Doing the jobs Americans won't

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(via Hot Air)



ABC News previews a report on Operation Fast and Furious (as you all know - the wildly successful federal gun-running scheme that allowed weapons to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, all without the knowledge or consent of the Mexican government) from Spanish-language Univision which was to air last night.

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As you can see, Univision puts a much more personal touch on this matter than whatever attention has been spared to it by American media outlets who have chosen to cover it as an election season partisan battle as much as anything else.


Much as how was demonstrated during their interview of the President a couple of weeks back, Univision appears to be a more journalistically credible entity when it comes to American concerns than does the American media.

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Fast and Furious update

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We arm Mexican drug cartels with assault rifles and we outfit our own with beanbags.

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment Monday charging five people in connection with Border Patrol agent Brian Terry's death -- a move that drew praise as well as skepticism from lawmakers laser-focused on the case.

The department, in unsealing the document, also announced a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of four suspects who are still at large.

The developments come amid an intensifying debate over the department's failed Fast and Furious anti-gunrunning operation. Weapons from that program were found at Terry's murder scene -- Republicans seeking documents pertaining to Fast and Furious last month escalated their probe by voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.

According to the indictment, the five defendants are charged with crimes including first-degree murder, second-degree murder and assault on a federal officer. The indictment alleges that the five defendants also assaulted three other Border Patrol agents who were with Terry.

For the first time, federal officials also revealed that Terry and the elite squad of federal agents initially fired bean bags -- not bullets -- at the heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2010. During the exchange, Terry was shot and killed.

(italics, ours)

We might want to give some serious thought to ending our sacrificing of brave men like Brian Terry by ending this dog'n'pony show called the war on drugs. It's entirely evident that we aren't serious about it and have instead politicized it. We apparently think it's a glorified pillow fight, so why bother?

And you would not be a hopeless cynic for wondering why those indictments are exclusive to south of the border.

#fireholder

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Fast and Furious update

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Again, unlike the Secret Service/Columbian hooker fiasco, it's a shame no one got laid as a result of Fast and Furious as more people might be paying some attention to it. As it is, even we think Congressman Issa has allowed himself to be distracted a bit by the twin godsend scandals of the aforementioned hooker-gate and the GSA/Las Vegas follies. Time to get back to work:







From Fox News:

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa has circulated a lengthy pair of documents making the case for holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over his "refusal" to cooperate in an investigation of the ill-fated Fast and Furious operation.

Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Thursday sent to every member of his committee a 64-page draft contempt order against Holder, as well as a 17-page memo outlining the history of the scandal.

"Operation Fast and Furious' outrageous tactics, the Justice Department's refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation and efforts to smear and retaliate against whistleblowers have tainted the institutional integrity of the Justice Department," Issa wrote.

The committee is not citing Holder or holding the attorney general in contempt at this point. However, the documents lay out the case for contempt should members be called to vote.

Word around the campfire is that Issa is not getting a whole lot of support from GOP leadership (read: John Boehner and Eric Cantor) as a leveling an actual contempt charge would be "off message". It remains unexplained just what message that is absent getting to the bottom of what that miserable hack that runs the Justice Department knew and when did he know it. Holder lied and people have died?: Would that not be the message?

The Justice Department, itself, has admitted to releasing documents that were deliberately misleading with respect to Fast and Furious and there is credible evidence from within the Justice Department that there was never any intention of tracking those weapons sold in the U.S. back across the border supporting the contention that this scheme was carried out in order to support a narrative of an unchecked flow of guns across the border to Mexican drug cartels.


Oh, and you will love this:

"Holding someone in contempt is one of the most serious actions Congress can take, but it is being used in this case as part of a partisan election year witch-hunt," Cummings said in a statement.

He's getting old so you can forgive him some forgetfulness as this investigation has been going on for a year, stretching back well into 2011.


Mr. Romney would be well-served to make this the center-piece of what is a crowded field of examples of this administration's corruptness and ineptitude.

Operation Fast and Furious update

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Back in 1995, the miserable hack that runs the Justice Department thought he had the strategy to rid our streets of guns:

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Breitbart.com has uncovered video from 1995 of then-U.S. Attorney Eric Holder announcing a public campaign to "really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way."

Holder was addressing the Woman's National Democratic Club. In his remarks, broadcast by CSPAN 2, he explained that he intended to use anti-smoking campaigns as his model to "change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC" about guns.

"What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable, it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes."

