Obama administration allowed American gun shipments to Mexican cartels

From the Houston Chronicle, the latest news on the investigation of Obama administration’s Mexican gun-trafficking program. (H/T Doug Ross)

Full story:

House and Senate lawmakers are threatening to block presidential nominees and subpoena Justice Department officials this week to force the release of documents on a controversial gun trafficking program that allowed American shipments of weapons to Mexican cartels.

Congressional investigators claim U.S. officials allowed American gun stores to sell weapons in bulk to Mexican buyers in order to track the shipments and identify the ringleaders, known as “Operation Fast and Furious” under “Project Gunrunner.”

Weapons from those sales were found at the scene of two separate attacks on U.S. agents, and Congress wants to know if they were used specifically in the deaths of Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent Jaime Zapata or Customs and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, claims the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is conducting a cover-up in its refusal to hand over documents and witnesses to congressional investigators.

Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he will block President Barack Obama’s nominees from confirmation until he gets the documents he needs for his panel’s investigation.

In the House, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., will hold the first of several hearings today into the failure of the Justice Department and the ATF to cooperate with the congressional probes. Issa is threatening to issue subpoenas to retrieve documents and to gain access to witnesses.

The efforts by Grassley and Issa have won bipartisan support from Texas lawmakers frustrated with the lack of information about the death of Zapata coming from the administration.

“The Justice Department engaged in an unauthorized activity which actually ended up putting guns in the hands of dangerous drug cartels in Mexico,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “Unfortunately, they seemed to be engaged now in a cover-up and refuse to be forthcoming with regards to Senator Grassley’s reasonable request for documents and information.”

Zapata, a Brownsville native, was working in Laredo as an ICE agent before he was transferred to Mexico to serve as a U.S. government consultant to the Mexican military’s battle against the cartels.

He was killed Feb. 15, and agent Victor Avila was wounded, when Los Zetas cartel members shot the agents in their SUV during an attempted car jacking along the highway between Mexico City and San Luis Potosi.

The Zapata family wants more information about the death of their son, said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, who supports Grassley’s attempt to obtain documents.

Congressman Darrell Issa tweeted this Daily Caller story.

Excerpt:

Four Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents in transcribed interviews with top GOP oversight official Darrell Issa’s office are contradicting the Justice Department’s account of “Operation Fast and Furious,” saying hundreds of weapons -– including assault rifles and military grade sniper weapons -– were allowed to escape into the clutches of Mexican drug cartels in an apparently reckless investigative strategy.

Their testimony raises the question of whether Ronald Weich, a deputy to Attorney General Eric Holder, lied to congressional investigators in a Feb. 4 letter denying the allegations. Weich is testifying before Issa’s committee Wednesday.

The four ATF agents describe how the weapons were tracked from sales at U.S. gun shops but not seized as is normal practice. The goal of the operation was to track the weapons as they progressed from the purchasers through criminal networks.

Yes, apparently Democrats are only opposed to legal gun ownership by law abiding citizens. If you are a murderous, torturing Mexican drug dealer, then the Democrats want you to have guns so you can murder people. And if the Democrats keep blocking border security measures, then the Mexican drug gangs can just come over and murder Americans on American soil. If you’re a Democrat, this makes sense to you. You voted for it. You support it. It’s “gun control”.

It’s similar to the way Democrats are only opposed to legal immigration. Illegal immigration is a great idea, according to Democrats. But if you have skilled workers who want to come here and work, start businesses, pay taxes and to NOT commit crimes, then the Democrats don’t want them to get green cards. People who pay taxes tend to vote Republicans, and that makes them bad – according to Democrats. Democrats only want illegals to become citizens – because illegals vote for more and more dependence on government.

And if you’re a Democrat, then executing convicted criminals is a bad idea, but murdering innocent babies is a good idea. Apparently, for Democrats, it’s a bad idea to deter criminals from committing violent crimes with the threat of capital punishment. But Democrats want people to have as much irresponsible sex as possible… and if a baby is created then people can just get rid of it. Babies are so inconvenient – for Democrats. Obama doesn’t want people who freely choose to have irresponsible sex to be punished… with a baby.

And if you want to start a business or get a job, that’s bad – according to Democrats. Bad people who work hard and don’t commit crimes should pay lots of income taxes – especially if you work really hard and make lots of money. But if you just want to be on welfare and collect federal benefits and food stamps, then you can do that and not have to pay any taxes. Democrats love to encourage people to be dependent on the government, because it’s easier to buy votes that way. The Democrats want to spend lots of money on people who choose not to finish high school and who choose not to get married before having children. They subsidize that – largely with the money they get from married workers.

