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LAS CRUCES (AP) — Defense lawyers for a New Mexico family accused of selling weapons to Mexican cartels say the federal government’s investigation is politically-motivated.

President Obama has an idea that can bring the contentious gun control debate to an end, in a manner that should be satisfactory to all sides. His idea is "safe, legal, and rare" [1]. Applied here, it means that guns should be safe, legal, and rare ("SLR-guns"). Those of you expecting access to your Second Amendment rights, don't be too bothered by "rare." It is somewhat contradictory, but other "safe, legal, and rare" applications ("SLR-other") experience a near-doubling of their underlying volumes once legality is affirmed. Before considering the particulars of SLR-guns, we should note our president's reasonable appreciation for...

Mitt Romney either lied in federal filings that show he worked at Bain Capital through 2002 and could be guilty of a felony, or has lied to the American people in saying he left the company in 1999, the Obama campaign is arguing in light of news reports on the firm’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CEDAR RAPIDS - President Barack Obama didn't answer a question posed by The Hawk Eye about the so-called Fast and Furious scandal, citing the ongoing investigation. But he took the opportunity to defend Attorney General Eric Holder's actions so far. The U.S. House voted to find Holder in contempt of Congress last week, due to the fact that his office did not turn over key documents to aid in Congress' investigation of the scandal. U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has been at the forefront of the investigation, which alleges that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed...

A left-leaning government watchdog organization filed ethics complaints Wednesday against House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) for revealing sealed federal documents in the ongoing Operation Fast and Furious scandal. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), in complaints filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics and the Department of Justice, accused Issa of violating federal law by putting sealed federal wiretap applications in the Congressional Record. The ethics complaint was a nakedly partisan effort by CREW to support the cover-up of the operation by the Obama administration, said House Oversight spokeswoman Becca Watkins. “It is shameful that an...

Most Americans don't care about whether Attorney General Eric Holder is hiding Fast and Furious documents because they don't understand the story. Until someone can tell us otherwise, there is only one explanation for why President Obama's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gave thousands of guns to Mexican drug dealers: It put guns in their hands to strengthen liberals' argument for gun control. Precisely because this is such a jaw-dropping accusation — criminality at the highest level of government to score a political point — Republicans refuse to make it. But the problem with Republican rectitude in...

An ethics watchdog group filed complaints against Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) with the Office of Congressional Ethics and the Justice Department on Wednesday for revealing details of federally sealed wiretap applications. In the two complaints filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the group claims that Issa “violated federal law by including material from a sealed wiretap application in the Congressional Record.” As part of Issa’s successful move to place Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for allegedly not responding to a congressional subpoena, the powerful chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney pushed back Tuesday against President Barack Obama’s calls for Romney to be transparent with his tax returns by calling on the president to cease using executive order to block documents related to Operation Fast and Furious. Appearing on Sean Hannity’s conservative radio program Tuesday afternoon, Romney ripped Obama for his lack of transparency after the conservative media personality walked his listeners through the series of attacks the Obama campaign has launched against his Republican rival. “The war on how you traveled with your dog, Bain Capital,” Hannity said. “The latest attack is to go out...

(NBC News) - Federal prosecutors are filing more charges in the murder of a US Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry, whose death is at the center of the controversy over the failed ATF gun tracing operation known as Fast and Furious. The new charges accuse five men of being involved in the shootout with Terry that resulted in his death. Prosecutors say the men were in the US illegally, trying to rob drug couriers. Four of the men are fugitives, federal officials say, and the FBI will ask for public help in finding them. A federal official says it's assumed...

The United Nations is putting the finishing touches on an Arms Trade Treaty that transcends borders and may even trample our Constitutional right to bear arms. Every indication is that the president will sign it. Like the New Start and Law of the Sea treaties before it, as well as the Kyoto Protocol and Agenda 21, the Arms Trade Treaty being finalized at the U.N. this month is one of those feel-good, can't-we-all-get-along pieces of parchment whose net effect is to accomplish little except to eat away at American sovereignty and freedom.

An NAACP convention in Texas broke into chants of support for Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday after the body adopted a resolution condemning the House of Representatives for finding him in contempt of Congress. The emergency resolution expresses strong support for Holder and calls upon NAACP members to contact their members of Congress to “express their outrage at the treatment of the first African-American and one of the best Attorney Generals in history.” It calls the contempt vote a “travesty of justice.” Members of the audience broke into chants of “Holder, Holder”... (Video at source link.)

