Dick Morris appeared on Fox and Friends this morning and was eerily prescient. The crew was discussing Fast and Furious and the possible Eric Holder Contempt of Congress vote that looms. Someone asked Morris what he thought was going on and Morris said that it seemed that Obama was going to allow Holder to take the hits on his own over F&F. Otherwise Obama would drop a cloak of Executive Privilege over the documents, but that would in turn make it appear as though Barack Obama was directly involved in the mess.
And now it appears he is directly involved.
President Obama on Wednesday asserted executive privilege over documents sought by a House panel ahead of a scheduled panel vote where Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to be held in contempt of Congress.
It’s the first time Obama has used executive privilege since taking office. A White House aide said the president had gone longer without asserting the privilege in a congressional dispute than any other president in the last three decades.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said his panel was “evaluating” a letter from Deputy Attorney General James Cole asserting the privilege that arrived minutes before Issa’s committee was to begin contempt proceedings. The vote was to take place Wednesday after a last-ditch effort to reach a deal over documents related to Operation Fast and Furious failed on Tuesday night.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley asked some pointed questions about the assertion of Privilege:
““The assertion of executive privilege raises monumental questions. How can the President assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the President exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme? The contempt citation is an important procedural mechanism in our system of checks and balances. The questions from Congress go to determining what happened in a disastrous government program for accountability and so that it’s never repeated again.”
Watch and listen to this hypocrite be critical of hiding behind Executive Privilege
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpwYh9TD6Nc[/youtube]
The man who just can’t shut up when it comes to some national secrets clearly doesn’t want something discovered. Now it seems highly likely that this scandal goes right to the top. Yet if not, Obama has learned nothing from Watergate.
It’s like Obama said
“I think the American people deserve to know what was going on.”
Obama has denied any knowledge of the tragic gun running operation. Either Executive Privilege does not apply or Obama is directly involved and has lied about it.
UPDATE
It’s really hitting the fan
No sooner does Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee jump to Holder’s defense and tries to pin F&F falsely on Bush
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk8Dv419H-4[/youtube]
than Holder retracts that assertion
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XypVcv77WBU[/youtube]
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
The F&F trail leads all the way to the White Hut. But we knew that. We just never expected that he would admit it.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Remember how ridiculous the people demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate looked when he finally released it? Or are some of us still in denial?
Most people have sense enough not to p-ss on a spark plug to begin with. It’s amazing that there are people who might actually try it twice.
I suppose it will at least distract media and public attention away from less important matters coming up, such as the automatic expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the automatic spending cuts built into the most recent debt ceiling compromise, the next debt ceiling crisis, the imminent lay-offs of hundreds of thousands of defense contractor employees, etc. All of which the GOP has had very little to say about, what with with an election coming up and all.
@Greg:
What is amazing is that there are other Americans like you Greg that don’t seem to have smoke blown up their tailends, just as long as your Marxist goals are achieved.
Marxist goals? Look for a sign with a pointing arrow, and words reading This Way Back to Reality.
@Greg:
If you support this current POTUS, whom I consider a full-blown Socialist, then you obviously accept his philosophies, which makes you a Socialist.
Obama is a liar, a fraud, and hopefully, it will come out that he had no trouble with the deaths of Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata as long as it furthered his goal to destroy the Second Amendment.
The whole operation was probably Obama’s idea.
@Greg:
All I’ve seen is a Photoshop fake.
@Greg:
That’s pretty funny considering that the liberal/progressive viewpoints are based on failed ideas of the past. Unicorns and rainbows are a much better description of you and your brethren’s “solutions”. I believe reality passed you by a long time ago, judging by your postings past and present.
@swampsniper, #6:
Nope.
Operation Wide Receiver, the earliest ATF gunwalking operation involving the Mexican drug cartels, began in early 2006 and ran through late 2007. During the course of Operation Wide Receiver, suspected gun traffickers were sold over 450 AR-15s, AK-47s, and Colt .38 handguns. The majority of those weapons were never recovered. That all happened a full year before Obama had been elected, and a full year before Eric Holder had assumed office as Attorney General.
The Guns That Got Away
Then there’s this inconvenient fact from a TPM article about weapons recovered at Mexican crime scenes:
Since Issa has opened up this particular can of worms, he should empty it out completely and see what’s hidden down at the bottom. This didn’t all start with Fast and Furious. That’s not what’s at the bottom of the can.
