This is a discussion on Rep. Issa Pushing Contempt Order Against Eric Holder within the The Second Amendment & Gun Legislation Discussion forums, part of the Related Topics category; Originally Posted by Spirit51 In YOUR opinion is not the opinion of the majority. This has to do with a political attack attempt on our ...
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Originally Posted by Spirit51
What she^^^^^^^^^^^^^ said^^^^^^^^
Hopyard, this is NOT a partisan attack, on ANY party.
This is an issue where, it wouldn't matter if it was a Watergate, an Iran Contra, A certain fib about who he had a sexual relation with somebody in the "Not so Square Office", or whatever.
It is/was an issue of a usurpation of power, that was covert in nature, was not supposed to be found out, but blew up in the Feds faces, and that is the issue at hand.
If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
Washington didn't use his freedom of speech to defeat the British, He shot them!
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- Ernest Benn
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Something bothers me about the way Grassely and Issa are handling this investigation. Its well and good that Holders feet are being held to the fire. But theres something missing here: Those congress critters are not talking about the instutionalized corruption and disregard for federal law that is a BATFE hallmark. Congress has no intention of reining in the BATFE and the career bureaucrats who give the organization continuity and direction.
Operation Fast and Furious did not originate with political appointees. Operation Fast and Furious was the brain child of the career bureaucrats in the Phoenix office of the BATFE. Those bureaucrats saw Operation Fast and Furious as a logical extension of Project Gunrunner which started in 2006. The Phoenix office of the BATFE asked the federal prosecutor for AZ for his approval of the proposed operation. That approval was given. The Phoenix office of the BATFE sold Operation Fast and Furious up the BATFE food chain. The rest is history.
Regarding F&F specifically, do we know which US Attorney in Phoenix approved it? In which year? Was the approval
distinct from the earlier approval for PG in 2006?
Regarding the "investigations: The election is going to happen before we turn around. Sometime in the next 2-3 months
all the critters are going to high-tail it out of DC to uh, "campaign" for a few months. Then they'll hold a lame duck session
in which going away parties and self-congratulatory celebrations are the primary focus of their attention. By Jan, it may or may not be a new world up there. As Shakespeare wrote: "Much Ado About Nothing."
"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war."
John Adams. Second President of the United States.
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I would love to see Holder so discredited and so disgraced (and disbarred) that he couldn't get a job as a Legal Secretary....or even the Legal Office janitor.
A woman must not depend on protection by men. A woman must learn to protect herself.
Susan B. Anthony
A armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one has to back it up with his life.
Robert Heinlein
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I must agree. I was going to stay out and follow this thread but then the nail got hit on the head. Why shouldn't the administration ordering the illegal activity be prosecuted. If I did the same thing I would go to jail. It was a definite assault on our second amendment rights except it back fired and their deceit came to light. Humm...politics at its best.
Isn't that just a little bit like asking why a DEA Agent who goes undercover and sells crack shouldn't be prosecuted
for the sale?
And isn't that like asking why whatever administration is in power when the undercover operation
took place shouldn't be prosecuted?
And wouldn't an affirmative answer destroy law enforcement efforts?
Are we gong to go after an Attorney General when a street drug under cover operation goes
bad and an undercover cop gets killed by a drug gang member?
Just asking.
"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war."
John Adams. Second President of the United States.
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My question would have to be.. What does all that have to do with Eric Holder being charged with Contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents that Congress has demanded?
If I was notified by Congress to turn over documents and I failed to do so... I would be charged with Contempt of Congress (of which I would plead Guilty to wholeheartedly.. but that is beside the point) so why shouldn't Mr Holder?
Lets Unite and REMIND our Government that WE are the source of their authority and that WE demand our Rights be returned, Unabridged, Non-infringed, without denial or disparagement.
You have a point. The administration and Mexican authorities were complaining about lack of gun control as causing a flow of guns from the US to Mexico while the administration was flowing guns from the US to Mexico while trying to make a case for increasing gun control. So the administration was playing both sides against the middle. The "middle" is 2A and us citizens it protects.
Dennis Burke was Arizona's top federal prosecutor until his resignation last August 30. His record is not on of 2A support; but he is a major source of information for Sen. Grassley and Rep. Issa in their investigation of Fast and Furious.
DefensiveCarry.com member, "Dave Workman, a gun-rights blogger, described Burke as 'the chief sacrificial lamb.'"The end came after federal records and testimony revealed that Burke last year pressed colleagues and superiors to deny that the Justice Department knowingly allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico under his watch, and that two of those weapons wound up at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
In e-mail exchanges with DOJ officials, Burke incorrectly described allegations about Fast and Furious by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, as "categorically false." He also reviled congressional investigators as "stooges" for gun-rights zealots.
Burke finally quit his post after testifying in secret to congressional investigators about the case....
"It's no coincidence that Dennis Burke, a longtime anti-gun policy person, was made U.S. Attorney in mid-2009 ... the same month (sic) that Fast and Furious begins," said Mike Vanderboegh, a gun-rights blogger. "They picked precisely the right guy to run a clandestine program." (The operation began a month after Burke's appointment was confirmed.)
Curiously, the supporters and detractors agree on one point: They say Burke became a scapegoat to protect higher officials in the Justice Department or White House.
I hope that Holder has a better lawyer than Hopyard. The crack sting defense is playing thinly. As stated, the administration was claiming a need for stronger gun control while violating laws on multiple (2000) counts.
