Attorney General Eric Holder Announces Resignation

United States Attorney General Eric Holder, who folds the dubious distinction of being the only attorney general held in contempt of Congress, announced that he would be resigning on Thursday.

Holder, one of the few Obama remaining appointments from the first term, is one of the longest-serving AG's in US history and the country's first black attorney general. His five year tenure was marked primarily by cover-ups, politically motivated prosecutions and overreach on the part of the DOJ.

In the summer of 2012, Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress when the DOJ refused to turn over documents pertaining to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Operation Fast & Furious, in which the agency allowed straw purchasers to buy guns in US border states and take them into Mexico without intervening. In December 2010, one of these guns was recovered from the scene of a shootout south of Tuscon, AZ where Mexican drug traffickers killed US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and Mexican officials have seized numerous guns traced to the gunwalking program from drug traffickers or recovered them from murder scenes south of the border.

Before Holder announced his resignation, a federal judge ordered Holder to hand over all the requested Fast and Furious documents to the House Oversight Committee by October 1st. This has led to some speculation that the withheld documents contain damaging or politically embarrassing details that would've generated bad publicity for the White House and Democrats a month before the midterm elections. Others believe Holder's departure could have been timed to allow President Obama's hand-picked replacement to be confirmed by the Senate in a lame duck session in the event the majority shifts back to the Republicans after the elections.

Early in his tenure, Holder also supported civilian trials for Al Qaeda terrorists captured on the battlefield and detained in Guantanamo Bay, although the administration later backed off of trying suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Federal court in New York.

As attorney general, Holder seemingly took every opportunity to inject race into the DOJ enforcing federal laws- his DOJ's Civil Rights Commission declined to press charges against members of the New Black Panthers Party who were videotaped clad in paramilitary uniforms and wielding nightsticks in front of a Philadelphia polling station in 2008. Claiming minorities were incapable of obtaining photo ID, Holder's DOJ also unsuccessfully fought newly-passed voter ID laws in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Texas.

Speaking out on the recent unrest in Ferguson, MO, Holder told an audience at New York University this week:

“As an African American man who has been stopped and searched by police in situations where such actions were not warranted, I also carry with me an understanding of the mistrust that some citizens harbor (toward police),"

Under Holder, the DOJ also aggressively went after e-mails reporters from the Associated Press and FOX News and seized the phone records of FOX News reporter James Rosen's parents in the name of national security.

Not surprisingly, holder said that the Department of Justice had no plans to investigate the Veterans Affairs clandestine wait-lists in which the agency deferred treatment to numerous veterans seeking care at VA facilities- with a number of them dying as a result of being denied care.

DOJ to Investigate Nebraska 4th of July Parade Float Mocking President Obama

Glad to see all the other pressing issues addressing the United States have been sufficiently resolved by the Department of Justice.

A 4th of July parade float featuring a dummy and an outhouse marked Obama Presidential Library in the town of Norfolk, NE was enough to involve the DOJ's Community Service Relations team after some residents and Cornhusker state political operatives complained that the display was racist.

The department sent a member of its Community Relations Service team, which gets involved in discrimination disputes, to a Thursday meeting about the issue. Also at the meeting were the NAACP, the Norfolk mayor and The Independent Order of Odd Fellows.


The Odd Fellows organized the parade. One of the floats included a zombie-like mannequin standing near an outhouse labeled “Obama Presidential Library.”


The float’s creator, Dale Remmich, has said the mannequin depicted himself, not President Barack Obama. He said he is upset with the president’s handling of the Veterans Affairs Department.

The man behind the float is rural Madison county, NE resident Dale Remmich, said that the zombie-like mannequin on the float is actually supposed to represent himself. Remmich used his own bib overalls and a walker and the mannequin is posed in a manner similar to Edvard Munch's The Scream. As a veteran, Remmich said he's been frustrated by the VA scandal and the lack of response from the White House since the story seemed to fall off of the headlines. The float has been described by the local chapter of the Oddfellows as a 'political cartoon on wheels' in the parade entry form.

The reaction of the Nebraska Democrat Party and an increasingly politicized DOJ serve to reinforce that Dale Remmich may very well be this year's edition of Tuffy Gessling, a clown at the Missouri State Fair rodeo who donned an Obama mask while performing his antics last year. Moreover, it presents an opportunity for north-eastern elitist an opportunity to wag their fingers and lament the backwards souls residing in America's heartland who just don't appreciate the genius and superior intellect of their 'betters' on the coasts.

Mr Paul Goes To Washington- Sen Rand Paul (R-KY) Launches 12 Hour Filibuster to Hold Up Nomination of Brennan to CIA

Aided by colleagues in the US Senate, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul ended a nearly 13 hour filibuster in an attempt to hold up the nomination of John Brennan to the CIA Director's post in the early morning hours of Thursday. At issue was limits to the President's authority to use drone strikes to kill Americans. Earlier in the day, Attorney General Eric Holder did not rule out using aerial drone strikes to kill American citizens on US soil during questioning before the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday.

After Holder's testimony, Sen Paul vowed that he would do what we could to hold up Brennan's nomination until the Committee recieved clarity from the White House on their policy on using drone strikes against American nationals.

Business in the Senate ground to a halt Wednesday as Paul -- aided by colleagues from both parties -- launched into the filibuster as he tried to hold up the nomination over concerns about the president’s authority to kill Americans with drones.

Paul's filibuster was at least two hours longer than most in U.S. history, as most flame out around 10 hours. Paul finished speaking around 12:40 a.m. local time, and his filibuster lasted 12 hours and 52 minutes.

"My legs hurt. My feet hurt. Everything hurts right now," Paul told Fox News shortly after stepping off the Senate floor, saying he believes "we did the best that we could."

"I would be surprised if we didn’t hear back from the White House," Paul said.

In a show of support, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came to the Senate floor and congratulated Paul for his "tenacity and for his conviction." McConnell also called Obama's choice of Brennan a "controversial nominee."

