Free Republic

Furious over the White House telling defense companies to ignore federal law requiring them to warn employees of possible layoffs from pending defense cuts, two key Republicans are demanding to know the legal rationale behind the guidance. Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire fired off a letter Monday night to Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, questioning the agency’s legal authority to make the promises, which they said could put taxpayers on the hook for “billions of dollars.” Mr. Zients‘ letter told private companies not only that they didn’t...

(CNSNews.com) - Kevin O’Reilly, a member of the White House National Security Staff who regularly communicated about Operation Fast and Furious with the Arizona-based ATF agent responsible for running the operation that allowed guns to flow to Mexican drug cartels, was suddenly transferred out of the White House and into Iraq in July 2011. The transfer took place shortly after the ATF agent O’Reilly had been communicating with testified about Fast and Furious in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the White House had provided the committee with a series of emails that O’Reilly and the agent had...

The rocket attack in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador to that country and three staff members should be treated “like an act of war,” Sen. Chuck Grassley said Wednesday morning. “There ought to be serious implications,” the Iowa Republican said on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. “Particularly when you get a rocket attack, it’s an act of war and ought to be treated like an act of war.” Grassley also expressed his regret to the families of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and other embassy staff who were killed in the assault on the American consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi....

(CNSNews.com) - The long-awaited inspector general's report on the Justice Department's botched gun-running scheme is finished, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said on Wednesday. But along with that news comes more questions: Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are demanding to know why a top ATF official involved in Operation Fast and Furious remains on paid leave from ATF -- while simultaneously drawing a six-figure salary from J.P. Morgan, a major investment bank.

Two weeks ago the mainstream and clean tech advocacy media proclaimed that taxpayer-subsidized, failing electric vehicle battery maker A123 Systems would be saved by a deal with a Chinese company. Since then the Massachusetts-based manufacturer’s stock price sank below what had been its previous low of 44 cents. This morning it is down to 38 cents, and yesterday the company received a delisting notice from the NASDAQ. So what happened? There could be several reasons why the recipient of hundreds of millions of U.S. stimulus dollars hasn’t impressed Wall Street with its pending bailout from Wanxiang Group. The deal is...

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has started taking "bets" on its website over when Sen. Charles Grassley will die, after the Iowa Republican scolded the Department of Agriculture for advocating a vegetarian diet. The USDA drew the ire of rural state lawmakers over a newsletter urging department employees to embrace "Meatless Mondays." The USDA later retracted the newsletter and said it wasn't properly vetted, but Grassley vented on Twitter that he plans to "eat more meat on Monday to compensate for stupid USDA recommendation."

There has been an up-tic in Fast & Furious chatter - Mitt mentioned it on Fox & Friends this morning. Look for the Complaint to be filed maybe Thursday. Senator Grassley has asked whether U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. exercised independence when he declined to pursue criminal contempt without a “particularized description” of the withheld documents. Senator Grassley has also said that without this DOJ description, Mr. Machen “cannot reasonably make an intelligent judgment as to the validity of any privilege claim and his duty to present the citation to a grand jury." This is a set up for...

The Toyota sudden acceleration debacle may be a thing of the past, but one U.S. Senator thinks the government investigation is worth another look. Sen. Charles E. Grassley claims the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, along with NASA, may have let what he calls a “serious issue” fall through the cracks. In a letter sent to NHSTA administrator David Strickland, Grassley raised questions about the investigation, asking whether vehicles were tested for a very serious defect called “tin whiskers,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Tin whiskers, as described in a NASA report, are “electronically conductive, crystalline structures of tin that...

Article For Immediate Release July 3, 2012 Grassley asks for Justice Department records of field agent memo on Fast and Furious ATF agent describes discussion of operation one day before Justice Department denial WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today asked Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for information about who at the Department of Justice (DOJ) saw a memo from a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) who was stationed at the Phoenix field division and was knowledgeable about Operation Fast and Furious.  This memo was produced the day before the Department of Justice...

In a letter Tuesday, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley pressed Attorney General Eric Holder for details about a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives memorandum that indicates his Department of Justice may have tried to cover up the gunwalking tactics that were at the heart of Operation Fast and Furious. Gary Styers, an ATF special agent in the Lubbock, Texas field office, wrote what Grassley described as a “Fast and Furious memorandum” on Feb. 3, 2011. In it, Styers described how two investigators for Grassley’s Senate Judiciary Committee office had contacted him the day before about the Fast and...

