Free Republic

In Katie Pavlich’s devastating new expose of the Eric Holder Justice Department-approved Fast and Furious operation, Pavlich doesn’t just expose the Obama administration. She exposes the mainstream media for what they are: tools of the Democratic Party, and of the White House. As Pavlich recounts, the first mainstream media outlet to report on Fast and Furious was CBS Evening News, which aired a report by Sharyl Attkinson. She stated that the scandal itself was so awful that “some insiders say it surpasses the shoot-out at Ruby Ridge and the deadly siege at Waco.” She pointed out that the Bureau of...

“Police records show the chief target of Operation Fast and Furious, a man pursued by ATF agents for 18 months, was actually arrested twice in 2010 for gun and drug violations, but released,” William La Jeunesse of Fox News reported yesterday, corroborating and adding new details regarding the arrest report posted in Gun Rights Examiner. Left unsaid in that column is what happened to the suspects as a result of that bust. La Jeunesse solves that mystery: The case was sent to prosecutors but never filed. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office said it sent the case back to police for...

ST. LOUIS — California Congressman Darrell Issa promised members of the National Rifle Association gathered here that his probe of the Operation Fast and Furious scandal will continue until those responsible for the debacle are held accountable. If the investigation continues into the summer — as some sources here have suggested to this column, with significant action coming around the time of the Republican convention — it could become the major campaign issue many gun rights activists believe it should be. The downside, noted one source, is that the mainstream press could dismiss it as political theater. The scandal has...

Operation Fast and Furious is the deadliest and most sinister scandal in American history. A scandal so big, it’s worse than Iran-Contra and makes Watergate look like a high school prank gone wrong. In the early days of the Obama Administration, President Obama claimed his goal was to stop the trafficking of guns from the United States into the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels. He claimed gun dealers in the United States were responsible for sending guns to Mexico. Both of his claims were lies. In order to push his lies and policies built around them, with a...

"Botched." That is the word the mainstream media too often associates with the federal gunwalking scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious—but in her new book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up, investigative reporter Katie Pavlich fearlessly chronicles exactly why the only thing "botched" about the ill-fated operation was the Obama administration's shoddy attempt to cover their tracks. Having shared office space with Katie for well over a year now, I've witnessed her ferocious commitment to this story since before Fast and Furious was even a thought in the national consciousness. I wasn't always quite...

This month’s Rattle brings us a host of stories that the mainstream media didn’t cover sufficiently-preferring instead to shower accolades upon the man responsible for abandoning immigration enforcement in the name of political opportunism. We’ll cover everything from the latest spate of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens to Barack Obama’s continued roll out of administrative amnesty, which now includes directives to ignore both interior enforcement and border security. But first, we’ll examine this administration’s ongoing obstruction of Congress’s investigation into the ever-broadening gun-walking scandals. Courtesy of Sipsey Street Irregulars-whose coverage of Fast and Furious is non pareil-we learn that...

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney applauded House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley for their efforts to investigate the Obama Justice Department’s lethal Operation Fast and Furious scandal today during a speech at the NRA Annual Meeting Leadership Forum in St. Louis. This is the first time any GOP presidential candidate has mentioned the Fast and Furious scandal by name in a public event speech, officially bringing the scandal into the 2012 general election with President Barack Obama. Romney also embraced the NRA’s calls for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign or be fired for his...

In her explosive new book Fast and Furious, Katie Pavlich makes the case that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano not only failed to stop an operation that led to the death of one of her own, Border Agent Brian A. Terry, but she may have also lied to Congress in sworn testimony at a hearing held to find out what really happened. Inside sources told Pavlich that Napolitano’s testimony was in direct contradiction to emails she exchanged, and reports and briefing she received, according to an exclusive preview of the book by Human Events. Pavlich’s book Fast and Furious is...

A judge has set a new trial date for 15 people accused of participating in a gun smuggling ring that was investigated by the federal government in Operation Fast and Furious. U.S. District Judge James Teilborg set a Jan. 3 trial date.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s visit to Washington last week featured his usual lecturing of Americans about gun control. This time, he had some good ideas, although he remains wedded to many bad ones, too. A polite guest, Mr. Calderon did not mention the “Fast and Furious” operation during his public events with President Obama. But reports indicate that he did bring it up privately, and he was furious - justifiably so. From late 2009 until early 2011, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) orchestrated the delivery of more than 2,000 firearms to Mexican drug cartels. According...