Paul is one of several lawmakers -- on both sides of the aisle -- who has raised concerns about the legal justification for launching drone strikes against Americans overseas. But Paul took to the floor after receiving a statement from Attorney General Eric Holder that creaked open the door to the possibility of using a drone to kill an American inside the United States.

“To allow one man to accuse you in secret -- you never get notified you've been accused,” Paul said on the floor. “Your notification is the buzz of propellers on the drone as it flies overhead in the seconds before you're killed. Is that what we really want from our government?”

Paul said he’d be raising the same complaints under a Republican president.

“No one politician should be allowed to judge the guilt, to charge an individual, to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country,” he said.

Neither Holder or Brennan would explicitly rule out drone strikes against American nationals on US soil in earlier questioning on the matter. Paul was eventually aided by other Senate colleagues including Ted Cruz, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen Tim Scott (R-SC), Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR). At one point, Cruz was reading aloud tweets in support of the Kentucky Senator. Paul offered to end the filibuster in exchange for a nonbinding resolution regarding drone strikes on US citizens on American soil, but Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL) objected to allowing a vote, so Paul continued. He eventually finished speaking at 12:40 ET on Thursday morning, with the filibuster lasting 12 hours and 52 minutes.

Rand Paul's filibuster was the first significant challenge to Obama by Senate Republicans since the president was being sworn in back in January 2009

The concerns over using drones against American civilians comes as the Department of Homeland Security announced the purchase of more than 21 million hollowpoint rounds on top of 2 billion rounds purchased in the last year. The government explained the purchase by saying that- like many other commodities- they got a better deal when they purchased ammunition in bulk [however, keep in mind that one doesn't merely target shoot with hollowpoints- NANESB!]. However, in addition to the bulk ammunition purchases the DHS also announced the acquisition of more than 2700 armored MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles over the weekend.

Also on Wednesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report cautioning that membership in 'extremist' anti-government groups is approaching an all time high. However, like the Department of Homeland Security, the SPLC has a fairly broad definition of 'extremists', lumping pro-life groups, veterans, Tea Party chapters or pro-gun organizations in the same category as neo-nazis and Ku Klux Klan while omitting militant organizations like the New Black Panther Party from their dire warnings about domestic terrorism.

House Oversight Committee Votes Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt Over DOJ's Fast & Furious Gunwalking

Despite a last-minute move by President Obama to invoke executive privilege over certain documents requested by the House Oversight Committee regarding a 'gunwalking' program from the ATF, the committee chairman went ahead with a vote to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.

The oversight committee, chaired by Congressman Darrel Issa [R-CA 49], had been investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Operations Fast & Furious where field agents were ordered to stand down as illegally purchased guns in Arizona made their way across the border to Mexico. In December 2010, US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed by a gang of heavily armed smugglers along the Arizona border. Two guns from Fast & Furious were recovered from the crime scene. Hundreds of guns from Fast & Furious have also been recovered at crime scenes across Mexico and by Holder's own admission, there are more than 1700 unaccounted for weapons from the ATF gunwalking program. These firearms will likely continue to surface at crime scenes in both the USA and Mexico.

Obama's 11th hour invocation of executive privilege on Wednesday came before the Oversight Committee was supposed to rule on whether or not to move forward with contempt of congress proceedings against Eric Holder.

While Attorney General Holder insists he's turned over all the documents that the committee has requested over the last 15 months, a number of the documents were heavily redacted and Holder has contradicted himself while appearing before Congress- Fast & Furious began in 2009 and Mexican officials weren't even alerted by the DOJ to the weapons being smuggled into the country.

On Wednesday afternoon, the panel voted 23-17 in favor of holding the Attorney General in contempt of Congress- with the vote being split along party lines. Democrats on the Oversight Committee claimed that the hearings are a politically motivated witchunt and that the Fast & Furious gunwalking happened under the Bush Administration as well- a claim that Holder himself eventually retracted.

However, Wednesday's vote does not mean that Holder is automatically in contempt of Congress- but rather a contempt motion goes before the rest of the House of Representatives. Speaker of the House John Boehner [R-OH8] and majority leader Eric Cantor [R- VA7] have indicated the contempt of congress vote is scheduled for sometime next week.

As Random Person Offered Attorney General Holder's Ballot in Washington DC Polling Station, DOJ Insists There is No Voter Fraud Problem

In another hidden camera video released by former Andrew Breitbart protege James O'Keefe, a man is shown walking into a Washington DC polling station and is offered Attorney General Eric Holder's ballot by a poll worker after checking the name off of a ledger during- presumably last week's primary elections in the District of Columbia.

The Justice Department fired back on Monday afternoon, claiming that the stung was 'manufactured' [which is technically true- O'Keefe claims he orchestrated this to demonstrate how easy it was to commit voter fraud- NANESB!] while Holder himself insists that there “is a misperception that there is a vast amount of vote fraud out there.”

An unnamed DOJ official was quoted in a brief article from the Talking Points Memo blog on Monday as saying

“It’s no coincidence that these so-called examples of rampant voter fraud consistently turn out to be manufactured ones.”

. Previously, O'Keefe had released videos showing operatives entering polling stations in Vermont and New Hampshire earlier this year and obtaining ballots by using the names of dead or nonexistent voters.

Even without the O'Keefe hidden camera videos, there have been a number of ballot fraud cases that have been prosecuted across the country.

In upstate New York, Troy City Councilman Michael LoPorto and Rensselaer County Board of Elections Commissioner Ed McDonough [both Democrats- NANESB!] are awaiting separate trials after investigators determined they and forging signatures on absentee ballots during a 2009 Working Families Party primary. The two were tried together by prosecutors when the presiding judge declared a mistrial after contentious deliberations by the jurors last month. Jury selection for LoPorto's trial is set to begin on June 4th.

Over in the Hoosier State, prosecutors in South Bend, IN have charged four St Joseph County Democrat Party officials and their subordinates with forging signatures on primary petitions during the 2008 Presidential election.

