Respecting The Constitutional Rights Of Americans

Yesterday John HInderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article with the following headline, “Schiff Obtained Phone Records of Nunes, Journalist, Others.”

How in the world did Adam Schiff get access to those phone records?

The article notes:

The mainstream media is abuzz with stories about Nunes communication with “Rudy Giuliani during key aspects of his Ukraine pressure campaign.” Nunes was in touch with John Solomon around the times he published major articles. And on and on. The telephone records don’t include the actual conversations. They identify who was calling whom and how long they spoke.

Schiff has crossed the line of decency with this move. Once again, he has abused his power. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton tweeted that obtaining these records is a remarkable abuse of President Trump’s constitutional rights. I would argue that it’s an abuse of the constitutional rights of all of the above. These are KGB tactics.

Well, fair is fair. Republicans should obtain Schiff’s phone records, those of the so-called whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, and the colleague with whom he had a “bro-like” relationship, you know, Sean Misko, the one Schiff hired as an aide the day after the whistleblower’s complaint was submitted.

The repellent Adam Schiff has managed to reach a new level of depravity.

This is not something that should be happening in America. It is a total disregard for the constitutional rights of the people involved. However, this is not a new tactic by the political left.

In October 2014, I posted an article about Sharyl Attkisson. She was fired from CBS for her reporting on Operation Fast and Furious. As you remember, that was President Obama’s gun-running operation that was supposed to bring Americans to the point where they overturned the Second Amendment.

The article from rightwinggranny noted:

Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”

The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.

The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.

“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.”

“They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.

It’s time to charge people with a crime when they violate the civil rights of an American citizen. I hope this will happen (but I am not optimistic).

Prepare The Popcorn, The Show Is About To Begin

Joe Biden has entered the Democratic presidential race. Prepare for amazing statements by someone who seems to have no relationship with reality.

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article today about a recent statement by former Vice-President Biden.

The article reports:

“The thing I’m proudest of is we, coincidentally, we were each in a different part of the country and we were each talking to groups of people that were being televised. On the same day, purely coincidentally, we were asked what are you proudest of from your administration? You know what I said—he said the same thing, though probably a bit more clearly than I did: Not one single whisper of scandal,” Biden said on ABC’s The View. “That’s because of Barack Obama.”

This has been a common refrain among Democrats and people in the media. In 2018, Obama himself declared his presidency was free from scandal.

“I didn’t have scandals, which seems like it shouldn’t be something you brag about,” Obama said.

Despite Obama’s claim of a scandal free presidency, his administration was plagued by numerous scandals. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, the administration’s response to the 2012 terror attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, a scandal involving the IRS targeting conservative organizations, Operation Fast and Furious, Department of Justice’s tracking of reporter James Rosen, the Solyndra scandal, and the failures of the Department of Veterans Affairs are a few of the scandals to have occurred throughout Obama’s time in office.

Wow. Maybe he just forgot.

 

Some Other Aspects Of The Fast And Furious Investigation

I am sure I was not the only person disgusted by the whitewash of the Fast and Furious investigation by the Justice Department. Since they were investigating themselves, it was no surprise that the culprits named did not include either Eric Holder or his top staff. However, Heritage.org pointed out some facts about the investigation that I hadn’t considered.

Today’s Morning Bell at Heritage listed five ways the Justice Department report tarnishes the reputation of Eric Holder’s Justice Department.

The article lists the five ways:

1. The report singles out top Department of Justice officials for wrongdoing.

2. The report appears to contradict sworn testimony by Attorney General Eric Holder.

3. The report faults top Justice Department leadership with failing to adequately respond to the murder of an American border patrol agent.

4. The White House refused to disclose any internal communications to the inspector general.

5. The report fails to consider evidence that a top DOJ official knew the department misled Congress.

Please follow the link and read the entire article for the details on each charge. I suspect that sometime after President Obama leaves office (either in 2012 or 2016), the truth about Operation Fast and Furious will come out. Until then, the facts will continue to get muddied.

