Original Article - Rush: Obama Created Crimes With Gunrunning
Radio giant Rush Limbaugh is coming down hard on the Obama administration’s “Fast and Furious” operation today, calling it “liberalism on parade” in a misguided attempt to promote stricter gun control in America.
“The whole point of Fast and Furious was to create mayhem in Mexico among drug cartels with American-made weapons easily procured so that you and I would stand up in outrage and demand tighter gun laws,” Limbaugh said.
“It was deceitful. It was sneaky. It was going against the will of the American people. It was liberalism on parade. It’s who these people are. They want tighter gun laws.”
The White House today tried to undercut a congressional investigation of the scandal in which the Department of Justice allowed guns to be sold and delivered to Mexican drug cartels by announcing tens of thousands of documents were covered by executive privilege.
This afternoon, a House panel voted to place Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his failure to comply with a subpoena for the documents, defying Obama’s assertion of executive privilege.
All 23 Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted for the contempt resolution, while all 17 Democrats voted against it.
Limbaugh explained Obama and his officials were actually creating crimes.
“There’s no other way to characterize this,” Limbaugh said. “They created, they manufactured crime. They enabled crimes. They saw to it that American guns ended up in Mexican drug cartel hands. And, of course, those people get the guns, they use them. When, in fact, it probably was difficult for the drug cartels to get the guns. It probably was not easy for the drug cartels to get the guns. Certainly not walking into gun stores in Phoenix and elsewhere, then crossing the border.”
“It would be no different than if they wanted to ban airplanes, to engineer a bunch of crashes,” he continued, providing an analogy. “If this bunch wanted all airplanes grounded, [they] sabotage a bunch so they crash, and the people [of] the country demand that all airplanes be grounded. They wanted these guns that were used in these crimes to come from America. They made it easy for the drug cartels to get American guns.”
Limbaugh said Obama is seeking an assault-weapons ban, but he resorted to the “Fast and Furious” tactic because he could not get a ban through the regular political process.
“It’s kind of like if you’re NBC and you want to illustrate that certain trucks are dangerous,” he explained, referring to real-life 1992 shenanigans performed by NBC’s “Dateline” program and its reporter Michelle Gillen.
“You put an explosive in a gas tank, and then you turn on the truck and remotely drive it down the road. Then you trigger the explosive remotely, the truck blows up, and you claim the truck’s dangerous. Then you get the truck off the road. But it’s only dangerous ’cause you at NBC blew it up. NBC did that for a TV show.”
The Fast and Furious operation led to the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
Original Article - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to Second Amendment: FU
“Calling tougher gun laws pivotal to Chicago’s crime-fighting strategy, Mayor Rahm Emanuel [above] said Wednesday he would do whatever it takes to protect the legal integrity of the city’s firearms ordinance, a portion of which was overturned by a federal judge,” suntimes.com reports. “Emanuel refused to say whether he would appeal U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan’s ruling, or simply rewrite the overturned section used to deny a man a gun permit because of a prior misdemeanor conviction.” Blood not boiling yet? Take your heart meds and make the jump for the money shot . . .
Emanuel said he would await Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton’s recommendation before deciding which way to go. But the mayor said he is determined to preserve the ordinance one way or another.
“The reason we have gun laws — the reason I’m trying to also pass tougher gun laws down in Springfield — is because it’s an essential complement to your overall crime strategy,” Emanuel said at an unrelated news conference.
“And we will adjust. I’m waiting for Steve’s comments, but we will do whatever we need to do to continue to pursue getting guns off our streets and out of the hands of gang-bangers and drug dealers.”
Except, I dunno, increasing the detection, arrest and conviction rates for said miscreants. Or, for that matter, allowing their potential victims to arm themselves—as is their Constitutionally-protected right—in some kind of weird ass deterrent deal.
Apparently, Rahm’s crime fighting strategy also involves getting rid of kids. Or warehousing them. Or something.
“You cannot have just more cops on the street. It’s part of a comprehensive strategy you’ve heard me talk about. … Our crime strategy is putting more police on the street and getting kids, guns and drugs off the street.”
Original Article - Pelosi: Holder Contempt Vote is Part of Republican Voter Suppression Scheme
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We now have the official… it took a while, about 24 hours, the official Democrat Party response to the contempt citation voted by the committee yesterday against Eric Holder. It comes from Nancy Pelosi. This morning in Washington, this is what the former Speaker said this is all about.
PELOSI: It’s really important to note how this is connected with some of their other decisions. It is no accident, it is no coincidence, that the attorney general of the United States is the person responsible for making sure that voter suppression does not happen in our country.
RUSH: There you have it.
PELOSI: That issues that relate to the civil liberties of the American people –
RUSH: There you have it.
PELOSI: — are upheld.
RUSH: That’s right.
PELOSI: These very same people [who] are holding him in contempt are part of a nationwide scheme to suppress the vote.
RUSH: We need a new planet. We need a new planet called Stupider, and I need to put Nancy Pelosi on it as the mayor of the whole planet, as the governor, as the evil emperor, whatever. I knew yesterday that it would take a while for these people to come up with an explanation, “Well, it’s common. Well, every president does it. Well, this is just a witch hunt.” But I never dreamed, because I can’t think this stupidly, I never dreamed that the official Democrat Party response would be that the Republicans intend to cheat in the election and Holder was gonna stop ‘em, and so Holder has to be stopped because he was gonna stop the cheating. That’s what the mayor of the new planet Stupider, Nancy Pelosi, said this morning in Washington, DC. The very same people holding Holder in contempt are part of a nationwide scheme to suppress the vote. (laughing)
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Just to repeat, let’s go back. Grab sound bite 21. Here we have the official Democrat Party explanation for the attorney general, Eric Holder, being found in contempt of Congress.
Well, of the committee, not the whole House yesterday.
PELOSI: (haltingly) It’s really important to note how this is connected with some of their other decisions. It is no accident, it is no coincidence that the attorney general of the United States is the person responsible for making sure that voter suppression does not happen in our country, that issues that relate to the civil liberties of the American people are upheld. These very same people [who] are holding him in the contempt are part of a nationwide scheme to suppress the vote.
RUSH: There you have it. That’s what it’s all about, folks. (laughing) Planet of Stupider. This is the same Nancy Pelosi who says she could have arrested Karl Rove any time she wanted, but she didn’t because she was responsible.
Original Article - Krauthammer: Mainstream Media Can No Longer Ignore Fast & Furious
“It has several immediate effects,” syndicated columnist and FOX News contributor Charles Krauthammer said about President Obama using executive privilege to protect Attorney General Eric Holder from the Fast & Furious investigation today.
“The first is, as you mentioned in the grapevine, there’s no way that the mainstream media, which have studiously tried to ignore this can do that anymore. In fact, as you pointed out, NBC, which has shown exactly ten seconds of coverage of this on its Evening News in the last year-and-a-half, is now going to have to explain the whole thing since the viewership has no idea what it’s about. So, number one, it becomes huge national issue,” Krauthammer said on a special edition of the panel on FOX News’ “Special Report” broadcast this evening.
“Secondly, it involves the president. Not that he was involved in the actual communications but he is the one that has to issue the, as to authorize the claim of executive privilege. Once he does that, clearly he is connected even though it’s not — it wasn’t claimed on grounds of presidential communications, which is the first way to do it,” Krauthammer analyzed.
“Nobody is saying it was the president, it was communications with the president which are now being protected. It’s being claimed on a second level of executive deliberation, meaning something happened inside the Justice Department,” he said.
Krauthammer also said this could come back to hurt the Republicans.
“But the final effect could be the one that hurts Republicans. As you have heard, from the talking point of Democrats in Congress, this will be characterized of another case of overreaching, obstructionism, opposition, blind opposition to the administration and distraction of real economic legislation or activities. And that is the line that the Democrats will take. it could, in fact, hurt Republicans among some of the electorate,” Krauthammer explained.
Original Article - Malkin Unloads on Liberal ‘Hannity’ Guest Over Fast and Furious: ‘The Blood Is on Your People’s Hands!’
Last week, Michelle Malkin stoked the conservative fire after she challenged Juan Williams for calling her “just” a blogger. But if that was stoking the fire, what she did Wednesday night on “Hannity” to liberal Tamara Holder was torching the place with napalm.
Malkin was a guest along with Holder on a segment talking about the day’s Fast and Furious news (Obama granting executive privilege and Holder being held in contempt). About three minutes in, Holder tried to use the liberal talking point that the entire operation was really started under the Bush administration (the “blame Bush” mantra is really popular these days). That’s where things first got tense, after Holder scolded Hannity who tried to make a point and told him, “No no, let me finish. Give me the same amount of time you give all your Republican friends.”
But after Holder continued to try and use the argument, Malkin eventually had enough.
“Can I just go back to this, the tiresome blame Bush card, because I don‘t think that Tamara knows what she’s talking about when we talk about the difference between Fast and Furious and Operation Wide Receiver and Project Gunrunner,” Malkin said.
“Excuse me!” Malkin shouted back when Holder tried to interrupt. “This is not a partisan thing!”
Holder, clearly offended, took a shot at Malkin: “Sure, sure, I don’t know what I am talking about. No no, to be attacked and say that I don‘t know what I am talking about just because I’m not a New York Times best-selling author–.”
Hannity stepped in and let Malkin finish, who delivered another blow: “For some of us the core issues of national security, Second Amendment rights, integrity in government actually matters, it is not just some sort of TV game debate for us, Tamara.”
Holder did not appreciate that, and there were plenty more raised voices before Malkin pointed out that Wide Receiver was “planned, controlled delivery and retrieval“ and that ”they got those guns back,” but that didn’t happen in the Obama administration because there was “underlying gun control agenda that is clear in these documents.”
“Clearly they are the ones with the ideological zealotry that caused bloodshed in this country. The blood is on your people’s hands, Tamara!” she said passionately.
“No, actually we‘re all Americans and it’s on all of our hands,” Holder responded, before saying these things just “take time” to figure out and that the contempt charge is too soon.
Malkin interrupted, and when Holder objected Malkin shot back, “No, I’m not going to let you get away with that lie!”
Watch the segment below. The setup starts at about 3:30, but the fireworks show begins about two minutes later:
Original Article - Scumbag Chris Matthews Slimes GOP as Racist for Going After Holder: An ‘Ethnic’ ‘Stop-and-Frisk’
Liberal MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews on Tuesday slimed the House GOP investigating Attorney General Eric Holder as racist, insisting that the possible contempt charges over Fast and Furious had an “ethnic” feel. Using charged, racial imagery, Matthews demonized, “Is this sort of stop-and-frisk at the highest level? Go after the attorney general, get him to empty his pockets, stand in the spotlight.”
The Hardball host, who had previously been ignoring the Fast and Furious scandal, changed course and portrayed the whole thing as a bigoted witch hunt. Talking to former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Matthews speculated: “I don’t want to start too much forest fire here, but it is my instinct: Is this ethnic, Mr. Mayor?” [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
The left-wing journalist weirdly speculated as to Congressman Darell Issa’s motives: “If he can humiliate this guy, if he can get to him, he’ll be a big star in the Republican caucus. He’ll be Dick Nixon.”
