ATF Gunwalker – Fast & Furious 6 (or 8) Years Later

The ATF started smuggling guns into Mexico in 2009, then got found out in 2011.  This goes back a long, long ways, and was one of the reasons this blog was started – initially we wanted to cover all kinds of political stuff, but the ATF’s Fast & Furious and sister smuggling operations dominated things for a long time.  Under Obama, nothing was done.  He exerted executive privelege and made all the relevant documents that he and Eric Holder knew about disappear from the public eye, all while claiming nothing happened, all while blood continued (and still continues) to flow in Mexico and in the US.  Holder was held in contempt by Congress for stonewalling their investigation into Fast & Furious, and it showed us how transparently biased much of the media was, especially on Fast & Furious.  Sharyl Atkisson, the CBS reporter who brought the story to the mainstream, was later personally targeted by the Obama administration and eventually left CBS.  David Codrea, one of the bloggers who first broke the story when it was still just “gunwalker”, is still around; sadly the other who helped break it, Mike Vanderbough of Sipsey Street Irregulars, is no longer with us – he was one of those guys with a very long memory and the kind of person who because they were tuned in for decades provided valuable perspective on the players involved at higher levels.  Katie Pavlich, who wrote a book on Fast & Furious, was on the story for years and years, and has moved up a bit in the blogging/reporting world, and still brings some light to the issue when there’s a chance, especially as Fast & Furious within the various gunwalking operations took place in her backyard of Arizona.

So now, years later, with a new president, new administration, new attorney general, it’s being revisited.  We’ll just have to see if anyone’s willing to actually prosecute the ATF and their DOJ counterparts.  Sadly the rule of the swamp is “only banana republics go after the previous administrations, so no current administration will ever go after a prior one for criminal actions”.

Another hearing was held on 6/7/17, which covers mostly old ground.

And the full hearing:

It starts at around 15 minutes or so.

I haven’t watched the whole thing yet, but I’m sure there are things that are forgotten.  In particular one thing that isn’t heard as much anymore is how this was a push by the ATF/DOJ/Obama admin for more gun control, as evidenced by the multiple-gun reporting for southwestern border states being mandated by the ATF, as well as political cries for further restrictions.

A few highlights from the last 6 years or so::

Obama Blames US For Gun Violence In Mexico

Gunwalker Update: Gun Control Celebration at ATF

Gunwalker Update: Feinstein Uses Fast and Furious to Push Gun Control, Gunwalker Being Used to Push Gun Control, Issa Introduces Whistleblower Protection Law, Issa & Grassley Digging Into F&F Investigation Leaks

Gunwalker Update: Public Relations Operation?

Something else to give this further perspective over time is that the last link there includes Stratfor’s debunking of the “90% of guns in Mexico come from the US” lie, which they pointed out is deliberately lying about the facts.  The numbers at the time were something closer to 12-17%, but the 90% number that’s run with by anti-gun politicians and actors comes from the percentage of guns from the US that Mexico sends to the US for tracing.  IIRC the numbers were something like 22,000 guns seized by Mexican authorities back in 2010, with 18,000 being from Mexico or other nations; with some 2-3000 being sent to the US because maybe they’re from the US, and then 90% of that smaller portion being traced to the US.  I go over this here, because as another note to how time has passed, Stratfor was hacked back in 2012 and parts of their website now only exist on the webarchive/wayback machine.

Also in that same last link there is reference to Bob Owens of PJ Media, who went on to start Bearing Arms, and who tragically committed suicide a few months ago.

He also wrote one of the best articles that delineates the clear differences between Bush’s Wide Receiver and Obama’s Fast & Furious/Castaway/unnamed TX operation Gunwalking programs.  Wide Receiver was a Bush ATF program from 2007 that sent tried to track guns south and have the Mexican authorities and ATF in Mexico catch the bad guys; versus Fast and Furious and the various parallel gunwalking programs like Operation Castaway in Florida – all of Obama’s DOJ’s programs that sent guns south and had no notification to any authorities in Mexico, not =Mexican nor US ATF in Mexico; nor other nations guns were sent to by the ATF.  During testimony in 2011, ATF Mexico attache Darren Gil explained how he was utterly blindsided by Fast & Furious and didn’t hear of it until through some backchannels someone asked him “how’s that gunwalking program going?” which neither he nor any other ATF in Mexico nor Mexican authorities had ever heard of.