Among those charged is the former long-time chairman of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party, Butch Morgan, who allegedly ordered the forgeries. He was forced to resign when the allegations were first made public last October, even though his lawyer, Shaw Friedman, told Fox News at the time that Morgan did not do anything wrong.

The St. Joseph County Board of Voter Registration's Democratic board member, Pam Brunette, Board of Voter Registration worker Beverly Shelton and Democratic volunteer and former board worker Dustin Blythe also face charges.

According to affidavits, St. Joseph County Voter Registration Office worker Lucas Burkett told investigators that he was part of the plan that started in January 2008 "to forge signatures on presidential candidate petitions instead of collecting actual signatures from citizens."

The documents state that Burkett told investigators that “he was heavily involved in St. Joseph County political activities with the local Democratic party," and that "he had, in fact, personally forged several such signatures," and had attended meetings at the local Democratic party headquarters, where it was agreed to forge the petitions. Morgan, the County Democratic Chairman, allegedly "instructed Mr. Burkett, Pamela Brunette, Beverly Shelton, and Dustin Blythe to forge ballot petitions for presidential candidates," and that "all of them agreed to follow these instructions" by copying names and signatures from old election petitions.

According to affidavits, Burkett told investigators it was his job to "forge petitions for candidate Barack Obama," Shelton "was assigned to forge petitions for candidate Hillary Clinton" and Blythe "was assigned to forge petitions for candidate John Edwards." When Edwards dropped out of the race at the end of January 2008 and Burkett refused to continue the forgeries, Morgan allegedly ordered Blythe to then forge petitions for Barack Obama.

Indiana State Police investigators identified a total of 22 petitions that appeared to be faked, yet sailed through the Voter Registration Board as legitimate documents. The signature of the board's Republican supervisor, Linda Silcott, which is required for legal certification, appeared to be rubber stamped on the documents. She told investigators that she did not remember signing or authorizing her rubber stamp to be used.

The developments in Indiana and upstate New York come less than a month after the DOJ struck down voter ID laws in Wisconsin and Texas- in December 2011, the Justice Department struck down similar legislation in South Carolina.

The Race Card- Never Leave the Beltway Without It

Attorney General Eric Holder attributed growing calls for his resignation over the Fast & Furious debacle to a "more extreme segment" that is motivated by racism in an interview with the New York Times that was published over the weekend.

In his Times interview, Holder again attacked the media who are covering the scandal. “Mr. Holder contended that many of his other critics — not only elected Republicans but also a broader universe of conservative commentators and bloggers — were instead playing ‘Washington gotcha’ games, portraying them as frequently ‘conflating things, conveniently leaving some stuff out, construing things to make it seem not quite what it was’ to paint him and other department figures in the worst possible light,” Times reporter Charlie Savage wrote in the front page Sunday Times story.

Holder has told the House Oversight Committee that he was unaware of the ATF's Operation Fast & Furious until earlier this year, despite e-mail records showing that his office was regularly briefed about the operation on an ongoing basis.

Fast & Furious allowed suspected straw purchasers to buy quantities of long guns legally on the American side of the border before smuggling them across the border into Mexico where they ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Field-level ATF agents in Arizona were ordered by their superiors to allow the guns to 'walk' across the border, where at least 300 of them have shown up at murder scenes- including the death of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry last year.

Well....lesser men would've no doubt copped to either incompetence or perjury, Eric "America is a nation of cowards on race" Holder decided to use his skin color to try and get himself one 'Get out of colossal fuckup free' cards, as though Holder and Obama's critics would be fine if it were a white Attorney General facilitating the transfer of American guns to the most dangerous criminal organizations in the Western hemisphere.

Holder's Justice Department has also taken the state of Arizona to Federal court last year over their statewide SB 1070 bill designed to curb illegal immigration, despite never having read the bill himself.

More recently, Holder's Justice Department has reportedly partnered up with the supposedly moribund ACORN to mount a series of legal challenges to the latest round of redistricting and recently passed voter ID legislation in Wisconsin or Texas.

Curiously, Holder and the DoJ didn't seem anywhere near as concerned about New York or Illinois' inability to send off absentee ballots to military personnel in time for last year's midterm elections.

One Year Ago Today- Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry Killed in the Line of Duty

Today marks the one year anniversary of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's death following a shootout with cross-border bandits in Rio Rico, AZ.

While law enforcement is an inherently dangerous profession in and of itself, perhaps the most infuriating aspect of Terry's murder was in how preventable it could've been.

The facts of the case are that during the overnight hours of December 14 and 15, armed Mexican nationals illegally crossed into the USA via a remote section of the US/Mexico border, reportedly to ambush and rip off other illegal border crossers and drug mules- although more recent reports indicate that the raiders were also looking for a confrontation with the Border Patrol as well.

Although records concerning Agent Terry's murder have been sealed, it has been established that two AK-variant guns recovered from the crime scene were from the ATF's 'Operation Fast & Furious' in which over the objections of gun stores and field-level ATF agents, guns purchased by straw buyers were allowed to 'walk'- to cross the US/Mexican border without further survaillance or notifying Mexican law enforcement where they ended up in the hands of cartels and other criminal gangs.

Not surprisingly, the family of Agent Terry is livid and wants to see heads roll at the Justice Department over what's being called a 'botched gunrunning sting'. There has been a number of Congressional hearings in the aftermath of Fast & Furious, but testimony from senior Justice Department officials has often been evasive and contradictory. Moreover, Attorney General Holder has complained that the hearings are politically motivated. During the most recent House Oversight hearings, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (D; TX-18) gushed praise for Holder, called for stricter gun control laws obstensibly to protect law enforcement and couldn't even remember Agent Terry's name while reading her boilerplate 'condolances' off of a rambling script.



Earlier this week, the Brian Terry Memorial Act passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and is awaiting action from the Senate. The act would rename the Border Crossing station in Bisbee, AZ in honor of Agent Terry.