Congressman Richard Nixon became a “star” in 1948 by exposing communist spy Alger Hiss. Hiss, of course, was very guilty. So, perhaps this is not the best metaphor for Matthews to use.
Showing just how little he had covered Fast and Furious, Matthews asked Wade Henderson of the Leadership Council, “Explain Fast and Furious.” His viewers could be forgiven for not knowing anything about it.
A transcript of the June 19 segment can be found below:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Up next, when Republicans won control of the House of Representatives, their real prize, of course, was the subpoena power. They have got it and they are using it to go after the attorney general. Is this sort of stop-and-frisk at the highest level? Go after the attorney general, get him to empty his pockets, stand in the spotlight as long as they can and see if anything happens? That’s ahead.
5:46
MATTHEWS: That was the House Oversight Committee chair, Darrell Issa, behaving in his usual way, two weeks ago hammering Attorney General Eric Holder for not turning over documents related to the so-called Fast and Furious campaign, the flawed gun tracking operation carried out by the ATF. Shortly after that, Issa set a vote to hold Holder in contempt of court, or contempt of Congress rather, for tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Holder and Issa just wrapped up a meeting, by the way, a few moments ago, after which Issa says he’s still waiting for the documents he wants and hopes to get them tonight, or wants to get them tonight. Willie Brown is a former mayor of San Francisco, former speaker of the California House, and Wade Henderson is the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Let me go to Wade first because I want to understand is there any reason why we should put any trust in the good intentions of Darrell Issa here?
WADE HENDERSON (Leadership Council): None at all, Chris. Chairman Issa is pursuing a politically motivated witch hunt that’s designed to discredit the Justice Department and to force Attorney General Holder to resign. He’s using Fast and Furious as the vehicle to pursue that witch hunt. But the truth is, nothing could be further from the factual bases for him making the assertion about Holder’s lack of cooperation.
MATTHEWS: You know, when I look at this, Willie Brown, Mayor Brown, I just look at it- and I don’t mean to use this term too much- but it’s almost like a stop-and-frisk. Here’s a chance to humiliate a distinguished member of the United States government, the attorney general- and everybody knows- close friend of the president’s. It’s a surrogate operation. If he can humiliate this guy, if he can get to him, he’ll be a big star in the Republican caucus. He’ll be Dick Nixon.
WILLIE BROWN (Former mayor of San Francisco): That’s what he thinks, but obviously, that will not be the case, Chris. There are too many Republicans, I think, that are responsible and responsible enough to know that you’re, you don’t go down the road that he’s going down in terms of contempt of a cabinet member. You just don’t do that unless it’s similar to what occurred with reference to the Bush administration when two members were cited in some manner or another for doing what they did of his staff. After that, there’s nothing that you can justify such conduct. Other than the fact that you’re leading kind of a lynch-like mob.
MATTHEWS: Well, let’s got to some of the things that Issa before he even heard of this case. He was looking for a case. He said when he got, before he even took the oath for this Congress, Issa, the congressman look what he said. November 8th, 2010, before he took the oath, I want seven hearings a week times 40 weeks. He didn’t say what they were for. I’m just going to have lots of hearings. He also said — what’s your jurisdiction? He said “we own everything.” This is megalomania.
HENDERSON: Chris, you know, Attorney General Holder testified at least eight times before Congress. He has turned over thousands of pages of testimony. He is the only attorney general that actually appointed an inspector general or referred a matter to an inspector general for review, and he ended the program which was the subject of controversy. Rather than investigating, for example, Attorney General Mukasey, who started the actual program under debate, it was called Operation Wide Receiver, Mukasey has not been before the committee, we’ve had no discussion or with ATF officials, who were involved. It was A.G. Holder who actually disciplined some of the ATF officials who were involved. So the truth is this isn’t about the facts regarding Fast and Furious. This is about creating a climate where the A.G. is going to be discredited and will resign.
MATTHEWS: You know, I worked on the Hill. As you know, Mr. Speaker, Willie Brown. You know, you are not supposed to make the come ad hominem comments about someone else. You saw the tape where he makes fun of Attorney General Holder by you are not my kind of witness. You are not a good witness. What’s this? You get to be the teacher and you get to reprimand the student? I mean, the kind — I have never seen it aimed at a cabinet member before.
BROWN: It really means you should not be given any opportunity to exercise power. Chris, when you receive the mantle of leadership on the power side, it automatically imposes up on you a higher level of responsibility than this congressman seems to be able to discharge. He’s got to be somewhat of an embarrassment to his colleagues just by his heavy handedness.
MATTHEWS: Let me — I want to you take — give us a narration here. Darrell Issa, the attorney general, what’s been going on here? How long has this been building?
HENDERSON: This has been building for months. As you pointed out, Darrell Issa was determined almost from the outset of him holding the gavel that he was determined to hold one member of the administration in some degree of difficulty because of their actions. He focused on Fast and Furious. Obviously this was-
MATTHEWS: Explain Fast and Furious.
HENDERSON: Fast and Furious was a gun-walking program where guns were purchased in the United States, taken across the border back to Mexico, and distributed by individuals who had no license or right to purchase –
MATTHEWS: And the idea was to track them.
HENDERSON: We were tracking those guns to find out where they went and hoped to buy the purchaser — to get the purchaser as well as the recipient. It was started under the previous administration. General Mukasey actually had Operation Wide Receiver which was the precursor of Fast and Furious. It ended up with in the depth of officials who were involved with the U.S. government and ATF official, I believe, was killed. But this was a terrible operation. It should never have taken place. Much to his credit, Attorney General Holder ended the program, he disciplined ATF officials who were involved. He convened and — inspector general to take a look at the issue. He testified over eight times with the Congress and he’s provided thousands of documents-
MATTHEWS: And your theory is with this guy Darrell Issa, his goal is to push this further into rub the guy’s face into it.
HENDERSON: Absolutely. And to force the attorney general to resign as a discredited official. Now, here’s what’s ironic — there has never been an attorney general held in contempt of Congress. There’s never been a vote by the House of Representatives on the contempt citation. To do it now against Eric Holder is to ignore all the facts of the case and to use a fiction to promote this kind of political agenda and I hope that both members of the Democratic Party as well as Republicans will see this for what it is.
MATTHEWS: I don’t want to start too much forest fire here, but it is my instinct: Is this ethnic, Mr. Mayor?
BROWN: I think it has some ethnic flavor to it. It will be interrupted by some in that vein.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
BROWN: And you have to be careful you don’t give the opportunity to make that case factually and what Darrell Issa is doing is — has given some individuals the opportunity to make that case and to compare it to a stop and frisk.
MATTHEWS: Well, I just did it because — it smells like it to me and I think there is a disdain on the part of some Republican, not all. Certainly not Boehner. But some of them down in the rank and file, red hot end of the team, that do talk down to the president and his friends absolutely.
Original Article - Documents: ATF Used “Fast and Furious” to Make the Case for Gun Regulations
Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation “Fast and Furious” to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.
In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the “big fish.” But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called “gunwalking,” and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called “Demand Letter 3″. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.
On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:
“Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.”
On Jan. 4, 2011, as ATF prepared a press conference to announce arrests in Fast and Furious, Newell saw it as “(A)nother time to address Multiple Sale on Long Guns issue.” And a day after the press conference, Chait emailed Newell: “Bill–well done yesterday… (I)n light of our request for Demand letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this case.”
This revelation angers gun rights advocates. Larry Keane, a spokesman for National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry trade group, calls the discussion of Fast and Furious to argue for Demand Letter 3 “disappointing and ironic.” Keane says it’s “deeply troubling” if sales made by gun dealers “voluntarily cooperating with ATF’s flawed ‘Operation Fast & Furious’ were going to be used by some individuals within ATF to justify imposing a multiple sales reporting requirement for rifles.”
The Gun Dealers’ Quandary
Several gun dealers who cooperated with ATF told CBS News and Congressional investigators they only went through with suspicious sales because ATF asked them to.
Sometimes it was against the gun dealer’s own best judgment.
In April, 2010 a licensed gun dealer cooperating with ATF was increasingly concerned about selling so many guns. “We just want to make sure we are cooperating with ATF and that we are not viewed as selling to the bad guys,” writes the gun dealer to ATF Phoenix officials, “(W)e were hoping to put together something like a letter of understanding to alleviate concerns of some type of recourse against us down the road for selling these items.”
ATF’s group supervisor on Fast and Furious David Voth assures the gun dealer there’s nothing to worry about. “We (ATF) are continually monitoring these suspects using a variety of investigative techniques which I cannot go into detail.”
Two months later, the same gun dealer grew more agitated.
“I wanted to make sure that none of the firearms that were sold per our conversation with you and various ATF agents could or would ever end up south of the border or in the hands of the bad guys. I guess I am looking for a bit of reassurance that the guns are not getting south or in the wrong hands…I want to help ATF with its investigation but not at the risk of agents (sic) safety because I have some very close friends that are US Border Patrol agents in southern AZ as well as my concern for all the agents (sic) safety that protect our country.”
“It’s like ATF created or added to the problem so they could be the solution to it and pat themselves on the back,” says one law enforcement source familiar with the facts. “It’s a circular way of thinking.”
The Justice Department and ATF declined to comment. ATF officials mentioned in this report did not respond to requests from CBS News to speak with them.
The “Demand Letter 3″ Debate
The two sides in the gun debate have long clashed over whether gun dealers should have to report multiple rifle sales. On one side, ATF officials argue that a large number of semi-automatic, high-caliber rifles from the U.S. are being used by violent cartels in Mexico. They believe more reporting requirements would help ATF crack down. On the other side, gun rights advocates say that’s unconstitutional, and would not make a difference in Mexican cartel crimes.
Two earlier Demand Letters were initiated in 2000 and affected a relatively small number of gun shops. Demand Letter 3 was to be much more sweeping, affecting 8,500 firearms dealers in four southwest border states: Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. ATF chose those states because they “have a significant number of crime guns traced back to them from Mexico.” The reporting requirements were to apply if a gun dealer sells two or more long guns to a single person within five business days, and only if the guns are semi-automatic, greater than .22 caliber and can be fitted with a detachable magazine.
On April 25, 2011, ATF announced plans to implement Demand Letter 3. The National Shooting Sports Foundation is suing the ATF to stop the new rules. It calls the regulation an illegal attempt to enforce a law Congress never passed. ATF counters that it has reasonably targeted guns used most often to “commit violent crimes in Mexico, especially by drug gangs.”
Reaction
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is investigating Fast and Furious, as well as the alleged use of the case to advance gun regulations. “There’s plenty of evidence showing that this administration planned to use the tragedies of Fast and Furious as rationale to further their goals of a long gun reporting requirement. But, we’ve learned from our investigation that reporting multiple long gun sales would do nothing to stop the flow of firearms to known straw purchasers because many Federal Firearms Dealers are already voluntarily reporting suspicious transactions. It’s pretty clear that the problem isn’t lack of burdensome reporting requirements.”