Wide Receiver was what leftist useful idiots would refer to and try to use to obfuscate Fast & Furious and make it seem like it was a “botched sting”.  Fast & Furious was not a “botched sting”.

It deliberately sent guns to Mexico to recover them at crime scenes after people had been murdered.  That was what was intended.  Once people accept those facts – as laid about by the ATF agents either whistleblowing or being grilled in front of Oversight & Reform in 2011 and ever since, it leads to the question of “why?” of which there are only two answers – either deliberately undermining the US constitution through a manufactured murder crisis in Mexico and/or influencing Mexico cartel politics by arming cartels.  The question then simply becomes “who is responsible for this and will they be held accountable?”  Six years in and we know the ATF bottom to top was responsible, the DOJ from Lanny Breuer to Eric Holder was responsible, and we know the executive branch to Obama knew about it (he talked about it in an interview even before Eric Holder finally fessed up to knowing about it).

So far, no one’s been held accountable.  The ATF has retaliated against their whistleblowers and rewarded their gunsmuggling criminal agents, but little else.

Gunwalker Update: Released Docs Tell Us What We Already Knew, NY Post Rediscovers Fast & Furious

From NYPost:

The deadly-but-forgotten government gun-running scandal known as “Fast and Furious” has lain dormant for years, thanks to White House stonewalling and media compliance. But newly uncovered e-mails have reopened the case, exposing the anatomy of a coverup by an administration that promised to be the most transparent in history.

Not forgotten at all.  Just depends where you live and depends if you have to deal with the armed cartels.  Also, those “newly uncovered emails” basically tell us things we already know.

A federal judge has forced the release of more than 20,000 pages of emails and memos previously locked up under President Obama’s phony executive-privilege claim. A preliminary review shows top Obama officials deliberately obstructing congressional probes into the border gun-running operation.

…internal documents later revealed the real goal was to gin up a crisis requiring a crackdown on guns in America. Fast and Furious was merely a pretext for imposing stricter gun laws.

Yup.

Only, the scheme backfired when Justice agents lost track of the nearly 2,000 guns sold through the program and they started turning up at murder scenes on both sides of the border — including one that claimed the life of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The scheme didn’t backfire.  The operation failed, but the scheme still worked.  Southern border states now have mandatory reporting to the ATF on any purchases of more than one firearm.  Democrats got more gun control, and they got it even though Fast and Furious came to light.  They even got it by citing Fast and Furious as something that meant ATF needed more funding, more resources, and more gun laws – Democrats were saying these things during the hearings with whistleblowers.

Then Team Obama conspired to derail investigations into who was responsible by first withholding documents under subpoena — for which Holder earned a contempt-of-Congress citation — and later claiming executive privilege to keep evidence sealed.

Fascinating how that works.  Start a criminal conspiracy using government force against citizens of the US and citizens of Mexico, get caught, then claim that you’re doing an investigation and the investigation is ongoing so you can’t reveal anything about it, then claim executive privilege and you can magically never be held accountable for a conspiracy that has so far resulted in hundreds of murders.

Somewhere Warren G. Harding is upset he couldn’t think of this scam during Teapot Dome (which killed no one).

The degree of obstruction was “more than previously understood,” House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz said in a recent memo to other members of his panel.

“The documents reveal how senior Justice Department officials — including Attorney General Holder — intensely followed and managed an effort to carefully limit and obstruct the information produced to Congress,” he asserted.

They also indict Holder deputy Lanny Breuer, an old Clinton hand, who had to step down in 2013 after falsely denying authorizing Fast and Furious.