Quickie Borderline Psychosis Update- Arms Sold to Mexican Police & Military Arming Cartels; Holder Appears Before House; DEA Laundering Drug Money?

Convoy of Mexican Federal Judicial Police Outside of Juarez

A CBS report has indicated that American firearms sold to the Mexican military and law enforcement in transactions approved by both the US State Department and Mexico's Secretariat of National Defense are ending up in the hands of drug cartels.

The problem of weapons legally sold to Mexico - then diverted to violent cartels - is becoming more urgent. That's because the U.S. has quietly authorized a massive escalation in the number of guns sold to Mexico through "direct commercial sales." It's a way foreign countries can acquire firearms faster and with less disclosure than going through the Pentagon.

Here's how it works: A foreign government fills out an application to buy weapons from private gun manufacturers in the U.S. Then the State Department decides whether to approve.

And it did approve 2,476 guns to be sold to Mexico in 2006. In 2009, that number was up nearly 10 times, to 18,709. The State Department has since stopped disclosing numbers of guns it approves, and wouldn't give CBS News figures for 2010 or 2011.

One weapon - an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle - tells the story. In 2006, this same kind of rifle - tracked by serial number - is legally sold by a U.S. manufacturer to the Mexican military.

Three years later - it's found in a criminal stash in a region wracked by Mexican drug cartel violence.

That prompted a "sensitive" cable, uncovered by WikiLeaks, dated June 4, 2009, in which the U.S. State Department asked Mexico "how the AR-15" - meant only for the military or police - was "diverted" into criminal hands.

And, more importantly, where the other rifles from the same shipment went: "Please account for the current location of the 1,030 AR-15 type rifles," reads the cable.

There's no response in the record.

The State Department's Direct Commercial Sales program would be completely separate from the ATF's Operation 'Fast & Furious', where field agents were ordered to allow weapons obtained in the USA by straw purchasers to cross the border into Mexico, where they would later turn up at crime scenes.

However, corruption and incompetence on the part of Mexican officials seems to have been pivotal in organized crime obtaining military and police-issue weapons.

Two years before I even started this blog, in response to gun control advocates using the increasing violence in Mexico as an excuse to further restrict the rights of law-abiding gun owners in the USA, I stated that a significant number of arms from military and police armories in Mexico were likely among the missing and arming cartel enforcers as police armorers or military quartermasters looked the other way. Cartels like Los Zetas- consisting largely of deserters from Mexico's special forces units- have likely used their military backgrounds to cultivate connections with the international arms markets as well as the black market. The Zetas have demonstrated in recent years that they are able to clean out entire arms depots in Central America.

WASHINGTON D.C.- In a House Judiciary hearing this week, Attorney General Eric Holder admitted that weapons allowed to 'walk' into Mexico would likely be turning up at crime scenes on both sides of the border for years to come.

"Although the department has taken steps to ensure that such tactics are never used again, it is an unfortunate reality that we will continue to feel the effects of this flawed operation for years to come," he said. "Guns lost during this operation will continue to show up at crime scenes on both sides of the border."

Holder faced the ire of skeptical lawmakers who are demanding accountability. Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner told Holder Thursday that he considers impeachment on the table if Holder doesn't figure out who's responsible.

A day before the House Judiciary Hearings, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had called for the resignation of resignation of Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer after recently disclosed e-mails showed that he was giving contradictory testimony before a previous Congressional committee.

Holder, for his part, vows that he won't be stepping down in the wake of Fast & Furious. Democrats in the House and Senate have also given the appearance of circling the wagons around Holder, using the Fast & Furious debacle to reiterate their calls for additional gun control laws or lavish praise on the Attorney General Holder for halting the ill-conceived program.

In fact, e-mails from ATF officials obtained by CBS news indicate that they were looking to use the gunwalking from Fast & Furious to make the case for stricter gun control regulations- particularly in border states.

The e-mails from July 2010 between the ATF's Phoenix office and the agency's headquarters discuss using the statistics from border states like Arizona to justify a regulation called 'Demand Letter 3', which would require licenced FFL dealers in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas to report to the ATF any transaction in which more than one long gun bigger than .22 caliber was purchased.

On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

"Bill - can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks."

The request for the demand letter came after the ATF encouraged liscenced dealers to go ahead with transactions to customers the dealer thought were suspect. The correspondence showed that the agency also sought to minimize or completely conceal their own role in facilitating straw purchasers obtaining the weapons.

DEA- A New York Times report last week alleges that the DEA is engaged in what some are saying is the money-laundering equivalent to Operation Fast & Furious.

Anonymous officials described an effort by U.S. agents to launder or smuggle "millions of dollars" in drug money in order to monitor the flow of cash to and from the cartels in Mexico. One official told the Times there was "close supervision." Another official said the Americans worked with Mexican agents on the investigation. Officials told the newspaper that the DEA tried to seize as much as they laundered, in part through arrests at pickup locations.

The article also described how officials had to obtain Justice Department clearance to launder more than $10 million at a time, something that was approved many times.

The DEA issued a statement Tuesday defending its operations.

"The DEA has well-established mechanisms for coordinating and approving activities associated with the fight against money laundering," the DEA said. "As a result of this cooperation, DEA has seized illicit transnational criminal organization money all around the world through our partnership with law enforcement."

The DEA said it had been working "collaboratively" with Mexico to fight money laundering "for years."

"As part of that collaboration, DEA works with Mexican authorities to gather and use information about these criminal organizations to counter the threats they pose to both of our countries," the DEA said, adding that the joint investigations "have led to important advances and detentions in each country. The cooperation between the United States and Mexico is based on principles of shared responsibility, mutual trust and respect for the jurisdiction of each country."

According to the New York Times article that ran on December 3rd, the DEA has successfully used similar tactics in other countries such as Colombia, but has only started to expand its use in Mexico over the past few years.