On July 12, 2011, Sen. Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department oversees ATF. They asked Holder whether officials in his agency discussed how “Fast and Furious could be used to justify additional regulatory authorities.” So far, they have not received a response. CBS News asked the Justice Department for comment and context on ATF emails about Fast and Furious and Demand Letter 3, but officials declined to speak with us.
“In light of the evidence, the Justice Department’s refusal to answer questions about the role Operation Fast and Furious was supposed to play in advancing new firearms regulations is simply unacceptable,” Rep. Issa told CBS News.
Original Article - Why “Operation Fast and Furious” Becomes a Massive Headache for Eric Holder and President Obama
Yes, we know that the controversial “Operation Fast and Furious” originated during the administration of President George W. Bush, just like we know that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were products of the the Bush administration. But recent events coming out of Washington and now the announcement of a wrongful death suit against the Justice Department by the family of the US Border Patrol agent who was gunned down by Mexican drug runners prove one thing: this isn’t about President Bush anymore, this is about the current administration of President Obama. This is about a failed “war on drugs” that continues to reflect a US-Mexico relationship that leads to nowhere.
Today President Obama exerted executive privilege for this first time in his administration when Congress asked for more information about a setup that basically sold US guns to Mexican drug cartels. After that, Holder was held in contempt by the Congressional committee that was investigating this. Sure, the logic is that by supplying tracked guns to criminals, you have a better chance of capturing them (which in essence makes no sense to us, since we still can’t get beyond the fact that the US government gave guns to Mexican drug dealers), but let’s repeat this again: the US government sold guns to Mexican drug cartels.
To those who don’t want to hear it, that is what happened, and yes, we know that the administrations of many US presidents have done similar things, but the past is the past. This is the now. And while you will hear the typical partisan talk about this (the GOP is out to get Holder and Obama), the fact remains: the US government sold guns to Mexican drug cartels. And now President Obama is invoking executive privilege. Yes, executive privilege about a situation that we can state with confidence added to the thousands and thousands of deaths in the failed war on drugs. Now, we are NOT saying that “Operation Fast and Furious” is the direct cause of the Mexican drug tragedy, but it is one of its many causes. And for those who don’t know by now, over 50,000 people have died as a result of this sad and senseless war.
You would think that if anything good came out of “Operation Fast and Furious,” the Obama administration would have let the American people know by now. People would accept results, but it appears that very little positive results have occurred. Instead we get executive privilege and tons of questions. We will leave the partisan claims to others, we tend to focus on one of the sad consequences of this whole campaign: the death of a US Border Patrol agent. As CBS News reported today:
CBS News has learned that the family of ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata has filed a claim for wrongful death against the Justice Dept. and other federal agencies. Zapata was gunned down by suspected drug cartel members in Mexico in Feb. 2011 with weapons later linked to an ATF case in the Texas area. Joining the claim is Zapata’s surviving partner in the attack: Victor Avila.
In an interview last November, Zapata’s family told CBS News they feel that U.S. law enforcement could have stopped the sale of a gun used to kill their son. CBS News obtained law enforcement records that show the gun that killed Zapata came from the U.S., and the suspects who allegedly trafficked it had been under law enforcement’s watch for months in Dallas but weren’t arrested.
In February, CBS News learned a second weapon used in the Zapata attack was also linked to an ongoing case under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The Justice Department has said ATF “was not aware of” the suspect’s purchase of the gun that killed Zapata when it happened, and that answering further questions would jeopardize the investigation.
This isn’t some patriot conspiracy blog reporting this. This is flipping CBS News. You don’t think there are questions about this? Shouldn’t the American people demand that more transparency be displayed here? What are the secrets that are not being shared? And why?
The tragedy of the Mexican drug war has negatively affected too many lives. When is enough enough? If the Obama administration had real political courage, it would be in front of this story and be more forthcoming. Instead, we get immigration promises and campaign videos in Spanish, while people continue to die south of the border. Maybe Obama is just like the rest of the American presidents who have followed a Monroe-Doctrine philosophy with Latin America. The more things change…. well, you know how that ends.
Original Article - Contemptible: Holder, Obama & Nixon
I’ll indulge in some measure of fiendish joy by suggesting to my left-leaning San Francisco neighbors that Barak Obama and Richard Nixon may soon share adjoining pages in history books.
Disposing of partisan puffery, and being a member of no major political party, my partisanship is simply nonexistent, the country has almost witnessed the unfolding of a White House cover-up. I say this because some members of the mainstream media and the Obama re-election committee (am I being redundant?) have avoided reporting on the Fast and Furious gun running operation. For NBC Nightly News viewers, allow me to recap the important and indisputable facts thus far.
A division of the U.S. Justice Department orchestrated and enabled the smuggling of over 2,000 firearms into Mexico with the intent of them landing in drug cartel hands.
The operation was not coordinated or even mentioned to the failed sovereign state of Mexico.
The firearms likely have caused numerous civilian deaths and the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
We found out because disgusted BATFE agents blew the whistle.
Under the most favorable interpretation, this is a massive instance of governmental imbecility (am I being redundant?). Yet stupidity can be forgiven in the absence of evil intent and in the presence of full contrition. However, when Eric Holder, head of the Justice Department under which the BATFE operates, was repeatedly called before congress he was evasive and uncooperative. Months passed after congress asked for internal communications that might enlighten the public about how decisions led to the monumental malignancy known as Fast and Furious. It finally culminated this week when Holder met with congressional investigators and offered them a deal whereby he might provide them the requested documents if the investigators declared him compliant in advance.
Holder’s fidelity to delivery of documents matches Bill Clinton’s fidelity to Hillary.
With Eric Holder unwilling to cooperate in ways that transparently illuminate the case, a congressional committee voted to declare the head of U.S. law enforcement to be in contempt of congress. Granted, every thinking American has contempt for congress, but this legal charge is equivalent to a judge siccing the police on you for failing to appear at your hearing. The properly vested authority for congress to investigate governmental illegalities has been functionally ignored by the government agency charged with enforcing the law. So Barack Obama intervened, taking a chapter from the Nixon playbook.
We all know how well that worked out.
Obama called upon executive privilege, a quaint piece of constitutional law that allows a president to not play with congress when it interferes with him performing his duties. Naturally this begs the question “What duties were Obama involved in that led to gun smuggling and border agent homicide?” Senator Chuck Grassley asked the same question, saying “How can the President assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the President exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen?”
Obama’s maneuver has Tricky Dick cranking 4500 RPMs in his casket.
Of all presidents to protect themselves under the guise of executive privilege, Nixon played the game hardest and lost large. Having participated in a cover-up of a burglary – in which, unlike Fast and Furious, nobody died – Nixon invoked executive privilege to obstruct congress and justice. This caused investigators to sue Nixon and the case rapidly reached the Supreme Court, who eventually rejected the notion of “absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process.”
Dick Nixon resigned 15 days later.
The timing of Obama’s intervention does not bode well for his reelection. The Supreme Court is about to recess until the first Monday in October, five weeks before the election. It took the Supreme Court less than three weeks to rule against Nixon, and given the deeper degree of precedence that created, it should take the Supremes even less time to obviate Obama. Since undecided and independent voters tend to make up their minds in the last weeks before an election, losing this decision and having to disclose potentially damaging documents in October will torpedo Obama’s already leaky reelection ship.
“Fall” may be an appropriate word to use this October.
Original Article – Murdered Border Agent’s Family Says President Obama ‘Compounding This Tragedy’ with Executive Privilege Assertion
The family of slain U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was killed with guns tied to the Fast and Furious program, issued a statement Wednesday afternoon accusing President Obama of compounding their family tragedy by invoking executive privilege.
President Obama invoked executive privilege to shield the Justice Department from having to release documents sought by House Republican investigating the secret law enforcement program, wherein weapons smugglers were permitted to buy guns so law enforcement could trace them to drug cartels. Law enforcement lost track of hundreds of the guns, which began showing up at crime scenes, most tragically in December 2010, where Terry was killed.
Terry family attorney Pat McGroder on Wednesday released the following statement from Terry’s parents Josephine Terry and Kent Terry Sr.: “Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to fully disclose the documents associated with Operation Fast and Furious and President Obama’s assertion of executive privilege serves to compound this tragedy. It denies the Terry family and the American people the truth.”
The Terrys said that their son “was killed by members of a Mexican drug cartel armed with weapons from this failed Justice Department gun trafficking investigation. For more than 18 months we have been asking our federal government for justice and accountability. The documents sought by the House Oversight Committee and associated with Operation Fast and Furious should be produced and turned over to the committee. Our son lost his life protecting this nation, and it is very disappointing that we are now faced with an administration that seems more concerned with protecting themselves rather than revealing the truth behind Operation Fast and Furious.”
Earlier today, Josephine Terry was on Philadelphia Talk Radio 1210 WPHT.
Asked about the president’s assertion, she said, “The only thing I can say is, if he did that they apparently don’t want Issa to get the documents to see what’s in there.”
“My son and I were very, very close,” she continued. “And my son was a person that believed in justice and he believed in telling the truth. He was a man of his honor. And if anybody knew him, they knew that. And I know he would be saying ‘you know what, I died for my country.’ He was a true American and I think he deserves the truth and I think everybody should know the truth. And if this was a bad thing they did with Fast and Furious it should be acknowledged so it never happens to anybody else’s son.”
Original Article - Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee Fired After Trayvon Martin Case
Trayvon Martin, a high-school junior from Miami who was visiting family in a gated community here, was shot to death Feb. 26 when he encountered George Michael Zimmerman. (Orlando Sentinel / June 20, 2012)
The Florida police chief who faced heavy criticism for his officers’ failure to arrest the man who killed Trayvon Martin has been fired, Sanford city officials told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday night.
Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee met with the city manager earlier in the day to discuss the terms of his employment, officials said.
“I have determined the police chief needs to have the trust and respect of the elected officials and the confidence of the entire community,” City Manager Norton Bonaparte said in a statement Wednesday night. “We need to move forward with a police chief that all the citizens of Sanford can support. I have come to this decision in light of the escalating divisiveness that has taken hold of the city.”
Lee took a leave of absence after Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old, was shot Feb. 26. George Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch volunteer, said he shot Martin in self-defense.
Lee offered to quit in April, but the City Council rejected his resignation on a 3-2 vote.
“Since February, the discussions have been whether it was feasible for him to come back and whether the city could move on, quote unquote, if he does come back,” Lonnie Groot, a lawyer from Lake Mary, Fla., who represents Sanford, told The Times just before he heard of Lee’s firing. “Everything that you [have] seen, read and heard since he stepped aside – that’s been the continuing conversation within the city.”
Lee will receive three months and one week’s worth of severance pay, in addition to any earned time off, officials said. The search for a new police chief will begin immediately.
