Free Republic

On February 7th, Coach is Right posted a story reporting John Boehner was involved in an under-the-table negotiation with Attorney General Eric Holder to arrange a “mutually acceptable conclusion” to the Congressional investigation of Operation Fast and Furious. (1) Originally broken by Mike Vanderboegh on his Sipsey Street Irregulars website, it was reported that the Department of Justice would provide Boehner and Republicans the heads of DOJ higher-ups Lanny Breuer and Jason Weinstein along with assorted minor players and in return, the GOP would drop House and Senate committee investigations, giving Eric Holder and Barack Obama a pass on their...

Go to the source for the speech.

by John Hill Stand With Arizona Kris Kobach, architect of Arizona's landmark S.B. 1070 and Kansas Secretary of State, brought needed common sense to the CPAC Conference discussion on immigration. Following remarks by Alex Nowrasteh, a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in which he denounced E-Verify and claimed - to boos from the audience - that "free market conservatives" should allow employers to hire illegal aliens (see synopsis here), it was Kobach's turn to restore sanity. First Mr. Kobach laid out the concept of "attrition through enforcement" with a simple analogy. He then laid out how Arizona and...

For nearly a year now, House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R=CA) and Attorney General Eric Holder have locked horns over Operation Fast and Furious. Throughout this time we have seen heated exchanges between the two during Congressional hearings, watched the DOJ’s narrative change more than once, and wondered why Holder has thus far been allowed to dictate the speed at which the committee can investigate him. As of late, when Holder dug in and simply refused to the turn over the documents the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed, the contest between he and Issa turned into nothing less than a...

Mexico arrests figure in Fast and Furious gun-smuggling scandal REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- Mexican authorities have arrested a reputed enforcer for the country's most powerful drug cartel -- a man also alleged to have amassed weapons from the U.S. government's failed Fast and Furious gun-smuggling operation (link, in Spanish, includes video). Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, 33, is also wanted by U.S. officials on drug-trafficking charges in El Paso. Mexican and U.S. authorities say he served as a top lieutenant to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel and was in charge of operations in the border state of...

Whether Operation Fast and Furious was a legitimate law enforcement operation, as the Department of Justice claims, or was part of a plot to impose gun control, it was radically different from all other border gun operations in one crucial way. Operation Fast and Furious was the only border gun operation that was undertaken with the full intention of the straw-purchased guns leaving the control of law enforcement officers and reaching the armories of drug cartel murderers. That fact alone should lead to the impeachment or administrative removal of everyone, from field agents to political appointees and elected officials that...

Congressman John Boehner, the House Speaker better known for displays of weeping than of courage, is reportedly cutting a deal with Eric Holder which would provide a “mutually satisfactory” outcome in Barack Obama’s criminal, gun running endeavor Operation Fast and Furious. Months ago, Boehner prevented Darrell Issa filing a charge of perjury against Holder even after documents proved the Attorney General’s May 4th House testimony concerning the date of his first “acquaintance” with Fast and Furious to be an outright lie. And now the weepy Speaker will OFFICIALLY let the most corrupt Department of Justice head in the nation’s history...

As a result of his refusal to honor House committee subpoenas demanding the release of some 70 thousand Fast and Furious-related documents currently withheld by the Department of Justice, Eric Holder faces the very real possibility of arrest and imprisonment by the House of Representatives. “Your actions lead us to conclude that the [Justice] Department is actively engaged in a cover-up,” wrote House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa to Attorney General Holder just two days before his February 2nd testimony before the Committee. (1) Stating what interested Americans have known for a year or more, Issa speaks of the...

Thanks to Sipsey Street, and then the Daily Caller, evidence is mounting that John Boehner may be surreptitiously putting the Kibosh on Darrell Issa's Fast and Furious investigation. The vast majority of today's show - available for MP3 download or stream - dealt with this subject. http://www.benbarrack.com/show_archives.asp

As I readied myself for what promised to be a bombshell of a hearing on February 2nd, I thought Attorney General Eric Holder would have his toughest test yet. He would now be in front of the committee that Darrell Issa chairs - the House Oversight Committee. In every Fast and Furious hearing Issa had been involved in, he stood out as the top bulldog, the fieriest and most knowledgable about the case. On February 2nd, he had the gavel and much more evidence with which to go directly at Holder. As I watched the hearing, I was struck by...