Now, fast forward some 17 years and the whole idea of "brainwashing" seems rather portentous given Operation Fast and Furious: a federal gun-running scheme that allowed weapons to walk back across the border without ever any intention of tracking them back to the bad guys all in order to enforce a narrative of an unchecked flow of guns southward and into the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels.

Holder's Justice Department continues to stonewall congressional investigations tempting contempt charges as well as shuffling/promoting/demoting people out of the way that were connected to Fast and Furious.

Though by no means a smoking gun but speaking of establishing a narrative, Holder's sentiments back in the 90s lay bare the mindset of an anti-2nd amendment political class warrior and his intentions of willfully misleading the general public in order to achieve an end.

News item of the day

Why bother having a Congress?

Also, file this under what could possibly go wrong?

This afternoon, in yet another executive action intended to boost the economy, President Obama signs an executive order that addresses prescription drug shortages.

The signing marks yet another move in the president’s “we can’t wait” campaign to grow the economy through unilateral actions while his $447 jobs bill remains stalled in Congress.

The president will direct the Food and Drug Administration to take steps to further reduce and prevent drug shortages, and price gouging. Obama will also reiterate his support for bipartisan legislation that will give the FDA new tools to avoid drug shortages.

Hmmm... price gouging. Let's see: the FDA will prevent this alleged gouging by capping prices thus exacerbating this drug shortage. Count on it. It's what they do.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

It stands to reason in our comprehensive border enforcement strategy that if we're allowing guns to flow freely back across the border and into Mexico to bolster a false narrative then we would surely be letting drugs from Mexico to walk across the border and into the U.S.

U.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court.

The allegations are part of the defense of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago. He is also a top lieutenant of drug kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman and the son of Ismael "Mayo" Zambada-Garcia, believed to be the brains behind the Sinaloa cartel.

The case could prove to be a bombshell on par with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' "Operation Fast and Furious," except that instead of U.S. guns being allowed to walk across the border, the Sinaloa cartel was allowed to bring drugs into the United States. Zambada-Niebla claims he was permitted to smuggle drugs from 2004 until his arrest in 2009.

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The court documents also allege that the U.S. government is using a "divide and conquer" strategy, "using one drug organization to help against others."

Zambada-Niebla's motion seeks U.S. government records about the 2003 Juárez case involving an informant who participated in several homicides for the Carrillo-Fuentes drug cartel, while under ICE's supervision.

He also requested records about the ATF's "Operation Fast and Furious," which permitted weapons purchased illegally in the United States to be smuggled into Mexico, sometimes by paid U.S. informants and cartel leaders.

"It is estimated that approximately 3,000 people were killed in Mexico as a result of 'Operation Fast and Furious,' including law enforcement officers in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, the headquarters of the Sinaloa cartel," the court documents allege. "The Department of Justice's leadership apparently saw this as an ingenious way of combating drug cartel activities."

Ingenious, indeed.

The U.S. Government: partnering with Mexican drug cartels to smuggle guns into Mexico and now it would appear, drugs into the U.S.

We're in the very best of hands.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update (Updated)

(please scroll down for the update)




For those of you who think that perhaps we should just go ahead and change the name of our blog, don't blame us... perhaps if the Justice Department would quit stonewalling and give this country some answers we all could just get on with life.



This is starting to look bad for Team O and quite possibly for the miserable hack that runs the Justice Department: a charter member of the dead tree media, the L.A. Times, is starting to cover the Gunrunner scandal instead of merely providing cover.

The embattled head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has told congressional investigators that some Mexican drug cartel figures targeted by his agency in a gun-trafficking investigation were paid informants for the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration.

Kenneth E. Melson, ATF's acting director, has been under pressure to resign after the agency allowed guns to be purchased in the United States in hopes they would be traced to cartel leaders. Under the gun-trafficking operation known as Fast and Furious, the ATF lost track of the guns, and many were found at the scene of crimes in Mexico, as well as two that were recovered near Nogales, Ariz., where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed.

In two days of meetings with congressional investigators over the weekend, Melson said the FBI and DEA kept the ATF "in the dark" about their relationships with the cartel informants. If ATF agents had known of the relationships, the agency might have ended the investigation much earlier, he said.

As a result of Melson's statements, "our investigation has clearly expanded," a source close to the congressional investigation said Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is ongoing. "We know now it was not something limited to just a small group of ATF agents in Arizona."

. . . . . .