Zimmerman, 28, a neighborhood watch volunteer in a gated community, had called police to report Martin as a suspicious person, then followed him. Martin was visiting the home of his father’s fiance, who also lives in the gated community, and had gone for a walk to buy Skittles and an iced tea.
A confrontation ensued and Zimmerman fatally shot Martin. Police took Zimmerman to the station that night but did not arrest him.
After a nationwide uproar, Florida Gov. Rick Scott appointed a special prosecutor, who charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder in April. He was arrested April 11, and had been free on $150,000 bail. He was rearrested June 3 when the judge learned he and his wife had lied about their finances during a bond hearing.
Shellie Zimmerman had testified that they had little money, but it was later revealed that a website George Zimmerman set up to receive donations had raised more than $200,000.
She has been charged with perjury and is free on bond. Her husband remains behind bars.
Original Article - NBC’s Today Continues Blackout on Fast and Furious Controversy
NBC’s Today kept up its complete omission of the Fast and Furious gun-running controversy on Wednesday, even as a House committee prepared to vote later in the day on whether to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. CBS This Morning stood among the Big Three morning newscasts in devoting a full report to the issue. ABC’s Good Morning America gave only a 20-second news brief on the controversy.
Overall, NBC has punted on the story since December 2010, when the scandal first emerged. NBC Nightly News had its own blackout on Fast and Furious until June 12, 2012, when correspondent Kelly O’Donnell finally mentioned “Congress’s investigation of a failed operation that sent U.S. guns into Mexico” during a 30-second news brief. The issue hasn’t been mentioned since on the evening newscast.
CBS This Morning anchor Erica Hill introduced correspondent Nancy Cordes’s report by noting how “a House committee is due to vote today on finding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Holder has refused the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s demand for documents from the controversial ‘Fast and Furious’ gun-running operation.” Cordes highlighted during the segment that “Holder says there’s no evidence of a cover-up; that he’s already provided 7,600 pages worth of documents; that this is, essentially, a Republican fishing expedition.”
On Good Morning America, news anchor Josh Elliott gave his sole news brief on Fast and Furious six minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour:
JOSH ELLIOTT: Meanwhile here at home, Attorney General Eric Holder could be charged with contempt of Congress today. A House committee is demanding more documents about the government’s Fast and Furious program, a failed sting operation that allowed weapons to get into the hands of Mexican gangs. Holder calls the committee’s threat to hold him in contempt pure politics.
The ABC morning actually hasn’t been much better than its NBC counterpart, as they’ve have only given one other news brief on the controversy over the past 18 months.
The full transcript of Nancy Cordes’s report from Wednesday’s CBS This Morning, which aired 15 minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour:
ERICA HILL: On Capitol Hill, a House committee is due to vote today on finding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Holder has refused the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s demand for documents from the controversial ‘Fast and Furious’ gun-running operation, which was first exposed by CBS News. Committee chairman Darrell Issa says a last-minute meeting on Tuesday went nowhere.
[CBS News Graphic: "Holder On The Hot Seat: Attorney General May Face Contempt Vote"]
REP. DARRELL ISSA, (R), CALIFORNIA: It’s, ultimately, the attorney general who is the custodian of the documents we wish to receive, and that’s why the contempt cites him. We would hope that the President would ask his attorney general to be more cooperative.
CHARLIE ROSE: Nancy Cordes is on Capitol Hill this morning. Nancy, what is happening here?
NANCY CORDES: Well, Charlie, what’s happening is the Republicans say that Holder is not giving them the documents they need to investigate whether the Department of Justice covered up its involvement in ‘Fast and Furious’, or tried to silence whistleblowers, after a U.S. Border agent, Brian Terry, was killed in Arizona, and two guns that had been walked as part of the program were found at the scene.
Attorney General Holder says there’s no evidence of a cover-up; that he’s already provided 7,600 pages worth of documents; that this is, essentially, a Republican fishing expedition. And so, he had an ultimatum of his own for Issa: I’ll give you more documents if you agree to drop the subpoenas against me.
ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I have to say, given the extraordinary nature of the offer that we made, and given the extraordinary way in which we have shared materials to date, that I think we are actually involved more in political gamesmanship, as opposed to trying to get the information they say they want.
CORDES: So unless someone blinks this morning, this contempt vote is going to go ahead in the committee. If it passes, then it would go to the House floor. If it passes in the House, it would come to the Senate. But the Senate, Charlie and Erica, is controlled by Democrats, so it’s likely that the move would die there.
Original Article - Vote to Sanction Holder Escalates Gun-Probe Fight
A standoff between Republicans and the Obama administration over a botched gun-trafficking operation escalated Wednesday, with a House committee voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.
The party-line vote came hours after President Barack Obama, for the first time, asserted executive privilege, aiming to block Republicans from gaining access to Justice Department documents about the operation.
House Republican leaders said they would bring the contempt measure to the House floor next week. If the full House votes to support it, then a contempt citation could be referred to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, an appointee of Mr. Obama’s who is in Mr. Holder’s chain of command.
If it ends up in the courts, the dispute would raise constitutional questions about the power of the executive branch vs. Congress. Previous such battles have ended before reaching that stage with some kind of truce between the sides.
The White House asserted executive privilege over gun-trafficking-probe documents sought by congressional Republicans, throwing into uncertainty a possible vote to sanction Attorney General Eric Holder. Peter Landers has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Getty Images.
The battle centers on a 2009-10 operation, dubbed Fast and Furious, that was run by Arizona-based agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, aimed at building a case against suspected smugglers of firearms to Mexico. The agents, using a tactic called gun-walking, allowed suspected smugglers to buy about 2,000 firearms, without intercepting the weapons.
Some of the guns have since turned up at crime scenes on both sides of the border, including at a December 2010 shootout that killed a U.S. border agent.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) have led an inquiry into Fast and Furious for more than a year, holding hearings with ATF agents who said their objections to the tactics were ignored. Mr. Issa heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which voted on the contempt measure Wednesday.
The documents at issue largely detail internal deliberations last year as Justice officials tried to respond to congressional questions about the operation. Republicans say the documents may show whether high-level officials were aware of Fast and Furious early on and whether there is a coverup. The White House says such documents involving internal deliberations traditionally haven’t been subject to a congressional subpoena.
The controversy has ebbed and flowed until reaching a flash point this week. The two sides appeared as if they might reach an agreement Tuesday night. Messrs. Holder and Issa met for 20 minutes, but the talks became of a game of chicken, with each side saying it insisted the other act first to resolve the standoff.
Mr. Issa Wednesday rejected the executive-privilege claim, saying it “only applies to materials that directly pertain to communications with the president and his senior advisers.”
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Mr. Obama’s reasoning was similar to that of former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Mr. Schultz said the other presidents “protected the same category of documents we’re protecting today,” meaning after-the-fact internal materials.
Mr. Bush claimed executive privilege six times, and Mr. Clinton is believed to have claimed it 14 times. Under the doctrine of executive privilege, presidents have sought to withhold from Congress documents relating to internal deliberations of the executive branch.
Mr. Holder said that “from the beginning, Chairman Issa and certain members of the Committee have made unsubstantiated allegations first, then scrambled for facts to try to justify them later. That might make for good political theater, but it does little to uncover the truth.”
If the matter were referred to the U.S. attorney, it isn’t clear Congress could compel him to prosecute the attorney general. In the Bush administration, the House voted to hold White House officials including White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt in a similar documents dispute, and the Bush-appointed attorney general ordered the U.S. attorney to disregard it. The matter was eventually settled with the production of documents.
Other attorneys general have been caught in similar disputes. The House oversight committee voted to hold Janet Reno, attorney general under Mr. Clinton, in contempt. The full House didn’t take up the matter, and the dispute was resolved when documents were produced. Democrats drafted a report recommending contempt against Attorney General Michael Mukasey in the latter days of the Bush administration but didn’t go further after he turned over documents.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Republican lawmakers said Mr. Obama’s assertion of executive privilege contrasted with his criticism as a senator of the Bush administration’s use of the privilege. Then-Sen. Obama said the Bush White House was “hiding” behind the privilege to avoid “coming clean” during a dispute over White House documents over the firings of U.S. attorneys. Mr. Bush’s then-attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, resigned under pressure over the firings.
With Democrats firmly backing Mr. Holder, it is unlikely the contempt fight will affect the remainder of his tenure through the end of the current administration in January.
Mr. Holder has increasingly been on the sidelines of some of the biggest national-security fights. He led the administration’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, and he pushed to try the plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in civilian court in New York. He ended up badly bruised in both efforts, after the White House surrendered to Republican objections.
Both sides sought to gain partisan advantage from the fight. The Republican National Committee is using a “Fire Eric Holder” website to seek campaign donations. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer accused Republicans of embarking on a “purely political” effort rather than focusing on legislation to create jobs.
Original Article - Fast and Furious Cover-up: Obama Asserts Executive Privilege to Protect Himself
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I guess you have to know when to fold ‘em and when to Holder ‘em. I think I’m gonna start asserting executive privilege. I’m an executive. Kathryn asked me a question, “I’m assigning executive privilege, I don’t have to answer that.” News media asked me a question, “Executive privilege. I don’t have to answer that.”Hi, folks. How are you? Great to have you here. Already hump day. The Excellence in Broadcasting Network. You know, you know, here’s some irony — by the way, telephone number, 800-282-2882.
What was Fast and Furious? Look, I’m assuming everybody knows that Obama has asserted executive privilege to protect himself, not just Eric Holder, but to protect himself from being discovered somewhat, somehow, to be involved in this Fast and Furious. What was Fast and Furious? As simply put as I can make it, Fast and Furious was an American government program authored by the Obama administration to arm violent drug gangs in Mexico with American weapons from Arizona, primarily. Assault rifles and deadly weapons were purchased from gun stores in Arizona and walked across the border to Mexico on purpose. This resulted in the death of scores of people, including a man named Brian Terry, a border agent for our government.
Now, we all know what the purpose of this was. The purpose of this was to gin up anti-Amendment 2 sentiment among the people of this country. The objective was — and this is where the irony steps in — the objective was to have news stories where everybody was shocked and stunned and saddened, guns purchased by drug cartel members in America. Look how easy it was, end up in Mexico, owned by violent drug gangs, and used in the commission of heinous crimes. Why, our gun laws are too lax. The sentiment in this country among the people is to maintain the Second Amendment. The America people don’t want, by a vast majority, any gun control legislation. But that doesn’t matter to people like President Kardashian or Eric Holder or any of the Democrat Party or the left.
They don’t want you to have guns, and so it doesn’t matter about the Constitution and it doesn’t matter about the will of the American people. If they don’t want you to have guns they’re gonna try to find a way to make sure that you don’t. And that’s what Fast and Furious was, as simply put as I can make it. Obama has dragged this on for years. He has never had any intention to cooperate, nor has Holder. It was the arming of violent gangs in Mexico with American weapons purchased in American gun stores resulting in the death of scores of people. Obama has never explained the details of what occurred to anybody, not the media, not investigators, not Congress. He is the head of the executive branch, so he asserts executive privilege. Meanwhile, he pretends that he knew nothing, but he’s trying to protect himself.