The Department of Justice unsealed documents today showing that Brian Terry was shooting bean bags at men who returned fire with assault rifles.

Second Amendment: The United Nations is putting the finishing touches on an Arms Trade Treaty that transcends borders and may even trample our Constitutional right to bear arms. Every indication is that the president will sign it. Like the New Start and Law of the Sea treaties before it, as well as the Kyoto Protocol and Agenda 21, the Arms Trade Treaty being finalized at the U.N. this month is one of those feel-good, can't-we-all-get-along pieces of parchment whose net effect is to accomplish little except to eat away at American sovereignty and freedom. Just as the world's worst human...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation unsealed an indictment in Tucson and offered a $1 million reward “for information leading to the arrest of four fugitives” wanted in connection with the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, the Bureau’s Phoenix Division announced today. “Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, Ivan Soto-Barraza, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, and Lionel Portillo-Meza are charged with crimes including first-degree murder, second-degree murder, conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery, attempted interference with commerce by robbery, use and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence, assault on a federal officer, and possession of a firearm by a...

Team Obama resorts to default excuse: Blame Bush Obama administration officials must remind each other daily that they will never have to accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong on their watch as long as they can find some way to blame their troubles on George W. Bush. So it should surprise no one that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the administration’s surrogates are vociferously claiming that Operation Fast and Furious, the gun-walking scandal run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is all Mr. Bush’s fault. Fast and Furious was a program that resulted...

After more than 18 months of waiting and a contempt of Congress charge against Attorney General Eric Holder, the FBI unsealed an indictment of five illegal Mexican bandits charged with the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry today in Arizona and offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest of four of the five men who are still on the run and suspected to be in Mexico. The men are Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, Ivan Soto-Barraza, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes and Lionel Portillo-Meza, Manuel and Heraclio are brothers. During a press conference earlier today, the FBI confirmed...

The Justice Department on Monday unsealed an indictment charging five individuals allegedly involved in Border Patrol agent Brian Terry's death, and announced a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of those suspects still at large.  For the first time, federal officials also revealed that Terry and an elite squad of federal agents initially fired bean bags -- not bullets -- at a heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2010. During the exchange, Terry was shot and killed.  The announcement comes amid an intensifying debate over the department's...

What does Kevin O'Reilly know about Fast and Furious, when did he know it, and why was he spirited off to a job in Iraq that he was not in line for? Why did his Iraq office change the phone number the day after Pajamas Media called and asked to speak with O'Reilly? Virginia Ramadan was expected to ascend to the directorship of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau for Iraq (INL-Iraq). She didn't. O'Reilly did. O'Reilly was serving as a White House National Security advisor during the time of Fast and Furious. One of the star participants, Alcohol...

For the first time, federal officials revealed Monday that murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and an elite squad of federal agents first fired bean bags -- not bullets -- at a heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2011. The announcement came as the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging five individuals allegedly involved in Terry's death. A sixth suspect has also been charged in a related incident. The U.S. is also offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of four outstanding suspects believed to...

For the first time, federal officials revealed Monday that murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and an elite squad of federal agents first fired bean bags -- not bullets -- at a heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2011. The announcement came as the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging five individuals allegedly involved in Terry's death. A sixth suspect has also been charged in a related incident. The U.S. is also offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of four outstanding suspects believed to...

Justice Department (DOJ) officials indicted five individuals for the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — who was murdered by drug traffickers armed through Operation Fast and Furious – and a $1 million reward for information leading to their arrest. “Agent Terry served his country honorably and made the ultimate sacrifice in trying to protect it from harm, and we will stop at nothing to bring those responsible for his murder to justice,” Attorney General Eric Holder said today. “This investigation has previously resulted in one defendant being charged with Agent Terry’s murder and taken into custody, and...

LORDSBURG, N.M. (AP) - New Mexico State Police and federal agents are wrapping up an aggressive effort to round up illegal weapons and stall narcotic trafficking in New Mexico's Bootheel area. The New Mexico State Police Aircraft Section is finishing Sunday its participation an "Operation Ridge Line," a joint field operation with the New Mexico National Guard Counter Drug Support Task Force and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

I have followed the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal investigation since it began. At first, President Barack Obama tried to blame “unscrupulous gun dealers” along our southern border. We wouldn’t have known any differently had it not been for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent John Dodson. Dodson testified that someone in our government forced gun dealers to sell assault weapons to known straw purchasers who had ties to Mexican drug cartels. Guns from this fiasco have turned up at many crime scenes, including the one in which a Border Patrol agent was killed. Some testified on Capitol Hill...