ATF Awarding Promotions to Fast and Furious Architects?

Earlier this week, the Los Angles Times had reported that three supervisor level ATF officials from the agency's Phoenix office were promoted and transferred to Washington D.C.

The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency's headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF's deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency's Phoenix office.
McMahon and Newell have acknowledged making serious mistakes in the program, which was dubbed Operation Fast and Furious.

"I share responsibility for mistakes that were made," McMahon testified to a House committee three weeks ago. "The advantage of hindsight, the benefit of a thorough review of the case, clearly points me to things that I would have done differently."

Three Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesmen did not return phone calls Monday asking about the promotions. But several agents said they found the timing of the promotions surprising, given the turmoil at the agency over the failed program.

McMahon was promoted Sunday to deputy assistant director of the ATF's Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations — the division that investigates misconduct by employees and other problems.

Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF's acting director, said in an agency-wide confidential email announcing the promotion that McMahon was among ATF employees being rewarded because of "the skills and abilities they have demonstrated throughout their careers."

Newell was the special agent in charge of the field office for Arizona and New Mexico, where Fast and Furious was conducted. On Aug. 1, the ATF announced he would become special assistant to the assistant director of the agency's Office of Management in Washington.

Voth was an on-the-ground team supervisor for the operation, and last month he was moved to Washington to become branch chief for the ATF's tobacco division.

Shortly after the Los Angeles Times article, the Justice department confirmed that the three had been transferred to D.C. but defined the move as a 'lateral transfer' to 'adminstrative duties'.

The ill-fated Operation Fast and Furious involved the agency allowing weapons purchased on the American side of the border to 'walk' into Mexico- in many cases against the wishes of ATF field agents- where they would supposedly be tracked to leaders of the different Mexican cartels. No cartel leaders were arrested as a result of Fast and Furous- the weapons instead turned up at the scene of the December 2010 shooting death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in Arizona and at several crime scenes south of the border.

Additional House Oversight Committee hearings on Operation Fast & Furious are scheduled for later on this year.

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding answers to reports that there were similar ATF "gun-walking" programs operated out of Texas.

“Until Attorney General (Eric) Holder and Justice Department officials come clean on all alleged gun-walking operations, including a detailed response to allegations of a Texas-based scheme, it is inconceivable to reward those who spearheaded this disastrous operation with cushy desks in Washington,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Last month, acting Director Kenneth Melson admitted to congressional investigators that his agency, in at least one instance, allowed sales of high-powered weapons without intercepting them. Melson accuses his superiors at the Justice Department of stonewalling Congress to protect political appointees in the scandal over those decisions.

Arizona Gun Store Sues Feds Over ATF Order Requiring Tracking of Long Gun Sales in Border States

A Yuma, AZ gun shop is one of two plaintiffs suing the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms over a directive to report multiple sales of long guns at gun stores in border states.

The directive, which was passed last month, requires that stores report to the ATF purchases of two or more semiautomatic rifles greater than .22 caliber over the span of five days. The ATF Order comes amid Congressional hearing on the ATF's disatrous Operatation Fast & Furions in which senior ATF officials ordered field agents to allow guns purchased by suspected straw buyers in the USA to 'walk', i.e. be illegally exported to Mexico where they were sold to cartels and other criminal organizations before eventually turning up at crime scenes on both sides of the border- including the fatal December 2010 shooting of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The move comes after gun control advocates met with Obama administration and Justice department officials earlier this year. In a quote attributed to none other than Sarah Brady, President Obama assured prominent gun control adovcates in a meeting that he was working on gun control 'under the radar'- in other words, through regulatory means and executive orders instead of leaving the volatile and often unpopular issue to the Senate or House of Representatives prior to an election year.

While at first blush, the ATF directive may not seem particularly onerous, kindly consider that this is the agency whose senior officials allowed thousands of weapons to be illeaglly exported to Mexico where they were used by criminal gangs and cartels to kill scored Mexican civilians, public officials, police officers and soliders. Now THE VERY SAME AGENCY is responsible for enforcing this directive?

Even more galling, many retailers were repeatedly warning the ATF about suspicous customers during the Fast & Furious operation; the agency urged them to continue with the transactions nonetheless.

It's also worth contemplating how this month-old directive would prevent arms trafficking when according to diplomatic cables released via Wikileaks, the Mexican cartels are increasingly arming themselves with military-grade weaponry such as rocket launchers, grenades and plastic explosives from poorly-guarded military armories in Central America, not semiautomatic rifles or shotguns from US retailers.

ATF Gunrinning Operation to Mexican Cartels- AKA 'Fast & Furious'- Comes Under Congressional Scrutiny This Week

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry- slain in December 2010. Weapons from ATF's Operation Fast & Furious Were recovered at the crime scene along the Arizona/Mexico Border

Earlier this week, certain politicians and media outlets that support gun control were frantically out there trying to establish the 70% myth [i.e. the narrative that '70% of the weapons recovered in Mexico' come from America, which curiously is down from 90% in a few short months- NANESB!] just days ahead of the House Committee on oversight and Government Reform hearings into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms operation Fast & Furious.

As predicted, this is one of the downside of the Anthony Weiner fiasco- probably the most important Congressional hearings in three decades is usurped by the media circus surrounding the former Congressman from Queens. Outside of CBS News' Sheryl Atkinson, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms poorly-conceived Operation FAst & Furious didn't get alot of coverage in the mainstream media- let alone the Congressional inquiry.

The full committee hearings got underway at Capitol Hill on Wednesday with testimony from Brian Terry's family, 6 months to the day after the Border Patrol was shot and killed by Mexican smugglers armed with AK-variant rifles acquired by straw purchasers who were under surveillance as part of the ATF operation. Yet instead of interdicting the guns before they could be moved across the Mexican border, field agents were ordered the allow the guns to 'walk'. Two of the guns found at the scene of Terry's murder were part of thousands the ATF allegedly allowed gun traffickers to purchase.