And don’t even think about requiring people to have a photo ID before voting. Democrats think that it is unfair for illegal immigrants and criminals to not have the right to vote – multiple times, if possible. Because they probably don’t vote Republican, and that makes it OK.

Welcome to the Democrat party – check your moral sense at the door, please.

Filed under: News, Arms Dealer, Arms Dealing, ATF, Barack Obama, Border, Crime, Criminal, Democrat Party, Drug Cartel, Drug-Trafficking, Drugs, Gangs, Gangster, Gun Control, Gunrunner, Guns, Ice, Mexican Drug Cartel, Mexico, Military Industrial Complex, Murder, Project Gunrunner, United States

MUST SEE! Michele Bachmann goes nuclear against gangster government!

Representative Michele Bachmann

UPDATE: For all the people that are searching for Michele Bachmann, this blog is FILLED with stories on Michele Bachmann!!! Here is a good summary of some of her best material. Here’s her latest video.

More recent posts

Here are my recent posts on Michele Bachmann:

• Michele Bachmann defends free trade at the Heritage Foundation
• MUST-SEE: Michele Bachmann explains why the US dollar is in serious trouble
• Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is Mrs November in new calendar
• Hot Air and Michelle Malkin post new video of Michele Bachmann’s town hall
• New Michele Bachmann video on the future of Obamacare
• MUST-READ: Michele Bachmann open to running for President in 2012!

Michele Bachmann’s amazing speech

This video is a MUST SEE. (H/T Doug Groothuis)

Here is the article by Michael Barone that she cited.

What is gangster government?

To start with the obvious, even though Obama denies that he will manage the companies, we have all learned by now that he has no problem doing the very thing he is denying. (In ordinary life this political artfulness is called lying). He fired one CEO, forced Chrysler to accept Fiat (WSJ.com 6/5/09), told GM that it cannot move its headquarters out of Detroit (WSJ.com 6/3/09), and may have ordered that whoever buys GM’s European auto maker Opel must agree not to export cars to the U.S.. (WSJ.com 6/1/09) These decisions were made in secret with no Congressional oversight, by a man with no training or experience of any kind in business, never mind the auto business. The companies will be run by politicians, who will make decisions for the benefit of political agendas rather than on sound business principles. The result will be that the auto companies and the union will not make the deep changes required to make the companies profitable, so we can anticipate many more cash infusions.

Gary Jason writes about how Obama is intervening in the free market to screw creditors and take care of his union supporters with taxpayer bailouts.

I will argue that the unprecedented action by the current administration in manipulating the bankruptcies of Chrysler and GM, and in effect nationalizing the companies, is egregiously unethical by every one of these major ethical perspectives. For this reason, I believe that this action makes it morally imperative for Americans to boycott these socialized companies.

… the Obama administration spent tens of billions in taxpayers’ dollars to take control of the companies and force the outcome it wanted. Obama, who received millions in contributions from the United Auto Workers union, has forced a settlement that will give UAW far more equity in the companies when they come out of bankruptcy than it was due compared to the secured debt holders.[i] Obama’s agents used threats and intimidation (calling holdout bondholders speculators and hedge funds at one point) to get the creditors to accept being shafted. (WSJ.com 5/11/09)The result is that the vast majority of the two companies will be almost clearly owned by the federal government and the UAW, and the UAW arguably controls the federal government.

The result is drenched in irony. The UAW was a major reason why the companies hit the wall, and now the UAW will be rewarded with major control and ownership. It is as if a rape victim were forced to marry her rapist. The result makes the crony capitalism we saw in Russia look clean by comparison; it, at least, was a kind of capitalism.

And what are the long-term consequences?

…To start with the obvious, even though Obama denies that he will manage the companies, we have all learned by now that he has no problem doing the very thing he is denying. (In ordinary life this political artfulness is called lying). He fired one CEO, forced Chrysler to accept Fiat (WSJ.com 6/5/09), told GM that it cannot move its headquarters out of Detroit (WSJ.com 6/3/09), and may have ordered that whoever buys GM’s European auto maker Opel must agree not to export cars to the U.S.. (WSJ.com 6/1/09) These decisions were made in secret with no Congressional oversight, by a man with no training or experience of any kind in business, never mind the auto business.

The companies will be run by politicians, who will make decisions for the benefit of political agendas rather than on sound business principles. The result will be that the auto companies and the union will not make the deep changes required to make the companies profitable, so we can anticipate many more cash infusions.