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” —Thomas Jefferson Chattanooga, Tenn. The House Republicans and many Democrats voted 255-67 to hold the most politically-motivated Attorney General in modern times in contempt of Congress. Keep in mind the nuanced distinction; it was a “contempt of Congress” vote, not what you and I feel: contempt for Congress. Holder failed to pursue blatant New Black Panther Party voter intimidation (all caught on tape), but instead went after Florida for trying to purge its voter rolls of those legally...

The American people finally have heard of Brian Terry. He is the best-known victim of Fast and Furious, an Obama-administration conventional-weapons-proliferation program. Between November 2009 and January 2011, Team Obama arranged for licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to straw buyers, who transferred them to known violent criminals in Mexico. Two of these firearms, AK-47s, were found near Rio Rico, Ariz., where suspected smugglers fatally shot Terry, a 40-year-old former Marine, on December 15, 2010. “I do not fear death,” Terry once wrote. “I do fear the loss of my honor, and would rather die fighting than have it said...

The American people finally have heard of Brian Terry. He is the best-known victim of Fast and Furious, an Obama-administration conventional-weapons-proliferation program. Between November 2009 and January 2011, Team Obama arranged for licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to straw buyers, who transferred them to known violent criminals in Mexico. Two of these firearms, AK-47s, were found near Rio Rico, Ariz., where suspected smugglers fatally shot Terry, a 40-year-old former Marine, on December 15, 2010. “I do not fear death,” Terry once wrote. “I do fear the loss of my honor, and would rather die fighting than have it said...

The liberal media continues to make a connection between "Operation Fast and Furious" under the Obama and "Operation Wide Receiver" under Bush, and major news outlets have made no effort to explain the difference. MRCTV sat down with NRA president David Keene, who explains the fundamental difference between these two operations.http://www.mrctv.org/embed/114643  

Once upon a time I made a lot of money doing nothing more than graphic timelines of events and people all engaged in a single endeavor, just to see who did what, and in what order, and asking why. It’s a terrific analytical tool. From the moment Fast and Furious went public in Dec 2010, after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, the story became so political, with so much dancing and sidestepping by administration officials inside ATF and the Department of Justice, no wonder a whole category of crimes involved have been overlooked. In fact, all the...

Early in the morning on June 27, Fortune Magazine published online a lengthy article called "The Truth about the Fast and Furious Scandal." Fortune's timing was not fortuitous. That evening, the House voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to produce documents requested by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. About a hundred Democrats walked out before the vote, and the talking points at their press conference came from the article. Leftist websites jumped on the story. It rapidly became the new liberal narrative on the scandal. Some moderate Republicans have been impressed....

The American people finally have heard of Brian Terry. He is the best-known victim of Fast and Furious, an Obama administration conventional-weapons proliferation program. Between November 2009 and January 2011, Team Obama arranged for licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to straw buyers, who transferred them to known violent criminals in Mexico. Among these firearms, two AK-47s were found near Rio Rico, Arizona, where suspected smugglers fatally shot Terry, a 40-year-old former Marine, on December 15, 2010. While Brian Terry epitomizes those whom Fast and Furious has harmed, he is not its sole casualty. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent...

Information provided congressional committees by ATF whistleblowers and leaks within the Department of Justice prove Eric Holder to be either criminally complicit in the Fast and Furious scheme and cover-up, or the most incompetent, congenitally comatose Attorney General in the nation’s history. Though Holder is many things, he is not incompetent, at least not in the willful “execution-upon-command” of illegal and despicable enterprises; especially when those enterprises involve Administration generated murder. “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...

The American people finally have heard of Brian Terry. He is the best-known victim of Fast and Furious, an Obama-administration conventional-weapons-proliferation program. Between November 2009 and January 2011, Team Obama arranged for licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to straw buyers, who transferred them to known violent criminals in Mexico. Two of these firearms, AK-47s, were found near Rio Rico, Ariz., where suspected smugglers fatally shot Terry, a 40-year-old former Marine, on December 15, 2010.“I do not fear death,� Terry once wrote. “I do fear the loss of my honor, and would rather die fighting than have it said...