Sources said investigators had "very real indications from several sources" that some of the cartel leaders the ATF was trying to identify through Fast and Furious were "already known" to the other agencies and apparently had "been paid as informants."

Finally, Melson said, ATF agents along the U.S.-Mexico border realized that the FBI and DEA were running separate operations and that it "could have a material impact on Fast and Furious." Melson said he notified his superiors of this problem in April.

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot...


The ostensible purpose of Fast and Furious was to track guns purchased here in the U.S. back to shadowy drug cartel figures so they could be positively IDed. However, it appears we already knew the identities of at least some of these heretofore shadowy figures because they were already on the government payroll. And not only were the agencies not communicating with each other, it appears, according to testimony, that the FBI and DEA were running separate operations.

So, taking all this in toto, it begs the question: what was the true purpose of Operation Fast and Furious? Because, as we see it right now, as horrible of an idea as it may have been to let weapons walk back across the border to identify who the Mexican drug king pins were, Fast and Furious didn't have an ice cube's chance in hell of even accomplishing that because the facts on the ground suggest that wasn't the reason why it was put into effect.

Dig this:

Mexican authorities have long complained that most of the guns that fuel the drug wars there are purchased in the U.S.

On Wednesday, Mexican federal police released a videotaped interrogation with recently captured Jesus Rejon Aguilar, an alleged founder of the Zetas gang who is wanted in the slaying of a U.S. immigration agent in Mexico. He brazenly told them that "all the weapons are bought in the United States" and that "even the American government itself was selling the weapons."

He added, "Whatever you want, you can get."

Terrific. Several rogue government agencies having a free-for-all down on our southern border region doing god-knows-what for god-knows-why.

When they said there was a border violence problem who among us thought that our own law enforcement agencies would be aiding and abetting that violence?



(UPDATE #1):Wouldn't you know? It's like a bad dream... $10,000,000 in the Porkulus package funded Gunrunner.

From page 16 the bill:

For an additional amount for ‘‘State and Local Law Enforcement
Assistance’’, $40,000,000, for competitive grants to provide
assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the
Southern border and in High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas to
combat criminal narcotics activity stemming from the Southern
border, of which $10,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘‘Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses’’
for the ATF Project Gunrunner.

A tragic convergence of failed Obama administraion policies. There's your shovel-ready.


(H/T: Commenter Harrison and Hot Air)

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

A while back we were very curious as to the relative silence of the Mexican government with respect to the rogue gun-running scheme that was being operated by this country's ATF. Were they complicit in the operation? Did they not have any knowledge but were being leveraged/pressured into silence by the Obama administration? Well, whatever the case, they are silent no longer as they are calling for their own pound of flesh.

Imagine if the Mexican government purposely and knowingly sent thousands of pounds of pure cocaine into the United States as part of an investigation and hundreds of Americans died as a result. Well, that is how Mexico feels right now over Operation Fast and Furious.

Not only did the U.S. keep secret the number of weapons it helped send to Mexico, it watched as casualties mounted.

That program is reprehensible from an ethical standpoint and reprehensible for two countries that are partners in the battle (against drugs)

The federal government has both American and Mexican blood on its hands. When the responsible parties are confirmed and justice is meted out, our neighbors to the south should be granted their day in court as well.

Quote of the day

From the Congressional report on the ATF's felony stupid gun-smuggling operation, Fast and Furious.

Page 38: [Dodson, speaking about ATF supervisors in Phoenix and their disregard for lives lost due to Fast & Furious]

“[T]here was a prevailing attitude amongst the group and outside of the group in the ATF chain of command… I was having a conversation with Special Agent [L] about the case in which the conversation ended with me asking her are you prepared to go to a border agent’s funeral over this… because that’s going to happen. And the sentiment that was given back to me by both her, the group supervisor, was that…if you are going to make an omelette [sic], you need to scramble some eggs.”

OK. We got the scrambled eggs part. Got it. No worries, there. Letting guns walk across the border and into the hands of Mexican drug cartels definetely qualifies as some egg-scrambling and even egg-breaking stuff. But what about the omlette? Where was the omlette? Or more precisely, in what shape or form was the omlette to be? Because as far as we can tell, the only omlettes that were made came in the form of two dead U.S. federal agents and lord-knows-how-many dead Mexican officers and civilians.


But maybe the ATF had different omlettes in mind.

ATF agents testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee could not explain how the operation was supposed to succeed when their surveillance efforts stopped at the border and interdiction was never an option.

Wait, what?

