Free Republic

Second Amendment: The United Nations is putting the finishing touches on an Arms Trade Treaty that transcends borders and may even trample our Constitutional right to bear arms. Every indication is that the president will sign it. Like the New Start and Law of the Sea treaties before it, as well as the Kyoto Protocol and Agenda 21, the Arms Trade Treaty being finalized at the U.N. this month is one of those feel-good, can't-we-all-get-along pieces of parchment whose net effect is to accomplish little except to eat away at American sovereignty and freedom. Just as the world's worst human...

Scandal: A campaign contributor who was an architect of the 1994 assault weapons ban was the mastermind behind the Fast and Furious operation that let guns walk into Mexico, including those that killed two U.S. agents. Shortly after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on Dec. 15, 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder's deputy chief of staff, Monty Wilkinson, received an email from U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke telling him just that: "The guns found in the desert near the murder(ed) BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s...

Scandal: The head of the House oversight panel suggests the real reason for the administration's invoking executive privilege in the Fast and Furious case is to hide proof that the operation was part of a push for gun control. Defenders of President Obama's use of executive privilege to provide cover for Attorney General Eric Holder in the gun-running fiasco that resulted in the deaths of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata may dismiss it as just another conspiracy theory. But the suggestion by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that the deadly operation was conceived to advance the...

Scandal: The president's spokesman confuses a "controlled delivery" operation known as Wide Receiver with the quite different Fast and Furious and couldn't even remember the name of the Border Patrol agent killed by it. When a Border Patrol agent is murdered in the service of his country as a result of a program run by his own government, one would think the White House press secretary would know his name. Jay Carney, his name was Brian Terry. During a contentious press conference where even the White House press corps seemed to have had enough with the administration's tap dancing about...

<p>Scandal: The president illegally asserts executive privilege to protect an attorney general who's either a clueless political hack, malevolent or both, withholding answers of who is responsible for a Border Patrol agent's death.</p> <p>President Obama's contempt for the rule of law hit a new low when, on the eve of a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, he granted his AG's 11th-hour request to hide sought-after documents on Operation Fast and Furious under the cover of executive privilege.</p>

Scandal: A drug enforcement agent says other agencies knew in 2009 about the Justice Department's gunrunning operation and even tried to interdict the weapons flow. And, yes, it was a gun-control plot. The notion that Fast and Furious was a localized operation run out of the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives of which few, particularly the arguably clueless Attorney General Eric Holder, were aware continues to be exposed as the lie it is. "In 2009, I became aware that ATF was walking guns," Tony Coulson, who was in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency-Tucson...

Justice: The attorney general says he and the president get criticized because they're African-American. He once said we need an honest discussion about race. OK, let's talk about him hiding behind his. Times have changed since the evening of April 7, 1775, when Samuel Johnson said that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel . In the supposed post-racial era ushered in with the election of President Obama and the appointment of Attorney General Eric Holder, racism has replaced it as the ultimate defense against charges of incompetence and misguided policies. In an interview with the New York Times...

Scandal: The House committee probing government gun-running now sets it sights on possible money-laundering involving drug cartel funds run in the name of drug enforcement. Why should we believe DOJ this time? It's an old adage that when investigating criminal activity you should follow the money. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has announced an investigation into a money-laundering operation allegedly run by the Drug Enforcement Administration. We may need to follow the people following the money. Just as Fast and Furious was allegedly intended to track and interdict gun-trafficking into Mexico, this operation,...

Scandal: The Justice Department has formally withdrawn a letter to Congress denying it sanctioned or allowed guns to be transferred to Mexico because it contained "inaccuracies." That's one way of putting it. Back in February, Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch, in response to the investigations by Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Fast and Furious gun "walking" program run out of ATF's Phoenix office, wrote a letter stating that the "allegation that ATF 'sanctioned' or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons is false." The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Welch contended, "makes every...

Scandal: The Justice Department has sealed court records detailing the circumstances of a border patrol agent's murder by a Mexican drug cartel, including the fact U.S. agents were being hunted with U.S.-supplied weapons. The murder of Border Patrol Agent Bryan Terry by Mexican drug cartels with weapons provided by his own government is a national disgrace. Attorney General Eric Holder, who professes being out of the loop regarding Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF program that got Terry killed, is doing his best to keep the American people from the truth. Holder's Justice Department has abruptly sealed court records in...