The ATF called it letting "guns walk" -- a tactic they hoped would lead to them to drug kingpins. Agents who disagreed with the strategy blew the whistle.

"To walk a single gun is in my opinion an idiotic move," said ATF senior special agent Pete Forcelli. "We weren't giving guns to people who were hunting bear. We were giving guns to people who were killing other humans."

After Terry's murder, ATF quickly rounded up gun trafficking suspects they'd watched for a year. That's when the first reports of gunwalking began to surface. Asked if they were true at the time, ATF Phoenix chief Bill Newell told reporters "hell no" -- surprising those who worked for him.

"I was appalled, because it was a blatant lie," Forcelli said. Newell didn't respond to interview requests.

Also under attack: the Justice Department which oversees the ATF. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich says the agency is cooperating with Congress, but Rep. Darryl Issa says information is being withheld.

"You should be ashamed of yourself," Issa said at the hearing Wednesday holding up a blacked-out sheet of paper. "The pages go on like this forever. You've given us black paper instead of white paper. How dare you make an opening statement of 'cooperation.'"

Issa pressed Weich on who in Washington authorized the program -- and received no answer.

"There was serious profound disagreement about strategy -- but the common goal was to stop gun trafficking to Mexico," Weich said. "Some of the testimony provided today is of great concern. That is why the attorney general asked the inspector general to look into it."

When Brian Terry was gunned down last December, he'd already mailed Christmas gifts.

"The gifts that Brian had picked out with such thought and care began to arrive in the mail that same week," recalled Terry's cousin Robert Heyer, a Secret Service agent. "With each delivery, we felt the indescribable pain of Brian's death."

Terry's family wants someone to accept responsibility. The Department of Justice inspector general is investigating -- and any gunwalking that was taking place has been halted.

Perhaps to nobody's surprise, the Democrats on the Oversight Committee attempted to make the hearings about gun control rather than any sort of accountability from the Department of Justice or ATF. On top of apologizing to Assistant Attorney General Ronald Wiech after Committee Chair Darrel Issa (R- CA49) berated the Justice Department official for turning over pages of redacted documents in response to a subpoena, Representative Elijah Cummings (D- MD7) has proposed setting up a separate minority-led hearing with witnesses of his choosing. In doing so, the Democrats have demonstrated that they are deliberately ignoring the fact that even if the entire United States had strict gun control laws reminiscent of Chicago or Washington D.C. there's still the fact that it was a government agency that facilitated the acquisition of at least 2000 weapons to Mexican criminals. On top of that, US Diplomatic cables released by wikileaks indicate that the overwhelming number of weapons seized in Mexico- including explosives, grenades and anti-tank weapons- are actually procured by cartels from poorly-guarded military armouries in Central America before being smuggled into Mexico.

[I know I've asked this before, but it bears repeating- the Los Zetas organization is mostly comprised of former soldiers from the Mexican army, including Special Forces. Now, keeping in mind their connections to not only the black market, but the international arms market- why should I believe for a second that they are shopping for guns at Cabela's or Wal Mart?- NANESB!]

Weapons allowed across the border under Fast & Furious (or Rapido y Furiosa in the Mexican press) continue to turn up throughout Mexico- in April, Mexican police raided a house in Ciudad Juarez that turned up a half dozen Romanian-made AK-variant rifles that were traced back to the ill-conceived ATF operation [the raid also turned up dozens of grenades and three anti-aircraft machine guns, which probably weren't purchased from American gun stores- NANESB!] .

In May, Mexican soldiers came under fire and a Mexican Air Force helicopter was forced to make a crash landing during an anti-narcotics operation in Michoacan- weapons seized from there were also traced back to Fast & Furious.

Some of the preliminary findings of the Committee include:

● Agents expected to interdict weapons, yet were told to stand down and “just surveil.” Agents therefore did not act. They watched straw purchasers buy hundreds of weapons illegally and transfer those weapons to unknown third parties and stash houses.

● ATF agents complained about the strategy of allowing guns to walk in Operation Fast and Furious. Leadership ignored their concerns. Instead, supervisors told the agents to “get with the program” because senior ATF officials had sanctioned the operation.

● Agents knew that given the large numbers of weapons being trafficked to Mexico, tragic results were a near certainty.

● Operation Fast and Furious contributed to the increasing violence and deaths in Mexico. This result was regarded with giddy optimism by ATF supervisors hoping that guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico would provide the nexus to straw purchasers in Phoenix.

That last finding is sure to anger Mexico, which has so far been muted in its criticism. In a March 2010 memo, ATF says it allowed gun smugglers to buy 359 guns while 958 people died in Mexico the same month. Internally, the agency was “trumpeting up the violence that was occurring as a result of an ATF sanctioned program

A full PDF file of the Committee's reports can be found HERE

Prior to the hearings and Agent Terry's murder, a number of gun stores in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico went to the ATF with their concerns about suspicious transactions and concerns that the guns could be used against Border Patrol agents and other lawmen. However, the ATF assured dealers that the suspected straw purchasers and the guns purchased were being 'continually monitored'. More disturbingly is that the ATF reportedly didn't even bother contacting Mexican law enforcement (however compromised, corrupt or ineffective) or military to let them know that criminals were trafficking weapons from the USA to their jurisdiction- not even after Fast & Furious guns were recovered at crime scenes south of the border.

So in a nutshell, you had the supervisors in the ATF facilitating the sale of guns to Mexican cartels through proxies to prove that Mexican cartels were getting firearms from American stores.

[Cross posted on Pundit Press]

Borderline Psychosis (Mostly) El Norte Edition- ATF Arming Mexican Criminals? Border Patrol Agent Armed w/Beanbag Rounds in Deadly Shootout

ARIZONA: You know how gun control advocates have been lobbying for stricter gun control laws in the USA citing the number of American weapons turning up at crime scenes in Mexico? I initially derided such claims as unmitigated bullshit, but it turns out they were more on the nose than anybody thought. But what nobody banked on was that the cartels and Mexican criminals were arming themselves thanks in large part to the complicity of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms.