Their efforts to impede investigations included:

-Devising strategies to redact or otherwise withhold relevant information;
-Manipulating media coverage to control fallout;
-Scapegoating the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for the scandal.

The last one is a bit interesting.  The ATF definitely deserves plenty of blame as they conducted the operation, but ultimately the story from the White House was that it was “a rogue operation conducted by a handful of agents at a field office”.

We know that’s BS based off the level the White House went to protect itself, we also know it’s BS based on the resources used – namely the FBI passing felons on background checks (there are later stories about that as well – I may go back and add more links).

Talking points drafted for Holder and other brass for congressional hearings made clear that Justice intended to make ousted ATF officials the fall guys for the scandal.

“These (personnel) changes will help us move past the controversy that has surrounded Fast and Furious,” Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich wrote in August 2011.

In an October 2011 e-mail to his chief of staff, moreover, Holder stated that he agreed with a strategy to first release documents to friendly media “with an explanation that takes the air out” of them, instead “of just handing them over” to Congress.

Thomas Sowell refers to this as “telling the truth slowly“.

Obama insists Fast and Furious is just another “phony” scandal whipped up by Republicans to dog his presidency.

“Phony”.

Gunwalker Update: Meaningless “Relenting” of Executive Privilege

From Politico:

Four years after asserting executive privilege to block Congress from obtaining documents relating to a controversial federal gun trafficking investigation, President Barack Obama relented Friday, turning over to lawmakers thousands of pages of records that led to unusual House votes holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt in 2012.

In January, a federal district court judge rejected Obama’s executive privilege claim over records detailing the Justice Department and White House’s response to Operation Fast and Furious, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigation that may have allowed as many as 2,000 firearms to pass into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson did not turn down Obama’s privilege assertion on the merits. Instead, she said authorized public disclosures about the operation in a Justice Department inspector general report essentially mooted the administration’s drive to keep the records secret.

Telling the truth slowly.

All the things he needed to hide stayed hidden, and when they were slowly uncovered elsewhere, he can now say that he’s all about “transparency” after 4 years of hiding things.

“In light of the passage of time and other considerations, such as the Department’s interest in moving past this litigation and building upon our cooperative working relationship with the Committee and other Congressional committees, the Department has decided that it is not in the Executive Branch’s interest to continue litigating this issue at this time,” Justice Deparment legislative liaison Peter Kadzik wrote in a letter Friday to House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

That’s a lie, but I’m not sure if the translation is “we think we’ve stalled long enough to cool out the mark” or “we’ve managed to cover everything up so you’ll find nothing” or “we’ve broken the opposition and they won’t ask any more questions”.

“As we’ve long asserted, the Committee requires and is entitled to these documents,” Chaffetz said in a statement. “They are critical to the Committee’s efforts to complete meaningful oversight. The Committee has a duty to understand and shine light on what was happening inside DOJ during the time of this irresponsible operation. Yet DOJ has obstructed our investigative work for years.”

After getting word that the Justice Department was turning over records, Chaffetz updated his statement, indicating that the House plans to press its appeal to get records beyond the ones the administration is providing.

“Today, under court order, DOJ turned over some of the subpoenaed documents. The Committee, however, is entitled to the full range of documents for which it brought this lawsuit. Accordingly, we have appealed the District Court’s ruling in order to secure those additional documents,” Chaffetz said.

Well go find the rest then, Chaffetz.

The June 2012 claim in the Fast and Furious case was the only formal assertion of executive privilege by Obama to try to defeat a congressional demand for records or testimony, though the administration has raised executive privilege concerns when declining to comply with other congressional inquiries. Most of those were resolved through negotiations. The administration has also asserted executive privilege in response to a variety of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

Much of the claim was that “it was part of an ongoing investigation” which is a wonderful way to make things go away forever.  Never close the case, and never answer.  Investigate yourself, never find wrongdoing, silence whistleblowers, and keep the investigation ongoing so you never have to reveal anything.

Just put “top men” to work on it.