Worse yet, we can foresee that now that the UAW and feds have control of Chrysler and GM, they won’t stop there. Their natural instinct will be to achieve monopolistic control. The UAW has helped drive Chrysler and GM to the wall and is now co-owner with the government of most of the equity. They will likely next target Ford, to get equity ownership of it. Then look for the UAW and the administration it controls to attempt to force the employees of foreign auto makers in this country to join the UAW, or use environmental and other regulatory laws to put those companies out of business.

Obama and the Democrats are willing to use threats and intimidation to ram through their socialist policies. Here is a long list of unconstitutional interventions. (H/T 4Simpsons) He does not care about laws and rights – he wants power over your liberty. He wants to control your life.

The Road to Serfdom

For those of you who did not know before, the greatest economics book of the 20th century was Nobel-prize winning economic F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom“, which is analyzes the history of socialism and fascism in Nazi Germany and Russia. This book is #1 on Human Events’ Top 10 books every Republican should read.

Human Events writes:

Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) was an Austrian economist awarded the Nobel Prize in 1974. He defended capitalism and individual liberty against collectivism. In “The Road to Serfdom,” he describes how government planning of the economy leads to tyranny. President Reagan cited Hayek as one of his favorite economists. “To decentralize power is to reduce the absolute amount of power, and the competitive system is the only system designed to minimize the power exercised by man over man,” wrote Hayek. “Who can seriously doubt that the power which a millionaire, who may be my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest bureaucrat possesses who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends how I am allowed to live and work?”

When Michele Bachmann stands up on the floor of the House and advocates against government intervention in the free market, she is literally standing between the American people and mass-murdering, rights-trampling, faith-destroying communism.

And by the way, Obama means to do the exact same thing with the health care and energy sectors.

BONUS

Don’t forget my recent post which has even more amazing and encouraging videos of Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn defending the American way. Or click here to see all of my Michele Bachmann posts. You can read more about her strong Christian faith in this article from World Magazine.

Filed under: Videos, Auto, Barack Obama, Capitalism, CEO, Chrysler, Communism, Control, Detroit, Dictator, Dictatorship, Fascism, Free Market, Gangster, Gangster Government, GM, Government, Hayek, Intervention, Intimidation, Liberty, Manufacturer, Michael barone, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Bachman, Michelle Bachmann, Michelle Obama, Move, Nationalize, Nationalized, Regulate, Road to Serfdom, Socialism, Socialize, Socialized, Take Over, Threat, Tyranny, UAW, Union, Video

Who cut federal spending more, Bush or Obama?

The Heritage Foundation is my favorite think tank, just like the Investors Business Daily podcast is my favorite podcast.  These two news sources are heads and shoulders over anything else. Except for Commenter ECM, but that goes without saying.

Let’s see what they have for us today!

First, let’s get an answer to the question of who cut spending more, Bush (in his last year budget) or Obama (in his first budget)?

The graphic, from Keith Hennesey, tells all:

Who cut spending more? Bush or Obama?

Oh, that reminds me of a video I saw on the Maritime Sentry of the lovely Michele Bachmann trying desperately to persuade the silly people in Congress not to give more money to organizations like ACORN who are facing charges of voter fraud. But there’s only one Michele and so many other unqualified people.

Well, let’s see her speak anyway:

She’s addressing Barney Frank, who is one of the people responsible for the recession in my opinion.

I don’t know why they won’t listen to her and do what she wants. When I see Michele speaking, I just want to give her whatever she wants. She seems so passionate, moral and competent, much more so than the other people who haven’t actually run a business or home-schooled 5 children and 23 foster children.

Representative Michele Bachmann

She had a post on her blog about her amendment to block giving money to ACORN, too.

Excerpt:

On Monday of this week, charges were brought in Nevada against ACORN and two of its former employees for voter registration violations, and  today, the Allegheny County District Attorney in Pennsylvania charged seven employees of ACORN with forgery and election law violations, saying they filed hundreds of fraudulent voter registrations during last year’s general election.

It really could not be more timely as Chairman Barney Frank was just on the House floor trying to justify his amendment to the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act that will allow groups such as ACORN that have been indicted, or have employees who have been indicted, of voter fraud to receive millions in taxpayer funding.

Last week, the House Financial Services Committee unanimously passed my amendment to prohibit the flow of your money to such groups, but Chairman Frank feels it necessary to take back his support for that commonsense language and raise the bar so that organizations would have to be convicted before their access to tax dollars would be cut off.

While I realize that we are all innocent until proven guilty, ACORN has established a pattern of voter registration violations that seems to pop up election after election and in state after state.  The courts are the appropriate place to try guilt and innocence.  Congress has a fiduciary obligation to spend tax dollars wisely.

Your taxpayer money must be held to the highest standard, and not used to engage in a proven pattern of voter registration violations.