BATF Agent John Dodson has come forward and in an interview with CBS went on record as saying that allowing suspect sale of firearms to straw purchasers in Arizona go through before they were smuggled to Mexico in a tactic known as letting the guns 'walk'.

Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.

ATF named the case "Fast and Furious."

Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles.

So it turns out ATF not only allowed it - they videotaped it.

Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets... the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence.

One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." The same e-mail notes: "Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone," including "numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles."

Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence in Mexico and on the border. "I even asked them if they could see the correlation between the two," he said. "The more our guys buy, the more violence we're having down there."

Senior agents including Dodson told CBS News they confronted their supervisors over and over.

Their answer, according to Dodson, was, "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs."

There was so much opposition to the gun walking, that an ATF supervisor issued an e-mail noting a "schism" among the agents. "Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case...we are doing what they envisioned.... If you don't think this is fun you're in the wrong line of work... Maybe the Maricopa County jail is hiring detention officers and you can get $30,000 ... to serve lunch to inmates..."

Agent Dodson and others knew that allowing the guns to walk wouldn't end well, and their fears were confirmed in December 2010 when two guns from Fast & Furious were recovered from the scene of an Arizona shootout that killed US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Not surprisingly, Mexican authorities were kept in the dark about Fast & Furious as well. Mexican diplomats have petitioned the US Department of Justice for more details regarding the operation over the weekend.

Dodson has formally sought protection as a whistleblower under Federal law and has been providing information to the Senate Judiciary committee, chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

ELSEWHERE ALONG THE BORDER: Speaking of the late Agent Brian Terry, documents detailing the Dec 14th gunbattle outside of Nogales, AZ in which the Border Patrol agent was killed indicates that the Border Patrol agents were instructed to use non-lethal beanbag rounds in their shotguns.

The documents say the group of illegal border entrants refused commands to drop their weapons after agents confronted them at about 11:15 p.m. Two agents fired beanbags at the migrants, who responded with gunfire. Two agents returned fire, one with a long gun and one with a pistol, but Terry was mortally wounded in the gunfight.

Terry's brother, Kent Terry, said the other agents who were there that night told him that they were instructed to use the non-lethal beanbags first. It's a policy that doesn't make sense to Kent Terry.

"You go up against a bandit crew that is carrying AKs, and you walk out there with guns loaded with beanbags - I don't get it," Terry said in a phone interview from Michigan. "It's like going to the Iraqi war with one knife. It boggles my mind. ... These guys (Border Patrol agents) are professionals; they should be able to use their judgment call on their own."

[snip]The Terry family remains upset about allegations that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed a gun smuggler it was investigating to purchase and smuggle into Mexico the weapons used in the shootout in which Terry died. The Justice Department has denied the allegations, but U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, continues to insist on the validity of the claims.

"Your government is telling you to use beanbags, but you are selling guns back to the Mexicans," Kent Terry said. "There's a lot of questions that they haven't answered."

The Border Patrol has declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

WASHINGTON D.C.: In a meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the White House last week, President Obama announced that a tentative agreement had been reached with Mexico that would allow Mexican truck drivers to use US Highways in exchange for Mexico dropping retaliatory tariffs on American goods once the first Mexican truck completes its run inside the USA.

OK....let me just come right out and say that this is like the layer cake of bad ideas.

Let me count the ways: I guess to start off with, expedited border crossings from Mexico mean that some criminal enterprise is going to take advantage of this which will most likely lead to expedited drug smuggling or human trafficking, abetted by corrupt officials on both sides of the border.

Last I heard, things like weigh stations, logbooks, preventative maintenance, hours of service, and safety inspections were these whimsical, novel foreign concepts to the majority of truckers on the Mexican side of the border. Even if Mexico reciprocates and allows American truckers to drive further into Mexico's interior, there's the the matter of rampant crime in the form of hijackings and roadblocks set up to rob drivers or steal their cargo. Either that or set it on fire as part of an impromptu blockade while one cartel or another lays siege to a Mexican city.

And lastly, I fail to see how allowing more Mexican trucks onto US highways would benefit the American economy or create American jobs- union or non-union.

MEXICO CITY: A Major in the Mexican Army is suspected of leaking information to drug cartels, training hitmen and enforcers through a private security company and funnelling weapons from the Mexican military to cartels like Los Zetas, according to a US diplomatic cable released on Wikileaks.

Major Arturo Gonzalez Rodriguez was assigned to President Calderon's security detail before being arrested in December 2008 for accepting $100,000 a month bribes from multiple cartels in exchange for relaying the travel plans of Calderon.

"Based on statements from a former cartel member turned witness code-named 'Jennifer,' PGR (federal attorney general's office) has accused González of passing information related to the activities and travel plans of Mexican President Felipe Calderón to the Arturo Beltran Levya organization (ABLO).

"González also stands accused of leaking military intelligence, training ABLO hit men through a private security company and supplying military weapons to various (drug trafficking organizations), including los Zetas."

The cable also alleges that another official working for the Calderon administration leaked copies of his medical file to drug traffickers.

CHIHUHUA: The 20 year old woman who found herself in the limelight in 2010 for becoming police chief of the border town of Praxedis G Guerro after her predecessor was murdered and beheaded by narotrafficantes was fired on Monday after failing to show up for work.

City officials released a statement saying that the mayor had decided to remove Marisol Vallez Garcia from office after she failed to show up after a leave of absence in which she had to attend to a family emergency. She was accompanied by a local official as far as the International Bridge connecting El Provenir with Ft. Hancock, TX last week.

Marisol Valles, then a 20 year old criminology student studying at the University of Guadlajara, was the only person willing to take the job and was sworn in on October 18, 2010 a year after the previous police chief was kidnapped, murdered and beheaded and his severed head left outside the Paxedis G Guerro police station.

