With Operation Fast and Furious, he crossed a line I don’t know that the Department of Justice has ever crossed. He put guns in the hands of known killers. On purpose. And yes, I know it’s not been proven that he gave the order, but the DoJ is his responsibility and what it does is on him. That’s what being in a position of responsibility is all about. So it makes me see red when he puffed up his chest and put out a statement as blatantly wrong as he did over the holiday break.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund today released preliminary fatality statistics for 2011, which show a 13 percent increase in the number of federal, state and local officers who died in the line of duty, from 153 in 2010 to 173 in 2011.  The data shows that 68 officers lost their lives in firearms-related incidents, 64 officers were killed in traffic-related incidents and 41 deaths were attributed to other causes.

“This is a devastating and unacceptable trend.  Each of these deaths is a tragic reminder of the threats that law enforcement officers face each day – and the fact that too many guns have fallen into the hands of those who are not legally permitted to possess them,” said Attorney General Eric Holder.  “Departments across the country have mourned the loss of too many dedicated colleagues and friends, but my colleagues and I at the Justice Department are determined to turn back this rising tide.  I want to assure the family members and loved ones who have mourned the loss of these heroes that we are responding to this year’s increased violence with renewed vigilance and will do everything within our power – and use every tool at our disposal – to keep our police officers safe.”

The families of Special Agent Brian Terry and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata would dispute that strongly.

Here’s the thing. Holder put this statement out to honor dead police officers. His department is directly responsible for the death of two American police officers and he had the temerity to talk about how bad it is that illegal guns kill cops. If he has a single molecule of dignity left in his body, he’d resign right now, crawl on his hands and knees to those murdered by Operation Fast and Furious guns, and beg their forgiveness.

But he won’t because he doesn’t, so Republicans (and any Democrats who still cherish the Rule of Law) have to make sure he pays for the misery caused by his unconscionable actions. Fast and Furious needs to be on the lips of every GOP Presidential candidate, should come up in every single debate (no matter whether the MSM moderators bring it up), and the GOP itself ought to put out a raft of commercials that demand a full accounting.

(via Ace)

As Holder’s aide was escorting the attorney general offstage following his remarks Tuesday afternoon at the White House, a Daily Caller reporter introduced himself and shook Holder’s hand. The reporter asked him for a response to the growing chorus of federal legislators demanding his resignation.

Holder stepped towards the exit, then turned around, stepped back toward the reporter, and sternly said, “You guys need to — you need to stop this. It’s not an organic thing that’s just happening. You guys are behind it.”

Holder then walked offstage without answering TheDC’s request for comment about calls for his resignation.

He then presumably went to his office for a glass of juice and a nap because that’s the cure for a bad case of crankypants.

We shouldn’t be surprised at Holder’s petulance. He’s never been known for being upfront and honest about the various corrupt schemes in which he’s embroiled himself in his relentless quest for political power. His political career has been one long example of failing upwards into positions of greater power and greater responsibility but less accountability to the citizens for whom he is supposed to work.

Did I not say just last night

What’s more, CBS News investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson — who’s been covering the scandal from the beginning — says in an interview on the Laura Ingraham Show today that the White House and Justice Department have taken to screaming at her for reporting on the story.

Click over and hear the interview. Attkisson, who is the only MSM journalist working the Operation Fast and Furious story with anything that resembles vigor, got a blessing out from the White House itself along with the earful from the Department of Justice.

Lest you think this isn’t about her Fast and Furious reporting, here’s a killer excerpt from the interview.

[The White House and Justice Department] will tell you that I’m the only reporter–as they told me–that is not reasonable. They say the Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, the New York Times is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.

I wish some of this had been in writing, but as Attkisson told Ingraham, the DoJ banshee refused to put anything she said in writing. I don’t blame her. If I had to hang my keister way out on a limb for a boss I knew could end up wearing a bright orange jumpsuit, I would do everything I could to reduce my keister-exposure. Hard times are coming, perhaps in the form of a special counsel, and the initial defense that Holder simply didn’t understand the question won’t fly in a perjury trial. Oh, and did I mention that the whole Black Panther voter intimidation story isn’t dead yet either?

That, of course, assumes that anyone would believe that Holder was confused. On that, Rep. Jason Chaffetz is more than a little bit puzzled. He was part of the hearing where Holder said he didn’t know about Operation Fast and Furious while it was fast and furiously shipping thousands of guns to Mexican killers. He remembers something that the Attorney General would probably rather he forgot.