Illegal Aliens, Illegal Votes, and the DOJ

First off, via Breitbart:

Immigration activists are pushing for illegal immigrants to be granted the right to vote in New York City and say legislation to that effect could be introduced later this year.

The New York Postreports that a proposal to extend voting rights to illegal immigrants, allowing them to vote in elections for city-wide offices, was highlighted at a Black and Latino Legislative Caucus event.

“We want to expand the right to vote for everybody, not suppress the vote. What a radical idea,” Bertha Lewis, head of the Black Institute, said according to the Post. The Post notes she said they expect such legislation to be introduced in the spring.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has made extensive efforts on behalf of illegal immigrants, including offering a city identification card. According to the Post, Lewis said she sees the extension of voting rights as part of that effort.

It is a pretty radical idea to be expanding the right of sovereign franchise to determine one’s representatives and government to people who are not citizens of the country and not even in the country legally.

Of course it’s part of the plan.  Disenfranchise American citizens who’d vote against people who’d take their rights away and bring in more people who will vote how the leftist collectivists desire so they can finally get rid of the real problems in America – because the root cause of all those problems are Americans.

And from National Review:

I attended a hearing on Monday afternoon before District of Columbia federal district court Judge Richard J. Leon that was one of the most “extraordinary” federal court hearings I have ever attended, to use Judge Leon’s description of the case. The hearing was over the temporary restraining order (TRO) and preliminary injunction (PI) being sought by the League of Women Voters and a host of other leftist groups to stop the recent decision of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to allow Kansas, Georgia, Alabama, and Arizona to enforce their proof-of-citizenship voter-registration requirement.

This morning, as I predicted would happen in an article on Sunday, the U.S. Justice Department took a dive and filed a pleading in which it not only failed to defend the actions of the EAC, but agreed with the plaintiffs and consented to both a TRO and a PI. Judge Leon called the pleading “unprecedented” and “extraordinary.” He said he had never seen such a document in his entire experience as a lawyer or a judge. He was obviously astonished that the Justice Department was not defending the agency, and it was soon clear he was not going to allow DOJ to just roll over.

The League of Women Voters, which has a wonderfully innocuous name, is pushing to oppose proof-of-citizenship as a voter registration requirement.  There’s no conceivable reason why they’d want to do this unless they want noncitizens to illegally vote.

The judge issued orders just before the hearing started granting the motions of both the State of Kansas and the Public Interest Legal Foundation to intervene in the case in order to defend the EAC’s position. So Kris Kobach, the Secretary of State of Kansas, was given time to argue against the TRO motion, as was Christian Adams of PILF. The judge opened the hearing by reading into the record an astonishing letter he had just received from the chair of the EAC, Christie McCormick. It informed the court that DOJ had told the EAC that it would not defend the agency, and that it would not allow the EAC to hire its own counsel. McCormick informed the judge that she believed DOJ was not fulfilling its duty and obligation to defend the EAC and had a potential conflict of interest.

It was clear that Judge Leon was shocked at what DOJ had done. While he gave the plaintiffs 20 minutes to argue their case, he gave the lawyer from the Federal Programs Branch of DOJ only five minutes because he said that DOJ was obviously on the same side as the plaintiffs. He also said almost immediately that he would not grant a PI without a complete briefing and arguments on the case — despite DOJ wanting to consent to the PI. Judge Leon made clear that there was “no chance at all — zero” that he would do what the plaintiffs and the Justice Department wanted him to do on that issue.

Let that sink in.  The DOJ, which is charged with enforcing the law, is on the same side of this as people actively trying to circumvent the law.

We’ve known the Obama DOJ has been a political organ dedicated to the ends of the hard left since they covered up Fast & Furious, but this is the DOJ outright defending voter fraud – the same voter fraud the left will try to tell you doesn’t really exist.