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The Foxes Have Reported That There Is No One In The Chicken Coop–Only Us Chickens

Fox News reported yesterday that the Justice Department‘s inspector general has released his report on Operation Fast and Furious. Now stop a minute and reread that sentence. The Justice Department’s inspector general has issued his report on the Justice Department’s actions in Operation Fast and Furious. The inspector general reports to Eric Holder–the head of the Justice Department.

The article at Fox News reports:

The report says Attorney General Eric Holder was not made aware of potential flaws in the program until February of last year. But the report cites 14 other department employees — including Criminal Division head Lanny Breuer — for potential wrongdoing, recommending the department consider disciplinary action against them. 

I suspect that some time after the November election we will find out what actually happened. Right now I refuse to dignify this report with any more words.

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Sometimes You Just Wonder Why People Say Things…

Yesterday the Daily Caller posted a quote from former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi about the ongoing saga of Fast and Furious.

The article reports:

I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day,” Pelosi said on Wednesday, The Huffington Post reports. “I’m not kidding. There’s a prison here in the Capitol. If we had spotted him in the Capitol, we could have arrested him.”

“Oh, any number” of charges could have been brought against Rove, Pelosi said. “But there were some specific ones for his being in contempt of Congress.”

What in the world does Karl Rove have to do with anything? Karl Rove was a senior policy advisor to George W. Bush–similar to the role that Valerie Jarrett or David Axelrod plays in the Obama Administration. Eric Holder is the Attorney General–he is the chief law enforcement officer in the country.

Someday I will understand why the left is so obsessed with Karl Rove. Somehow my husband got on the mailing list for donations to the Democrat party–almost every fund raising request has Karl Rove’s name on it. It would be so much more constructive to talk about issues. It really doesn’t matter whether Ms. Pelosi could have arrested Karl Rove. It does matter if Eric Holder abused his power in Fast and Furious. Congress needs to be able to find out what happened. The cover-up of Fast and Furious looks more and more like Watergate every day–only the media hasn’t bothered to focus on it as they focused on Watergate.

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Somehow Most Of The American Press Missed This

Yesterday Investors.com posted a story about Tuesday’s “Three Amigos” summit with President Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Things, unfortunately, did not go well. Our political President has been so busy focusing on his re-election, he seems to be neglecting some other things that are rather important.

The article reports:

Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier.

The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Obama the U.S. will have to pay market prices for its Canadian oil after Obama’s de facto veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada is preparing to sell its oil to China.

Until now, NAFTA had shielded the U.S. from having to pay global prices for Canadian oil. That’s about to change.

Prepare for even higher prices at the gas pump as this takes effect.

The article reports the reporting of the summit in the Mexican press:

Excelsior of Mexico City reported that President Felipe Calderon bitterly brought up Operation Fast and Furious, a U.S. government operation that permitted Mexican drug cartels to smuggle thousands of weapons into drug-war-torn Mexico. This blunder has wrought mayhem on Mexico and cost thousands of lives.

There is also the fact that America is blocking the entry of both Mexico and Canada into the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The article at Investors.com concludes:

In short, the summit was a diplomatic disaster for the U.S. and its relations with its neighbors north and south.

It should have been the easiest, most no-brainer diplomatic task Obama faces.

Instead, it underscored the Obama administration’s indifference to anything more than its own political interests.

It’s a shame the American media didn’t tell us. Instead we had to learn of it in the foreign press.

As Americans, we used to be able to depend on the basic media to provide us with news about the events of the day. It is becoming more and more obvious that Americans are going to have to do their own research on the Internet and other places if they are to be informed voters.

 

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Friday Night’s Document Dump

Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article on the latest Friday night document dump by the White House.

The article reports:

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has subpoenaed 80,000 pages of documents concerning Fast and Furious. Holder has only provided about 7,000 pages. He has, however, given all 80,000 to his internal investigator — DOJ’s Office of Inspector General.

Attorney General Holder has no problem letting the foxes within the Department of Justice guard the chicken coop, he is just concerned that if the House Committee sees the documents, they might actually do something about what they contain.

