Posted on 07/13/2011 6:16:16 PM PDT by marktwain
This afternoon, Congressman Darrel Issa (R-CA), as Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, holds the first Congressional hearing devoted specifically to the growing scandal of "Project Gunwalker." As National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea explains, this hearing is merely the beginning, with a second already scheduled for Wednesday, and more in the works. This sequence of hearings has clearly been carefully thought out, with today's laying the groundwork of establishing the administration's obligation to comply with congressional subpeonas--something it has stubborny refused to do so far. Today's hearing, at 1:00 PM Eastern, is titled "Obstruction of Justice: Does the Justice Department Have to Respond to a Lawfully Issued and Valid Congressional Subpoena?" and will be covered on C-Span.
What must not be allowed to be lost in the shuffle here--and the smart money is on "the shuffle" being, much of mass media's wishes notwithstanding, quite significant--is that what is at stake here is vastly larger than "merely" whether or not our own government deliberately facilitated the trafficking of firearms to known criminals who would use them to kill innocent citizens and loyal agents of law and order both in Mexico and the U.S. The enormity of even such an atrocity as that pales in comparison to the question of what would prompt the government to engage in such evil.
We talked recently about Congressman Issa's thoughts on that:
This is not a discovery process of what happened--we know what happened. We know that this administration, at the highest levels, approved a process that allowed thousands of high-powered weapons--basically AK-47 and M-16 look-alikes--to go to the worst of the worst on both sides of the borders, that those weapons have been used to commit crimes, and they have led to the death of federal agents on our
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
They'll talk. Your typical career federal employee simply won't risk his or her own lifetime credit rating and employability.
They will talk.
And the agency heads can't fire them all.
I'd go through the materials they have on hand at the committee and begin identifying some of these lower ranking career employees and just drop a subpoena on them OVERNIGHT. Begin the hearing on THOSE PEOPLE instantly.
Everything takes time. It cannot be done instantly. Issa is working on it. His committee just demanded all the emails involving all of this from a dozen of the top people. The lower you start, the longer it takes.
We already have a number of GS13/14 types working with the investigation, or so it appears to me.
There are things they know that they will never tell unless it can remove their boss' boss.
Without being subjected to impeachment hearings in the House they will simply never talk.
This shouldn't take much time at all. Remember, a career employee approaches his job entirely differently than an appointee, or a top end SES type who is much closer to retirement.
So....what happened in the hearings today? Anything? At all? It’s like even Issa has a news blackout, no C-SPAN, no nothing.
What is that red splotch supposed to mean?
Thanks Nateman.
Ken
Would you rather it was green?
No. It’s just an overdone mess.
Okay. will fix...just for you.
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