The analogy would be if the myth that the Sacbee printed about CIA involvement in crack distribution in the inner city were true - all the while calling for stricter drug laws. But even fiction isn't that strange.
-Blackstone’s Commentaries 145–146, n. 42 (1803) in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)Americans understood the right of self-preservation as permitting a citizen to repel force by force
when the intervention of society... may be too late to prevent an injury.
A little something like the structure of the US Government confers co-equal powers and different powers; separation of powers. You as a private citizen lack The Executive Privileges which ALL administrations guard.
This is what Wiki has on the subject:
"In the United States government, executive privilege is the power claimed by the President of the United States and other members of the executive branch to resist certain subpoenas and other interventions by the legislative and judicial branches of government. The concept of executive privilege is not mentioned explicitly in the United States Constitution, but the Supreme Court of the United States ruled it to be an element of the separation of powers doctrine, and/or derived from the supremacy of executive branch in its own area of Constitutional activity.[1] "
Executive privilege - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war."
John Adams. Second President of the United States.
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I could be incorrect but I don't believe law enforcement engages in illeagle activities to go undercover. Does an under cover hooker engage in the actual act...no. Why would the DEA be selling drugs to catch a drug dealer ? I think they pose as buyers and then prosecute when they prove the law has been broken. Does law enforcement commit murder to infliterate ? If the AG acknowledges and directed the under cover hooker to engage in the actual act then I suppose they have also broken the law if they knowing acted with the knowledge that prostitution is illeagle. If law enforcement enguages in the same activities as the criminals then what's the difference between the two. So your saying if I committed a straw purchase, a valid defense is I was under cover? Im sure that will get me off the hook.
Just saying...
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan
Well said and good point. You just demolished the inaccurate example I used. But that aside, the issue of the validity of the
subpoena is a different issue.
As I wrote earlier, time is a flyin till recess and silly season. This is going nowhere.
"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war."
John Adams. Second President of the United States.
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The only Privilege protecting any member of our Government from prosecution that has been granted by our Constitution is covered in Article 1 Section 6The United States Constitution - The U.S. Constitution Online - USConstitution.netAs far as wikipedia goes, do you realize that it can be edited by anyone who wishes to create a user account there? I have seen a 13 year old go in and trash his teachers homework assignment just because he did not want to do it. So I do not consider wikipedia a credible source.They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
How about this definition of Executive Privilege from a more credible source. From executive privilege legal definition of executive privilege. executive privilege synonyms by the Free Online Law Dictionary.And an explanation from a source that I will not call credible but is far more reliable than wikipedia What Is Executive Privilege, Anyway? : NPRThe right of the president of the United States to withhold information from Congress or the courts.
Now I will challenge you to show me where anyone who is not at least a Congress Person or higher in the Governmental food chain is protected under something that does not realistically exist.What Is Executive Privilege, Anyway?
Does the Constitution allow for executive privilege?
Nowhere does the Constitution mention the term or the concept of executive privilege. The belief that it does, the late legal historian Raoul Berger once said, is one of the greatest "constitutional myths."
So how can a president simply withhold information if the Constitution doesn't give him the power to do so?
Presidents have argued that executive privilege is a principle implied in the constitutionally mandated separation of powers. In order to do their job, presidents contend, they need candid advice from their aides — and aides simply won't be willing to give such advice if they know they might be called to testify, under oath, before a congressional committee or in some other forum.
You do realize that you're citing US v. Nixon? It was a unanimous 8-0 (Justice Rehnquist recused for prior association with Nixon) ruling falling against President Nixon. Wiki says, "The Court rejected Nixon's claim to "an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances."
The year before the ruling, on March 22, 1973, Nixon told his Attorney General, Mitchell, "I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment; cover-up or anything else, if it'll save it; save the plan." "Anything else" seems to include the oft-repeated phrase during the Watergate hearings, "I do not recall". Watergate brought down a presidency and even some of the prestige of the office. No one even died.
Might Gunrunnergate?
Smells like it to me.
Are you telling us with a straight face that "this" isn't going to be an issue into this fall's election season?
-Blackstone’s Commentaries 145–146, n. 42 (1803) in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)Americans understood the right of self-preservation as permitting a citizen to repel force by force
when the intervention of society... may be too late to prevent an injury.
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Lawyers for Bill Newell and David Voth claim federal prosecutors would not allow the arrest of guys running guns into Mexico.
Key ATF agents in Fast and Furious case blame prosecutors | Arizona Capitol Times
TUCSON — Two federal agents at the heart of a failed gunrunning investigation are blaming federal prosecutors for allowing illegal buyers to take the weapons to Mexico.
The Arizona Daily Star reports that lawyers for ATF supervisors Bill Newell and David Voth sent letters to two members of Congress investigating Operation Fast and Furious last month, saying federal prosecutors blocked any efforts to arrest the suspected illegal buyers or to seize the guns before they reached Mexico.
They argued that from September 2009 until June 2010, the prosecutors told the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents running the investigation they did not have probable cause to arrest the people buying the weapons or to seize the guns.
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A buddy of mine and I have a running joke where when someone quotes wiki we say, "Oh, everything on Wikipedia is true and if it isn't, you can just change it."
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
...Adam
"If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart, and if you're not a conservative at 40, you have no head." --Winston Churchill
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