Terry Frieden of CNN reported that of the hundreds (not thousands) of pages produced by the Justice Department, few of them are actually related to Fast and Furious. Most of the documents released deal with an incident in 2007, which the Democrats on the Committee are attempting to use to change the subject.

The article reports:

According to congressional Democrats on the House oversight committee, in the “Hernandez case” ATF agents, working with Mexican police, planned to track illegal weapons as they left the United States all the way to their final destination. But Mexican police reported they never saw the vehicle that ATF agents had followed to the border.
 
It is time for the Justice Department and the White House to come clean and release the whole mess to the House Committee. The American people are entitled to know what the truth is regarding Operation Fast and Furious. How many Americans and Mexicans have to be murdered before Operation Fast and Furious is investigated and those responsible dealt with?

 

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It Really Doesn’t Pay To Cover-Up Bad Stuff

Today’s Washington Times is reporting that Arizona is launching its own investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, the government gun running operation that Congress has been trying to investigate for more than a year.

The article reports:

Speaker Andy Tobin created the committee, and charged it with looking at whether the program broke any state laws — raising the possibility of state penalties against those responsible for the operation.

It’s a turnaround from the rest of the immigration issue, where the federal government has sued to block the state’s own set of laws.

The committee is due to report back on March 30.

The article reminds us:

On Friday the chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona told a House committee he will decline to answer their questions next week, citing his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

The official’s lawyer, in a letter to the committee, said his client is innocent but is “ensnared by the unfortunate circumstances in which he now stands between two branches of government.”

At some point we need to remind people that they don’t have these problems if they follow the law. I am hopeful that the pleading of the Fifth Amendment along with the Arizona committee will result in a serious enough investigation to expose whatever the facts are in this matter. If laws were broken, people need to face the consequences. 

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I Think There Is A Problem With This

 America has three branches of government–the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. The idea is to divide the power so that no one branch takes control of the government. There is also the added benefit that each branch protects its own interests by keeping an eye on what the other branches are doing. Thus, we have Congressional hearings when the Executive branch gets a little feisty. The purpose of these hearings is to hold everyone accountable. The process works when everyone is held accountable. The process does not work when information is withheld from Congressional committees and the committees cannot properly do their work.
 

Yesterday the Daily Caller reported on some recent testimony by Attorney General Eric Holder at the Operation Fast and Furious hearings. It seems that Attorney General Holder has not been entirely forthcoming with his emails regarding Operation Fast and Furious.

The article reports the following testimony:

“Most of the 5,000 documents you turned over are emails,” Issa said to Holder. “Mr. Attorney General, I have a question for you. Not one of these emails, in fact, is yours. Aren’t you a prolific emailer?”

Holder responded that, “No,” he is not a “prolific emailer.”

Issa followed up: “Don’t you email?”

Holder responded in the affirmative. “Do you have a personal email account as well as an attorney general email account?” Issa pressed.

“I have an email account at the Justice Department, yes,” Holder equivocated.

If I remember correctly, the press went after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for using her personal email account for business when she was governor. Somehow the major press is not noticiing that the Attorney General seems to have done the same thing.

The article further reports:

Holder continued to avoid the line of questioning, and said that he’s provided an “unprecedented” amount of documents to Congress. But, he still wouldn’t cite a legal reason why he’s refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas and requests.

“In making production determinations, we have followed what attorneys general in the past have always used — applicable standards, whether these are Republican or Democrat attorneys general,” Holder said. “The information we’ve provided you has been responsive, has been, I think, wholesome and also unprecedented.”

I think this is political-speak for I am not going to willingly give you the information you are looking for–you are going to have to come after it. I hope Committee Chairman Representative Darrell Issa will do just that.

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The Smoking Gun In Operation Fast And Furious

The Corner at National Review Online posted a story yesterday about some recent information that has come to light about Operation Fast and Furious. It seems that a lot of the testimony given to Congress disagrees with the documents given to Congress. National Review commented on the latest example.

The following email shows from ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait in July 2010 to Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

“Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.” 

This email and other information was posted at CBS News yesterday.