Yesterday was the devil's own day in the Gunwalker scandal investigation and the search for the truth suffered as a result. Several sources tell Sipsey Street that the committee's work has been slowed by the intervention of Speaker of the House John Boehner, with some saying plainly that "the fix is in."

The mother of murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry had harsh words for Attorney General Eric Holder after Thursday’s House oversight committee hearing on Operation Fast and Furious. “THIS IS FOR YOU SON,” Mrs. Terry posted on Facebook at about 3:30 p.m. “Mr. Holder. How come you can never say my sons name. You never have. All i ever hear you say is ‘i didnt find out or I cant say’ Im actually tired of hearing your double talk in answering questions. What a joke you are. You know my son was a real AMERICAN, a WARRIOR, and a HERO,...

PHOENIX, January 29, 2012―President Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, had the Department of Justice dump more documents relating to botched Operation Fast and Furious on congressional officials late Friday night. The documents reveal that Holder learned of the death of Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, on the day it happened. The released emails show a conversation between one official, whose name was redacted, and now-former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke. “On December 14, 2010, a BORTAC agent working in the Nogales, AZ AOR was shot. The agent was conducting Border Patrol operations 18 miles north of the international boundary when...

Operation 'Fast and Furious' has taken a new turn. Late Friday night, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released documents that show Attorney General Eric Holder was alerted of border patrol agent Brian Terry's death the day it occurred- contradicting Holder's statements when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2011. At the time, Holder said he was informed of Terry's murder only "a few weeks" before the hearing.

For years, the Left has asked why the Obama administration hasn’t pursued prosecutions against lenders who arguably engaged in fraud when foreclosing on mortgages in the wake of the housing-bubble collapse.  It turns out that these lenders had friends in high places in the Department of Justice.  Reuters reports that both Attorney General Eric Holder and his lieutenant Lanny Breuer, who ran the DoJ’s criminal division, were partners in a law firm that worked on behalf of those very same firms (via JWF’s Just A Grunt): U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal...

When Eric Holder ordered Justice Department Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar to begin an investigation of possible wrongdoing in Operation Fast and Furious it was with just one purpose in mind—enable the Attorney General and other DOJ officials to refuse to answer questions or provide documentation concerning the “gunwalking” debacle because there is an “ongoing investigation.” It’s a neat little legal trick the Obama Regime has pulled on more than one occasion. But although Holder used this dodge of his own creation to keep congressional committee members at bay for nearly a year, it appears the OIG report is just about...

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday pledged to use the full force of the Justice Department to defend the Voting Rights Act, one of the keystones of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Speaking in Columbia, S.C., on the federal holiday honoring the birth of assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., Holder defended the goals of the Voting Rights Act. The law prohibited practices that prevented African Americans from going to the polls, and it gave federal agencies new powers to ensure that voting was more accessible. It went into effect in 1965 and...

Calling the president’s illegal non-recess appointments “an escalation in a pattern of contempt for the elected representatives of the American people,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, dismissed a Justice Department memo on Thursday that sought to lend retroactive constitutional weight to the president’s move. Grassley hinted at Senate “action to check and balance” the president’s power grab, though he declined to go into specifics. The DOJ Office of Legal Counsel’s memo, also debunked by Heritage’s Todd Gaziano, claims that pro forma Senate sessions do not preclude the president from unilaterally appointing federal officials. That legal...

Arpaio is challenging the Obama administration’s Department of Justice to present evidence to back its charge that his office is discriminating against Hispanics. “Prove it,” Arpaio said in remarks directed at Holder in an interview with WND. “If Eric Holder has evidence that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has engaged in systematic violations of the civil rights of Hispanic, then show me the evidence,” Arpaio said. Arpaio contends that the 22-page complaint the Department of Justice released Dec. 15 against his office was nothing more than anecdotal and didn’t prove there are systematic sheriff’s department policies aimed at depriving Hispanics...

BUFFALO, NY—U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Minnetta Walker, 44, of Buffalo, N.Y., who was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States, was sentenced to 24 months in prison, to be followed by one year supervised released, by U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Arcara. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Catherine Baumgarten, who handled the case, stated that Walker was employed by the United States Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), as a behavior detection officer, assigned to the Buffalo Niagara International Airport (Buffalo Airport) in Cheektowaga, New York. TSA is responsible for ensuring passenger...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. claims Jim Crow is returning. In a recent speech, Mr. Holder said that attempts by states to pass voter identification laws will disenfranchise minorities, rolling back the clock to the evil days of segregation. He said that a growing number of minorities fear that “the same disparities, divisions and problems” now afflict America as they did in 1965 prior to the Voting Rights Act. According to the Obama administration, our democracy is being threatened by racist Republicans. Hence, the Justice Department must prevent laws requiring a photo ID to vote from being enacted. Mr....