ATF Agent John Dodson, testifying in front of the committee, said that in his entire law enforcement career, he had “never been involved in or even heard of an operation in which law enforcement officers let guns walk.” He continued: “I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest.”

The obvious answer is that Gunwalker’s objective was never intended to be a “legitimate law enforcement interest.” Instead, it appears that ATF Acting Director Ken Melson and Department of Justice senior executives specifically created an operation that was designed from the outset to arm Mexican narco-terrorists and increase violence substantially along both sides of the Southwest border.

Remember a year or two ago, all the bitching and whining we heard from the legacy media and the political class about the unfettered flow of weapons back across the border into Mexico? We sure do.

At the same time in 2009 that federal law enforcement agencies (the ATF, the DOJ, and presumably Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security) were creating the operation that led to the executive branch being the largest gun smuggler in the Southwest, the president’s team was crafting the rhetoric to sell the crisis they were creating.

On television, in various news outlets, and even in a joint appearance with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama pushed the 90 percent lie, implying that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexican cartel violence came from U.S. gun shops

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This is unbelievable but believe we must as the Justice Department, despite claiming they will conduct their own investigation, is showing zero signs of cooperating with the House committee investigation.

Omelette: a crudely cynical and deadly politically-motivated ploy to foster an anti-gun narrative.

How's that tasting?

Sarah sez

One in a series that takes a look at some of the zany and madcap things said by Sarah Palin.






Here's Palin in an interview opining on drug legalization:

I don't think that will work. I mean, I hear the same debate. I hear it in my country. It is not likely to work. There is just too much money in it, and I don't think that—you can legalize small amounts for possession, but those who are making so much money selling, they have to be stopped.

(italics, ours)

Ehh... what?


Of course, that wasn't said by Sarah Palin but rather Secretary of State Hillary Clinton which makes it all the more curious as one would think that a comitted statist like Clinton would jump at the opportunity to legalize and thus regulate and tax a product in which resides too much money.


But looking at the fundamentals of too much money, Secretary Clinton appears to be completely ignorant of just why this is so as explained by the Reason.tv video below.

Photo image(s) of the day

TIJUANA — It started with some police officers noticing a suspicious convoy of vehicles moving through a neighborhood in eastern Tijuana late Sunday, turned into a shootout and ended with the Monday seizure of 115 tons of marijuana — an unprecedented bust for Baja California.

The processed pot, about 230,000 pounds of it, could fetch about half a billion dollars on the street in the United States, according to one criminology source.

Eleven suspects were under arrest as of Monday evening. One of them was being treated for injuries sustained in the confrontation. One police officer also was injured.

The article somewhat unhelpfully explains that the seized 115 tons of marijuana weighs about as much as 15 adult male African elephants or a Boeing 757 at maximum takeoff weight.

Since neither elephants nor jumbo jets are in our day-to-day frame of reference, perhaps the Union-Tribune could've been more helpful by adding "appetite-wise, 115 tons of marijuana is the equivalent of 436,000 bags of Doritos.

Not evidentiary

Officials in China are struggling with allegations that a tainted baby powdered-milk formula is to blame for an alleged outbreak in infant puberty.







If that is true, it's clear that it never effected one particular segment of the population.

Go figure: Living a long and productive life just might cost you some Pt.II

Researchers have discovered a way to identify drugs that can single-out and attack cancer stem cells and cancer stem cells only. This discovery could represent a new generation of anti-cancer medicines and a new strategy of treatment.

The practical test of this theory has been difficult because cancer stem cells have proven to be elusive targets but this team of researchers from the Broad Institute has devised a way of screening for drugs that attack the cancer cells but leave unharmed ordinary cells.

The team, led by Dr. Piyush Gupta, screened about 16,000 chemicals, including all known chemotherapeutic agents approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The team reported in yesterday's issue of Cell that 32 of the chemicals selectively went after cancer stem cells. These particular chemicals may or may not make good drugs, but the screening system proves for the first time, the researchers say, that it is possible to single out cancer stem cells with drugs that leave ordinary cells alone. Only one of the 32 chemicals is approved as a drug for cancer.

(italics, ours)

This sounds like good news, right? Drugs that only kill the cancerous cells but leaves the healthy ones alone? If proven viable, this would be a game-changer for chemo-therapy and its kill-‘em-all scorched earth policy.

But you know what? It’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of money and even with all that, the very people poring their blood, sweat and tears into this, aren’t sure if it will even work. And that’s just the facts of life in the world of pharmaceuticals.