The article at The Corner shows that Mark Chait attended a meeting about Operation Fast and Furious in January 2010 and was probably briefed on the Operation before that. So what is the point of all this?

The Corner reports:

According to an August 2011 press release from Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee, in testimony Chait “stated that [he] did not learn about the tactics used in [Fast and Furious] or about the specific concerns of the line agents until earlier this year.”

Mr. Chait’s memory (at least according to the information given) is off by a year.

The CBS News article concludes:

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is investigating Fast and Furious, as well as the alleged use of the case to advance gun regulations. “There’s plenty of evidence showing that this administration planned to use the tragedies of Fast and Furious as rationale to further their goals of a long gun reporting requirement. But, we’ve learned from our investigation that reporting multiple long gun sales would do nothing to stop the flow of firearms to known straw purchasers because many Federal Firearms Dealers are already voluntarily reporting suspicious transactions. It’s pretty clear that the problem isn’t lack of burdensome reporting requirements.”

 On July 12, 2011, Sen. Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department oversees ATF. They asked Holder whether officials in his agency discussed how “Fast and Furious could be used to justify additional regulatory authorities.” So far, they have not received a response. CBS News asked the Justice Department for comment and context on ATF emails about Fast and Furious and Demand Letter 3, but officials declined to speak with us.

 “In light of the evidence, the Justice Department’s refusal to answer questions about the role Operation Fast and Furious was supposed to play in advancing new firearms regulations is simply unacceptable,” Rep. Issa told CBS News.

Has anyone really thought through what limits on who can own guns would accomplish? Has it occurred to the government bureaucrats that even if guns were totally illegal criminals would still find a way to get them. That would leave criminals armed and innocent people unarmed. Do we really want to do that?

The guns that were sold in Operation Fast and Furious were sold because of the intervention of the ATF. The article at CBS News cites gun dealers who were uncomfortable with being asked to sell the guns, but were told by the ATF to continue to sell them. Frankly, I think the gun dealers were more conscientious than the government in attempting to protect American citizens.

 

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The Fast And Furious Document Dump

Yesterday Michael A. Walsh posted an article at the New York Post about the White House’s Friday night 1,400-page document dump concerning Operation Fast and Furious.

Basically, the documents released contradict the Obama’s administration’s claim that Eric Holder and President Obama were totally unaware of what was going on with Operation Fast and Furious. This is an interesting claim considering that the administration has recently sealed all records relating to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed using a gun that was traced back to Operation Fast and Furious.

The evidence is growing that the charges made by Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Darrell Issa about Operation Fast and Furious are, in fact, true. The Obama administration did allow about 2,000 high-powered weapons to be sold to Mexican drug cartel agents and then taken across the border and into the Mexican drug wars. There has been speculation that this was done so that a case could be made to place tighter gun laws on Americans. At this time I would like to mention that the problem with gun laws is that only law-abiding citizens pay attention to them. Generally, all that gun laws accomplish is to disarm an innocent public while arming criminals. Eventually this leads to more gun crimes–not less.

The article concludes:

It’s time for the months of lies to end — but don’t hold your breath. The administration recently sealed the court records relating to agent Terry’s murder and — a year later — the one man arrested hasn’t been tried.

So far, three presidential candidates, a couple of senators and more than 50 congressmen have called for Holder to resign. If he can’t answer the one question that matters — why — that number ought to include his boss.

Keep in mind that had the Democrat Party maintained control of the House of Representatives, we would not be hearing about Operation Fast and Furious. It would have been buried. We need to elect Congressmen in 2012 who will put the good of the country above the good of their individual party.

 

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The Dog Ate My Homework

In the Friday night document dump by the Obama administration this week, you will find all sorts of documents related to Operation Fast and Furious.

Late last night, Big Government reported on the document dump. The letters are supposed to show how the Department of Justice accidentally gave Senator Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee inaccurate information on Operation Fast and Furious.

The article reports:

In a letter last February to Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had not sanctioned the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser and that the agency makes every effort to intercept weapons that have been purchased illegally. In Operation Fast and Furious, both statements turned out to be incorrect.

