Free Republic

What is the deal with MSNBC folks being anti-Second Amendment lately? Last week it was fill in host Craig Melvin and this week it's analyst and Huffington Post writer Alex Wagner. Wagner was on Real Time With Bill Maher and when asked about what should be changed in the Constitution, Wagner said we should get rid of the Second Amendment. Bill Maher, HBO: "Let's ask Alex. What would you change in the Constitution?" Alex Wagner, Huffington Post: "Well, I'm going to be pilloried for this. I think get rid of the second Amendment, the right to bear arms. I just...

The Obama administration appears to be attempting to defend Attorney General Eric Holder as the Justice Department dumped more than 650 pages worth of Operation Fast and Furious documents on congressional investigators late Monday. There are two reasons why the timing of this release is significant: first, 28 members of Congress are currently calling on Holder to resign immediately. Second, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday — and this appears to be an attempt to divert pressure for Fast and Furious away from Holder. The new documents, according to Iowa Republican Sen....

Upon being proven to have perjured himself before the House Government Affairs Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder did what any dedicated leftist would; he changed the subject and blamed someone else. In a childish and petulant letter to his principle adversary, Darrell Issa, Holder accused the Republican congressman of cynical efforts to “score political points” and repeated his claim to have known nothing of Operation Fast and Furious in 2010. But Issa would have none of the Attorney General’s bogus claims or pathetic excuses. In a masterpiece of typewritten homicide which has received far too little attention from conservative bloggers–and...

Just prior to taking office, Barack Hussein Obama’s transition team promised the incoming Administration would create ”…a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for American citizens.” Of course that was before the Fast and Furious debacle claimed several hundred lives and exposed the perjury of an Attorney General. It was before the Obama Department of Energy bestowed half a billion tax dollars on a bankrupt Solyndra Corporation whose principle investor happened to be an Obama campaign money-bundler. And it was also before another Obama campaign money-bundler used his influence to have the White House pressure a general into changing...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A key House investigator says he could send subpoenas to the Obama administration as soon as this week over weapons lost amid the Mexican drug war.

Washington (CNN) -- House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said Sunday that he could issue subpoenas to the Justice Department this week in connection to a now-discredited federal gunrunning operation. Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Issa said that he wants a better understanding of who knew what, when about Operation Fast and Furious. "But more importantly, we have to understand at what level did the authorization really come?" he said. "People at the top of (the) Justice (Department) were well briefed, knew about it and seemed to be the command and control and funding for this program."...

The Obama administration engaged in a pattern of approving loans that were not qualified to receive taxpayer money, according to one Republican House chairman who says the development is as disturbing as the potential loss of billions of dollars in investments. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Relations Committee, said Sunday that the administration's approval of a loan guarantee for solar power company Solyndra -- which went belly up shortly after a half-billion dollar investment by the federal government -- is just one example of a "breach of protocol" in approving loans. Issa said the...

In a series of tense exchanges, Republicans on a House oversight panel sharply questioned whether the Obama administration was looking to inflate the number of "green" jobs by using a broad definition -- which, as it turns out, counts virtually anybody working in mass transit. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, grilled officials from the departments of Energy and Labor during his hearing Thursday. The meeting quickly turned into a forum for Republicans to vent their frustration with the government's subsidization of the clean-energy sector, in the wake of a controversy over loans...

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that his committee plans to investigate government loan programs to private corporations in light of allegations of improper dealings between the White House and failed energy company Solyndra and wireless startup LightSquared. "I want to see when the president and his cronies are picking winners and losers… it wasn't because there were large contributions given to them," the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Tuesday morning on CSPAN. Issa said the committee was looking at whether it was improper for members of Congress or White House staff to select companies eligible...

The botched sting operation known as Operation Fast And Furious has claimed the careers of at least three Justice Department officials, with Republican lawmakers expecting even more fallout to come. The operation, run out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives field office in Phoenix, allowed guns to knowingly fall into the hands of violent criminals in Mexico. A congressional investigation into the operation led by House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Senate Judiciary ranking member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is examining how high up within the administration the program was known about and authorized....