Here’s another story from the Heritage Foundation about Obama’s interventions into the free market. The more he meddles, the fewer people will want to run businesses in the USA, and the more unemployment there will be. You’ll remember that Obama tried to force the banks to stiff creditors for pennies on the dollar, while giving his union supporters a much better bankruptcy deal than they deserved.

“…I am indeed fearful writing this. It’s really a bad idea to speak out. Angering the President is a mistake…” What country would you expect to hear a citizen make this statement? Venezuela? Cuba? Russia? Nope, those are the words of prominent hedge fund manager Clifford Asness, who wrote a now-famous and widely circulated open letter this week describing the intimidation techniques used by President Obama and his administration.

Why did the President have to resort to such enhanced techniques of intimidation? Mainly because he was asking financial lenders to engage in the same unscrupulous acts his administration has been engaging in since January, i.e. picking winners and losers without concern for free market principles. The President wanted hedge funds to force a loss on investment onto their unknowing clients, so he could reward supportive union bosses in a “controlled” (i.e. Obama controlled) bankruptcy.

The rest of the post documents the ways in which government intervention and intimidation of private business hurts the economy. And they summarize Tom Lauria’s testimony that I blogged about before:

Tom Lauria, a prominent bankruptcy judge, and Democratic Party contributor, recently told WJR in Detroit: “One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.” Certainly the White House press corps considers themselves independent of any revenge scheme the President may cook up, but then why has their silence on these issues been so loud?

And here is the big picture lesson:

While the left and the right can agree to disagree on certain matters of this bailout, every American should be on one side of this intimidation debate, against what Michael Barone labeled “Gangster Government“. Whether trying to strong arm the dissolution of a company to benefit its union bosses, or trying to use selective declassification of national security memos to prove a policy point, the White House needs to be held to the highest (not higher) standard. The best way to end this cycle of government intimidation is to get government out of these businesses to begin with. Without an end, there shall be no means.

Attack the free market and you attack all of our liberties, especially our precious freedom of religious expression. If I cannot earn an income and make purchases without government approval, then I am not free. We have to keep talking about this story until Obama understands.

My next story is from Victor Davis Hanson, writing in Investor’s Business Daily. He makes the case that America is strong, secure and prosperous for specific reasons. Mess with the design of the country and we will lose our liberty, security and prosperity.

His first example is environmental regulation in California:

Now in California — the nation’s richest farm state — the population is skyrocketing toward 40 million. Yet hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland this year are going out of production, and with them thousands of jobs.

Why? In times of chronic water shortages, environmentalists have sued to stop irrigation deliveries in order to save threatened two-inch-long delta fish that need infusions of fresh water diverted from agricultural use. And for environmental and financial reasons, we long ago stopped building canals and dams in the Sierra Nevada to find sources of replacement irrigation water.

And what about domestic energy production?

Developing such traditional sources of energy responsibly would save us trillions of dollars in imported fuels, keep jobs at home and allow the nation a precious window of energy autonomy as we steadily transfer to more wind, solar and renewable energy.

If we exploit our own energy carefully offshore and in Alaska, it will mean less sloppy foreign drilling off places like Nigeria or in the fragile Russian tundra to feed American cars and trucks.

And what about being able to project military power abroad?

Democrats and Republicans have also taken for granted having enough military power to intervene overseas to remove tyrants like Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Manuel Noriega and the Taliban — and to stop atrocities whenever we can. But such power takes hundreds of billions of dollars in expensive hardware and military personnel.

He also wants to keep the defense budget static, or even cut it in some places.

In our have-it-both-ways generation, we want to keep our involvements abroad while not worrying as much about the practical means to meet them.

And his last example, massive deficits… and expanded entitlement programs?

Then there is the question of national debt. We are projected to run a record $1.7 trillion deficit — and may add $9 trillion to our existing $11 trillion in aggregate debt over the next eight years.

Meanwhile, the president has outlined vast new entitlement programs in health care, education, environmental programs and infrastructure.

It’s like we think that the USA is a magic place that will somehow keep running smoothly if we stop believing everything that got us the top spot in the first place. Shouldn’t we send Obama to North Korea or something where his policies might actually be welcomed? Democrats can’t handle any of these issues. Let’s put Michele Bachmann in charge in 2012.

Filed under: News, ACORN, Barney Frank, Capitalism, Charges, Coercion, Communism, Corrupt, Corruption, Cut, Debt, Defense, Deficit, Fascism, Federal Budget, Fraud, Free Market, Gangster, Government Spending, Intervention, Intimidation, Michele Bachmann, Mob, National, Press Corps, Shareholders, Socialism, Spending, Tom Lauria, Unions, Violations, Voter Fraud, White House