further proof that you can’t trust the “news” coming from The Washington Post? Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, referenced the same WaPo editorial that we called out this week in his column for the Huffington Post. Read more