Now, what triggered this today is also very simple. Darrell Issa’s congressional committee has been attempting to get documents from the Department of Justice to document this. And Eric Holder has refused to turn over the documents. They have been negotiating back and forth. There was a scheduled face-to-face meeting. Holder claims that he made one of the greatest offers in American history, to share information, the executive branch and the legislative branch. But here is the bottom line. The Department of Justice lied to Issa’s committee. February 4th, 2011, the Department of Justice — that’s Holder — sent a letter to Congress in which they stated that the allegation that ATF sanctioned or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to straw purchasers to begin transporting them to Mexico is false. That was a lie.
The DOJ sent a letter to Issa’s committee that was not true. In their letter, they said, “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.” Now, a member of Congress, Issa’s committee member, said, “We know that multiple people in the Department of Justice were involved in drafting this letter, and we know that their statement was false.” So the Department of Justice, where the law of this land is to be the most stringently administered, adhered, obeyed, enforced, lied to Congress. And that is what this controversy is all about. That’s why Issa wanted documents from Holder. It was Holder who called Obama either last night or today, asked for executive privilege, and Obama granted it.
Now, the irony of this is that the whole point of this operation was for all of this to become public except for Obama and Holder’s involvement, and for you to be so angry about it that you would demand tighter gun control laws. Well, now the whole thing has become public, and now they’ve gotta do everything they can to try to keep it under wraps. They wanted this thing public. They wanted the results of this brilliantly conceived, but it was not flawlessly executed, they botched the execution. Way too many people died. A border agent died on December 10th. And so now the Department of Justice, part of the executive branch, Eric Holder and Obama have claimed, well, Obama is the only one who can, has claimed executive privilege.
Now, look, folks, I’m not a lawyer. My dad was a lawyer out there. As far as I know, executive privilege has been traditionally asserted to either protect the president’s confidentiality, protect the executive branch’s autonomy — separation of powers — or, three, to protect state secrets. There may be other reasons, but those are the three reasons I’ve always understood for it. So which of those is behind Obama’s claim here? If the executive privilege is to protect confidentiality, then he’s admitting his involvement in Fast and Furious. If he says it’s to protect executive branch autonomy, should they have the kind of autonomy to do dangerous and illegal stunts like this? Now, I don’t know that Obama would have the nerve to invoke national security after leaking all the secrets they just leaked, but you never know.
Anything’s possible with this bunch. Charles Grassley, senator from Iowa, has issued a statement, and it’s pretty telling. (I’m getting it now.) His statement is this: “The assertion of executive privilege raises monumental questions. How can the president assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement?” That’s a pretty good question. Now, the executive branch includes the DOJ. But executive privilege..?
For example can Holder call Obama and say, “I want you to exert executive privilege for me” and have it not affect Obama? No. “How can the president assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the president exert executive privilege over documents he has supposedly never seen?” That’s another thing Obama said. He’s never seen anything; he doesn’t know what’s going on.
“Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme? The contempt citation is an important procedural mechanism in our system of checks and balances,” says Grassley. “The questions from Congress go to determining what happened in a disastrous government program for accountability and so that it’s never repeated again.” Well, that’s basically what this is all about. Again, something very, very simple.
On February 4th, 2011, the Department of Justice, Eric Holder, sent a letter to Congress in which they “said that the allegation that ‘ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms] “sanctioned”‘ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico — is false.’” They denied the program. They denied that Fast and Furious existed. They denied it in a February 4th 2011 letter to Congress. And in that letter they will say “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that were purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.”
Now, it’s known that multiple people in the Department of Justice were involved in drafting that letter. And Congress now says that the statements in the letter were false. You lie to Congress…? You know, ask Roger Clemens. You lie to Congress like this, whether you think these guys are hoity-toity and far more important in their own minds than they really are, the fact of the matter is when the executive branch starts lying to these guys, red flags go up, and this is exactly what happens.
So the congressional committee of Darrell Issa said, “We want everything you’ve got on this,” and Holder’s not gonna give it. Executive privilege. The White House is apparently now intent on hiding something. Obama’s involvement? Further details of the program? But I have to tell you, I’ve looked at the media on this. They’re gob-smacked. This is another thing. They were so out of touch. To them, Fast and Furious has been nothing more than a Tea Party, right-wing, extreme, conspiracy theory.
It’s been something they’ve laughed about. They’ve not bothered to inform themselves. To them, it’s just a joke. Fast and Furious is nothing more than a joke. It’s typical right-wing tinfoil hat people trying to get poor old Barack. And they’re shocked! They are shocked that Obama asserted executive privilege. Remember, the big assertion of executive privilege that went down the tubes was Nixon and Watergate. A lot of presidents have asserted executive privilege. I think Clinton did 14 times. Bush did six.
So it’s not uncommon. But the big one that led to the downfall of a president was Richard Nixon because the Supreme Court did not allow him to assert it before challenge. He lost the claim of executive privilege in Watergate. So they know what can happen. And they’re gob-smacked by this. They don’t know how to report this. They thought it was a joke, folks. They thought it was nothing more than the Martians had landed, that a bunch of people believed the Martians had landed.
Now they’re already having second and third thoughts about Obama. You got Frank Bruni (or Bruni, I don’t know how you pronounce his name) at the New York Times with a scathing review of Obama’s performance done at this G-20 summit. Obama looked totally outclassed, looked totally out of his element. He just looked like he had no business being there. It was embarrassing. No command whatsoever of his actions, of his presence. He seemed small. This is the New York Times describing Obama at the G-20.
Then you have this Neil Munro business. Then you have the leaks. You have Obama failing in the polls. You’ve got the Supreme Court might do away with Obamacare. They, in 2008, never envisioned 1% of what’s happening here. I tell you, Fast and Furious they thought was a joke, and here’s Obama asserting executive privilege. It sounded like “Angrier” Mitchell. “Well, we didn’t have time to play the whole tape on Romney. Hee-hee-hee. Romney didn’t know what a scanner was!”
They, folks, are struggling with how to defend their guy. Now, they will. I don’t have any question. When they get hold of themselves, when the media gets hold, I’m gonna predict to you what’s gonna happen. They will argue that they are upholding long-honored tradition of protecting the internal process of the executive branch. That’s what the media will say about Obama. It’s part of the separation of powers doctrine.
They’ll argue that ongoing investigation and congressional interference could upset the executive process. They’ll be defended on this by the press. Don’t misunderstand. I’m just saying right now, the press thought this was nothing more than the birthers. They think the birthers a bunch of kooks; they think the Fast and Furious crowd’s a bunch of kooks. And now, with Obama asserting executive privilege, they think, “What are they trying to hide? It makes them uncomfortable.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me tell you something, folks. This assertion of executive privilege just shows how important Fast and Furious was. You can’t claim it’s just some low-level, rogue operation and then go out and assert executive privilege. You don’t assert executive privilege for low-level operations. But it looks like President Kardashian is going to go the national security route. The Democrat apologist and presidential historian Douglas Brinkley was just on Fox News saying that the country…
By the way, he’s an administration mouthpiece. Listen to this. This a journalist, an historian, Douglas Brinkley, on Fox. He said, “The country can’t have our secret strategies about dealing with drug cartels out there in the public! We can’t have that.” Right. Issa would have immediately leaked all of our strategies in dealing with the drug cartels? Right. Issa would have leaked? This administration leaks like a sieve. Folks, it already is known what Fast and Furious was!
Maybe there’s much more to it that we don’t know, but we know what it was.
The regime armed violent gangs in Mexico. On purpose. The Obama administration wanted US assault rifles walked across the border by drug cartel members and used in the commission of their crimes. And then they wanted news stories saying, “Look at this! A Mexican drug cartel. Where’d they get their guns? America. It’s too easy. We’ve gotta tighten our gun laws. If these drug cartels can walk into a gun store in Phoenix and end up getting these assault weapons and go out and start killing people, why, our gun laws are too lax!”
That was the purpose here.
I know the regime was hoping to sweep Fast and Furious under the rug, and if they’re hoping to sweep it under the rug with this, they’ve done precisely the wrong thing. But I don’t know. Folks, this administration seems to be so incompetent, I don’t know how good they are at managing a cover-up. We’re gonna find out. We’ll find out if they’ve got what it takes to take what we’ve got. If they’ve got what it takes to manage a decent cover-up. I mean, even when they got the news media working on their side.
Obama demanded that Bush give Congress his exit strategy in Iraq. Obama was demanding Bush give away our timetable. And, by the way, we’ve got it. Coming up after the break we’ve got audio sound bite of Obama in 2007. He was on Larry King Alive, and he was criticizing the whole notion of executive privilege. He was saying that presidents ought not hide behind that. Bush had asserted executive privilege on something and be Obama was righteously offended by this and was highly critical of Bush using executive privilege. He said administrations ought not hide behind it.
And don’t forget Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News was yelled at and screamed at by Department of Justice members over her coverage of this story.
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Barack Obama: Our First Gay-Female-Hispanic-Asian-Jewish President! http://t.co/C4rWIIvVFriday, 06.22.12 08:12
Gay marriage Gives Romney Chance to Fire Up Base (Obama Puts Nails in Own Coffin) http://t.co/bn3W1TqdFriday, 06.22.12 08:12
America In Transition (Gay Delusions) http://t.co/10rrV0qjFriday, 06.22.12 08:09
Toldya About the Lesbian Nuns in Leavenworth (MUST READ!) http://t.co/LDhrOdJCFriday, 06.22.12 08:07
The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage http://t.co/T6ZfP6b5Friday, 06.22.12 08:07
ORIGINAL LINK - Barack Obama: Our First Gay-Female-Hispanic-Asian-Jewish President!
Newsweek’s cover this week declares that Barack Obama is the “First Gay President,” playing on the reader’s knowledge that Obama isn’t himself gay, but his support for same-sex marriage earns him an honorary rainbow halo. The headline obviously calls back to 1998, when Toni Morrison declared Bill Clinton the first black president in The New Yorker, which at the time was edited by current Newsweek editor Tina Brown. “Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas,” Morrison wrote, laying out the formula for how to declare a President has attained the identity of someone else through actions and behaviors. Newsweek‘s cover has been called “controversial” and “pretty shocking,” but it’s merely the most recent in presidential firsts that weren’t for the country’s actual first black president.
First Female President: Perhaps Newsweek should have been more specific and declared Obama the “first lesbian president’ because the magazine’s already given him the honor of womanhood. During the 2008 campaign, Martin Linski wrote, “Obama doesn’t play the sax. But he is pushing against conventional—and political party nominating convention—wisdom in five important ways, with approaches that are usually thought of as qualities and values that women bring to organizational life.” The headline? “Obama: First Female President?”
In June 2010, The Washington Post‘s Kathleen Parker took the question mark out of the way. “Obama: Our first female president,” her headline declared. Her column made the case that his crisis management style was more typically female.
