Free Republic

So for the Liberals, Democrats and left-wingers how does it feel to realize that your Commander In Chief spent five years attempting to destroy the greatest Nation in the World.   Enjoy the few minutes of glory, because before 2014 comes to an end – your reputation will go down the tubes just like Barack Obama’s. Do you really think that you will a free “get out of jail card” after Americans have suffered through the Fast and Furious gun runner, Benghazi, IRS, NSA and ObamaCare scandals?  Like any other crime in our USA, you may not be the one who...

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) in 2014 will pursue the IRS scandal, the deadly Benghazi attack and the botched Fast and Furious operation in what will likely be his last year as the House GOP's chief investigator. Issa sounded a cautionary note that the investigations might not conclude while he has the gavel. “The administration wraps up investigations. We are done when we are done … there shouldn’t be any sort of effort to load in or unload" before his term limit of six years as the top Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee ends in December. Rep. John...

You’ll have to forgive me. This is a difficult time for me. This week I have been forced to confront memories I’ve been trying to bury my whole life, but recent events have made that impossible. I…am a survivor of traffic jams. It’s not easy to talk about. Just the sight of brake lights causes flashbacks to the horror of sitting on a freeway not going anywhere. But for you, dear reader, I will be strong and push on. You probably know a victim of traffic jams yourself. You may well be one. Be silent no more! Thanks to the...

WASHINGTON The Obama administration is urging schools to abandon overly zealous discipline policies that civil rights advocates have long said lead to a school-to-prison pipeline that discriminates against minority students. The wide-ranging series of guidelines issued Wednesday in essence tells schools that they must adhere to the principle of fairness and equity in student discipline or face strong action if they don't. The American Civil Liberties Union called the recommendations "ground-breaking."

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...

PHOENIX — A federal judge has rejected arguments by the Department of Justice that she cannot intercede in a congressional bid to investigate how and why the agency first lied about the Operation Fast and Furious “gun walking’’ operation in Arizona. Judge Amy B. Jackson said federal courts are entitled to determine whether the Obama administration is wrongfully withholding documents from a House panel looking into the now-abandoned practice of letting illegally purchased weapons make their way to Mexico. That practice came to light when “walked’’ guns ended up at the scene where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed...

A gun from the failed U.S. operation known as "Fast and Furious" turned up at the scene of a shootout between Mexican authorities and alleged cartel gunmen earlier this month, according to CNN. U.S. officials told CNN at least one AK-47-style gun that could be traced back to the failed gun-walking scheme was found at the scene. The shootout on Dec. 18 left five alleged cartel members dead in Puerto Penasco, a popular tourist site in Mexico. The now-defunct Fast and Furious program began in 2009 and was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Agents...

Investigators have traced yet another firearm, used by suspected cartel gunmen in a deadly Mexican resort shootout, back to the failed federal gun-walking operation known as “Fast and Furious.” A U.S. official confirmed to CNN Tuesday that an “AK-47 style” firearm was recovered at the scene of a Dec. 18 gunfight in Puerto Penasco, a Mexican town just across the Arizona border. So far, it’s the only gun from the shootout that has been linked to the disastrous ATF operation.

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...

DNC sends email defending Obama from impeachment possibility Posted By Patrick Howley On 7:11 PM 12/28/2013 In | No Comments The Democratic National Committee (DNC) sent out a paranoid email Saturday evening urging supporters to vote for Democrats so that Republicans can’t impeach President Obama. The email, subject line “Impeachment,” was sent to Obama for America supporters, imploring them to contribute to the DNC’s 2014 efforts. “What do these people all have in common?,” the email asked, featuring quotes from Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Rep. Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan, and Rep. Blake Farenthold...

In business you have to spend money to make money and apparently in law enforcement, you have to allow crimes to catch criminals. According to documents obtained by the Huffington Post in a Freedom of Information Act request, FBI agents authorized informants to break the law at least 5,939 times in 2012. The bureau was mandated to supply the Justice Department with these statistics annually more than 10 years ago after it was revealed that mobster Whitey Bugler was a snitch - but the numbers were never made public until earlier this year, when USA Today made the first FOIA...

John Dodson, the federal agent who blew the lid off the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking scandal, claims the FBI had ties to the men who killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010 near Nogales, Ariz. In fact, Dodson says the Mexican bandits who gunned down Terry were working for FBI operatives and had been sent to the border to do a “drug rip-off” using intelligence gathered by the DEA. Dodson, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said he doesn’t think the FBI was part of the rip-off crew, but the...

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...

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...

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...

Congress could reenact an independent counsel law that expired in 1999 “to prosecute ‘Fast and Furious’-related criminal charges against high-ranking Obama administration officials,” The Washington Times reported, citing House lawyer opinions from a late Tuesday court filing. While it may be gratifying to see the idea finally getting serious consideration in some quarters, it’s nonetheless bewildering to some why it’s taken so long for it to happen. It’s also frustrating, although entirely predictable based on their conduct throughout the unfolding “Gunwalker” story, that no other “legitimate news media” outlets deem the development worth reporting on, as a news feed search...

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...

In September, White House Spokesmodel Jay Carney was asked about the mounting stories of companies cutting employees and hours to get under the arbitrary magic numbers created for Obamacare’s many mandates. In typical progressive fashion, Carney dismissed reality and substituted his own. “There’s a difference between anecdotes and data,” he said. He’s right, of course. And he should know … his boss has governed by anecdote, not data, not facts, since he took office. Putting Obamacare aside for the moment, the most egregious example in the history of the United States of the bluster of anecdotes over reality came in...

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...