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The U.S. Department of State and the governments of Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom are on opposite sides of the issue of corporate liability in the Supreme Court case of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. The nations filed an ...

During his testimony about Operation Fast and Furious before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last week, Attorney General Eric Holder said that he still hasn’t discussed the deadly scandal with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano or President Barack Obama. Holder’s admission that he hasn’t taken the initiative to discuss how the government should handle this scandal came during an exchange he had with Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz. “I had an opportunity in the Judiciary Committee to ask you questions on Dec. 8, 2011,” Chaffetz said when questioning Holder on Thursday. “I...

Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee today was, in the main, a re-run of past appearances before Congress. He kept the stone wall firm and tight, while angrily denying he was running a cover-up, and accusing investigators of running “political gotcha games.” Here’s Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY) cutting to the chase, and asking Holder how many more U.S. Border Patrol agents would have had to die as part of Operation Fast and Furious before the Attorney General would finally take responsibility: Holder continued his “incompetence defense” of insisting that he really doesn’t know anything that...

The attorney general's claim regarding when he knew about Operation Fast and Furious conflicts with the released communications.The Department of Justice released hundreds of documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious late Friday afternoon, including a series of emails that strongly suggests that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself in congressional testimony. The crucial email exchange began at 2:31 a.m. on December 15, 2010, with a message from an unidentified DOJ source to “OIOC SIT� and “SITROOM�: On December 14, 2010, BORTAC agent working in the Nogales, AZ AOR was shot. The agent was conducting Border Patrol Operations 18...

"It is not in the national interest to lock the United States into supporting an expensive and dirty form of oil for many years to come. Also, additional capacity for tar sands oil perpetuates America's addiction to oil, and undermines the clean energy alternatives that would bring genuine energy security," the NRDC report continues.

The Obama administration is drawing fire for yielding what critics see as a huge propaganda victory to Islamist regimes seeking to curb American speech deemed "offensive" to Muslims. The State Department hosted a three-day, closed-door meeting last week with representatives of the Saudi Arabia-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on measures to fight religious "intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization." In her closing remarks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton portrayed the conference as a sign that Washington and the OIC are working together to protect religious freedom around the world. "We have to get past the idea that we can suppress...

While Western diplomats wring their hands over trivial insults to Islam, a slow-motion genocide of Christians has been unfolding in the Muslim world. The latest attack occurred on Christmas day in Nigeria, where the terrorist sect Boko Haram bombed two Catholic churches in the towns of Abuja and Jos, killing at least 39 worshipers. This same group killed 32 Christians last Christmas Eve. In this year alone, Boko Haram has murdered 491 people. The killings in Nigeria are just one example of continuous violent attacks on Christians and their churches. Yet our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been nearly...

Zetas may be smuggling weapons using State Dept. program - Chaparral, Columbus & southern NM roads The brutally violent Zetas drug organization may be smuggling military-grade weapons through El Paso and Columbus, N.M., to feed its ongoing battles against other cartels and to possibly disrupt the 2012 elections in Mexico. Phil Jordan, a former director of the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center and a former CIA operative, said the Zetas have shipped large amounts of weapons through the El Paso area. "They are purchasing weapons in the Dallas area and are flying them to El Paso, and then they are...

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” Sir Winston Churchill When Historians will look back to these times in the History of Contemporary America, they will certainly wonder, how come the Superpower of the World was conquered without a drop of blood running in the streets... Another major Muslim conquest, the one that took place in Spain between 711 and 718, entered History marked by bloody battles in different cities where revolts and resistance opposed the invasion and takeover by the Islamic invaders. They did not take it over smoothly as they are...

Finnish police and customs authorities in the port of Kotka have discovered a large cargo of weapons and explosives on board a Danish-owned vessel arriving from Germany and bound for South kroea and China. The Isle of Man-registered, Danish-owned Thor Liberty, which was packing 69 patriot missiles and 160 tonnes of explosives According to reports from Kotka, which is close to the Russian border, officers found 69 Patriot missiles and 160 tonnes of explosives on the Isle of Man-registered, Thor Liberty which is owned by Thorco Shipping, headquartered in Svendborg, Denmark. The Swedish news agency TT reports Thorco’s CEO Thomas...