Later in the hearing, Chaffetz followed Issa’s line of questioning on the topic. While talking with TheDC, Chaffetz references video of the hearing, where he restated Holder’s testimony to Issa. “You said it was in just the last few weeks that you had heard of this [Operation Fast and Furious], right?” Chaffetz asked Holder at the hearing. Holder didn’t object to Chaffetz’s characterization of his testimony, even though Chaffetz told TheDC he certainly had the opportunity to.

[...]

Though Chaffetz wouldn’t definitively say whether Holder committed perjury, responses from the Attorney General and his staff are troubling. “I was really surprised to hear the [DOJ spokesperson say that the Attorney General misunderstood the question,” Chaffetz said. “I restated what the Attorney General had said and he didn’t refute it. He had an opportunity to clarify and he obviously didn’t. So, for the spokesperson to say the Attorney General misunderstood the question doesn’t hold any water.”

Oh, dear, Mr. Attorney General Holder. This does not look good at all. Not at all.

I don’t want to engage in any irrational exuberance here, but the possibility that all the stuff the progressive left imagined would happen to the Bush administration — the hearings, the arrests, the political ruin — could very well happen to the Obama administration makes me just a little bit giddy. I had to endure eight years of the left’s Chimpy McHitlerChaneyBurton nonsense. I’m long-past ready to serve them heaping plates of crow.

New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

Holder’s out here is that he could stretch the definition of “the last few weeks” so that it reaches all the way back to April. It would certainly be a better excuse than the one his office offered CBS News.

The Justice Department told CBS News that the officials in those emails were talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General. And tonight they tell CBS News, Holder misunderstood that question from the committee – he did know about Fast and Furious – just not the details.

I smell the origins of a perjury defense, but not a very good one. Here’s how I know that the Department of Justice served up a snow shovel full of cow-flop for its boss: the only reason you would ever use the excuse “no, those memos to the Attorney General involved another operation where some Attorney General, who wasn’t named Eric Holder at all, let guns walk into the hands of murderous drug cartels” is if you knew that revelation couldn’t hurt you worse than the truth. Then he just upped the feebleness of the excuse with the backup “…and I knew there was an operation called Fast and Furious, but I didn’t know a doggoned thing about it even though a veritable blizzard of memos about it crossed my desk.”

I strongly suspect Holder knows he is cooked. Rep. Darrell Issa, who chairs the committee looking into Fast and Furious, said back in July that he was convinced “absolutely” that Holder didn’t tell the truth when he testified. I don’t know if Issa had these documents in hand already without Holder’s knowledge, but I think that’s a reasonable supposition and its very likely he has more. Issa has not been the sort of person to declare certainty without a handful of proof. That doesn’t mean Holder won’t go down swinging. Issa will have to have a real “smoking gun”, some clear link that shows he either approved of at least one “walking” operation or that he knew one of them happened and did nothing about it. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this document exists and it’s most likely in the hands of Issa’s committee already.

So, does that mean we’ll see Eric Holder frogmarched out of the White House? Maybe. There are two possibilities. If Operation Fast and Furious began and ended with him, then we’ll get the march the left so badly wanted to see from Karl Rove (and won’t that be the most wonderful day ever?). But if the operation started above Holder, then he’ll probably flip on that person to get whatever deal he can cut with Issa (or a special prosecutor) to stay out of prison. In that case, we could see Rahm Emanuel or Valerie Jarrett under oath, or even the President of the United States.

Operation Fast and Furious could very well do to this administration what the left desperately, and with every ounce of its strength tried to do to the Bush administration for eight year. If that happens; if we get impeachments and jail sentences and photo after lovely photo of corrupt Chicago political goons in cuffs getting hauled out of the White House, the progressive left will lose its collective mind. Even if we don’t, and Holder is the only one who spends time working out how Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell works in Cell Block D, the progressives will not be happy at all since this will all extend well into 2012 and the height of the campaign season.

Either way, you might want to lay in a stock of popcorn now, because things are going to get very entertaining.

A: No. I only get my news from CNN, MS-NBC, ABC, NBC, PBS, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Q: How about the one about how we border a country in which Hezbollah has been working closely with the narco-terrorist drug cartels?

A: No. I only get my news from CNN, MS-NBC, ABC, NBC, PBS, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Q: Wow. Okay. Well maybe you heard the one about the country just to our south where the narco-terrorist drug cartels have gotten hundreds and hundreds of weapons courtesy of our own government?

A: No. I only get my news from CNN, MS-NBC, ABC, NBC, PBS, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Q: Oh. Well carry on then!