Judge Leon talked about all of the cases in which the Federal Programs Branch has been involved in his courtroom, and said he had never seen the type of incomplete brief that DOJ had filed in this case. He said that those briefs “usually cover the waterfront” in terms of raising every legal argument to defend an agency. Leon was very dismissive of the DOJ’s position, its behavior, and its failure to mount a defense consistent with its usual practice. Secretary of State Kobach did a much better job than the plaintiffs in explaining why the plaintiffs had not met the standards for the issuance of a TRO. Kobach pointed out the many errors and mistakes made by the plaintiffs’ lawyer. And he laid out the evidence of noncitizens registering and voting in Kansas — which is why this proof-of-citizenship law is needed.

There is a crystal clear example of why proof of citizenship laws are needed, because noncitizens are illegally voting in elections.  And to this, the DOJ responded:

It was clear that this hearing did not go the way the plaintiffs’ lawyers and DOJ had tried to arrange it to go. They thought the fix was in. In fact, it went so badly, particularly with DOJ being called on the carpet by Judge Leon, that at the end when the plaintiffs’ lawyer got up to try to repair all the holes that Kobach had knocked in their case, the lawyer tried to compare the EAC action to Nazi Germany. He waved the EAC opinion at issue in the air and said “this is what Nazis do behind closed doors!” You know a lawyer is desperate when he tries to equate a dispute over an election administration issue to Nazi Germany.

How bad is it exactly when asking that people who are eligible to vote be asked to prove they are eligible to vote since there are people illegally voting?

And how far have we fallen as a country when the Department of Justice is out saying that any state that wants to abide by elections law, when it has evidence of ongoing illegal voting and states demanding justice, will instead call them Nazis?

The Oregon Standoff

Everybody’s already read about the Oregon standoff with the Hammonds (and the Bundys), how the Hammonds were convicted of arson for burning some land clear, how they were sentenced and the judge said they didn’t deserve the mandatory minimum because it was clear they were doing a range burn with a purpose that wasn’t vandalism or destruction, and how things went to hell from there when another court said they had to serve mandatory minimums because that was the law, right or wrong.  Then the situation got worse, with federal law enforcement escalating things and with ranchers (many of whom were not originally involved) also escalating things.

Congressman Greg Walden’s speech is something that was lost in that discussion, because it was easy for people disinterested in the situation to write it off as some reactionary militia action or some ranchers whining about not getting more free land to graze on.

Its worth watching if you’d like backstory to the whole standoff, and why there are some folks who are still mad about it today.

Frankly, the congressman explaining how the administrators of federal land went back on agreements written into law is the kind of thing that should offend everyone, but it’s lost because the messengers were coopted by the Bundy clowns.

Gunwalker Update: ATF’s Operation Facebook and Furious

From the ATF’s facebook page (click comments on the link to open it up):

Screenshots and assorted shenanigans here, including an ATF agent telling people to “get off this page”:

In for a penny, in for a pound:

Nice.

Executive Actions, Everytown for Gun Control, and The Leftist-Statist Function of Laws

From Politico, a story on how the Obama administration is saying it’s going to target citizens engaged in lawful commerce and exercise of their rights:

According to gun industry insiders and others familiar with the proposals, the changes include requiring an expanded number of small-scale gun sellers to be licensed — and therefore conduct background checks — whenever selling a weapon. This wouldn’t close the so-called gun show loophole, though it has the potential to narrow it.

The administration is also expected to impose tighter rules for reporting guns that get lost or stolen on their way to a buyer.

They won’t go after straw purchasers, but they’ll come up with more rules and regulations for those engaged in exercising rights specifically outlined by the Constitution.

as one of the major proponents of a change, Everytown has recommended adding several factors to the definition — including selling guns in their original packaging, reselling a gun shortly after acquiring it, maintaining a certain quantity of guns for sale or selling more than 25 guns a year — as possible signals that someone needs a license.

For people who are engaged in shooting sports, that’s not really that many.  There are already laws on the books that target people who are actually in the business of dealing guns without a license.  If law enforcement wants to go after someone for selling guns without a license because it’s their undeclared business, they can – and it’s a matter for law enforcement to figure out “is this guy a dealer, or is this guy someone who’s well-to-do and buys and sells a lot or is he liquidating inherited guns or is he X Y Z that’s not criminal?”