Of course, as I’ve said before, getting to the bottom of the can isn’t really what Issa’s Kangaroo Court is all about. It’s all about the November election, and somehow getting Barack Obama.
@Greg:
Anyone who relies on TPM, which is nothing more than a talking rectum for the Obama administration, is scraping the bottom of the barrel for information.
Yes, over 60% of the guns that Mexico asked the U.S. to trace came from the U.S., but the problem with that story, that the talking rectum won’t report, is that those guns represented about 20% of the guns the Mexican government had captured. That works out to between 11-12 per 100 of the guns conficated by Mexico.
Also, during Wide Receiver, there is no proof that any of those weapons ever made it across the border. But there are documents that those weapons were confiscated before they could cross the border. Something else the talking rectums on the left won’t tell their readers.
It is clear that the guns allowed to walk by the Holder DOJ were used in the deaths of both Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata. Today, Jaime Zapata’s family, along with his parter who was also shot, filed a law suit against Eric Holder and the Department of Justice. And today, the head of the Border Patrol union called for Eric Holder’s resignation. When you have lost the rank and file, Greg, you have lost big time.
Now, being the narrow minded people that liberals/progressives are, they, like you, think that if they scream loud enough “Bush did it, too” that this will just go away. After all, Obama has been blaming Bush for his own incompetence for the last three years, and fools like you continue to accept that excuse. But here is what I, and most conservatives say to you; no matter who was responsible for allowing weapons to walk across the border of Mexico, no matter which administration did it, bring it on.
But you can bet your sweet ass that the current administration cannot lay this at the feet of Bush, or Eric Holder would have provided those documents long before now. This scandal, which is greater than Watergate, is going to get laid directly at the feet of the most incompetent president in our national history.
The difference between Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious?
One was a botched operation.
The firearms in Wide Receiver were equipped with RFID tracking devices.
Thus only 450 of them even made it into Mexico.
Knowing the time aloft numbers for virtually all government surveillance planes , the buyers had a simple method of getting their purchases across the border undetected. They simply drove four-hour loops around the area.
As surveillance planes were forced to return to base for refueling, the smugglers simply turned and sprinted their cargo across the border.
(This is just like those illegal food vendors here in my city. They wait until after 4PM before they start. That’s because the Health Department doesn’t patrol the streets after 4PM. Tamales? Fruit Ices? Corn with butter? All with flies and filth. But only after 4PM.)
Rather than making large enough holes for the tracking devices to be laid out inside weapons, agents force-fit them into the rifles.
That cramming caused the antennae to be folded, reducing the effective range. And an already short battery life (36-48 hours maximum) meant that should purchasers allow the firearms to sit, the tracking devices eliminated themselves.
The other was a deliberate walking of guns across the border with NO intention or ability to track them.
Fast and Furious was specifically designed to assure that straw purchasers and cartel weapons smugglers would be under the de facto protection of the Obama administration, with no attempts at interdiction!
Over 2,000 guns walked into Mexico.
Over 300 people in Mexico have died from people using these weapons.
Look up the difference between botching something and doing something deliberately.
@Greg: So F&F was allowed to take place despite a similar previous program that failed in 2007. That makes this Justice Department even more inept since they were unable to learn from the mistakes of the first one. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if the first operation actually had a tracking method in place and it failed, then the second operation, with no tracking method in place, was even more prone to failure. But by all means, feel free to blame everyone but those responsible.
@retire05, #10:
TPM reported the data, they didn’t collect and compile it. The data comes from the ATF, as TPM clearly stated. They even provided a convenient link to the ATF report.
@Greg: Crap.
F&F is a plot to create mayhem at the border in an effort to suspend the 2nd Amendment and I have absolutely no doubt that Obama is the author.
How ironic that Obama and Holder offer amnesty to 800,000 illegal Mexicans while at the same time providing drug cartels the weapons to kill at least 30,000 Mexicans.
@Greg: TPMPMSNBC. There, I fixed it for you, Greg. Maybe you could get that whore Andrea Mitchell to chime in as well.
Obama loves diversions.
I don’t think F&F is a pure diversion because it is too damaging to him.
But look what sneaked in under the radar while we obsessed…..
THIS POINT made by Grassley clearly illustrates the point made by the author of this thread:
(CREDIT: ACE OF SPADES):
Read this CAREFULLY.
Very carefully. Because Grassley makes a very valid point that is sure to bite Obama in the butt.
House Government Oversight Committee Votes 23-17 In Favor Of Making “Racism” The Official Language of the US
PJM
And by that I mean they voted out a contempt finding against Holder, which now goes to the entire House for consideration.