Scandal: Refusing to apologize to the family of a border patrol killed by a gun "walked" into Mexico, the attorney general hides his prior knowledge and blames Congress for not pushing gun control. Holder must reside in a parallel universe with an alternate and quite flexible timeline. His recollection of what he knew and when he knew it must depend on the meaning of "knew." In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Holder said he "first learned about the tactics and the phrase 'Operation Fast and Furious' at the beginning of this year — I think when it...

Scandal: A Department of Justice withholding Fast and Furious gun-running information from Congress proposes shredding the Freedom of Information Act by being able to deny certain documents even exist. The most transparent administration in history has struck another blow for opaqueness with a proposed new federal regulation expanding its ability to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, as the new rule states, "as if the excluded documents did not exist." Current provisions that allow for denying access to documents are found in 5 U.S.C. section 552(c) and were enacted in 1986. Government can deny document access if the...

Scandal: The attorney general once again pleads ignorance as some 40 Fast and Furious weapons are found at a Mexican drug lord's home. If the AG doesn't read memos, maybe he can read a subpoena. After Eric Holder was involved in the pardoning of international fugitive Marc Rich, he confessed to not doing a thorough check of Rich's history and background. When he criticized Arizona's immigration law, SB1070, he admitted to not even reading the law. Now, with dead bodies and illegal weapons piled up high in Fast and Furious, Holder says he didn't read the memos. Holder's "Sgt. Schultz"...

Scandal: A major-league pitcher was indicted for lying to Congress about steroid use. Administration memos show Eric Holder lied about what he knew about Fast and Furious and when he knew it. What's the difference? Somewhere, Scooter Libby must be scratching his head. He was indicted and convicted simply because his recall of when a meeting occurred differed from others. He didn't lie about a gun-running operation that led to the deaths of two American agents and at least 200 Mexicans. But Attorney General Eric Holder did, according to memos obtained by CBS News and Fox News. They show Holder...

Scandal: Friday's release of documents shows the extent of White House contact with the ATF over Operation Fast and Furious. Included is a map showing where the guns went in Mexico — enough weapons for a Marine unit. In a classic news-dampening maneuver, some, but not all, documents requested by congressional investigators looking at administration gun-running were released late Friday by the White House. Usually this is done to avoid the full impact of politically embarrassing or, in this case, potentially incriminating news. As we noted in July, Special Agent in Charge William Newell, recently promoted to a cushy job...

Scandal: New documents reveal the Department of Justice lied to Congress and show how U.S. officials bought guns with tax dollars and then made sure no one stopped their transfer to Mexican drug cartels. The funneling of thousands of American guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in the operation known as Fast and Furious was not a botched sting operation or the result of bureaucratic incompetence. It was not designed to interdict gun trafficking, but to facilitate it. We now know that it involved not just the use of straw buyers, but also agents of the federal government...

Scandal: Weapons linked to ATF's "Fast and Furious" operation have been tied to at least eight violent crimes in Mexico, including three murders and four kidnappings. At least Solyndra doesn't have a body count. Administration scandals are piling up fast and furious, no pun intended, but none is worse than the gun-running operation that operated under the umbrella title of Project Gunrunner. Fast and Furious, a deadly subset, gets deadlier by the day. A letter dated Sept. 9 from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch sent to Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and...

Scandal: As guns funneled by the ATF into Mexico continue to show up at crime scenes, three key supervisors of an operation that resulted in the deaths of two U.S. agents get moved up instead of fired. Considering the unmitigated disaster that came from a program allegedly designed to track and capture gun traffickers, we would have expected a wave of resignations and dismissals, starting with Attorney General Eric Holder. Instead, we get kudos and career advancement. William McMahon, who was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' deputy director of operations in the West, where the program was...

Scandal: A former ATF special agent tells Congress a National Security Council staffer was informed about Operation Fast and Furious before guns allowed into Mexico wound up at the murder scene of a U.S. agent. The latest evidence that both the White House and attorney general knew and approved of Project Gunrunner and its deadly offshoot, Operation Fast and Furious, came this week in the testimony of William Newell, ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix office, before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. That the "stench of cover-up," as Fox News analyst Brit Hume described...

Scandal: As hearings reveal the attorney general to be either a charlatan or a boob, word comes of possible FBI complicity in letting guns "walk" into Mexico, ordered by an administration pushing gun control. If there was any doubt that Project Gunrunner and its offshoot, Operation Fast and Furious, had little to do with stopping gun-trafficking into Mexico and a lot to do with creating an atmosphere for more gun control, it ended with the revelation by Fox News that two convicted felons were allowed to buy and move more than 300 guns into Mexico, something the FBI should have...