Another victory for advocates is likely to be a requirement for all licensed dealers and manufacturers to report to federal authorities any guns that are stolen in transit to a buyer as missing from their inventory. Currently, advocates say, thieves often target packages addressed to gun retailers in the hopes of stealing unregistered guns that are harder to trace. And while buyer and seller might sort out refunds or replacements on their own, they’re not required to report the missing guns to the National Crime Information Center.

There’s already a form for that.  Buyer and seller don’t sort out refunds or replacements on their own if packages turn up missing – one or both parties will report the package missing for insurance purposes.  Plus they don’t want a gun stolen in transit to end up as their problem once the thief uses it.

White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett also raised gun-control advocates’ hopes for new domestic violence provisions last month. In a post on the actress Lena Dunham’s website, Jarrett noted that guns are the most likely cause of death for women who are victims of domestic partner violence.

Somehow I’m unsurprised that Valerie Jarrett is exchanging notes on the web with Lena Dunham.  Probably won’t post much to Dunham about efforts to fight against sexual assault on children.

Gun-control activists acknowledged that changing the rules for licenses might have limited impact on what sellers actually do in the short term. But in this political environment, they’ll take whatever measures they can, no matter how incremental.

“Setting cultural norms,” said Everytown research director Ted Alcorn, “is something that laws do.”

And there’s the point.

This isn’t about doing anything that prevents crime or violence.  This is about a boot stamping on a human face forever.  These are the moral busibodies who will torment free men endlessly.

They’re going after a Constitutional right and trying to push people away from it culturally.  They’re trying to destroy the right by making it culturally nonexistent.  They’re trying to make it harder and harder to buy and sell guns.  The numbers game is just the camel’s nose.  Right now they want 25 guns a year… next it will be 15, then 10, then 5, then 2, then 1, then 0.

The same game has been played in many states with magazine restrictions.  30 is too many!  20 is too many!  15 is too many (NJ, CO)!  10 is too many (CT, CA, MA, MD)!  7 is too many (NY)!  5 is too many!  3!  2!  1!  0.  When gun control advocates are asked what the number they “need” is, they will never settle on a number to stop on.  After Newtown, the argument was “30 children will be killed” and they demanded mag restrictions… why?  If 30 children is terrible, why is 15 children okay?  Or 10 children?  Or 5?  Or one?   Because of course it’s not the number, that’s just a way to get a restriction that can then be pushed further.

Currently NY is pushing for an ammo ban that will drop allowable purchases to an absurdly low level:

If enacted, the legislation would place strict limits on the number of bullets a gun owner can purchase over a 90-day period, and ban gun dealers from selling ammunition for a firearm to anyone unauthorized to own such a weapon.

The bills are aimed at owners of high-capacity rifles, but they would also affect owners of handguns with much smaller magazines, even six-shooters.

The provision would limit the amount of bullets a gun owner can buy to no more than twice the amount of the capacity of the weapon ever 90 days, which means someone who owns a six-shooter could only buy 12 bullets every three months, the Brooklyn Eagle reported.

48 rounds a year with a typical revolver.  One box of ammo (minus two rounds) for the year.

You can’t maintain a lot of proficiency with that little ammo… of course, to the gun-banner, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.  Restrict the ability to shoot, then say people are incompetent, then take away the guns.  It’s a win-win for the leftist statist.

It also uses laws to set cultural norms – you can’t introduce someone to shooting with 4 rounds per month.  You can’t go plinking with 1 round per week.  With a double-barrel shotgun, you’d have 4 rounds per 3 months, 16 per year, so it’d take you years just of nursing your state-approved amount to go shoot sporting clays.