The Obama administration continues to deny that we are at war with Islamist jihadists. Indeed, the word “jihad” itself is forbidden in Obama-land if used to describe the Islamist warriors. At its highest levels, the Obama administration insists on using bland euphemisms rather than accurate language describing the Islamist ideology we are fighting. As far as the Obama administration is concerned, the global war against Islamist killers is an “Overseas Contingency Operation.” The Fort Hood massacre, in which thirteen people were killed and dozens more wounded by an Islamist jihadist, is described by Obama officials as “workplace violence.” In one...

An alleged Mexican drug cartel member was arraigned in U.S. federal court Wednesday on murder charges from the roadside ambush of two U.S. immigration agents working south of the border. A spokesman for the U.S. District Court in Washington says Julian Zapata Espinoza entered a not guilty plea and is being held in jail. The charges included murder and attempted murder for the Feb. 15 mid-day attack along a four-lane highway that killed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata and wounded colleague Victor Avila as they were driving to Mexico City after a meeting with other U.S. personnel....

The Finnish authorities have impounded an Isle of Man-flagged ship bound for China with undeclared missiles and explosives, officials say. Police are questioning the crew of the MS Thor Liberty after what were described as 69 Patriot anti-missile missiles were found aboard. Interior Minister Paivi Rasanen said the missiles were marked "fireworks". The MS Thor Liberty had docked in the Finnish port of Kotka after leaving Germany last week. Dock workers became suspicious after finding explosives poorly stored on open pallets, and the missiles were then found in containers marked "fireworks". The managing director of the ship's owner, Thorco Shipping,...

What Obama administration officials, including the president, knew or didn't know about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives' 2009 Operation Fast and Furious has little to do with what they should have known. Attorney General Holder, Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and Secretary Napolitano each declared that he or she did not know about Fast and Furious until 2011. But what should they have known about a federal program that eventually led to mass murder? In a 1999 web article on leadership, writer and attorney Jonathan Wallace examined the question of when to hold those in power accountable. He...

One of the most popular attractions in Washington, D.C. is a building that graces Pennsylvania Avenue with an exterior engraved with the First Amendment to the Constitution and its guarantee of, among other liberties, freedom of speech. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have been well advised to hold her three-day meeting last week with the some of the most determined enemies of free expression – increasingly doing business as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – at the Newseum, rather a few blocks away in Foggy Bottom. After all, at that shrine to our most fundamental civil rights, the...

From December 12 to 14, the State Department is hosting the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a body of 57 Muslim countries that presents itself as a representative of all Muslims. Its top objective is eliminating “Islamophobia” by promoting legislation to punish those who criticize the religion or uses language is deems offensive. This week, the OIC is in Washington D.C., enjoying the company of the State Department. Sources within the OIC told the International Islamic News Agency that the event’s objective is to work on “developing a legal basis for the U.N. Human Rights Council’s resolution which [will] help...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities said Tuesday that an alleged founder of the Zetas drug cartel had an arsenal of 169 guns when he was captured Monday, and may have been linked to the abduction of nine Mexican marines. Navy spokesman Jose Luis Vergara said suspect Raul Lucio Hernandez Lechuga oversaw Zeta operations around the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, where nine marines disappeared earlier this year. Vergara said a suspect was killed and a marine wounded in a firefight that erupted during Hernandez Lechuga's capture Monday in the Veracruz state city of Cordoba. The bust was the result of...

The State Department on Monday launched three days of closed-door talks with representatives of international organizations and several dozen countries with the stated aim of promoting religious freedom and tolerance while ensuring that freedom of expression is not harmed in the process. U.S. Ambassador at Large for international religious freedom Suzan Johnson Cook, said on Monday, "We must denounce offensive speech whenever we encounter it – but our commitment to universal principles makes clear that faith must never be a crime and religion must never be used as an excuse to stifle freedom of expression.” The Obama administration’s initiative, building...

SNIP Six years later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to host OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Washington, DC in mid-December 2011 to discuss how the United States can implement the OIC agenda to criminalize criticism of Islam. Cloaked in the sanctimonious language of “Resolution 16/18,” that was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in April 2011, the WDC three-day experts meeting is billed as a working session to discuss legal mechanisms to combat religious discrimination (but the only religion the Human Rights Council has ever mentioned in any previous resolution is Islam). The UN Human Rights...

