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On Tuesday Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform, took a major step toward holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his failure to provide subpoenaed documents and other information about Operation Fast and Furious.

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...

Mike Vanderboegh is drinking Diet Mountain Dew in the cafeteria of the Rayburn building on Capitol Hill, and he is pissed. Not because his flight from Alabama was almost “as bumpy as [his] first marriage,” nor because he almost got into a physical altercation with an “idiot street urban adventurer” outside the National Archives who said Vanderboegh looked like Newt Gingrich. The former militia man turned gun rights blogger is angry because he thinks the Republican “sons-a-bitches” on the House Oversight Committee put on the “ultimate display of public limp dickery” during a Thursday hearing in which Attorney General Eric...

Attorney General Eric Holder squared off Thursday with Republicans on a House committee who are demanding that the Justice Department turn over documents about its handling of congressional inquiries into a flawed gun-smuggling investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. At the start of a hearing, chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will do what is necessary to force the Justice Department to produce the information. The attorney general said he will consider Issa's demand. But he said, with one exception, the department was inclined to follow longstanding tradition of withholding internal documents about...

Posted by Gateway Guest Blogger on Thursday, February 2, 2012, 5:50 PM Posted by The P/Oed Patriot Accoridng to You Tube: “Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, goes on Fox Business to discuss the Obama Administration’s failed investments of taxpayer dollars into ‘green’ programs.”

Top Department of Justice officials had extensive knowledge of and involvement in Operation Fast and Furious, claims a new report released Thursday, hours before Attorney General Eric Holder's scheduled testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The report released by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, top lawmakers investigating the botched gunrunning operation, claims Justice Department officials in Washington and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were involved in the coordination in the early stages of the operation. Justice headquarters "had much greater knowledge of, and involvement in, Fast and Furious than it...

Look at that hottie behind Issa!

Over the last three years, we’ve made a number of significant improvements, including policy and personnel changes… the steps that we have taken to ensure that the flawed tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious – and in earlier operations under the prior Administration – are never again used. We also have provided Congress with documents to show how inaccurate information was initially conveyed in a letter sent to Senator Grassley on February 4, 2011. These documents (intended to) ) show that Department officials relied on information provided by supervisors from the relevant components in the best position to know...

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chaired by Darrell Issa (R-CA) is set to begin a hearing on the morning of February 1 on President Obama's recess appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). During the hearing, titled "Uncharted Territory: What are the Consequences of President Obama's Unprecedented 'Recess' Appointments?", constitutional attorney David Rivkin will assert that the appointments are unconstitutional.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) threatened to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress if the nation’s top cop doesn’t hand over Justice Department documents within nine days. Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, blasted Holder in a letter on Tuesday for refusing to comply with the panel’s subpoena for documents relating to the "Operation Fast and Furious" gun-trafficking operation. “If the department continues to obstruct the congressional inquiry by not providing documents and information, this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress,”...

Just received tweet from Congressman Issa that Fast and Furious has its own website for information updates now.

“Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa demanded in [a] letter to Attorney General Holder that the Justice Department make Arizona U.S. Attorney’s Office Assistant United States Attorney Michael Morrissey available to speak with Committee investigators about his role in and knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious,” a release issued moments ago by the committee reveals: His supervisor, Patrick Cunningham, has stated he will exercise his Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer any questions pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious – such an assertion is extremely rare and suggests possible criminal culpability on the part of a high ranking...

No, I didn't make that headline up. Issa has flown off to Davos to hobnob with the international elites this weekend. That, at least, is what I'm being told. This is a marvelous turn of events for the New World Order conspiracists. Shortwave millennialists will be going nuts. Much is being made today in various places of Issa's latest letters to Holder here and here. Here is David Codrea's take, which lays out succinctly the public facts as known. Last night, I was floated some rumors that Morrissey and Hurley, Cunningham's fellow myrmidons working under Dennis Burke on the Fast...

The chairman of a House committee investigating the failed “Fast and Furious” operation demanded on Thursday that the Justice Department make a key federal prosecutor in Arizona available for questioning about “his role in and knowledge of” the controversial gunrunning probe. Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made the demand in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., saying Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Morrissey played an “integral part” in Fast and Furious and has information not available from other sources. Mr. Morrissey’s supervisor, Patrick J. Cunningham, chief of the...

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, goes on Fox News to discuss next week's hearing on Operation Fast and Furious. Patrick Cunningham, Chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona, will plead the fifth amendment during next week's committee hearing.

WASHINGTON, DC – House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) today announced the issuance of a subpoena to Patrick J. Cunningham, Chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona. Mr. Cunningham's repeated refusals to testify voluntarily have forced the Committee to use compulsory process. "During the course of our investigation, the Committee has learned of the outsized role played by the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office – and you specifically – in approving the unacceptable tactics used in Fast and Furious," Chairman Issa wrote to Cunningham in a letter informing...