First Jewish President: Like this week’s issue of Newsweek, New York magazine went big on their Morrison reappropriation. Former White House counsel Abner Mikva told John Heilemann “When this all is over, people are going to say that Barack Obama is the first Jewish president.” The magazine made it their cover.
First Asian-American President: In 2009, the AFP ran with the headline, “Obama the first Asian-American president?” As evidence, the article notes that in his first hundred days, “Obama appointed a record three Asian-Americans cabinet members and quickly focused his attention across the Pacific. He invited Japan’s prime minister as his first guest and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Asia on her maiden trip.”
First Hispanic President: Geraldo Rivera spoke in March 2009 about the hopes the Hispanic community had for Obama’s immigration policies, alleging “Barack Obama is the first Hispanic president the same way Bill Clinton was the first black [one].”
George W. Bush, the only other president since Clinton, received comparatively few honorifics. Writing in Foreign Policy Suhail Khan did once write, “If Clinton was, as the author Toni Morrison once quipped, America’s first black president, Bush was, at least momentarily, the country’s first Muslim president.” (Those on the far right who would give Obama that title should take note.)
But Obama’s received the bulk of it. Perhaps that’s because he did set an historic first as the first black president, Clinton be darned. Obama’s supporters often see what they want to see in him. Just consider how many interpreted his “evolving” stance on gay marriage to be (as it eventually was) a closeted support. We love to break barriers in America, but we only get the chance every four years, so in the meantime, we work with the male Christian president we’ve got.
Newsweek‘s headline quickly grabbed the attention it was obviously seeking, but given this list, maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised by it. Expectations were high that editor Tina Brown would do something typically attention-grabbing to mark this occasion, but this effort seems, well, cliché. It wasn’t going to be long before someone outed our first black, female, Jewish, hispanic, Asian-American president as gay.
LINK - Gay marriage Gives Romney Chance to Fire Up Base (Obama Puts Nails in Own Coffin)
“While many Republicans consider the sudden emergence of gay marriage as an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign an unhelpful distraction, social conservatives Sunday insisted the Obama administration has given presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney an opportunity.
“I think the president this past week took six or seven states he carried in 2008 and put them in play with this one ill-conceived position that he’s taken,” American Values President Gary Bauer said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I think that Barack Obama has helped fit that missing piece of intensity that Mitt Romney is going to need,” Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Christian organization Family Research Council, said on CBS‘ “Face the Nation.”
Gay marriage is suddenly the country’s hottest political talking point after Mr. Obama last week said he now personally supports same-sex marriages — though he said the legality of such unions should be decided by individual states…”
You get to be the sex you think you are (and everybody else has to acknowledge it).
I am used to surprises from the New York Times—a newspaper so far from me culturally and politically it might as well be a daily bulletin about life in a parallel universe—but last August I read a personal essay in the “Modern Love” space of the “Styles” section that really brought me up short. “My Husband is Now My Wife” (quite a tabloidy title for this genteel newspaper) was about the deeply ambivalent day the author escorted her husband to a hospital for surgery in which he would “take his first surgical step into womanhood.”
I’m a jaded ex-Manhattanite, awright? “Sexual reassignment surgery,” as it is called, is not news. I know about the clinics in Colorado where they slice up existing organs and then do Play-Doh sculpturing with the tissue that’s left. The surgery thing has been going on since the sixties. And I know from cross-dressing. On my Upper West Side block it was not uncommon to encounter a neighbor—skinny, middle-aged, bald pate surrounded by a cap of stringy graying locks—taking his daily constitutional…on roller skates, wearing a tiara and a pink tutu, blessing passersby with a Tinkerbell wand.
So it wasn’t the soo-last-century, Dude-Looks-Like-a-Lady part that startled, it was the part near the end where the author lets slip that all her fussing about losing a husband and gaining a wife was actually over a hospital stay in which her husband would have “facial feminization surgery, a not uncommon procedure in male-to-female transitions, in which a surgeon carves out a more femininely proportioned version of a male face.”
“In my husband’s case,” she wrote, “this meant higher eyebrows, a smaller nose and a more pronounced chin. A few months later, his Adam’s apple would be shaved down and he would receive breast implants.”
Almost as if it was an afterthought, she added “genital surgery would follow” on some unspecified date.
OK, he hadn’t had the genital surgery yet. It was unclear if he ever would. Certainly, for the average woman, the breast part could be hard to take. But the point is, at the moment, “Husband” had just messed around with his face. So what entitled him to claim membership in the sorority of majestic, complex, mysterious creatures called Women? It was actually a bit presumptuous. (If I were a feminist I would say, “How very male.”)
But here we had our author, one Diane Daniel of North Carolina, telling herself sternly that she must remember to stop referring to Husband with “him,” “his,” and “he.” We meet the couple’s therapist who has been “suggesting for months” that Daniel “use female pronouns at home” when addressing Husband, even before he went into the hospital:
“I will when I need to,” I’d told her on our last visit. “But for now he’s still a man to me.” I’d turned to my husband, dressed in jeans and a black button-down shirt. “When I look at you, hon, I see a man.”
“But she’s a woman,” our therapist countered, her words slicing through my denial.
By the end of the essay, Daniel has re-educated herself. Now she gently corrects nurses when they use the “incorrect” pronoun:
“After he eats a little something, we’ll give him pain pills,” a nurse said.
“Could you say ‘she’?” I asked gently.
Once I looked in to it, I found more “Modern Love” columns where it was just assumed the reader has already accepted that “gender identity” (what you decide you are) trumps “gender assigned at birth” (what your body says you are). There was, for instance, the woman who started her essay by writing, “Before we met, my partner had changed names from a female-sounding one to a male one…”
…and by the time we were together, everyone we knew either called him by this new name or spoke of him with male pronouns. He identified himself as a transgender man, woman to man. It wasn’t until two years after we began dating that he decided to have his breasts removed. For him, chest surgery was the next step in transitioning genders, a symbolic and physical gesture of leaving womanhood behind.
This essay, written by a younger woman than Daniel, was much more philosophically evolved. Apparently this boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, hadn’t had any medical interventions at all. She merely “identified himself as a transgender man” and began dressing as a man (what does that mean nowadays anyway?) and that was enough, the author says, for everyone they knew to either call him by this new name or speak of him with male pronouns.
WELCOME TO THE Brave New World of “gender identity” versus stick-in-the-mud old “gender.” This subjective aspect—the demand that the world recognize you as what you think you are, simply because you’ve decided you are—is new. It turns out law and theory to support this new definition have been proliferating quietly for quite some time as well.
In other words, when we stodgy old conservatives, not attuned to the latest reverberations of the “progressive” world, think of a “transsexual” or (this is much more correct) a “transgendered person,” we’re probably imagining, say, Christine Jorgensen (if we’re really old) or Jan Morris, i.e., someone who made a good old Protestant Work Ethic effort to “transition” to the other sex. We are thinking of people who have at least put a considerable amount of effort and in most cases, a lot of money, like their life savings, into this illusory project of “becoming the other sex.”
The various stodgy old state laws (it is the states that control issuance of the all-important birth certificate) reflect this attachment to physical reality versus subjectivity. Most state laws are still like those in New York City, which, since 1971, has been willing to issue a “corrected” birth certificate to a transgender person provided he or she is able to prove, via a detailed medical record, that “the applicant has undergone ‘convertive’ surgery, which has generally but not exclusively been interpreted by the Department [of Health and Mental Hygiene] to mean genital surgery.”
This onerous surgery requirement has been excised in a several states but that’s hardly enough, say the gender activists. As lawyer Christopher Daley of the very activist Transgender Law Center explains, a transgender person is one “whose internal understanding of their own gender is different from the sex they were assigned at birth.…Transgender persons seek to live in accordance with the sex that takes proper account of the sex of their brain…” (The Transgender Law Center is apparently even so uncomfortable with the designations like “men’s room” or “women’s toilet” that they refer to “gendered” public bathrooms as “bathrooms intended for people who identify with a particular gender.”)
In the future, as Kristina Wertz of the Transgender Law Center puts it, all of official America will recognize “that gender identity is not dependent upon anatomy or the ability to access expensive medical treatment.” Wertz applauded the State Department for its June 2010 policy change, a small but important one, stating that applicants wishing to change the gender markers on their passports will only need to present certification that they have “undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition.” The State of Vermont has amended its law to say that “hormonal or other treatments” are sufficient for a sex change on a birth certificate.
Chaz Bono, one of America’s most famous female-to-male transgendered people, was a beneficiary of California’s liberalized law. On May 2, 2010, Bono was able to leave a Santa Monica courthouse officially a man, after the court’s acceptance of a vaguely worded letter from a doctor stipulating that he had “performed an irreversible surgical procedure for the purpose of altering Chaz Bono’s sexual characteristics from female to male.” (At the time Bono had had a mastectomy and lots of testosterone.) Meanwhile the press had never questioned that Chaz Bono was anything other than all man, from the moment the Chaz persona appeared on the scene and throughout “his” turn on “Dancing With the Stars.” When Hollywood Reporter reviewed the documentary Becoming Chaz, it obediently informed us that Chaz Bono “was a male trapped in a female body since birth.”
Outside of the Mainstream Media, there are, of course, still some dinosaurs skulking around who are not comfortable with the notion that you can change your sex by whacking something off and soldering something else on. There is the matter of chromosomes, and wombs, and the fact that the newly constructed genitals aren’t good for much of anything except just kind of sitting there—like a trophy, a symbol. They are useless for procreation. Both kinds of sex reassignment surgeries, female-to-male and male-to-female, render the recipient irreversibly sterile. And they are not too good for other uses either. As Chaz Bono explained on the David Letterman show, she has not been rushing the decision to get what the trans community calls “bottom surgery” because “you can end up with something functional but very small or something that’s more normal sized but without much erotic sensation.” (Chaz did admit that “There’s different ways to do the surgery, from real basic to more and more options. It’s like a car.”)
In short, the long-standing “surgery requirement” laws may have seemed silly when they first appeared, but they now stir up something like nostalgia. At least they are a nod to the idea that gender is rooted in anatomy, and that maybe human beings are defined by their role in the procreative project.
SO IS THERE SUCH A THING as “the sex of one’s brain”? Questions like this raged back and forth in 1966 when Johns Hopkins Hospital opened its Gender Identity Clinic and became the first hospital in America to do sex change operations. The doctors had a variety of opinions about why these operations were worth doing. Some, bolstered by a new genre of psychological theory, were downright messianic about “correcting the body to match the real gender.” Some seemed to feel that the surgeries were like a nose job or any other cosmetic surgery, a chance to make a body-part-obsessed person feel better. Some, like psychiatrist Paul McHugh, who did psychological screenings for the program, eventually became fiercely opposed. He saw other doctors’ relatively easy acceptance of the project as a kind of abdication of the professional’s role and a symptom of a social climate in which “all standards by which behaviours are judged are simply matters of opinion—and emotional opinions at that.” The new relativism was even reflected in new attitudes toward schizophrenics—who, increasingly, were deinstitutionalized as a matter of course and treated as if they were just expressing “a different lifestyle choice.” With a similar reluctance to “be judgmental” about someone else’s life choice, McHugh felt that patients were too often approved for surgery without much probing, out of “the spirit of doing your thing, following your bliss, an aesthetic that sees diversity as everything and can accept any idea, including that of permanent sex change, as interesting and that views resistance to such ideas as uptight if not oppressive,” he wrote in a scathing article for the American Scholar titled “Psychiatric Misadventures.”
“Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should,” wrote McHugh. In his intake interviews, the typical applicant claimed it was “torture for him to live as a man, especially now that he has read in the newspapers about the possibility of switching surgically to womanhood.” But “[u]pon examination it is not difficult to identify other mental and personality difficulties…” which McHugh believed, unless resolved, would follow the patient into his new body and torment him again after attaching to a new external target.
“It is not obvious,” he note, “how this patient’s feeling that he is a woman trapped in a man’s body differs from the feeling of a patient with anorexia nervosa that she is obese despite her emaciated, cachectic state.”
“We don’t do liposuction on anorexics,” he wrote. “Why amputate the genitals of these poor men? Surely, the fault is in the mind not the member.”
BUT THE STANDARDS McHugh complained about in the late sixties have become so entrenched, I may as well be quoting cuneiform off a stone tablet. Allowing some patriarchal white male Ob/Gyn to have the power to take a cursory glance at your baby genitalia and “assign a gender” doesn’t seem to fit in a world where “self-definition” has become a mantra.
And this may explain why, according to the New York Times, “a growing number of high school and college students…are pushing for the right to change their pronoun whenever they feel like it.” Katy Butler, one of those high school students, identifies herself as part of the “nonconforming gender community” and is one of those enthusiastic about “Preferred Gender Pronouns” (PGPs).
“You have to understand, this has nothing to do with your sexuality and everything to do with who you feel like inside,” Katy said, explaining that at the start of every Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning Association meeting, participants are first asked if they would like to share their PGPs.
A PGP can change as often as one likes. If the pronouns in the dictionary don’t suffice, there are numerous made-up ones now in use, including “ze,” “hir,” and “hirs,” words that connote both genders because, as Katy explained, “Maybe one day you wake up and feel more like a boy.”
Butler is lucky enough to live in the anything-goes enclave of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Out in the hinterlands the idea that a newly chosen “gender identity and expression” must be tolerated at all times does not always go down so well. Men who have recently decided they are women, for example, and show up at work wearing a dress have been fired or been harassed until they quit. There have been a number of savage attacks on trans people who attempted to use the public restroom corresponding to their gender identity.
Enter what the New Republic last year called “America’s Next Great Civil Rights Struggle,” the struggle to end discrimination against transsexuals in housing, the workplace—and eventually any other place a trial lawyer can discover it. Sixteen states (plus D.C.) and 143 cities or counties have added “gender identity or expression” to their protected categories lists—alongside the usual race, religion, gender (the other kind of gender), age, and disability. A more subtle but telling sign that more states will probably add the new category is the news that 207 major corporations (places like Coca-Cola, Apple, Chevron, Kellogg, and Best Buy) now offer insurance covering the cost of full-scale “transitions.” According to 2011 numbers collected by the Human Rights Campaign’s annual Corporate Equity Index, this is an increase “from just 85 a year earlier.” When HRC began following the issue a decade ago, no corporations covered the surgery.
A number of recent gender identity discrimination cases have been settled in the plaintiffs’ favor. If Johnny is hired as a paper pusher, and then starts to come to work as Jane, and then is fired, his lawsuit for workplace discrimination and wrongful termination is relatively straightforward, because the defendants cannot usually prove the sex change affected the job of paper pusher.
Things get murkier when a workplace has established a “Bona Fide Occupational Qualification” to justify hiring only males or only females. Yes, there are jobs where one can still discriminate. Take “urine monitors”—the people who would watch you pee into a cup if you went for a drug test.
El’Jai Devoureau is currently embroiled in a gender discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, Urban Treatment Centers of Camden, New Jersey. Devoureau, a fortysomething who claims to have been dressing as a man for years, to have had years of hormone therapy and some kind of surgery which she/he has so far been very opaque about, and who even has a “male” driver’s license, applied for the male-only job but was fired after two days because Devoureau’s supervisor said rumors were going around that she/he was not a man. Devoureau, who wears long corn rows, sports a wispy beard, and looks a bit like the ’80s singer Terence Trent D’Arby, said, “But I am a man.” The supervisor said something to the effect of, “Um, we don’t think so.” And the standoff began. The case has thus begun its crawl through the New Jersey court system. More evidence to support Devoureau’s claim may have to be…er, unveiled to support Devoureau’s claim—but maybe not. As the New York Times says, the outcome could turn on “the question of what is a man.” It could certainly be precedent-setting.
WHAT I FIND REALLY ODD about this “new Civil Rights movement” is that it’s happening now—after decades of struggle over the boundaries of sex roles and a great expansion of norms. As one of the online commenters to the New Republic’s “Great New Civil Rights Struggle” article put it, “Isn’t the trans-sexual phenomenon at heart conservative? Instead of enlarging the range of human behavior, it narrows the options down to ‘girls act one way and boys another so if you act one way, you have to be trapped in the wrong gender’s body.’ ”
But exactly. As a sign of how far we have come, there is a film, Alfred Nobbs, currently in theaters. It’s about a 19th century woman “living as a man” apparently because she seeks the love of women. But in 2012 no woman has to dress as a man in order to openly partner with another woman. (Well, in most parts of the country!) No woman has to attempt to “pass” as a man to take a job on a highway crew, or to enter a training program for fighter jet pilots.
Another curiously retrograde part: Once they “transition” many transgenders become the most devout standard-bearers for sex stereotypes. “When you discuss what the patient means by ‘feeling like a woman’ you often get a sex stereotype in return—something that woman physicians note immediately is a male caricature of women’s attitudes and interests,” Paul McHugh wrote. “One of our patients, for example, said that, as a woman, he would be more ‘invested with being than with doing.’”
“Ever since I became a woman, I just can’t do math anymore,” trills the main source in the New Republic’s “Civil Rights” article.
Chaz Bono is now infamous for having become a walking sexist-comment-machine. (“I can be a a-hole; I can be insensitive.…There is something in testosterone that makes talking and gossiping really grating.…I’ve stopped talking as much. I’ve noticed that [my girlfriend] can talk endlessly.…I got way more gadget-oriented.…Definitely since transitioning I’ve wanted to be up on the latest, coolest toy.”)
Accordingly, Warren Beatty’s oldest child (who started life as Kathlyn but is known, after hormone treatments, as “Stephen Ira Beatty”) has taken to excoriating Bono from her blog, with flamers like: “I don’t want any rich white trans guy…telling the media that testosterone made him a misogynist…he has some deep-seated misogyny to work through.”
If your head is spinning with all this gender-bending, join the club. But keep in mind that there is one reference point that will hold steady like the North Star: With this new category of victim slouching toward Bethlehem to be born, the trial lawyers are girding happily. I await the day a male-to-female trans applies for a job at Hooters.
I mentioned not too long ago that I was exposed to a bunch of lesbian ex-nuns (and active nuns) when I was a kid outside of Kansas City. My bedroom window looked out onto the bell towers of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth’s headquarters, less than a mile away. The sisters who were old-school, pre-Vatican II wore habits and were generally conservative, but sidelined because of their age. The 1960′s and forward “nuns” were pretty much all lesbians, or if they weren’t, they were sure fooling a lot of people with their high-and-tight six-dollar haircuts, manly clothing and overall butch affectations and comportment. If a child can’t instantly tell whether a person is a man or a woman, there are some serious, serious psychosexual problems afoot with the androgyne in question. And, like I said, Leavenworth was never lacking for “courageous ex-nuns”, who always ended up living with fellow ex-nun “roommates”. Uh-huh.
Well, the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth officially jumped the ol’ shark and have declared according to their own pagan magisterium that abortifacients are just fine with them.
Here’s the citation from the Topeka Capital Journal.
Now, you may be thinking that a little cabal of nuns in Leavenworth, Kansas is no big shakes, right? Wrong. This is a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR business concern, and this example perfectly demonstrates what I and so many others (such as Karl Denninger) have been saying about the evil incestuous problem with the Marxist-infiltrators of the Church and how they have intentionally pushed for government takeover of the care of the sick and the poor.
First, here is a URL documenting the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Healthcare System’s (SCLHS) size:
Fitch rates their bonds as AA-. Yes, that’s right. They have a Fitch rating. Um, is it just me, or does that seem . . . wrong somehow?
Yeah. So, one more time for those of you who might be new or still haven’t figured this out yet. The Marxist infiltrators of the Catholic Church have specifically and consciously pushed for the government takeover of pretty much all charitable functions that WERE the domain of the Church – hence the traitorous alliance with the “democrat” party in the United States.
In doing this, these traitors to Our Lord have essentially used the power of the State to enforce a “mandatory tithe”, coercing every earner in the United States through the Internal Revenue Service, regardless of religious affiliation or personal preference, to pay for the services that the Church SHOULD be paying for, but has ABANDONED. That’s right. The Church has almost totally abandoned caring for the sick and the poor. Now what we have are these massive for-profit outfits like the SCLHS which are for-profit middle-men who bill everything that would have formerly been “charity” to the United States government – while still trying to lord “moral authority” over everyone else by falsely claiming to be “the Church.”
Aside from this being pure evil, the result is a mathematical inevitability: a Ponzi scheme doomed to collapse and failure. But then, that is exactly what the Marxists were driving toward – total systemic collapse leading to the Marxist oligarchs taking complete totalitarian control of the former United States, and then the entire world. The Church has been infiltrated and used as a stooge to push state control of healthcare, care of the poor and the elderly.
The point of the Marxists specifically recruiting homosexualists into the clergy is playing out before our very eyes right now. First, the homosexualists were charged with degrading and draining the Church of its capacity to preach the Gospel, and eventually to have the Church become operationally Marxist itself. The final step in this process has already begun, namely schisming the Church and forming an “American Catholic Church”, which will be a neo-pagan Marxist “Revolutionary church” and will operate as a client and front for the Marxist regime in Washington D.C.
The SCLHS is a perfect example of this. First, they want the billion-dollar gravy train to keep flowing and so they will support the Marxist regime to the very end, because the thought of them actually cutting into their TEN-FIGURE portfolio to actually, you know, PAY for healthcare for the poor in a Christ-like spirit of true charity is utterly beyond their comprehension. Are we surprised, given that they approve of killing innocent babies?
Second, since the SCLHS is almost entirely comprised of lesbians, they WANT the Church to schism and they want to form an “American Catholic Church” that will ratify and celebrate their psychosexual perversions, ordain them as priestesses, and then let those “priestesses” MARRY and engage in sodomite acts. They need statist intervention in order to make this happen, and that is EXACTLY what they are getting. The Obama regime has declared war on the Bride of Christ, and is erecting the frame of the “Revolutionary church”.