Holder's Racial Politics Eric Holder must be amazed that President Obama was elected and he could become Attorney General. That's a fair inference after the Attorney General last Friday blocked South Carolina's voter ID law on grounds that it would hurt minorities. What a political abuse of law. In a letter to South Carolina's government, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez called the state law—which would require voters to present one of five forms of photo ID at the polls—a violation of Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Overall, he noted, 8.4% of the state's registered...

Suffrage: Fresh from using his race as a defense in the Fast and Furious scandal, the attorney general blocks South Carolina's voter photo ID law as discriminatory. Tell that to the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Palmetto State can't seem to catch a break from this administration. First, the right-to-work state gets harassed by the National Labor Relations Board over Boeing's expansion into a new plant. Now the Justice Department has blocked a voter ID law passed in May and signed by Gov. Nikki Haley. Both federal actions, along with a Justice Department investigation into Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have...

The number of officers killed in the line of duty jumped 13 percent in 2011 compared with the year before - and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder condemned the increase as “a devastating and unacceptable trend” that he blamed on illegal firearms. The number of deceased law enforcement officers rose to 173 killed in the line of duty this year, from 153 in 2010, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund announced Wednesday. This year’s figure is 23 percent higher than the 122 killed in the line of duty in 2009.

With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama's snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal. Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May -- while Operation Fast and Furious subpoenas were flying on Capitol Hill -- that "one of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals." Conveniently, he defines scandal as a "widespread elite perception of wrongdoing." So as long as left-wing Ivy League...

The phrase voter literacy test conjures up thoughts of devious and pernicious practices once used primarily in the Deep South to disenfranchise minority voters. Yet, a ruling by a federal judge last week seems to go overboard in the opposite direction. From The Daily Caller: A U.S. District Court judge has rejected a challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—filled [sic] when the Department of Justice barred the city of Kinston, N.C. from holding nonpartisan elections—reasoning that lack of access to party affiliation would discriminate against minority voters who otherwise wouldn’t know how to find Democratic...

It's the most ridiculous and uncontroversial issue in the world, but leave it to a liberal/Democrat to make it serious and controversial. According to them, demanding an official picture I.D. to vote "disenfranchises" poor people. And we all know, they tell us, that most poor people are minorities? How? No freaking idea.But this, apparently, is why most Republicans -- nay, most Americans -- believe that voter I.D. is just plain common sense.Because it is.Think of all the things you have to do in your lives that require an official photo I.D.: from driving a car to boarding an airplane to renting...

There comes a time at most large family gatherings when a heated political argument breaks out. And by “heated political argument” what I mean is “someone just repeats something they heard on Hannity’s radio show that you know to be completely untrue.” You may be the lone liberal in a conservative family, or you may have one right-wing uncle in your left-wing family, but this will happen. What to do? If you have a “smart phone,” just bookmark Snopes now. That’ll take care of the really weird stuff. (Well, not this level of weird, but “I read that airlines don’t...

When Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue filed a 1997 wrongful death lawsuit against the Clinton Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Prisons he had no idea that the scraps of information grudgingly released by the federal government would be the first in a 15 year trail of evidence detailing the criminal involvement of the FBI, CIA, ATF and United States Secret Service in the planning and execution of the Oklahoma City bombing. Since the 1995 murder of his brother Kenneth in his cell at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, Trentadue has badgered, bullied, harassed, threatened and...

Krauthammer: Eric Holder ‘one of the most incompetent attorneys general in US history’ Jeff Poor - The Daily Caller 52 mins ago Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder suggested racism was behind the attacks he was facing for the missteps his Department of Justice has made. On Friday’s “Special Report with Bret Baier” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer explained what he thought was the rationale behind this charge from Holder: It’s a defensive tactic for his political troubles. “It’s clearly a cheap shot of an attorney general who is in political trouble,” Krauthammer said....

The ObamaAdministration's re-election mobilization continues: Witness Eric Holder's attempt to play the race card and perhaps twist the law in a campaign against voter identification laws. In the AttorneyGeneral's telling, the movement in the states to require voters to show some ID is a revival of minority disenfranchisement a la Jim Crow. A growing number of minorities, he said in a speech last week, are now worried about "the same disparities, divisions and problems" that beset the country in 1965 and "many Americans, for the first time in their lives . . . now have reason to believe that we...