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...

Five years ago, Mexico President Felipe Calderon launched a war on drug cartels. Since then at least 40,000 people have been killed in drug-related crimes, according to official figures. But the government stopped updating its total figure at the end of 2010, making it difficult to track progress in 2011. Political scientist Eduardo Guerrero puts the total at 47,500, if deaths reported in the newspapers this year are included. Others believe the government has been too narrow in its definitions and the total could be approaching 60,000. Where do the cartels get their guns and their money from? And which...

The Fast and Furious Scandal gets worse for AG Eric Holder and his Department of Justice. The Watergate adage that it is not the crime, it's the cover-up that matters comes to mind, with the reservation that the crime in F&F -- supplying thousands of sophisticated firearms to a drug cartel -- dwarfs a third rate burglary in gravity. Hundreds of Mexicans have been slaughtered, and two US sworn agents murdered. The fact that the Department of Justice has now acknowledged that it has lied to Congress, covering up its involvement, should make this a headline-grabber of a case, dominating...

Selling weapons to Mexico - where cartel violence is out of control - is controversial because so many guns fall into the wrong hands due to incompetence and corruption. The Mexican military recently reported nearly 9,000 police weapons "missing." Yet the U.S. has approved the sale of more guns to Mexico in recent years than ever before through a program called "direct commercial sales." It's a program that some say is worse than the highly-criticized "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal, where U.S. agents allowed thousands of weapons to pass from the U.S. to Mexican drug cartels. CBS News investigative correspondent...

In all of our nation’s history, a handful of dates stand out – dates that meant life or death for America and our freedoms. On July 4, 1776, our Founding Fathers put their lives on the line and declared that America would be independent and free. On June 6, 1944, American troops landed at Normandy and America took a critical step toward ending history’s bloodiest war. And on September 11, 2001, we witnessed the deadliest terrorist attack ever to take place on American soil. These events, and many others, shaped our destiny and still affect our lives today. And as...

As we continue to watch the general uproar over the Operation Fast and Furious program, and specifically what Attorney General Holder knew and when he knew it, it needs to be noted that perjury is not the only apparent violation of law to have occurred. I refer to the apparent violation of at least one (probably two) major U.S. laws by the Holder Justice Department. A few years ago, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701, the follow-on to the Trading with the Enemy Act) was expanded in order to criminalize any transactions between U.S. entities — to...

Since the December 2010 shooting death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and its Department of Justice masters have represented the tragedy as a chance encounter between Terry’s patrol unit and armed, illegal alien drug runners in the Arizona desert. But new information makes it clear that Attorney General Eric Holder’s DOJ has labored for the past year to hide the fact that the heavily armed gang which exchanged fire with the bean-bag equipped members of Terry’s border patrol unit that night was in the Peck Canyon, Arizona location thanks to a tip...

A White House spokesman pointed Friday to an account published by the left-wing advocacy group Media Matters for America in its denial of three online claims that President Barack Obama was briefed about the failed “Operation Fast and Furious” gun-walking program in 2010. According to recently released White House visitor logs, then-Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler was admitted to the White House four times in 2010 between May 7 and May 19. The Los Angeles Times has reported that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program was at its peak during May 2010.

The Fast & Furious scandal pot may be reaching the boiling point.  Attorney General Eric Holder has maintained he knew nothing about the “gun walking” operation on the southern border that put thousands of high powered weapons into the hands of the Mexican gun cartel and led to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and increased the mayhem on both sides of the border.    He would have us believe that the operation was simply a misguided adventure involving a couple of rouge officers behaving badly way out west.  Holder contends that even after Agent Terry’s murder in...

The furor over Operation Fast and Furious has already put a shadow over the political future of prominent Arizona Democrat and former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, as POLITICO reported back in August when he resigned the prosecutor's post under pressure. That shadow grew significantly darker and longer on Friday with the release of internal Justice Department documents in which Burke excoriated the "Gun Lobby" (presumably, the National Rifle Association) as well as its "stooges," among whom he counted Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Here's one of Burke's e-mails on the subject, included in my story last night on the latest Fast and Furious document dump:...