As the United States continues on its downward trajectory, thanks to the policies of Barack Obama, the debate rages about whether he’s doing it all on purpose or is just incompetent. When talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh discusses this, he concludes that “it doesn’t matter” because the result is the same either way. Limbaugh misses a very critical line of distinction when he says that. If Obama is incompetent, it means he must be voted out of office. If he is intentionally destroying the country as it was founded, it means he has malicious intent and must be removed through...

Eleven days after publishing what Rep. Darrell Issa called an “error-ridden” “hit piece” about him, The New York Times has issued two more corrections to its reporting in the story. The Times now says the August 15 article used “erroneous information” to allege foul play on Issa’s part because he withdrew much of his family foundation’s assets from the stock market several months before it crashed. Reporter Eric Lichtblau used faulty documentation to allege that Issa’s family foundation “earned $357,000 on an initial investment of less than $19,000 – a return of nearly 1,900 percent in just seven months, the...

Darrell Issa is a brilliant businessman who made a lot of money the old-fashioned way: he earned it, rather than marrying or inheriting it as so many Democratic politicians do. Which is another way of saying that he is just the kind of man we need in Washington.The Left, of course, doesnÂ’t see it that way. The New York Times hates Issa because, as Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he has launched several investigations of wrongdoing that have embarrassed the Obama administration. So ace reporter Eric Lichtblau, no longer occupied with illegally leaking national defense secrets...

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), whose House Oversight committee has overseen the aftermath of such horrors as the “Gun Walker” scandal, has demanded the retraction of a hit piece published by the New York Times. He even wants them to retract the headline: “A Businessman in Congress Helps his District and Himself.” Issa’s office has cited 13 erroneous statements in the article. Thus far, the Times has issued one “correction.” You know how that works: front-page smear, corrections several days later on page A-37, sandwiched between ads for the Chevy Volt and help-wanted notices from federal regulatory agencies. The formal request...

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...

VISTA, Calif. — Here on the third floor of a gleaming office building overlooking a golf course in the rugged foothills north of San Diego, Darrell Issa, the entrepreneur, oversees the hub of a growing financial empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Just a few steps down the hall, Representative Darrell Issa, the powerful Republican congressman, runs the local district office where his constituents come for help. The proximity of the two offices reflects Mr. Issa’s dual careers, a meshing of public and private interests rarely seen in government. Most wealthy members of Congress push their financial activities to...

(WASHINGTON)—House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) today released the following statement in response to the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) failure to fully comply with the committee's subpoena issued August 7, 2011: "The National Labor Relations Board and Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon have thus far failed to comply with a lawful subpoena. This refusal by NLRB to abide by the law further heightens concerns that this is a rogue agency acting improperly. The integrity of NLRB and its leadership is clearly in question. "The public has a right to know the truth about why a...

The Obama administration sought to intimidate witnesses into not testifying to Congress on Tuesday about whether ATF knowingly allowed weapons, including assault rifles, to be “walked” into Mexico, the chairman of a House committee investigating the program said in an interview Monday. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, said at least two scheduled witnesses expected to be asked about a controversial weapons investigation known as “Fast and Furious”received warning letters from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to limit their testimony. Mr. Issa's committee is set to hear testimony from six current...

Darrell Issa is asked about a Moody's downgrade. He gives some real straight-talk on what they should do if we continue to run $1.4 trillion deficits year after year and we don't reign in our massive spending

Oversight: As the hearing to give approval to the final settlement for the Pigford farmers approaches, it's time to investigate this classic case of waste, fraud and abuse. Somewhere Van Jones is smiling. Seventy-nine Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted last week against an amendment to H.R. 2112 — the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2012 — that would have blocked the government from paying out additional billions for the Pigford II settlement. One of them was Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, who had promised...