The debate in Congress over the best way to shut down foreign websites that steal U.S. copyright material and sell counterfeit goods could be about to shift. At least that's the hope of Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who outlined their strategy during a Wednesday press briefing with reporters at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The unlikely partners have teamed to oppose two bills in the House and the Senate, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) that would shut down foreign websites by forcing search engines and domain...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa today responded to the Energy Department's announcement that their $730 million loan to Severstal, a Russian steel company, will not be granted... "While I am pleased that the Department of Energy has reconsidered its decision to fund a $730 million loan to Severstal, it's deeply disconcerting to know that this loan would have gone forward had Congress not raised concerns… Following the waste of taxpayer dollars in the collapse of Solyndra, the Department of Energy needs....

The Justice Department sent nearly 500 pages of documents to Republican lawmakers Thursday that suggest the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives may have used questionable tactics and lost track of American-made weapons in a gun trafficking investigation on the Mexican border as early as 2006. The documents sent to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) could add a new dimension to a political controversy that's raged on Capitol Hill for a year. Issa and other Republican lawmakers have accused the Obama administration of acting recklessly by losing track of almost 2,000 guns on the...

I just received an email update from Congressman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office, stating that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 2. The questions will center on the Department of Justice’s knowledge of, and response to, the gunwalking tactics that were used in Operation Fast and Furious. The A.G. will also be asked to address the DOJ’s “steadfast refusal to disclose information following the February 4, 2011 letter to Senator Grassley, which the [DOJ] has withdrawn because it contained false information denying allegations made by whistleblowers about Operation...

President Obama may best be known as the president who took kicking the can down the road to new, unimagined levels. Obama has demonstrated an unusual ability to delay decision-making, to obfuscate issues, to divert attention from matters of critical importance, and his preference to take half measures when pushed to the brink is now well known. Obama is the Grand Master of Kicking the Can Down the Road. But in 2012 that seems likely to change—the can is going to kick back. The problems besetting our nation can only be ignored and obfuscated for so long—and the past three...

Late yesterday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s office sent me an email with a copy of a letter the Congressman had sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on December 15 — a letter to which the A.G. has yet to respond. In it, Issa informs Holder that the Committee would like him to appear for more testimony on January 24, 2012. In other words, Fast and Furious isn’t going away any time soon. Issa wrote: The hearing will examine flaws in the management structure of the Justice Department as demonstrated in the genesis and implementation of ATF’s Operation Fast...

Rep. Darrell Issa wants an explanation from the Obama administration about why Occupy protesters were allowed to put up tents in McPherson Square Park in Washington, D.C., in what he insisted was a violation of a ban on “camping” in the nation’s capital. The California Republican, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, complained in a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that $400,000 in recent landscaping upgrades to the park had been damaged by the “illegal camping” of Occupy participants. According to a press release issued by his office, Issa asked Salazar to explain “a...

This week in front of the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder doubled down, then tripled down, on Fast and Furious. He dug in, fought back, and pretended nothing is systemically wrong inside his Justice Department. Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) even accused him of potential contempt of Congress, a crime (2 U.S.C. 192). Holder’s testimony was not merely shameful, it was a maturing manifestation of a lawlessness which I first warned about in July of 2010 when I testified about the New Black Panther dismissal. Small acts of lawlessness have given way to larger ones. In the radio...

Since the Obama administration took up residence in D.C., that world of law and order has slipped away. No other action by higher-ups has demonstrated this near-total breakdown of checks and balances more than Operation Fast and Furious. Our representatives on Capitol Hill are so hopelessly flawed, our mainstream journalists so ethically challenged, and our citizens so desensitized to corruption that a government-initiated program transferring high-powered weapons to vicious Mexican drug cartels, who would in all likelihood use them to murder innocent human beings, seems like business as usual. For months a hypnotized media has called the operation a "botched...

As if Congress didn’t have enough evidence that the Department of Justice has completely lost its mind, the New York Times is reporting that the Drug Enforcement Agency has helped launder “millions of dollars in drug proceeds” on behalf of Mexican drug cartels, a figure much higher than previously estimated. The Department of Justice has been under investigation by Congress for facilitating gun smuggling during Operation Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious was a gun running scheme on the US-Mexican border that’s resulted in violence and death on both sides of the border including the deaths of federal agents in...

House Republicans pummeled Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday over the disputed gun-trafficking investigation called Operation Fast and Furious, accusing the Justice Department of hiding the truth and lying to Congress in a slugfest of an oversight hearing. Mr. Holder denied the allegations and declared that he would not resign. Mr. Holder had testified about Fast and Furious on three prior occasions, and the hearing before the House Judiciary Committee produced few revelations. But it was the most politically charged session yet, as one Republican after another tore into the attorney general. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of...