“How can the president assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement?” Grassley said in a statement. “How can the president exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme?”
BTW: If this is all Bush’s doing, per the very distinguished Congressthing Sheila Jackson Lee, why not disclose all the documents?
Let’s finally get Bush for what he did.
Or no?
Obvious, But Worth Saying Again: Executive privilege can be invoked to protect national security secrets and, to a lesser extent, confidential advice given to the president.
It cannot be used to protect strategizing about how to lie to Congress.
But there is at least one helpful development in Holder’s request that the President invoke executive privilege to shield these documents: The President now owns the consequences of further stonewalling. There is no ongoing DOJ prosecution or investigation to protect. There is no obvious reason why the President can’t waive even what legitimately privileged documents there are (which is probably far fewer than the 1,300 pages being withheld).
Most of Issa’s requests are about how a patently false, and now “inoperable,” memo was drafted, and who authorized it, and sent the perjurious document to Congress.
Are they claiming Executive Privilege shields them from disclosing how they contrived to lie?
That dog won’t hunt.
@Nan G: It only stands to reason that the reason why the Republicans would hold Holder in contempt would be to draw attention away from this news. They want to distract voters away from gloomy economic forecasts that could hinder Obama’s re-election efforts. It all makes sense now.
Advice from a DEM. Chasing this rabbit will be as productive as the Clinton impeachment and the birther fiasco. The more the American voter sees people like Issa and Sheriff Joe the worse it will be for Romney. “It’s the economy stupid” CAN bring a Romney victory.
@Greg:
You seem to think that this is nothing more than a witch hunt to discredit Obama during an election year. Frankly, I don’t give a damn what kind of year it is but that didn’t seem to bother you, or your fellow Socialists, when the Democrats went after the Bush administration and promised all of us that Karl Rove was going to be frogged marched out of the White House because of a non-covert Valerie Plame, even after Plame refused to be sworn in for her Congressional testimony.
So, we can assume that witch hunts on the part of Democrats are good, in your book.
Tell me, how many people died because of Valerie Plame? How many Border Patrol and ATF agents are dead because of Valerie Plame’s lies and the lies of her husband, Joe Wilson?
You see, Greg, I care if our BP agents are being shot down because of the actions of Eric Holder, terrorist sympathizer, and the half Kenyan/British citizen, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. And if the gods smile on this nation, we will see Obama discredited and Holder in prison for the death of Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata.
@Richard Wheeler:
If you think the American voter doesn’t care that we have an administration that has now injected themselves in the biggest scandal to hit this nation in over 100 years, you’re just fooling yourself. And now, since Obama has decided to inject himself into the mix, with his claim of executive privilege, even the Obama lap dog media can no longer ignore this story.
Some small measure of caution might be prudent. Executive Privilege could be a calculated move. It’s an open invitation for republicans to gather ’round the spark plug and let ‘er fly.
Retire, greg has stated he is “not a fan of capitalism”. He supports all kind of marxist wealth redistribution plots, and hates the wealthy (unless they are leftists). He’s not a marxist tho. (roll eyes)
Rich, the clinton impeachment was seen by average Joes as pure politics. The birth certificate is a fringe issue. F&F, not so much. This definitely has a weight that even the non-politically inclined may take an interest in.
Retire05 Your personal animosity towards Obama ain’t gonna help Mitt one bit. Maybe you don’t care. “biggest scandal in 100 years” Right
H.R The vote today was 32r–27d Politics as usual. American voter is interested in economy and national security. Will see this as strictly political. Issa is a far right ideologue.
Chicago style politics…If you are surprised by what happened today then you haven’t been paying attention….Obama and his crew make a cork screw look straight…
Rich, more like the biggest scandal in a long time, not counting Watergate. It has the potential to be even bigger, tho.
@Richard Wheeler:This was taken almost a week ago and seems to contradict your theory that the American people don’t care. Once the details emerge, we’ll see what happens to these numbers. The blame the other guy this administration is well known for may have worn itself out for this one. Duly noted that we should ignore potential wrongdoing unless the folks in question have an ‘R’ after their name. So much for checks and balances.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/june_2012/40_think_holder_should_resign_as_attorney_general
Greg is a barometer for White House panic.
You will note he has the same talking points supplied to the Democratic members of the Oversight Committee. These zombies kept repeating the “started under Bush” meme and Issa would remind them that the DOJ had just sent a memo retracting that claim. They would blink a couple of times and continue claiming it to be so, as though Issa hadn’t said anything.