See the memo itself in the sidebar media player, obtained by Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars and posted exclusively on Gun Rights Examiner. [snip] [Of significance in the Styers memo Lajeunesse references but does not detail...] “The most important observation of Styers is that the ATF end of this operation was by all law enforcement standards set up to fail,” Vanderboegh said in a phone conversation with this reporter moments ago. “Indeed, it seems Styers’ opinion was that this was designed to be a necessary fail. “Styers describes an ATF operation that is deliberately incomplete, seeming to shield the...

Under fire for losing track of weapons that turned up at crime scenes along the Southwest border, the Justice Department has taken the extraordinary step of formally withdrawing an inaccurate letter about the episode that it sent to Congress earlier this year. Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole sent nearly 1,400 pages of emails and other documents to Capitol Hill late Friday afternoon that lay bare the raw and sometimes cringe-worthy process by which the letter was drafted. The materials contain clues into how misleading information about the botched gun trafficking operation made it into a Feb. 4, 2011 letter to...

More than 1,000 pages of frenzied email exchanges were fired back and forth among Justice Department officials, as they weighed how to respond to initial inquires about the gunwalker scandal. Today, the agency turned over those subpoenaed records to Congress in advance of a hearing next week with Attorney General Eric Holder. The emails are marked by intra-office disagreement over how vigorously to defend the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF)....

The Department of Justice late Friday afternoon staged a “document dump” of more than 1,000 pages related to the Operation Fast and Furious investigation, including some e-mail exchanges critical of Senator Charles Grassley, and one exchange that raises questions about what some Justice Department officials should have known was an erroneous statement in a Feb. 4, 2011 to Grassley. An earlier estimate of the number of documents from one sources has been reduced down from about 2,000, reported earlier by this column. The documents have gone to the House committee investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation....

NPR: Justice Withdraws Inaccurate 'Fast And Furious' Letter It Sent To Congress. Under fire for losing track of weapons that turned up at crime scenes along the Southwest border, the Justice Department has taken the extraordinary step of formally withdrawing an inaccurate letter about the episode that it sent to Congress earlier this year. Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole sent nearly 1,400 pages of emails and other documents to Capitol Hill late Friday afternoon that lay bare the raw and sometimes cringe-worthy process by which the letter was drafted. The materials contain clues into how misleading information about the botched...

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...

Scandal: The Justice Department has sealed court records detailing the circumstances of a border patrol agent's murder by a Mexican drug cartel, including the fact U.S. agents were being hunted with U.S.-supplied weapons. The murder of Border Patrol Agent Bryan Terry by Mexican drug cartels with weapons provided by his own government is a national disgrace. Attorney General Eric Holder, who professes being out of the loop regarding Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF program that got Terry killed, is doing his best to keep the American people from the truth. Holder's Justice Department has abruptly sealed court records in...

While federal officials publicly denounced a lone whistleblower and told Congress the Obama administration had done everything it could to stop guns from going to Mexico, administration officials had signs that Fast and Furious investigators were losing track of weapons, a new memo obtained exclusively by Fox News suggests. The memo, written in early February by Agent Gary Styers with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, appears to corroborate allegations made a few weeks earlier by whistleblower ATF Agent John Dodson about the gunrunning probe. It also conflicts with a letter from Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich to...

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

While federal officials publicly denounced a lone whistleblower and told Congress the Obama administration had done everything it could to stop guns from going to Mexico, administration officials had signs that Fast and Furious investigators were losing track of weapons, a new memo obtained exclusively by Fox News suggests. The memo, written in early February by Agent Gary Styers with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, appears to corroborate allegations made a few weeks earlier by whistleblower ATF Agent John Dodson about the gunrunning probe. It also conflicts with a letter from Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich to...

A Senate committee investigating the so-called "gunwalking" scandal spent hours Tuesday questioning Attorney General Eric Holder, who testified that "Operation Fast and Furious," which has been tied to the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, should never happen again. Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in Arizona near the Mexican border 11 months ago. Two assault rifles that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allegedly let walk into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in "Fast and Furious" were found at the scene. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, who broke this story, has spoken exclusively...