In El Paso, Texas, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Ricardo Montalvo has been arrested and charged with attempting to smuggle guns and ammunition into Mexico. More specifically, he’s been accused of trying to smuggle the weapons to the Mexican cartel. His girlfriend, Carla Gonzales-Ortiz, has been charged in the matter as well. Montalvo and Gonzales-Ortiz are also accused of making a number of straw purchases of weapons between November 2010 and January 2011. Included in these were five Ak-47s, two .380 pistols, and a couple of .22 rifles. In other words, Montalvo and Gonzales-Ortiz made purchases similar to those which our...

The traditional media’s story of the moment is the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. That incident was initially reported as potentially a white on black racially motivated shooting of an innocent unarmed teen. The media’s response was to go into hyperbole overdrive. Editing 911 tapes to make it appear as if Zimmerman was racist and having “audio experts” declare that a racial slur could be heard on the same tapes. The racial demagogues Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackon descended on Sanford and lynch mob mentality ensued. The demagogues accused the local police of playing favorites due to race....

President Barack Obama’s White House counsel has essentially told Congressman Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley to “dream on” if they think a recent request to interview former National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly about Operation Fast and Furious is going to happen. The Gun Rights Examiner has obtained a copy of an April 5 letter sent to Issa and Grassley by Kathryn Ruemmler, counsel to the president. In the letter, she tells them: Over six months ago, the White House produced documents responsive to your prior request for communications between Mr. O’Reilly and ATF agent William Newell that relate to...

Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz told the Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly on Friday that although a key White House witness in the ill-fated Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking program is willing to testify about what he knows, the Obama administration won’t let him appear before Congress. White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler sent a letter Thursday to Republican lawmakers Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley, refusing their request to speak with Kevin O’Reilly, a former National Security staff member whose emails place him in the middle of the unfolding scandal. Issa and Grassley had written to Ruemmler on March...

PHOENIX (AP) - A man who bought two rifles found at the scene of the fatal shooting of a federal agent near the Arizona-Mexico border pleaded guilty Thursday to two felony charges in the federal government's botched gun smuggling investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. Authorities say Jaime Avila Jr. was a member of a 20-person ring accused of buying guns and smuggling them into Mexico for use by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Two AK-47 variants bought by Avila from a suburban Phoenix gun store were found in the aftermath of a December 2010 shootout that mortally wounded Border...

Last month, FOX News reported that someone at Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has been leaking information to Congressional committees about the Obama Regime’s Mexican gunwalking enterprise Fast and Furious. ATF Investigation Reports (ROI’s) that reached the offices of Senator Charles Grassley and Congressman Darrell Issa revealed gun runners and drug dealers to be secretly in the employment of the FBI. And a Mexican illegal, already wanted on weapons charges, was shown to have been turned loose by a remarkably accommodating ATF agent. And now something new has been added to the mix. On March 28th, Senator Grassley wrote Kathryn...

Obama's neglect of our nearest neighbors and biggest trade partners has created deteriorating relations, a sign of a president who's out of touch with reality. Problems are emerging that aren't being reported. Fortunately, the Canadian and Mexican press told the real story. Canada's National Post quoted former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson as saying the North American Free Trade Agreement and the three-nation alliance it has fostered since 1994 have been so neglected they're "on life support." Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier. The Winnipeg...

"Human sacrifices suspected along Mexico border," reads the headline of a disturbing MSNBC story. The story, admittedly, has nothing to do with "Operation Fast and Furious" or "Project Gunwalker." Still, a journalist writing a story about the U.S. government's deliberate arming of ruthless Mexican drug cartels could do far worse for a headline. The MSNBC story is about a poor Mexican family, worshippers of Santa Muerte (Saint Death), who are accused of murdering two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman, believing that these blood sacrifices would bring them wealth: "They thought that by offering the blood, they would be protected...

Last month FOX News reported that someone at Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has been leaking information to Congressional committees about the Obama Regime’s Mexican gunwalking enterprise Fast and Furious. ATF Investigation Reports (ROI’s) which reached the offices of Senator Charles Grassley and Congressman Darrell Issa revealed gun runners and drug dealers to be secretly in the employ of the FBI. And a Mexican illegal, already wanted on weapons charges, was shown to have been turned loose by a remarkably accommodating ATF agent. (1) Now something new has been added to the mix. On March 28th, Senator Grassley wrote Kathryn...

“Attorney General Eric Holder today welcomed the confirmation of… Michael E. Horowitz as Inspector General for the Justice Department,” a Friday Office of Public Affairs release announces. “…Horowitz [was] confirmed yesterday by the U.S. Senate,” it reports. The nominee was confirmed by a voice vote, per the Library of Congress THOMAS legislative database. So who is Michael E. Horowitz? Most recently he’s been a partner at a law firm. He’s been a commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a deputy Assistant Attorney General and Chief of Staff at the Justice Department, an Assistant U.S. Attorney, a law firm associate, and...