So, at the end of the day, it is all about the love of money, and perverted sex.
People, there is NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.
Finally, one more time, CHARITY and COERCION are absolutely, totally, completely 100% MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. The moment that even the slightest HINT of coercion enters into the picture, charity is DESTROYED. Gone. Adios.
Love (caritas) MUST be freely given. It HAS to be a free choice of the giver. Putting the gun and jackboot of the IRS to people’s heads and necks BY DEFINITION exterminates charity. Apparently, every jackass bishop in the Western World today is either too stupid or too Marxist to comprehend or acknowledge this utterly fundamental truth.
ANY bishop who crows on and on and waxes philosophical about the state’s NECESSARY role in healthcare, care of the poor or care of the elderly is a heretical jackass who needs to sit down, shut up, beg God’s forgiveness for being a Marxist jackass, and then beg the Holy Spirit for a modicum of intelligence and understanding of simple, obvious truths.
Christ charged THE CHURCH with caring for the sick, poor and elderly – IN CHARITY, meaning that the Church FREELY GIVES, beginning with the FREELY GIVEN tithes of the individual faithful, and then FREELY GIVEN by the Church itself to the poor, sick and elderly.
This system worked beautifully up until 50 years ago, when the Marxist-homosexualists took over. Not only did it work, but there was even enough money to build BEAUTIFUL churches. Now the Church pays for none of these things out of its own coffers, and instead money is spent on building butt-ulgy churches. There is a relatively new parish here in the Denver metro area for which the rectory – that is the priest’s house – cost $800,000. Apparently this priest felt that he “deserved” to be rewarded with an $800,000 pad. Meanwhile, at the Latin Mass parish I attend, the priests live in a small, old house, and donate their $13,000 per year salaries back to the parish. That’s telling, don’t you think?
These Novus Ordo clergy and religious are TERRIFIED at the thought of being held to the charge and discipline of the pre-Vatican II Church and actually having to spend tithe revenue on CHARITY and embrace poverty themselves, and they will schism the Church before they turn loose of their government coerced ObamaCare/Medicare/Medicaid/SocialSecurity/Welfare gravy train.
The debate over whether the state ought to recognize gay marriages has thus far focused on the issue as one of civil rights. Such a treatment is erroneous because state recognition of marriage is not a universal right. States regulate marriage in many ways besides denying men the right to marry men, and women the right to marry women. Roughly half of all states prohibit first cousins from marrying, and all prohibit marriage of closer blood relatives, even if the individuals being married are sterile. In all states, it is illegal to attempt to marry more than one person, or even to pass off more than one person as one’s spouse. Some states restrict the marriage of people suffering from syphilis or other venereal diseases. Homosexuals, therefore, are not the only people to be denied the right to marry the person of their choosing.
I do not claim that all of these other types of couples restricted from marrying are equivalent to homosexual couples. I only bring them up to illustrate that marriage is heavily regulated, and for good reason. When a state recognizes a marriage, it bestows upon the couple certain benefits which are costly to both the state and other individuals. Collecting a deceased spouse’s social security, claiming an extra tax exemption for a spouse, and having the right to be covered under a spouse’s health insurance policy are just a few examples of the costly benefits associated with marriage. In a sense, a married couple receives a subsidy. Why? Because a marriage between two unrelated heterosexuals is likely to result in a family with children, and propagation of society is a compelling state interest. For this reason, states have, in varying degrees, restricted from marriage couples unlikely to produce children.
Granted, these restrictions are not absolute. A small minority of married couples are infertile. However, excluding sterile couples from marriage, in all but the most obvious cases such as those of blood relatives, would be costly. Few people who are sterile know it, and fertility tests are too expensive and burdensome to mandate. One might argue that the exclusion of blood relatives from marriage is only necessary to prevent the conception of genetically defective children, but blood relatives cannot marry even if they undergo sterilization. Some couples who marry plan not to have children, but without mind-reading technology, excluding them is impossible. Elderly couples can marry, but such cases are so rare that it is simply not worth the effort to restrict them. The marriage laws, therefore, ensure, albeit imperfectly, that the vast majority of couples who do get the benefits of marriage are those who bear children.
Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society, so there is no reason for the state to grant them the costly benefits of marriage, unless they serve some other state interest. The burden of proof, therefore, is on the advocates of gay marriage to show what state interest these marriages serve. Thus far, this burden has not been met.
One may argue that lesbians are capable of procreating via artificial insemination, so the state does have an interest in recognizing lesbian marriages, but a lesbian’s sexual relationship, committed or not, has no bearing on her ability to reproduce. Perhaps it may serve a state interest to recognize gay marriages to make it easier for gay couples to adopt. However, there is ample evidence (see, for example, David Popenoe’s Life Without Father) that children need both a male and female parent for proper development. Unfortunately, small sample sizes and other methodological problems make it impossible to draw conclusions from studies that directly examine the effects of gay parenting. However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child’s development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes. Is it wise to have a social policy that encourages family arrangements that deny children such essentials? Gays are not necessarily bad parents, nor will they necessarily make their children gay, but they cannot provide a set of parents that includes both a male and a female.
Some have compared the prohibition of homosexual marriage to the prohibition of interracial marriage. This analogy fails because fertility does not depend on race, making race irrelevant to the state’s interest in marriage. By contrast, homosexuality is highly relevant because it precludes procreation.
Some argue that homosexual marriages serve a state interest because they enable gays to live in committed relationships. However, there is nothing stopping homosexuals from living in such relationships today. Advocates of gay marriage claim gay couples need marriage in order to have hospital visitation and inheritance rights, but they can easily obtain these rights by writing a living will and having each partner designate the other as trustee and heir. There is nothing stopping gay couples from signing a joint lease or owning a house jointly, as many single straight people do with roommates. The only benefits of marriage from which homosexual couples are restricted are those that are costly to the state and society.
Some argue that the link between marriage and procreation is not as strong as it once was, and they are correct. Until recently, the primary purpose of marriage, in every society around the world, has been procreation. In the 20th century, Western societies have downplayed the procreative aspect of marriage, much to our detriment. As a result, the happiness of the parties to the marriage, rather than the good of the children or the social order, has become its primary end, with disastrous consequences. When married persons care more about themselves than their responsibilities to their children and society, they become more willing to abandon these responsibilities, leading to broken homes, a plummeting birthrate, and countless other social pathologies that have become rampant over the last 40 years. Homosexual marriage is not the cause for any of these pathologies, but it will exacerbate them, as the granting of marital benefits to a category of sexual relationships that are necessarily sterile can only widen the separation between marriage and procreation.
The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage. If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis can it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other? Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally. But why is sexual love between two people more worthy of state sanction than love between three, or five? When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos.
Watch Glenn Beck discuss the Christian bashing incident below…
Dan Savage, a paid evangelist of the HOMOSEX agenda, earns a living giving people “sex advice”, which usually amounts to nothing more than just encouraging students and others to engage in wonton sexual activity.
Not surprisingly, he’s no fan of the Bible. In a recent speech to students, the founder of the ‘It Gets Better’ anti-bullying campaign decided not to talk about bullying but instead bully Christians and the Bible himself.
Watch the original shocking video of Savage below:
LINK - Vulnerable Senate Dems Back Away from Obama Gay Marriage Flip Flop
“The Hill reports that some Democratic senators up for re-election have declined to back President Obama’s gay marriage statement.
Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.), the two most vulnerable Democratic senators, have declined to endorse Obama’s call for the legalization of gay marriage.
Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Bob Casey (Pa.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.), Democrats who have easier races but in states that could become more competitive by November, have also backed away from Obama’s stance.
They all represent states with constitutional amendments or laws banning same-sex marriage.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) predicted Thursday the Democratic Party would adopt a pro-gay marriage plank in its platform. While that may happen when delegates to the Democratic National Convention meet September in Charlotte, N.C., the party remains divided…”
MSNBC host Chris Matthews is using President Obama’s old “evolving” motto for his gay marriage stance against black Bishop Harry Jackson (and religious leaders in general), who stands firmly against marriage that isn’t between one man and one woman.
Listeners of New York hip hop radio station HOT 97 did not take kindly to the news that President Obama had endorsed same-sex marriage. The day after the announcement, callers took to the airwaves to express their disappointment with the news.
TRANSCRIPT:
HOST:
The sad part is amazingly there are people in New York whose votes he just lost. No question about it I have been doing radio for a long time and whenever I talk about this issue I am shocked by how many people call up and are upset with the idea of supporting same-sex marriage. Even in New York, even in 2012.
So, if anyone in NYC is disappointed that Obama made this announcement, call us up.
(…)
Anthony, how do you feel about Obama? You’re not feeling him, huh?
CALLER ANTHONY:
No, because I’m totally against that same-sex marriage, man. I’m 27, I grew up in the days where a female’s supposed to marry a female, I mean a male supposed to marry a female.
HOST:
How does it affect you?
ANTHONY:
Because you got the younger generation in today’s society growing up. I mean if you have a kid would you want your kid, if he was a boy, marrying another guy? Or daughter marrying another girl? The emotions, the feelings?
I’m totally against it. I mean I’m born and raised in New York, my parents are from Guyana. That would never go in Guyana.
HOST:
Jennifer, you will not vote for Obama because of what he said?
JENNIFER:
Definitely not.
HOST:
Why?
JENNIFER:
I don’t know, I’ve never liked gay people
HOST:
Jennifer, do you know how disgusting that sounds?
JENNIFER:
Let me rephrase that, I don’t agree with what they are into.
I’m not going to vote for Obama because I feel like… he knew he was losing votes and he needed to get people’s attention. And that’s what he did. Why did he want to do this now, when he knows election day is…
Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, led opponents in the move to deny a judgeship to Richmond prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland.
In a testy interview today with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on the Virginia legislature’s recent refusal to appoint openly gay Richmond prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland to a judgeship, Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, declared that “sodomy is not a civil right.”
Marshall, a U.S. Senate candidate and one of the General Assembly’s most conservative members, denied that he had lobbied against Thorne-Begland because he is gay, but instead termed him an “activist.”
Marshall said Thorne-Begland “displayed a pattern of behavior inconsistent with what we have come to expect in Virginia judges.”
Homosexual Prosecutor (denied judgeship) With Lover and 2 Children
As examples, he said Thorne-Begland had been forced to “misstate his background” in order to join the Navy in the late 1980s, defied regulation by going on television and been openly critical of the now-defunct “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
“He can be a prosecutor if he wants to,” Marshall said, “but we don’t want advocates as judges.”
Marshall added that he was “concerned about possible bias” if Thorne-Begland had been appointed a General District judge, using the example of a barroom fight between a homosexual and heterosexual.
Marshall rejected Baldwin’s comparison of the issue to civil rights and women’s suffrage, remarking: “Sodomy is not a civil right. It’s not the same as the civil rights movement.”