"Brian Terry’s murder was entirely preventable. The incompetence of the DEA and FBI let his Border Patrol unit walk into an ambush. After the ambush, it appears the FBI tampered with evidence to cover up that one of their informants was involved with the murder of a federal agent."

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- To date Barack Obama, the dispenser of hope and change and the presiding officer over the least transparent presidency in history, has claimed he only learned about Fast and Furious earlier this year. However, with each new document dump Obama’s timeframe seems to be as inaccurate (or as purposely misleading) as Attorney General Eric Holder’s. For example, just months after he took office it was evident he was focused on a Fast and Furious-like operation, ostensibly aimed at cutting down on gun trafficking on the southern border. Thus, on March 24, 2009, Deputy Attorney General David...

In the growing Fast and Furious scandal, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death in Peck Canyon, Arizona was previously described as a chance meeting that led to a firefight: an illegal alien “rip crew” working for the Sinaloa cartel was hoping to find other illegal aliens and to rob them at gunpoint. Instead, they stumbled across a Border Patrol unit and murdered Agent Terry. Last week, the Washington Times offered a new version of the encounter: they reported that the rip crew was not hunting illegals, but Border Patrol teams — with the intention of engaging them in combat. Sources...

Americans for Limited Government president Bill Wilson told The Daily Caller that Attorney General Eric Holder’s loss of control on Tuesday is a sign that he’s “got something to hide and he’s scared.” Holder lost control of his demeanor on Tuesday at the White House when TheDC asked him to respond to the surge in calls for his resignation over Operation Fast and Furious. “You guys need to — you need to stop this,” Holder said. “It’s not an organic thing that’s just happening. You guys are behind it.” Fast and Furious was a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and...

Poor, much-maligned Eric Holder. He should be able to implicitly approve an ultimately lethal operation without anybody ever asking questions about it. Luckily for him, the tax-exempt “watchdog” group Media Matters agrees with him. You know the story so far: The Attorney General received memos that clearly outlined the controversial tactics employed in Operation Fast and Furious, a program to funnel firearms to straw purchasers in a purported attempt to track the weapons from the hands of the straw purchasers and into the hands of the leaders of Mexican drug cartels. The program’s credibility was called into question because the...

Fairfax, VA --(Ammoland.com)- NRA-News is a valued partner that continues to cover breaking gun rights news with a new and improved short video format in the “NRA News Minute” videos. To view the current firearms or gun rights news video, please click above: Cam Edwards talks to Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu on White House continuing to get away with fast and furious.

From multiple sources come shocking charges of deadly ineptitude and an FBI coverup. Previously, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death in Peck Canyon, Arizona was described as a chance meeting that led to a firefight: an illegal alien “rip crew” working for the Sinaloa cartel was hoping to find other illegal aliens and to rob them at gunpoint. Instead, they stumbled across a Border Patrol unit and murdered Agent Terry. Last week, the Washington Times offered a new version of the encounter: they reported that the rip crew was not hunting illegals, but Border Patrol teams — with the intention...

To date Barack Obama, the dispenser of hope and change and the presiding officer over the least transparent presidency in history, has claimed he only learned about Fast and Furious earlier this year. However, with each new document dump Obama’s timeframe seems to be as inaccurate (or as purposely misleading) as Attorney General Eric Holder’s. For example, just months after he took office it was evident he was focused on a Fast and Furious-like operation, ostensibly aimed at cutting down on gun trafficking on the southern border. Thus, on March 24, 2009, Deputy Attorney General David Ogden made the following...

The employees of the Justice Department who testified to Congress about the notorious "Fast and Furious" program claim that they have been punished by the department while the people most responsible for the program have been rewarded.

Calls for Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation from Congress have swelled to 52, along with “three presidential candidates and two sitting Governors,� as reported by the Daily Caller.  Holder really wants them to stop reporting this stuff. As Vice President Joe Biden recently explained to HUMAN EVENTS, only liberal media outlets are allowed to ask questions of Democrat Party royalty, at carefully orchestrated events.  Holder spoke briefly with the Daily Caller and expanded this doctrine to include the reporting of embarrassing, but objectively accurate, facts: As Holder’s aide was escorting the attorney general offstage following his remarks Tuesday afternoon at the...