From documents obtained by Jesse Trentadue, it’s clear that Clinton Administration Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and his DOJ team had conspired to squelch any investigation into the August, 1995 murder of Trentadue’s brother Kenneth. (1) But the obvious question is WHY? And why kill Kenneth Trentadue at all? He was no more than a face in the crowd, hardly distinguished or distinguishable from tens of millions of others throughout the United States. What would move the Deputy Attorney General to animate resources of the United States Justice Department to make certain there would be no hearing, no investigation, no...

Either there has been a huge increase in discrimination by law enforcement during the Obama administration, or Obama is targeting law enforcement for politically motivated reasons. In the current era of heightened sensitivity to racism and police brutality, it makes no sense that abuses by law enforcement are increasing. The U.S. Department of Justice’s sudden flurry of investigations finding massive amounts of discrimination and abuses by police agencies around the country is coincidentally occurring at the same time the U.S. Department of Justice is undergoing a highly publicized Congressional investigation into Fast and Furious. Law enforcement is a natural target...

"[T]he Justice Department hid and destroyed evidence that would have exposed my brother's murders, and we believe that Mr. Holder was directly involved in those acts of obstruction of justice." It's not a new accusation. As a matter of fact...

“You need to know that Eric Holder…played a key role in covering up the torture-murder death of my brother, Kenneth Michael Trentadue.” (1) This is what Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue wrote in December of 2008 to prospective incoming chairman of the Senate Justice Committee, Patrick Leahy. The newly elected Barack Obama had made Holder his choice for Attorney General and Trentadue was going to do everything in his power to stop this shameful appointment from going forward. Kenneth Trentadue was killed in Oklahoma City on August 21st of 1995, four months after the bombing of the Alfred P....

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION at the link below to show you Stand With Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and AGAINST the political witchhunt of Obama's Department of Justice. This Administration and its open-borders allies La Raza, MALDEF and the ACLU, will stop at nothing to try and destroy the most prominent national symbol in the fight against illegal immigration. Sheriff Joe will not back down. Please sign the petition to show we stand behind him. [Note: The opposition already has a petition AGAINST Joe with 11,014 signatures (as of 6:32PST). Let's blow past them with 20,000 signatures or more by the end...

“This is classic Sherlock Holmes ‘the-dog-didn’t-bark’ evidence” of cooperation between the progressive groups and the administration, Rivkin said. The groups “are always bitching about [legal] impunity, and how impunity encourages aberrant behavior and weakens deterrence,” he said. “So where is their outrage? Why are they not criticizing a war criminal going free?” If U.S. troops had committed war crimes and were let go, Rivkin told TheDC, “wouldn’t every newspaper in the country be horrified and slamming the administration? How is it better to let an enemy war criminal go [free] to be hailed and praised?”

Is it racist to require people to show a photo ID when they vote? You need a photo ID for nearly any meaningful transaction, such as cashing checks, including government checks. If this simple requirement “suppresses� the vote, maybe we need to ask why it’s such a great idea to push for universal suffrage for every adult who is merely breathing. Of course, even this latter requirement would suppress the vote in Chicago and New Orleans, where dead people get to vote all the time – and do so cheerfully! In a speech Tuesday at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library...

President Obama led us to believe that he would be a post-racial president who would bring the races together, but it's gotten to where you can't criticize this most leftist administration in American history without someone accusing you of racism. The most recent example involves criticism of Attorney General Eric Holder over Fast and Furious, an operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which was overseen by the Justice Department. It involved the indirect sale of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, which resulted in some 300 killings in Mexico, including the murder of Border Patrol agent...

Buried in a recent New York Times profile of Attorney General Eric Holder is this revealing tidbit: But Mr. Holder contended that many of his other critics — not only elected Republicans but also a broader universe of conservative commentators and bloggers — were instead playing “Washington gotcha” games, portraying them as frequently “conflating things, conveniently leaving some stuff out, construing things to make it seem not quite what it was” to paint him and other department figures in the worst possible light. Of that group of critics, Mr. Holder said he believed that a few — the “more extreme...