It’d be amazing to see this same objective pushed for other rights.  What if they pushed against the First Amendment and you were only allowed so many words per yea

–

“If I have a cold, I can’t buy Sudafed without ID, but I can walk into any gun shop and walk out with enough bullets to arm a small army without showing any kind of ID,” Ms. Simon said in a joint release. “I can buy any kind of bullets regardless of what kind of gun I own. I don’t even have to own a gun to stock up on bullets. Nothing stops me from having friends buy even more bullets for me. The sky is the limit. The San Bernardino shooters had 6,000 rounds of ammunition. We need this legislation so that cannot happen here.”

Yes, you should be able to buy all the Sudafed you want as well.

There are also laws against murder and lots of gun laws in CA and that didn’t stop the San Bernadino terrorists.  There are also lots of gun laws in India and that didn’t stop the Mumbai terrorists.

“Setting cultural norms,” said Everytown research director Ted Alcorn, “is something that laws do.”

It’s to push people away from their rights by making them hard to exercise.  Push people away from their rights and then they can be taken away.

Hell, the left can make laws so inherently oppressive that people don’t even understand why or how they’re being oppressed anymore.

Gunwalker Update: Five Years On

From Katie Pavlich:

Five years ago today, Marine and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a firefight by Mexican bandits. The firearms used by the criminals who killed him were part of the Obama Justice Department’s Operation Fast and Furious. As a reminder, ATF agents allowed more than 2500 AK-47s and other firearms to be purchased and trafficked by known Mexican cartel members through Fast and Furious. Hundreds of people have been killed as a result of the program, which was secret until ATF whistleblower John Dodson exposed it after Terry’s death in 2010.

“Five years later. We have celebrated Brian so many times that it warms my heart. This is a little something of past friends and ones we met along the way at events held to honor Brian. I thank all of you with every ounce of my being! We will keep fighting. 11:08pm tonight is when a deadly gunfight happened and took Brian. Please also pray for his team that was there when he took his last breathe and The Border Patrol family,” Terry’s sister, Kelly Terry-Willis, posted to her Facebook page late yesterday.

Today, not a single ATF agent has been fired as a result of the operation.  Terry’s killers have been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty on a variety of different charges, including first degree murder.

Holder nor Obama are in prison.  There’s a Border Patrol station named after Brian Terry.  Sharyl Atkisson left CBS.  Hundreds to thousands of Mexicans and Americans are now dead because of Obama/Holder’s ATF’s actions.  But aside from a lot of people who won’t forget the wrongs done by Obama/Holder’s DOJ and ATF, to most of the US, it’s almost like nothing ever happened.  The media succeeded in carrying the water for Obama to the point he can still make claims for the need for gun control after a terrorist attack and not get laughed out of office – despite having been responsible for arming narcoterrorist cartels.

Hell, assholes from the ATF are still called on by the media for gun control pieces as though they aren’t an agency composed of criminals and thugs that doesn’t care about either the rights or lives of Americans or our Mexican neighbors.

It’s a sad indicator of the times we’re living in.

The San Bernadino Terrorist Attack and Gun Control Response

They already have a lot of these things waiting in a drawer to be cranked out the next time the have to push their agenda.  The NYT did a page 1 editorial on how we must ban guns for the children to prevent terrorism.  It’s full of the same things we expect to see every time they crank out their gun control screed, full of the same “no rights are without regulation so we can infringe them even if they say ‘shall not be infringed'”, etc. etc.

Obama went out saying that the ability of US citizens who are convicted of no crimes to buy guns is “an insane loophole”. Of course he’s talking about the terrorist watch list/no fly list, which as we’ve noted before has erroneously included people like the late Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy, who spent months trying to get it fixed – and when you’re a former president’s brother and one of the most powerful Democrats in the country and it takes months… what does that leave for the common man?  Even the leftist ACLU opposes the no-fly list.  Meanwhile, there are at least 72 people on the no-fly terror watch list who work for DHS or TSA.  Keep in mind that Obama was calling for the terror watch/no fly list ban before San Bernadino as well – something that since the San Bernadino terrorists weren’t on the watch list, would have made no difference then and would make no difference now.  This is just exploiting a crisis.  (And of course the way to keep potential terrorists from doing any terrorists acts is to have the AG charge them with terrorist activities.)