It’s not certain how often any of them had contact with the President nor do we know if they discussed Operation Fast and Furious with him or staff members closer to him. You could assume that at least the National Security Adviser, the Attorney General, and someone fairly high up in the State Department had to have gotten briefings as well, but we don’t have proof. Yet.

At this point, Moe Lane’s advice is very useful.

My usual comment about this investigation, at this stage: these things take time to develop.  We’re starting to exit the ‘ask questions’ part and starting to enter the ‘here, let me pull on these loose threads here’ stage; patience is a virtue generally, and doubly so when it comes to a (potential) scandal of this magnitude.  The real fun starts when people increasingly under the magnifying glass start realizing that while, say, the Attorney General can count on having a signed pardon covering his departure, they cannot…

Let’s be patient. We’ve gotten far more of the story than I would have expected given the media boycott. There will be a point at which the weight of the evidence pushes the media coverage from a trickle to a great flood. We can but remind people of what we’ve learned about the deadly political scheme thus far and educate those who have not heard about it.

The rest will come in time.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole issued the following statement today regarding information requests for multiple sales of semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines in select states along the Southwest Border:

“The international expansion and increased violence of transnational criminal networks pose a significant threat to the United States. Federal, state and foreign law enforcement agencies have determined that certain types of semi-automatic rifles – greater than .22 caliber and with the ability to accept a detachable magazine – are highly sought after by dangerous drug trafficking organizations and frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest Border. This new reporting measure — tailored to focus only on multiple sales of these types of rifles to the same person within a five-day period — will improve the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to detect and disrupt the illegal weapons trafficking networks responsible for diverting firearms from lawful commerce to criminals and criminal organizations. These targeted information requests will occur in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to help confront the problem of illegal gun trafficking into Mexico and along the Southwest Border.”

Let us not forget that Cole Justice Department, and perhaps even Cole himself, allowed well over 2,000 guns of just the type he mentioned, plus several .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifles, to get into the hands of narco-terrorist cartels in Mexico. That the Obama administration would paint gun store owners (who practically begged BATFE agents to stop selling firearms to straw purchasers as part of last year’s Operation Fast and Furious) in any way responsible for the recent paroxysm of violence in Mexico is unconscionable.

You know something? Strike that first sentence up there. Cole doesn’t need a drug test. He needs to be under oath before Congress, then he needs to be unemployed or in prison. And so do his bosses.

The latest revelation is that Eric Holder might know more about Operation Fast and Furious — the program launched from the Phoenix office of the BATFE ostebsibly to conbat the flow of illegal weapons into Mexico — than he let on. Both Doug Ross and Barbara Hollingsworth for the Washington Examiner have the transcript of several Holder statements in which he bragged about how the administration was going to ramp up its weapons-interdiction efforts.

However, we need to be very careful how we write about this story. Both Ross and Hollingsworth, as well as Buck Sexton as Glenn Beck’s site The Blaze, conflate Project Gunrunner with Operation Fast and Furious. The terms are not interchangeable. So far as I can tell, Attorney General Holder did not profess ignorance about Project Gunrunner, as Sexton alleges. He professed ignorance about Operation Fast and Furious. That’s a critical difference that, at this point, leaves him off the hook.

Here is the difference between the two. Project Gunrunner is a multi-state operation that began in 2005-2006. It encompasses several local operations inside it, including Operation Fast and Furious (such as Operation Castaway, which might have its own scandal a-brewing). Gunrunner also involves other federal law enforcement agencies — the FBI, DEA, and ICE — as well as local and state police departments.

Operation Fast and Furious started in 2009 as part of the larger Gunrunner initiative. It ran out of the Phoenix (Arizona) Field Division of the BATFE and was shut down in 2010. It may have involved other agencies, unbeknownst to the acting director of the BATFE. Fast and Furious is the program under which all the guns “walked” into Mexico, the one that killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata, and the one about which the Department of Justice has stonewalled Darrell Issa’s Congressional investigation. The trouble for this administration lies in Fast and Furious — not the larger Project Gunrunner.

We need to be crystal clear about what we mean when we discuss this growing scandal. You had better believe that this administration will try to use the legal and safe operations happening elsewhere under the Gunrunner umbrella to confuse the issue and hide its misdeed. We can not give them an inch of cover. Right now, the evidence shows, at the very least, that high-ranking officials inside the Justice Department directly contributed to hundreds of needless deaths. We must get to the bottom of that, and clarity will get us there much faster.