It was a very uncomfortable Thursday for Attorney General Eric Holder on Capitol Hill as he testified before the House Judiciary Committee about Operation Fast and Furious. If it wasn’t clear that Fast and Furious was implemented as a way to push more gun control measures without the consent of Congress, it’s crystal clear now. Continued stonewalling from the Justice Department had Rep. James Sensenbrenner talking about impeachment Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers called for the enforcement of new gun control measures pushed through the Justice Department in July without the approval of Congress, requiring...

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- The congressional investigation into the gunrunning scandal known as Fast and Furious is in full swing this week, with the House Judiciary Committee to hold a round of hearings on Thursday. More and more reporters in the mainstream media are now taking a closer look at the scandal, which GOA first began alerting members to in January. Under the program, thousands of guns purchased with federal tax dollars were allowed to “walk” into Mexico, at which point they disappeared into the hands of violent drug cartels. Just this week, the New York Times reported that the Drug...

Watch live on C-SPAN3 or on the internet at this link: http://www.c-span.org/Events/Atty-Gen-Holder-on-Operation-Fast-and-Furious/10737426112-1/

When it came time for Attorney General Eric Holder to make his opening comments, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) requested that the A.G. be sworn under oath. Issa had already noted that Congress had been lied to and that in previous hearings, Holder & Co. displayed the “unheard of” habit of redacting their letters and testimony to the Congress. Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) said that it wasn’t necessary for Holder to be sworn under oath because it was understood that he was already under oath by virtue of the purpose for which he was appearing. Issa then asked Smith if he...

On Thursday morning, Attorney General Eric Holder will appear before the House Judiciary Committee and he’s set to get grilled over Operation Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious was a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program overseen by the Justice Department. The operation facilitated the sale of thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers. Straw purchasers are people who legally purchase guns in the United States with the known intention of illegally trafficking them into Mexico. At least 300 people in Mexico were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as was U.S. Border Patrol agent...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has provided Congress with 1,364 pages of documents detailing how the department gave inaccurate information to a U.S. senator in the controversy surrounding Operation Fast and Furious, the flawed law enforcement initiative aimed at dismantling major arms trafficking networks on the Southwest border. In a letter last February to Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had not knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser

Rep. Darrell Issa, who has been investigating the Fast and Furious operation for nearly a year, declined on Friday to call for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to resign over the botched undercover probe that led to hundreds of weapons being “walked” to gun smugglers in Mexico. Mr. Issa, California Republican, said the operation is not about Mr. Holder or Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, both of whom he has criticized strongly over their handling of the failed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive’s (ATF) investigation. “It is not about...

The California Air Resources Board is now being investigated by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. On Wednesday, the committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Temecula, sent Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols a 13-page letter advising her that he was "expanding" the committee's ongoing investigation into the establishment of fuel economy standards. .. "Your refusal to subject yourself and your office to congressional scrutiny is emblematic of the core concern that many in Congress share...that CARB, as a state actor, is unresponsive to congressional concerns and unappreciative of congressional priorities," Issa wrote.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is calling for an investigation into allegations that ACORN-related group New York Communities for Change "engaged in fraud through its participation in the Occupy Wall Street protests." In a letter dated Monday, Issa, R-Calif., called for U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch of the Eastern District of New York to launch a probe into allegations first reported by FoxNews.com that NYCC may have "solicited donations from union members under false pretenses and misappropriated those funds to support the protesters." In an Oct. 26. report, FoxNews.com quoted sources within NYCC who said that the group --...

What is the deal with MSNBC folks being anti-Second Amendment lately? Last week it was fill in host Craig Melvin and this week it's analyst and Huffington Post writer Alex Wagner. Wagner was on Real Time With Bill Maher and when asked about what should be changed in the Constitution, Wagner said we should get rid of the Second Amendment. Bill Maher, HBO: "Let's ask Alex. What would you change in the Constitution?" Alex Wagner, Huffington Post: "Well, I'm going to be pilloried for this. I think get rid of the second Amendment, the right to bear arms. I just...

Congressman Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley are looking to plug leaks in their on-going investigation of Operation Fast and Furious, and today sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding answers about how sensitive information was available on a shared network computer drive that was accessible to more than 75 people. Among those people were 24 Justice Department employees including six employees of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and more than 50 other people inlcuding "contractor staff (who) had access to portions of the shared network drive at varioius times, though most of these individuals...

WASHINGTON- House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) today announced the introduction of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (H.R. 3289). The legislation will strengthen provisions of the Whistleblower Protection Act, originally enacted in 1989, for federal government employees who expose abuse, mismanagement, or criminal activity in federal agencies and programs. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is an original co-sponsor of the legislation, as are Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who sponsored whistleblower protection enhancement legislation last congress. Similar legislation was approved by the...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley lambasted Attorney General Eric Holder in a new letter detailing how Holder’s team has failed to provide congressional investigators with critical details surrounding the connections between Operation Fast and Furious and a second federal agent’s murder. The two top Republicans wrote to Holder on Tuesday criticizing what they said was the Department of Justice’s late and lacking response to Grassley’s March 2011 request for details about the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jaime Zapata. “Not only was the response more than six months late, it completely failed...