Documents obtained by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show then Clinton Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder authorized members of the FBI to provide explosives to Oklahoma City bombing criminals Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols immediately prior to the April, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building. Holder had authorized the FBI to provide the explosives to McVeigh and Nichols in conjunction with a Clinton Administration undercover operation named PATCON, an acronym for “Patriot Conspiracy.” As Jesse Trentadue describes it, “PATCON was designed to infiltrate and incite… militia[s] and evangelical Christians to...

As we mark one year this week since Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot to death in Arizona -- with guns allowed to drift over the Mexican line found at the scene -- we certainly know much more about Operation Fast and Furious. That's the bad-idea-executed-poorly child of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, sanctioned by your own U.S. Justice Department. In addition to Terry's death, another federal agent may have been killed in Mexico by a walked gun, and the case could well have ties to North Texas. What we still don't know -- what Attorney...

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION at the link below to show you Stand With Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and AGAINST the political witchhunt of Obama's Department of Justice. This Administration and its open-borders allies La Raza, MALDEF and the ACLU, will stop at nothing to try and destroy the most prominent national symbol in the fight against illegal immigration. Sheriff Joe will not back down. Please sign the petition to show we stand behind him. [Note: The opposition already has a petition AGAINST Joe with 3,400 signatures. Let's blow past them with 5,000 signatures or more by the end of today!]

by John HillStand With Arizona Prominent Congressman Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is defending Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio against Justice Department charges of committing "civil rights violations" against Latinos in Maricopa County. Thomas Perez, head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division - and a former board member of Hispanic hate group CASA de Maryland, unexpectedly released the report on December 15. Some observers, including Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, believe the sudden release of results of the 3+ year investigation was timed to distract from the one-year anniversary of the murder of Border Agent Brian Terry, for which Eric Holder's...

NEWS RELEASE Sheriff’s Response to DOJ Letter December 15, 2011 (Maricopa County, AZ) The following statements were made by Sheriff Joe Arpaio during a press conference held on 12/15/11 in response to the 22 page Department of Justice letter received 1 hour prior to DOJ press conference. “Before we get started today, I want to say something to the citizens of Arizona and the rest of the nation. On the surface, it may appear that today’s findings and actions by our federal government are directed towards this Sheriff and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. The truth of the matter is...

Phoenix - Sheriff Joe Arpaio said a scathing U.S. Justice Department report about his office's law enforcement tactics against Latinos marks "a sad day for America as a whole." Billed as America's toughest sheriff, Arpaio struck a defiant tone at a Thursday afternoon news conference in response to the report, which he called a politically motivated attack by the Obama administration that will make Arizona unsafe. (Snip) Homeland Security also will restrict the sheriff's office use of the Secure Communities program, which uses fingerprints collected in local jails to identify illegal immigrants.

The Justice Department, following an often hostile three-year investigation, said Thursday the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) in Phoenix under the leadership of Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio violated federal law and the Constitution in its handling of persons arrested and inmates held in its jail system. Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, who heads the department’s Civil Rights Division, said investigators concluded there was reasonable cause to believe that sheriff’s deputies engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conduct and violations of federal law that jeopardized the agency’s commitment to fair and effective law enforcement. The not-unexpected decision said...

During Eric Holder’s December 8th testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Darrell Issa told the Attorney General that he faced contempt of congress charges for his continued stonewalling of document demands of House committee subpoenas and Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner added that impeachment proceedings could be forthcoming. But with near complete liberal ownership of the American media and the increasingly supple spine of House Speaker Jim Boehner to fall back on, Holder continued to lie, distort and virtually make light of the Obama Regime initiated death toll of Operation Fast and Furious. Lying is a “state of mind” Holder...

by John HillStand With Arizona Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar has filed a resolution in the House of Representatives pushing for vote of “no confidence” in Attorney General Eric Holder. The resolution is a formal way to exhibit congressional disdain for Holder as the investigation into "Operation Fast and Furious" proceeds. It would also be an initial step toward some House Republicans’ plan to formally remove him from office if he won’t resign.The resolution, officially numbered H. Res. 490, states that “it is the sense of the House of Representatives that Congress has lost confidence in the Attorney General of...

Republicans in Congress appear to be increasingly committed to the idea that Attorney General Eric Holder should resign because of the part he played — or didn’t play — in Fast and Furious. Late yesterday afternoon, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona — who, you’ll recall, said Holder and other top Justice officials could conceivably be cast as “accessories to murder� — filed a resolution in the House of Representatives to call for a vote of “no confidence� in the AG. The Daily Caller reports: The resolution, introduced Monday afternoon, is a formal way to exhibit congressional disdain for Holder...