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Via Jammie Wearing Fool, the numbers are as brutal as he says. In a poll taken by The Hill after last week’s assertion of executive privilege by Barack Obama in the Operation Fast and Furious probe, only 29% of likely voters supported Obama’s move to block access to Department of Justice documentation, while a clear majority disapproved: A clear majority of likely voters believes President Obama has exercised his executive power inappropriately — particularly in blocking the release of documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious, according to a new poll for The Hill. … The Hill Poll found that...

Scandal: The president's spokesman confuses a "controlled delivery" operation known as Wide Receiver with the quite different Fast and Furious and couldn't even remember the name of the Border Patrol agent killed by it. When a Border Patrol agent is murdered in the service of his country as a result of a program run by his own government, one would think the White House press secretary would know his name. Jay Carney, his name was Brian Terry. During a contentious press conference where even the White House press corps seemed to have had enough with the administration's tap dancing about...

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Few principles are more important to our constitutional scheme than the separation of powers, which is precisely why President Obama's bogus assertion of executive privilege to thwart Congress' investigation into Fast and Furious is so inexcusable. Executive privilege is an important safeguard against congressional overreach and to preserve the separation of powers. The inherent right of the executive to protect highly sensitive information has long been recognized, and the privilege was judicially established during the Watergate era. As such, Congress should not go on fishing expeditions against a president to score political points. But neither should a president assert the...

President Barack Obama has long tried to distance himself from the “Fast and Furious” scandal at the Justice Department, which stems from a program under which Mexican drug cartels were allowed to acquire U.S. firearms that were later used against U.S. law-enforcement personnel. By invoking executive privilege to stymie congressional investigation of the case, the president has placed himself squarely in the center of it.President Obama, who had been a bitter critic of the Bush administration’s use of executive privilege, today through his representatives protested that he is only doing what the Bush administration did before him. The same...

Last night, radio host Mark Levin outlined the five steps that should now be taken to compel Attorney General Eric Holder to produce Operation Fast and Furious documents. “There is no need for Senate action,” Levin explained. Instead, he said, a civil lawsuit should be pursued by House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). Levin outlined what he believes is “the right way to proceed”: 1. Hold Holder in contempt by resolution of the House. 2.Seek authorization from the House for the Committee to proceed by civil action to compel production of the documents. 3.Chairman Issa should file suit in...

The garbage propagated by the Obama Administration is not going unnoticed by some liberals. Some are indeed calling him out. Over at the Daily Kos, an article slammed him for his incompetency and lack of transparency: At Reddit, many users have had enough with the President's broken promises. Here are just a few examples. "A wolf in sheep's clothing:" ...Even at Democratic Underground some (though certainly not most) actually thought about what the President was doing:

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At Pelosi’s weekly press conference this morning, she made the point several times that there was a huge difference between George W. Bush asserting Executive Privilege over the firing of US Attorneys and Obama using it yesterday. When asked what the differences were she deferred to Elijah Cummings on the issue. But then she took a moment to tell the press what this contempt vote was really about, to stop Holder from fighting voter suppression in this country: Contempt of Congress? Contempt of Congress? To frivolously use that really important vehicle to undermine the person who’s assigned to stop the...

This are actually two questions, both equally important, thanks to the calendar. Will Barack Obama's claims of executive privilege work legally, and will it work politically? We're more likely to find the answer to the second question before we find the answer to the first, as the presidential election will arrive before any definitive court ruling on the action yesterday from Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. In my column for The Fiscal Times, I predict that Obama will lose on both counts: A Congressional Research Service analysis from 2008 makes the need for presidential involvement in a claim of...

    On Wednesday's Mark Levin Show:A House Congressional panel has voted to place Eric Holder in contempt of Congress regarding the Fast and Furious investigation.Also, President Obama has cited executive privilege and refuses to hand over evidence or documents regardingwhat he knew or when he knew it.Mark applauds the Republicans for standing up and delivering a blow to the tyranny that is going on, and urges them to keep at it. Mark explains the history of executive privilege, as well as the power of Congress versus the power of the Executive. It is clear that Eric Holder is at...

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s mother and father released a statement today on President Obama’s executive privilege. “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.” Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry “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...

Fast and Furious fight heads to the House floorPresident Obama’s attempt to invoke executive privilege to forestall contempt-of-Congress proceedings against Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. failed. Instead, the claim elevates the dispute between the administration and Capitol Hill to a new and troubling level. The operative question now is, what did the president know and when did he know it? The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted Wednesday to recommend a contempt charge against Mr. Holder. Since October, the Justice Department has refused to respond to a subpoena seeking 1,300 pages of documents related to the botched Fast...

WASHINGTON—A House committee voted to sanction Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt of Congress, escalating a standoff between Republicans and the Obama administration over documents about a botched gun-trafficking operation. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in a party-line vote, approved the measure by the panel's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), after a nearly six-hour hearing that largely devolved into partisan bickering. House Republican leaders immediately said they would bring the contempt measure to the House floor next week. Just before the committee began its meeting Wednesday morning, the White House said President Barack Obama had asserted executive...

March 26, 2007 Executive Privilege: A Primer In view of the current conflict between Congress and the President, it might be useful to outline existing law on executive privilege, and thus to provide a kind of primer (a tentative, preliminary, and incomplete one to be sure). The following does not focus on or attempt to resolve the current controversy. Nor does it trace the practices of Congress and the executive branch over time. One of the largest lessons is that much of the law remains unsettled. The Supreme Court has not said a great deal; the court of appeals for...

House Oversight Committee Has Just Passed a Resolution Holding Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt for not releasing fast and furious documents.   The Contempt Charge now goes to the entire House for a vote on holding Holder in Contempt before it is sent to prosecution.The committee even passed an amendment with many reasons why Obama's executive privilege is not valid The Committee hearing was very interesting. The Democrats, like Reps Towns and Rep Norton, tried to say that the Committee should give more time to Eric Holder because Holder is willing to work with the committee to release some documents....

June 20, 2012WashTimes: Sen. Grassley: Assertion of Executive Privilege Raises ‘Monumental Questions’ Bryan Preston..... “The assertion of executive privilege raises monumental questions,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee who first began the Fast and Furious investigation. “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? 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,” he said. ..........

By now, you probably know that President Barack Obama invoked executive privilege to stall Congress' attempt to get Attorney General Eric Holder to fork over documents in the Fast and Furious Scandal. You probably also know, by now, that Obama explicitly spoke out against executive privilege before he was president, saying "the American people need to know what's going on," in yet another classic "do as I say, not as I do" moment brought to you by the first dictator in the history of the United States. But did you know the president has to be involved in a situation...

The White House asserted executive privilege Wednesday over some gun-trafficking-probe documents sought by congressional Republicans, throwing into uncertainty a possible vote to sanction Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt of Congress. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was meeting Wednesday morning to discuss the contempt fight. The panel's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), said the committee was evaluating the White House's assertion. In a letter to Mr. Issa, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the president had asserted the privilege to block the documents from being released, but he held out the possibility of negotiating an agreement over...

President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to forge ahead Wednesday morning with its meeting on the contempt resolution anyway. If the vote proceeds, Republicans have more than enough votes on committee to pass the resolution. However, Holder would not be considered held in contempt of Congress unless and until the full House approves the measure.