The calls for gun control rather than terrorist control have been everywhere in the last week.  AG Lynch said the Obama administration would call for more, Obama spent last Friday talking gun control and not terrorism; and then there’s the stupidity of the left as they call for bans, not just the lack of any understanding about a bullet button, but one Dem congresswoman saying that “multi-automatic round weapons are easily available“, and a host of bogus statistics and BS that come from people who don’t even know what they want to ban, but they know they want to take it away from you, the leftist-parody-of-itself saying the NRA funds terrorism, and then as the left peels back the mask to reveal it’s true face – the straight up calls for disarming everyone.

A true liberal position, the place to start, is to call for domestic disarmament. That is the banning of the sale of all guns to private parties coupled with a buyback of those on the street (Mexico just moved to so control guns). Collectors can keep their guns as long as they remove the firing pin or fill the barrel with cement. Gun sports can be allowed — in closed shooting ranges. And hunters can be allowed to have long guns (if they pass background checks) with no scopes, which are not sporting. But, these exceptions aside, liberals should call for a gun-free nation and point out the much lower murder rates and fewer deaths due to accidental discharge of fire arms found in those civilized nations where most guns have been removed from private hands — and often even from those of the police.

That’s a true progressive leftist position – there’s nothing “liberal” at all about stripping everyone of their right of self defense.  It is, however, a wonderful plan to create tyranny.

On Women In Combat 11: Fait Accompli

While you weren’t looking, the Obama administration made sure not to let a crisis go to waste and the SECDEF opened all combat positions in the military to women.

Washington (CNN)All U.S. military combat positions are being opened up to women, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Thursday.

The decision allows women to fill about 220,000 jobs that are now limited to men — including infantry, armor, reconnaissance and some special operations units.

“This means that as long as they qualify and meet the standards, women will now be able to contribute to our mission in ways they could not before. They’ll be able to drive tanks, give orders, lead infantry soldiers into combat,” Carter said at a news conference Thursday.

They won’t meet the standards because the current standards are “too high”.  Once the standards are lowered (or men not wanting to be accused of sexism let failures pass) they won’t contribute to the mission because they’ll be – by definition – substandard, and they won’t be able to drive tanks, give orders, or lead infantry soldiers into combat as well as the men currently in those jobs.  Also, the men who come in after the adjusted standards will also be substandard.  The entire military will suffer.

“There will be no exceptions,” Carter said.

Carter’s historic announcement comes after years-long reviews, and after public push-back from the Marine Corps, which had sought exceptions to keep positions such as infantry, machine gunner, fire support and reconnaissance to men. A Marine Corps study suggests all-male squads are more effective in combat and less likely to be injured than integrated groups.

Carter acknowledged the Marines’ resistance, but said he’d decided to set a policy that covers the full department.

“We are a joint force, and I’ve decided to make a decision that applies to the entire force,” Carter said.

He will never be laying in the street bleeding and needing someone to carry him to safety.

“Moving forward,” Dunford said, “my focus is to lead the full integration of women in a manner that maintains our joint warfighting capability, ensures the health and welfare of our people, and optimizes how we leverage talent across the Joint Force.”

Ah, moving forward – the relentless march of progressivism.  It will not maintain warfighting capability, will not ensure health and welfare, and will not “optimize leveraging talent”.

He acknowledged that “some service members, men and women, have a perception that integration would be pursued at a cost of combat effectiveness.”

And they’re correct.  Combat effectiveness is meaningless to a man who will never face combat and whose world consists of what’s best for the party.

However, Carter said: “The military has long prided itself on being a meritocracy.”

It’s only been a partial meritocracy recently, and now it’s not a meritocracy at all.

Standards will drop, combat effectiveness will fall, the hard scientific biological differences of men and women will be ignored in the name of progressively harming the US and all its institutions, and the military and the US will suffer.