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In the second installation of a three-part series on "gun violence in Mexico," the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) continues to blame the U.S. for gun violence in Mexico, while viewing Fast & Furious as a legitimate attempt at law enforcement which just happened to go wrong. According to NCR, Obama tried to reinstitute an "assault weapons" ban in the U.S. as a way to keep Mexico safer. He also pledged to "keep increasing the pressure on the gun traffickers." NCR claims part of the pressure on traffickers included Operation Fast & Furious, which turned out to be a "botched 2009...

A man convicted in the shooting death of a federal Border Patrol agent during a firefight that revealed the government's botched gun-smuggling investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious was sentenced Monday to 30 years in prison. Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, who is from El Fuerte in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, is the only person to be convicted in the Dec. 14, 2010, shooting death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry near the Arizona-Mexico border. U.S. District Court judge David C. Bury handed down the sentence, 360 months with credit for time served.

PHOENIX (AP) — A Mexican man has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in the 2010 killing of a U.S Border Patrol agent that revealed the botched gun-smuggling investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. #Manuel Osorio-Arellanes was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty in Flat Rock native Brian Terry’s shooting death.

Kent Terry, the brother of slain border agent Brian Terry, sent a scathing letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding to know why the United States has let years pass without holding anyone accountable for Operation Fast and Furious. In his letter, Mr. Terry wrote, Breitbart.com reported: “Mr. Holder, I am going to get right to the point of this letter. I am not pleased with your behavior as America’s Attorney General. Simply denying that you had no knowledge about Operation Fast and Furious is troubling in itself, but for you to not comply with Congress is even more troubling....

The DEA agents met with members of the cartel in Mexico to obtain information about their rivals and simultaneously built a network of informants who sign drug cooperation agreements, subject to results, to enable them to obtain future benefits, including cancellation of charges in the U.S.," reports El Universal Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the cartel in exchange for information used to take down its rivals. (If true, that re-raises the issue regarding what Attorney General Eric Holder knew about the gun-running arrangements.)

When this case first appeared, at the height of the first exposure of  the Fast and Furious scandal, it was highlighted as an example of smuggling to the Mexican cartels that was *not* a part of the operation.    It might or might not be significant that the BATFE agent quoted in the article is William Newell, who had a significant role in Fast and Furious, and whose testimony before congress became infamous. Now, one of the victims of the prosecution is able to tell a bit of his story.   He was never allowed bail from the time he was...

Lest anyone forget that the Obama administration has yet to fully come clean on the travesty that was Operation Fast and Furious — the not-”botched” but certainly crooked gunrunning scandal in which federal officials pressed American gun dealers into selling more than 2,000 weapons to known cartel smugglers, and then allowed those criminals to funnel the weapons back across the Mexican border with no way of actively tracing them — the results of the administration’s egregiously deficient enterprise are still popping up in the aftermath of deadly violence. Back in August, CBS reported on the unwelcome discovery of three Fast...

If not for Ian Garland’s appeal, he would still be sitting in prison. In what appears to be a gross injustice, Garland, who ran a gun shop near El Paso, Texas, was encouraged by ATF officials to sell weapons to “straw purchasers during the failed Operation Fast and Furious,” and then was arrested and thrown in prison for doing what he was told to do by the government.Thankfully, a federal judge released Garland earlier this month, over the objections of federal prosecutors.Ian Garland was arrested, along with the town’s mayor, Eddie Espinoza, former Columbus Police Chief Angelo Vega, and former village trustee Blas “Woody” Gutierrez, and...

Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) has introduced an Articles of Impeachment resolution against Attorney General Eric Holder for his role in Operation Fast and Furious and other scandals of President Barack Obama’s administration. Seven congressman have signed onto the resolution thus far in addition to Olson. They are Reps. Larry Bucshon (R-IN), Blake Farenthold (R-TX), Phil Roe (R-TN), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), Roger Williams (R-TX), Ted Yoho (R-FL), and Randy Weber (R-TX). The Articles of Impeachment has four different sections. The first calls for Holder’s official removal because of his failure to comply with congressional subpoenas relating to Operation Fast and Furious....

A Texas Republican plans to introduce a resolution of Articles of Impeachment for Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday. Rep. Pete Olson’s (R-Texas) office said this morning that “this was not a decision made lightly,” but comes with Holder’s “pattern of disregard for the rule of law and refusal to be forthright with Congress and the American people” since being held in contempt in June 2012. That 255-67 vote on criminal contempt, which included 17 Democrats, was tied to the Fast and Furious scandal and marked the first time Congress has found an attorney general in contempt. A measure of...