Here is a handy comparison of the two programs. Gunwalker followed by F&F:
Informed Mexican Government of Program: Yes / No
Attempted to Track Guns: Yes / No
Attempted to Intercept Guns: Yes / No
Attempted to Make Arrests: Yes / No
Number of Guns Involved: approx. 400 / 2000+
Halted Program Due to Interdiction Failures: Yes / No
Coupled Program to Attacks on 2nd Amendment: No / Yes
@Richard Wheeler:
My personal feelings toward Obama has nothing to do with Mitt Romney, no matter how much you think it does. Obama was a blank slate on which people like you wrote what ever the hell they wanted. Hope and Change? Hope for what? Change from what? In 2008, you could ask 100 people that supported Obama those questions and you would have gotten 100 answers. The Flim-Flam Man, David Axelrod, sold you a bottle of snake oil (Obama) and you gladly handed them your vote. No one, especially the lap dog media, bothered to vet Obama. He was just the “Messiah” (literally portrayed by the press with halos around his head) that people could project their own hopes on like a black screen. And he has been an abstract failure not to mention his total thwarting of the U.S. Constitution.
I remember how Democrats gritched that a 5 1/2% unemployment rate was a disgrace. But what do we have now? 8+% for how many months? And the only reason it stays at less that 11-14% is because the Obama DOL drops so many Americans from the work for rolls. Foreign policy? What was our first clue that Obama’s foreign policy would be a disaster? Honduras. Now Obama’s Middle East policies and Arab Spring are another abstract failure. Now the Muslim Brotherhood is saying if their candidate doesn’t win in Egypt, there will be riots and all out war.
Defend Obama all you want, but when Pennslyvania is rapidly becoming a swing state, there is hope for this Constitutional republic, after all.
@another vet:
Heh!
This is only the ”diversion du jour, ” another vet.
The diversions have been coming fast and furious all through Obama’s 40 months in office.
A recent report found that Obama spent over $9 billion to produce only 910 jobs (but they were GREEN jobs).
That’s $9,800,000 per job WE wasted out of hard-earned money.
Know how much we spend to hire a person at hubby’s (printing) business?
Less than $40,000.
And that is NOT including his/her salary, just all the training and perks and hoops we have to jump through.
@Nan G: You’re not trying to say that you and your husband, private sector people who work, are more efficient than Obama are you?
@Wm T Sherman, #28:
What was retracted was the AG’s inaccurate statement that Fast and Furious had begun during the Bush administration. The Wide Receiver operation did in fact take place during the Bush administration. And–as the ATF has documented–the annual number of firearms illegally crossing the border from the U.S. into Mexico peaked before the Obama administration had even begun.
The right’s “they’re blaming it all on Bush again” line is also wearing a bit thin. They seem to think it functions as some sort of all-purpose armor against any inconvenient placing of responsibility. The fact of the matter is that plenty of things still troubling us today did begin during the Bush administration.
Most of the zombies I’ve encountered lately are remotely controlled by FOX News and right-wing radio.
@retire05, #29:
I think you must be confusing Obama with Mitt Romney. For almost everything Romney now says, you can find something he has said or done in the past that directly contradicts it.
Retire05 You’re confused. I’ve been plugging a Romney/Rubio ticket for months. Thank God the likes of Santorum,Perry,Cain,Gingrich and the intollerable Palin got kicked to the curb.
Obama will win Pa. Romney needs Ohio and Fla (Rubio) to win.Romney is favored right now. Don’t blow it parading out the likes of Issa and Arpaio.
@Greg:
At least Romney has a record that one can refer to. Obama spent his entire Illinois senate career (won only after Axelrod destroy Obama’s opponents by getting the court to release sealed divorce records) voting present or, in the rare cases where he did vote, to the far left.
An article by Chuck Norris listing broken promises by Obama. The numbers in the second to last paragraph are from two pro-Obama web sites.
@Richard Wheeler:
You seem to have confused me with someone who would have backed Romney had I had a choice. Once again, a few states, some of whom will go for Obama, picked the GOP candidate for the entire nation. Hell, I didn’t even get to vote in the primaries until the end of May, thanks to the national Democrat party.
Romney is no conservative, and his only redeeming quality is that he is less progressive than Obama and I hope, will at least honor our Constitution. But he will go easy in illegals (remember, he hired them to manicure his lawn and clean his tennis courts), will not make any hard effort to support the Defense of Marriage laws, and basically, in my view, cannot be trusted to restore conservatism to this nation.