 

The Justice Department letter was responding to Grassley’s statements that the Senate Judiciary Committee had received allegations the ATF had sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers. Grassley also said there were allegations that two of the assault weapons had been used in a shootout that killed customs agent Brian Terry.

When asked about the weapon used to kill Brian Terry, former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke stated in an email that the weapon was purchased in a Phoenix gun shop before Operation Fast and Furious began. That was later shown to be false.

Please follow the link to Big Government to read the entire article. Also keep in mind that had Operation Fast and Furious not been uncovered and made public, the Obama administration would have used ‘the amount of American guns used in crimes in Mexico’ as an excuse to take away the rights of law-abiding gun owners. It wasn’t the gun owners who broke the law in Operation Fast and Furious–it was the federal government.

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If These Records Ever Get Unsealed They Will Be Dumped On Either A Friday Night Or Christmas Eve

Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard Blog reported today:

The Obama Administration has abruptly sealed court records containing alarming details of how Mexican drug smugglers murdered a U.S. Border patrol agent with a gun connected to a failed federal experiment that allowed firearms to be smuggled into Mexico.

This means information will now be kept from the public as well as the media. Could this be a cover-up on the part of the “most transparent” administration in history? After all, the rifle used to kill the federal agent (Brian Terry) last December in Arizona’s Peck Canyon was part of the now infamous Operation Fast and Furious. Conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the disastrous scheme allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels.

This story has been a nightmare for the administration since the story first broke. On October 4, 2011, Big Government reported on a CBS reporter who had been yelled at by the Department of Justice for reporting on Operation Fast and Furious. These documents need to be made public and the entire story told.

 

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More Bad News From Operation Fast And Furious

22 – El Paso, Texas

Image via Wikipedia

On Saturday the Los Angeles Times reported that 100 assault weapons acquired under Fast and Furious ended up in a home belonging to the purported top Sinaloa cartel enforcer in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, whose organization was terrorizing that city with the worst violence in the Mexican drug wars.

The article reports that three months into the Fast and Furious program, El Paso, Texas, began to emerge as a hub for the weapons traffic.

The article reports:

On Jan. 13, 2010, El Paso police stumbled upon 40 firearms after following a suspicious dark blue Volkswagen Jetta that backed into a garage at a local residence, according to federal court records.

The article further reports:

Two others, Ivan Chavira and Edgar Ivan Galvan, were subsequently charged in that gun recovery, along with the recovery of 20 Fast and Furious weapons on April 7, 2010, in El Paso. Those guns also were discovered by chance by local authorities, and ATF trace records show that the weapons were purchased in Phoenix two weeks before they were found in El Paso.

Notice that in both cases, the weapons were discovered by alert police officers–whatever tracing the government claims to have put on these guns was non-existent. The Los Angeles Times also posted a chronology of events regarding Fast and Furious through October 8. It is amazing to realize the scope of this program.

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One Reason You May Not Be Hearing The Entire Truth In The Mainstream Media

Yesterday Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard reported that CBS News investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, who has been covering the Operation Fast and Furious scandal for CBS News was screamed at by the White House and Justice Department for reporting on the story. Ms. Attkisson was interviewed on the Laura Ingraham show, the transcript of the interview is posted in the Weekly Standard article.

The article reports:

Ingraham: So they were literally screaming at you?
Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.”

Finally, Attkisson notes that the White House is claiming that a thorough investigation of the scandal is unwarranted:

[The White House and Justice Department] will tell you that I’m the only reporter–as they told me–that is not reasonable. They say the Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, the New York Times is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.

This may explain why CBS is the only news outlet that has actually asked questions about Operation Fast and Furious. I think it is particularly interesting that the reporter was accused of being biased because she has pursued the story. Wouldn’t she have been biased if she had chosen to ignore the story?



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The Death Toll Related To Operation Fast And Furious Grows

CBS News reported yesterday that three more murders have been linked to guns bought as part of Operation Fast and Furious. The article posts portions of a letter from the Justice Department listing weapons that have been found at various crime scenes in Mexico. It is an unfortunate chapter in the history of America that we were involved in gunrunning operations to Mexico.

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