House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley are asking the Department of Justice’s internal investigator to hold accountable anyone who retaliated against or threatened to retaliate against Operation Fast and Furious whistleblowers. In a Friday letter to the DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Grassley and Issa said they’re now concerned retaliation is much more likely following Thursday’s votes to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt of Congress. “We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main whistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under...

On Thursday, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley ripped President Barack Obama for his assertion of the executive privilege to keep hiding Operation Fast and Furious documents from Congress. Grassley said the White House must provide a “privilege log” detailing what documents Obama is exercising his power over, and what his legal argument for doing so is. (Snip) “The attorney general repeatedly claimed that the Justice Department was making an ‘extraordinary offer’ Tuesday night,” Grassley continued. “The only thing extraordinary is that the attorney general offered a promise to produce documents one day and then asked the president to claim executive

Sen. Grassley: DOJ retracts 2d statement made to the Senate Judiciary Committee. .. Sen. Grassley: At hearing last wk, Holder claimed his predecessor Mukasey, had been briefed about gunwalking in Operation Wide Receiver. Sen. Grassley: Now, the Department is retracting that statement and claiming Holder “inadvertently” made that claim to the Committee.

"Botched." That is the word the mainstream media too often associates with the federal gunwalking scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious—but in her new book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up, investigative reporter Katie Pavlich fearlessly chronicles exactly why the only thing "botched" about the ill-fated operation was the Obama administration's shoddy attempt to cover their tracks. Having shared office space with Katie for well over a year now, I've witnessed her ferocious commitment to this story since before Fast and Furious was even a thought in the national consciousness. I wasn't always quite...

Democrats have hit back at veteran GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley for calling President Barack Obama “stupid” in a weekend Twitter message. “Ive know @ChuckGrassley a long time. I am saddened he would embarrass himself like today with his comments about the President,” Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, tweeted. Meanwhile White House senior adviser David Axelrod said, “Heads up, Sen. Grassley. I think a 6-year-old hijacked your account and is sending out foolish Tweets just to embarrass you!” ABC News reported. But the senior senator from Iowa was unrepentant. “In his Tweet on Saturday, Sen. Grassley said that it doesn’t speak...

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called on Congress to probe the existence of a government operation that allowed hundreds of weapons to enter Mexico under (Wide Receiver), George W. Bush.

FCC fires back at Sen. Grassley over LightSquaredBy Brendan Sasso - 03/08/12 03:40 PM ET The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fired back at Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Thursday after the Republican lawmaker accused the agency of stonewalling his probe over wireless startup LightSquared. On Wednesday, Grassley said the FCC was ignoring his repeated attempts to meet with senior staffers over the agency's decision to grant LightSquared a conditional waiver last year. "Commission staff have attempted to address these issues through multiple conversations with the senator’s staff, including as recently as last week," FCC spokeswoman Tammy Sun said in a...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today asked the principal behind the LightSquared 4G wireless project to explain a questionable contact to Grassley’s office that intimated benefits for Grassley if he softened his inquiry of government approval of the project. Since last April, Grassley has been reviewing the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of the LightSquared project and the concerns of interference with the Global Positioning System. According to a press release issued from Grassley’s office today, the Senator wrote to Philip Falcone of Harbinger Capital Partners, expressing concern that two separate incidents implied a desire to have Grassley “pull punches” in his...

Calling the president’s illegal non-recess appointments “an escalation in a pattern of contempt for the elected representatives of the American people,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, dismissed a Justice Department memo on Thursday that sought to lend retroactive constitutional weight to the president’s move. Grassley hinted at Senate “action to check and balance” the president’s power grab, though he declined to go into specifics. The DOJ Office of Legal Counsel’s memo, also debunked by Heritage’s Todd Gaziano, claims that pro forma Senate sessions do not preclude the president from unilaterally appointing federal officials. That legal...

New documents obtained from the Justice Department Thursday prove that the administration knew that guns had been walked as part of Operation Wide Receiver, Senator Charles Grassley said in a press release, and then he reiterated his call for Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer to resign. The documents include e-mails and copies of letters sent to Grassley by Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, including a Feb. 4, 2011 letter that insisted that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had never “sanctioned or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them...