People wonder why pharmaceuticals cost so much? There’s your answer. It costs $802 million dollars to take a drug from Phase I testing to final FDA approval and much of that cost is eaten up by the sunk costs of failed drugs. And the average time it takes for the FDA testing program? 90.3 months.

From what has been established above, it would appear that the market forces at work in the R&D and 3-phase FDA testing program plus the ongoing research into that drug is a burden the pharmaceutical company can decide to bear on its own. In other words, the pharmaceutical company has skin in the game and is in the best position to determine the return on investment of the particular drug in which they are investing.

So, why in god’s name would you need anything like a “comparative effectiveness board” to determine what the pharmaceutical firm is determining on their own on a constant and real time basis?

Because they have a profit-motive, who better than they to determine the effectiveness of their drug?

Yet again, another concept lost on the proponents of government-managed healthcare.

Still so many unanswered questions

For Gen “X”-ers that grew up following college hoops, the death of Maryland superstar, Lenny Bias, represents one of those “where were you when…?” moments. He was to be our generation’s Connie Hawkins, its Spencer Haywood – that rare breed of power forward that could combine grace and quickness with strength and power. Its ironic that off-court troubles merely bedeviled both Hawkins and Haywood and it was off-court troubles, though, that claimed Bias’s life.

Twenty-three years ago, just 2 days after he had been drafted in the 1st round by the Boston Celtics, Lenny Bias died of a cocaine overdose.

Twenty-three years and the impact, unfortunately, not of his life but rather his death looms large. To many, the death of Bias represented Ground Zero for this nation’s War on Drugs being kicked into high gear as politicians were able to exploit the stature of Bias’s college legend and his proximity to the nation’s Capitol. To others, Celtic fans in particular, Bias’s death began a bizarre and macabre 20+ year wandering in the NBA wilderness. (Reggie Lewis, a young Celtic superstar-in-the-making and who was to lead the Celtics out of the post-Bias nightmare, himself, was struck down in his prime at the age of 27 due to sudden cardiac death.)

For us, there was nothing to compare. In that era there were but a few whom we championed because of their style of play: Magic, George Gervin, Bernard King, Lenny Bias and Bias, of course, represented the first and only to be cut down by drugs.

Deadspin has their take here regarding a Len Bias documentary (with film trailer) and which explores how Bias’s death would be covered differently today with our 24 hr. cable news coverage and whatnot… and of course, the Deadspin commenters who amazingly remain just above tastelessness considering the subject matter.

The Democratic National Convention: Sucking the fun out of life since 2008

…. Because nothing says you don’t give a hoot about recapturing the Solid South like a ban on fried food.

We get a kick out of all the aged hippies that brought drugs, free love and all other manner of license to the big tent of the Democratic Party back in the day now seeing it transformed (much by their very own doing) into that of a bunch of nags, scolds and yes… fear mongers.

H/T: Drudge

San Diego State sees its business school enrollment slashed

There was some confusion yesterday as 75 SDSU students participating in a cross-border venture capital project for the university’s business school were busted by the DEA concluding a year-long undercover investigation. Authorities also seized 50 lbs. of marijuana, 4 lbs. of cocaine and weapons in raids that focused on several fraternity houses starting early yesterday morning. Story here.

And just to prove there is no satire or parody like real life, there was a mock graduation held today for the 75 arrested plus 2 students that have died recently from overdoses by those protesting the arrests and….. the two that OD’d…. ?… because they want a responsible drug policy on campus….? On Hedgecock’s radio show today, they got a soundbyte from one of these knuckleheads saying it was basically the school’s and the government’s responsibility to ensure that only “clean drugs” were available as there was too much “dirty drugs circulating that was causing these ODs.” Story here.



And if the above is any indication it came as an absolute shock to no one that it was revealed today in the much-anticipated report on how well college football athletic programs are performing academically, San Diego State’s football program was in the bottom 5 of the 119 Div. I-A programs. Story here.

Yeah… all in all not a tremendous couple of days up on the Mesa.

Quote of the Day

Robert Downey Jr., the talented yet troubled actor on living the high life... and the low life:

"I have a really interesting political point of view, and it's not always
something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can't go from a
$2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it
and come out a liberal. You can't. I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone
else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my
proclivities and politics every since."

The timidity by which he felt he had to address such discourse in the Hollywood chow hall was addressed by us here.

H/T: The Weekly Standard