Free Republic

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...