Article For Immediate Release July 3, 2012 Grassley asks for Justice Department records of field agent memo on Fast and Furious ATF agent describes discussion of operation one day before Justice Department denial WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today asked Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for information about who at the Department of Justice (DOJ) saw a memo from a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) who was stationed at the Phoenix field division and was knowledgeable about Operation Fast and Furious.  This memo was produced the day before the Department of Justice...

“A republic, if you can keep it.” Ben Franklin Masked by chatter around judicial wrangling, electoral ramifications and how the surprising Obamacare decision impacts policy, many miss the wretched significance of Chief Justice Roberts’ twisted logic. He has empowered runaway government certain to incite chaos. The Affordable Care Act reflects the logical continuation of a decades-long drift toward domineering by Washington over every facet of life. Not logical as in likely to succeed. Few government initiatives do. But logical because rather than scuttle past failures, subsequent congresses spawn new efforts to offset what prior funding merely squandered. Taxpayers already footed...

An ethics complaint against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been filed by David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh with the Office of Bar Counsel, Board on Professional Responsibility of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Codrea and Vanderboegh are the two bloggers who first broke the news of the Fast and Furious scandal in December 2010. Said Vanderboegh, Eric Holder believes that he will escape serious consequences of the congressional investigations of the Fast and Furious scandal simply by running out the clock on his tenure. We intend this ethics complaint to place him on notice that his lies...

In a letter Tuesday, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley pressed Attorney General Eric Holder for details about a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives memorandum that indicates his Department of Justice may have tried to cover up the gunwalking tactics that were at the heart of Operation Fast and Furious. Gary Styers, an ATF special agent in the Lubbock, Texas field office, wrote what Grassley described as a “Fast and Furious memorandum” on Feb. 3, 2011. In it, Styers described how two investigators for Grassley’s Senate Judiciary Committee office had contacted him the day before about the Fast and...

The Sipsey Street Irregulars blog and Gun Rights Examiner have obtained an exclusive copy of a letter written by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa to Attorney General Eric Holder, warning him against continued retaliation against whistleblowers in the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal, citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh announced this morning. The letter, dated June 1, specifically identifies agents Jay Dobyns and John Dodson as targets of official retribution. Dobyns was the agent who had his family threatened and his house burned down after the Bureau failed to apply proper relocation procedures, and has been a...

An ethics complaint against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been filed by David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh with the Office of Bar Counsel, Board on Professional Responsibility of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Codrea and Vanderboegh are the two bloggers who first broke the news of the Fast and Furious scandal in December 2010.Said Vanderboegh, Eric Holder believes that he will escape serious consequences of the congressional investigations of the Fast and Furious scandal simply by running out the clock on his tenure. We intend this ethics complaint to place him on notice that his lies and...

The day before the Justice Department broadly, and falsely, denied that guns had “walked” as part of the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-smuggling operation, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told supervisors in a memo that he had expressed his concerns about the operation to Congressional investigators. In a July 3 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned whether the memo should have raised red flags at the Justice Department. “The possibility that DOJ was aware of this memorandum on February 3, 2011, and still sent the erroneous letter to Congress...

Some who spoke with my office claim they were “alarmed” by the substance of the memorandum and it caused such a stir that ATF planned to put a panel together to address the allegations but someone within DOJ suppressed the idea. The possibility that DOJ was aware of this memorandum on February 3, 2011, and still sent the erroneous letter to Congress on February 4, 2011, raises more questions about DOJ’s claim that faulty information from Department components inadvertently led to the false letter. This was direct, documented information from street level agents in a far better position to know...

I have picked up on a strange report about Jason “Main Justice” Weinstein, whose appearances in subpoenaed documents brackets Department of Justice involvement Fast & Furious. Weinstein first appears in a September 9, 2009 email to Lanny “Deep in the Cheese” Breuer, which discusses ATF and DOJ coordination of gun trafficking investigations. It ends with an analytical review, now claimed to be the subject of executive privilege, ordered by Breuer, sometime after February 4, 2011. On that date, the DOJ provided a letter to Congress, drafted in part by Weinstein, which falsely claimed that ATF made “every effort to interdict...