A rump group of House Republicans are tired of waiting for answers from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. — they want him impeached and will formally introduce their charges Thursday. As Roll Call previously reported, a small group of GOP lawmakers have been drafting articles of impeachment for Holder over a string of controversies, including a Department of Justice refusal to turn over documents related to Operation Fast and Furious, a refusal to uphold certain laws — namely the Defense of Marriage Act, the Controlled Substances Act and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 — and a refusal to...

<p>Attorney General Eric Holder wants to appeal a recent judge’s ruling that allows the House to continue with its contempt case, related to Holder’s refusal to turn over documents concerning the Justice Department’s failed Operation Fast and Furious gun-tracking program.</p>

In case you missed it over the weekend, late Friday night Attorney General Eric Holder issued a motion to appeal after U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled in September she will not dismiss contempt and executive privilege lawsuits against the Justice Department. Department of Justice attorneys argued the lawsuits should be dismissed on grounds the judiciary has no business getting in-between Executive branch and Legislative branch disputes. Jackson disagreed with their argument, saying the judiciary has an obligation to look at these kinds of disputes. Holder was hoping to get the case in front of the U.S....

<p>In September 2009, John Dodson, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was assigned to the ATF’s Phoenix office. What he found there shocked him. The bureau was encouraging gun dealers to sell weapons in bulk to known straw buyers, who would funnel those guns to Mexican drug cartels. Known as Operation Fast and Furious, it ended with the death of at least one American law enforcement officer. Dodson became a congressional whistleblower, and the investigation into the operation is ongoing. In this exclusive excerpt from his new book, “The Unarmed Truth,” Dodson explains how tragically inept Fast and Furious was.</p>

Sharyl Attkisson touted 'Fast and Furious' whistleblower John Dodson as "a rare example, especially amid the Obama administration's war on leaks" during a segment on Monday's CBS This Morning. Attkisson, whose reporting on the arms trafficking scandal won CBS a Edward R. Murrow Award, spotlighted the ATF senior agent's new book on "the inside story of why he went public to expose the government's false denials about its gunwalking secrets." The correspondent also pointed out how "there's still a court battle over the 'Fast and Furious' documents that President Obama is withholding from Congress under executive privilege". She also featured...

House lawyers late Monday filed court papers asking a federal judge to force the Justice Department to turn over records to reveal the extent of efforts to stonewall a congressional probe into a botched weapons investigation known as Fast and Furious. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wants the records to wrap up its probe, which has shifted from the bungled gun-walking operation to “an apparent effort, over a period of many months, by high level DOJ officials” to hinder the investigation, lawyers argued in a court pleading filed Tuesday night in federal court in Washington. The request marks...

Border: A federal judge finds that the Department of Homeland Security, instead of arresting cartel members and the clients who pay them to smuggle children into the U.S., helps the drug lords complete the transactions. Former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano once proclaimed the U.S. border to be as secure as it has ever been. Yet her department has been found by Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Texas to have actively undermined that security by enabling drug cartels engaged in the lucrative smuggling of children. The case before Judge Hanen — United...

John Dodson, the ATF agent who blew the whistle on the the Justice Department’s blood-soaked gun-trafficking operation known as Fast and Furious, told the Arizona Republic in an interview, Thursday, that the FBI played a key role in events leading to the 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. His comments to the paper, augment what he wrote in his new book, The Unarmed Truth - My Fight to Blow the Whistle and Expose Fast and Furious. Dodson claims that the bandits who killed Terry were working for FBI operatives and were tipped by the DEA to be...

Expressing dismay at an increase in Equal Employment Opportunity complaints under the administration of recently confirmed permanent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director B. Todd Jones, a moderator at CleanUpATF blasted the agency Thursday by citing Department of Justice statistics, also released yesterday. Longtime readers of this column recall CUATF is a website run by disaffected ATF agents dedicated to exposing Bureau waste, abuse, corruption and fraud. It was from their forum that this correspondent and citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh of the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog first got wind of allegations that ATF was facilitating “gunwalking” into Mexico...

A wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of slain Border Patrol agent Brian Terry has been dismissed by a federal judge on the grounds that a court settlement would interfere with the powers of the U.S. government, which has a compensation scheme of its own. Terry died in a shoot-out with Mexican drug cartel gunmen in southern Arizona in December 2010 in a case tied to a flawed bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, gun-running operation that embarrassed the Obama administration and strained relations with Mexico. Last year Terry's parents, Kent and Josephine Terry, filed a...