Congressional investigators probing the botched federal gun-trafficking program known as Fast and Furious are now setting their sights on the FBI. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, sent a letter Thursday to FBI Director Robert Mueller demanding answers about the guns found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Terry was gunned down last December in a remote area of the Arizona desert by a group of illegal immigrants. Two of the guns recovered at the scene were...

With the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) $8 billion deficit this year forcing Congressional action, Representatives Issa (R-Calif.) and Ross (R-Fla.) have proposed the Postal Reform Act, H.R. 2309, which balances the books and ensures taxpayers do not foot the bill for USPS mismanagement. Click here to view the PDF.Rightsizing the workforce Compared to the private sector, over 80 percent of the Post Office’s costs are labor related, while FedEx and UPS spend 20-40 percent less. The Postal Reform Act looks to bring down labor costs by rightsizing the entity’s workforce and bringing postal employee compensation in line with other...

Several Republican lawmakers are challenging the Obama administration's science czar over what they claim are repeat incidents of "scientific misconduct" among agencies, questioning whether officials who deal with everything from endangered species to nuclear waste are using "sound science." The letter sent Wednesday to John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, cited four specific controversies in recent years where scientific findings were questioned. Sens. David Vitter, R-La., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., rattled off a slew of questions on what they called "the apparent collapse in the quality of scientific work being...

A powerful House Republican committee chairman accused the National Labor Relations Board of being a “rogue agency” in a letter to its general counsel Monday. The chairman claimed the NLRB knowingly withheld damaging documents relating to his committee’s probe of the agency’s controversial Boeing (BA) complaint. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darryl Issa, R-Calif., in a letter to Lafe Solomon, NLRB acting general counsel, said the withheld documents “demonstrate that the NLRB is acting as a rogue agency that believes it does not have to fully answer to Congress.”

Congressman Darrell Issa is reportedly preparing a letter to send to the FBI about a mysterious “third gun” allegedly recovered from the December 2010 murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in Arizona, but the Justice Department is already firing back with assertions that the gun doesn’t exist. News of this third gun first surfaced weeks ago, and Issa has been dogging this as part of his investigation as head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He spoke Sunday morning with CBS’ Bob Schieffer and investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, explaining that this investigation is hardly about...

Is The FBI Suppressing Evidence? In a follow-up to this morning's Face The Nation interview of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) about Operation Fast and Furious, CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson reports that the committee will be asking for more information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Issa said this morning that the family of Agent Terry was told by agents attending his funeral that there were three firearms found at the murder scene. Documents released to the committee only mentioned two weapons linked to Operation Fast and Furious. Issa wants...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa snapped at National Labor Relations Board general counsel Lafe Solomon for openly defying his congressional subpoena. Not complying with congressional subpoena is technically an illegal act, and Solomon could be charged with contempt of Congress if Issa, a leading Republican, chooses to proceed down that path. “Your continued personal obstruction, lack of compliance with a validly issued congressional subpoena and false statements to the committee are unacceptable,” Issa said in a Monday letter to Solomon. “The NLRB is acting as a rogue agency that believes it does not have to fully answer to...

The Justice Department is accusing the Republican congressman who is leading an investigation into "Operation Fast and Furious" of "mischaracterizing evidence" and "maligning" federal law enforcement officials by questioning Sunday whether the FBI was trying to cover up the existence of a third gun at the scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry's murder last year. "The FBI has made clear that reports of a third gun recovered from the perpetrators at the scene of Agent Terry's murder are false," the department said in a statement Monday. This comes one day after Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif,

Video 1:39 minutes Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Attorney General Eric Holder "clearly knew more than" he revealed to Congress about a controversial gun-tracking program and said his probe of the matter had revealed clear “inconsistencies.” "He clearly knew more than he -- than he said when he said he only first heard of this program a few weeks before,” said Issa on CBS News' Face the Nation. “I take him at the word, but only if we can have the kind of dialogue that allows us to ask, if you...

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) made headlines this week by issuing a subpoena for documents from Attorney General Eric Holder about a botched weapons investigation, but Holder is apparently not Issa’s only target. A little-noticed provision of the subpoena targets the White House, specifically naming Eric Schultz, a communications aide who was hired in May to respond to media inquiries on oversight matters. Issa issued the subpoena as part of his investigation into a program called Fast and Furious, which whistle-blowers have described as allowing assault weapons and military-grade sniper rifles to transfer into criminal networks....