(CNSNews.com) – Dennis K. Burke, who as a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s was a key player behind the enactment of the 1994 assault-weapons ban, and who then went on to become Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano’s chief of staff, and a contributor to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential primary campaign, and then a member of Obama's transition team focusing on border-enforcement issues, ended up in the Obama administration as the U.S. attorney in Arizona responsible for overseeing Operation Fast and Furious. When Obama nominated Burke to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona,...

Over two dozen college-age protesters gathered this morning outside the White House to protest the Obama administration’s handling of the Fast and Furious “gun walking” investigation that has embroiled Attorney General Eric Holder. The protest involved a variety of handmade signs featuring such messages as “AG doesn’t mean Above Government” and “Guns don’t kill people, Holder does,” many featuring the Twitter hashtag #FireHolder, which has taken off in popularity in recent weeks. Timothy Dionisopoulos, 23, co-created a Facebook event last week promoting the rally, and the page has quickly turned into a gathering place for those wishing to share articles...

The way Attorney General Eric Holder sees it, all this mounting criticism of his inept leadership as the nation's top law enforcement officer is simply predictable politics of the worst kind in an election year. And last month's congressional contempt citation against him, the first ever of a sitting member of a presidential cabinet, isn't really about his Justice Department pouring thousands of weapons into the already pretty well-armed Mexican drug wars and causing the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent (Brian Terry, see photo above). And then denying the House Oversight Committee access to relevant documents. No. The...

In an interview with the Washington Post, Attorney General Eric Holder said the House vote last week to hold him in criminal and civil contempt was hardly about documents, but about Republicans not liking his boss President Obama and the decisions his Justice Department has made when it comes to certain issues like DOMA, terrorism and voting rights. Holder is the only sitting attorney general to every be held in criminal contempt of Congress. Holder failed to mention it was both Republicans and Democrats who voted to hold him in contempt. “I’ve become a symbol of what they don’t like...

Scandal: A campaign contributor who was an architect of the 1994 assault weapons ban was the mastermind behind the Fast and Furious operation that let guns walk into Mexico, including those that killed two U.S. agents. Shortly after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on Dec. 15, 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder's deputy chief of staff, Monty Wilkinson, received an email from U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke telling him just that: "The guns found in the desert near the murder(ed) BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s...

No big deal....despite the fact that a stash of AK-47s was found along a hiking trail in not Colombia, not Mexico but in....Arizona. A hiker in the Madera Canyon area found three assault rifles in a black trash bag one mile north of Old Baldy Trail. After receiving a report of the discovery on Wednesday, June 20, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office determined that the rifles were found in Santa Cruz County, and notified the local sheriff’s office. Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputies then went to the site and recovered what turned out to be a stash of AK-47 assault...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sharply criticized lawmakers Monday for voting to hold him in contempt of Congress last week, saying Republicans have made him a “proxy” to attack President Obama in an election year. In his first interview since Thursday’s vote, Holder said lawmakers have used an investigation of a botched gun-tracking operation as a way to seek retribution against the Justice Department for its policies on a host of issues, including immigration, voting rights and gay marriage. He said the chairman of the committee leading the inquiry, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), is engaging in political theater as...

David Bahnsen of Newport Beach, California is a Senior Vice President of Morgan Stanley, and also serves on the Board of Advisers of the California Recovery Project with Dr. Arthur Laffer. Bahnsen has abandoned his earlier support of the Ron Paul crusade, and now describes himself as an "economically literate Republican." He is the author of "The Undiscerning and Dangerous Appreciation of Ron Paul." Bahnsen says "It is the ironic that Ron Paul's alleged praiseworthiness comes from his devotion to the Constitution, when in fact, he has emphatically rejected it." Bahnsen has many family and business connections with libertarians. His...

Oakland California is ground-zero for recreational drug use, which apparently continues to affect the dwindling staff at the Oakland Tribune. Like some other San Francisco Bay Area rags, the Trib has a congenital dislike for private firearm ownership, though in the wake of continuing gun control movement defeats our local press has suddenly become concerned with how criminals get guns and less about guns themselves. Sadly, the media’s meandering modus operandi retains the end goal of enacting more useless gun control laws. Hence, the Oaksterdam Tribune’s recent propaganda piece of inveigling ink, proving once again that the paper is better...