We had a chance to nominate someone who really appreciated the working man, who wasn’t a silver spoon fed Northeastern conservative (read; liberal) and who had a record of keeping his state in good shape inspite of a severe economic downturn. He was soundly rejected by lies from Romney and a ever left turning northeast.
I will vote for Romney, but only because the alternative is unthinkable and if given another four years, Obama will reach his goal of “fundamentally transforming” our nation to the point where it will not be recognized.
Retire05 The very reasons you dislike Romney are reasons myself and a majority of Americans can support him. He’s a social moderate and in my opinion the ONLY Repub. candidate who could beat BHO. Adding Rubio will ensure victory.
At this point, Obama’s record includes winding down a couple of decade-long wars, ridding the world of most of al Qaeda’s top leaders, taking steps that will bring affordable health insurance to over 32 million Americans who haven’t previously had it, saving a huge segment of the U.S. auto industry, and weathering the worst recession since the Great Depression. All without the help of the loyal opposition. That might not meet anyone’s definition of “fundamental transformation,” but it’s not too shabby for the first 3 1/2 years in office, all things considered.
@Richard Wheeler:
Then you must be from a state that is close to either the Beast or Left Coast. Social moderate? What the heck is that? Why do I never hear any Democrat referred to as a “moderate?” I am had a belly full of “social” moderation. I don’t want to get along with the liberals, I want to DEFEAT them and totally remove them from any form of power in this nation.
And you’re wrong about Romney being the only candidate that had a chance to beat Obama. Road kill could have beat Obama if the economy is still in the tank on election day in November.
The latest Bloomberg poll gives Obama a 13 point lead. That’s likely a misleading result. The RCP poll average has him only 2.2 points ahead.
@Greg:
Winding down a couple of wars? Really? The only war Obama has wound down is the Iraqi front. In Afghanistan, we have seen Obama double the U.S. military body count in just 3 1/2 years compared to the entire 8 years of Bush. And let’s not forget Obama selling us out to the Pakistanis, making it now impossible to go after the bad guys because the Pakistani government was all in a twit over the killing of ObL.
And where do you get your number of 32 million Americans that didn’t have insurance? Oh, maybe your counting Obama’s potential voters, the 20+ million illegals that he seems to be catering to. Nevermind that your beloved Democrat party violated Constitutional law enacting Obamacare. Never before in the history of our nation have citizens been punished for NOT engaging in commerce, as Obamacare will do. But then, I guess you don’t mind the federal government having the ability to require you to provide your checking account number to the IRS so that if you don’t buy insurance, they can deduct premiums from your checking account without your permission.
Saved the auto industry? Really? Or did you mean saved the auto unions by screwing the secured bond holders, a security guaranteed by bankruptcy laws? How much is GM into the taxpayer for? Remind me again. And all those green cars? If it doesn’t blow up in your face, how much you think it is going to cost you to charge one of those suckers when Obama shuts down the coal industry and you have to pay four times as much for electricity to charge one of those puppies?
Yeah, not too shabby if the book laying on your night stand is the Communist Manifesto and not the Bible.
Never argue with a fool. Note to Valery Jarrett if obama asks you to go on a bus ride, run like hell.
@ Greg
I think I see what your problem is. Your BS meter is broken and has been for 4 years. Either that or your intake port is mixed up with your exhaust port. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and go with the first one. Get it fixed, you’ll feel better in a year.
@Greg:
Hey bud, saving a huge segment of the U.S. auto industry? How wouldn’t bankruptcy have done the same?
From the OP:
But, Obama was like, 8 or 10 years old when Watergate happened….
At least that was the defense he used when talking about Ayers.
@Greg: You said:
.
.
@Greg: You said:
Yup, it’ll be pointed at the Conservative victories popping up all over the country.
@ Greggy… you CLAIMED.. that Obama…”saving a huge segment of the U.S. auto industry,”
A Chapter 11 Bankruptcy would have done the same…. at ZERO COST to Taxpayers…. so why didn’t Obama let that option happen??
His UNION DONORS would have gotten spanked in Bankruptcy court…. so, Obama used OUR Tax $$$$, to pay off his Union voter base.. FACT…..
You are one lost dude…
Sorry I missed posting on this topic. You all handled it quite well. The only thing you forgot is you can not argue with a fool with out running the risk of looking like that fool. Greg and Rich both show their stripes.