Valles is reportedly seeking asylum in Texas after her infant son was being treated for an unspecified illness there. She also was reportedly subjected to a number of anonymous death threats during her brief tenure as police chief.

What Dangerous Armed Black Paramilitary Groups?

Apparently the latest meme that had been circulating around the leftosphere over the last few weeks is that Armed Black Separatist or Paramilitary Groups are actually a fabrication of FOX News- and even if they aren't, then they're perfectly harmless blowhards in berets or bow ties who should be ignored. Heck, even Erick Holder's Department of Justice allowed them to engage in some videotaped voter intimidation with no real consequence.

With that said, this week marks the 3-year anniversary of the murder of Oakland newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey. Bailey was shot dead in broad daylight in downtown Oakland shortly before an investigative piece of his about the pending bankruptcy of Your Black Muslim Bakery for the Oakland Post was scheduled to be published. Bailey's killer approached the editor and fired three rounds from a stolen Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun before fleeing in a waiting Ford Aerostar van.

The Your Black Muslim Bakery was supposedly a grassroots enterprise that provided food, jobs and vocational training to inner-city youth and was run by a Nation of Islam offshoot. In practise, it combined the worst attributes of a cult and a street gang. Bailey's article was to highlight problems within the Your Black Muslim Bakery that were much more sinister than bankruptcy- since 2002, the local institution's management had been in flux when then-Bakery head Yusuf Bey was taken into custody for 27 counts of rape and sexual assault against minors. Bey died of cancer at the age of 67 while awaiting trial in 2003.

Bey's successor at the bakery didn't last long. Waajid Aljawwaad went missing in late February 2004 and his decomposing body was discovered in a shallow grave near King Estates Park in Oakland in July of that year. I'm guessing by his relatively short tenure and the Bakery's other ventures (extortion, assault, kidnapping, rape, real-estate fraud, homicide), Waajid Aljawwaad might've been the only person at Your Black Muslim Bakery who was interested in baking bread.

One of Bey's sons- Antar Bey- took over the bakery and mortgaged the property to cover back taxes and other costs before defaulting. Antar was shot dead in October 2005 in what police say was a botched carjacking.

A month later, men wearing suits and bow ties swarmed into a pair of West Oakland corner stores run by Yemeni grocers , smashing bottles of alcohol and windows. The shotgun used to kill Chauncey Bailey was stolen from one of these stores. Yusef Bey IV, the new head of the bakery, and an associate were arrested after surveillance camera footage of the attack began circulating.

According to the Chauncey Bailey project, Oakland Police Sgt. Derwin Longmire interceded on Bey IV's behalf with other officers investigating the market attacks.

Fast forward to 2007, when Bey IV and his associates decide to raise money for the bakery that's more than $1 million in debt by kidnapping and robbing drug dealers. In May 2007, they allegedly kidnapped two women who they thought were customers of an East Oakland drug dealer and began interrogating them in a vacant house when they were scared off by a passing patrol car.

The morning after Bailey's murder, Oakland Police arrested 19 members of the bakery in a series of pre-dawn raids on the bakery's four locations as well as other properties owned by Bey IV on probable cause warrants. Devaugndre Broussard, a 19 year old handyman at the bakery, initially confessed to being the triggerman who killed Bailey.

Bey IV was taken into custody on the earlier kidnapping charges and was secretly videotaped in a San Leandro Police interview room with his brother Joshua Bey and associate Tamon Haflin. In earlier interviews with the police, Bey IV denied knowing anything about the shooting of Bailey.

The lead investigator in the Bailey homicide was none other than Sgt. Derwin Longmire. A series of recorded phone calls turned over to Alameda County prosecutors in 2008 revealed that Bey IV and Longmire were good friends and that Longmire may have shifted the focus of the Bailey investigation away from Bey IV.

Broussard had also since recanted his his confession, saying that Bey IV had convinced him to take the fall. The unrelated kidnapping charges against Bey IV were dismissed by an Alameda County Superior Court Judge in April 2009, although prosecutors immediately re-filed charges in the case. Bey IV is also standing trial for real-estate fraud where another judge ruled that Yusuf Bey cannot act as his own attorney.

Yusuf Bey IV's attorney, Lorna Patton Brown, was alleged to have smuggled a hit-list of witnesses out of prison for Yusuf back in March of this year. The list was delivered to Bey IV's family and accomplices on the outside.

Of course, according to the NAACP and most press outlets, the tea party movement is far more dangerous than the Nation of Islam splinter group (or it's bakeries). I'm not sure how to break this to Keith Olberman and the good people (with plenty of time on their hands) at Media Matters, but however fringe Bey's group might be, they've already racked up a body count of black murder victims than a group of Americans expressing their first amendment rights.

Just some food for thought courtesy of Your Black Muslim Bakery.

Federal Judge De-Fangs Arizona Immigration Law One Day Before It's Set to Take Effect

A Federal Judge issued an injunction against much of Arizona's SB1070 law targeting illegal immigrants on Wednesday- a day before the law was scheduled to take effect.

According to the Arizona Republic, US District Judge Susan Bolton's last-minute injunction blocks the following portions of SB1070 from taking effect

• The portion of the law that requires an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there's reasonable suspicion they're in the country illegally.

• The portion that creates a crime of failure to apply for or carry "alien-registration papers."

• The portion that allows for a warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe they have committed a public offense that makes them removable from the United States.

• The portion that makes it a crime for illegal immigrants to solicit, apply for or perform work. There are three parts to that part of the law. Two of them will go into effect, one of them will not.
The ruling also says that law enforcement still must enforce federal immigration laws to the fullest extent of the law when SB 1070 goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Individuals will still be able to sue an agency if they adopt a policy that restricts such enforcement.

Bolton did not halt the part of the law that creates misdemeanors crimes for harboring and transporting illegal immigrants

The Arizona Governor's office had already filed an expedited appeal with the US 9th Circuit court, saying that yesterday's ruling wasn't completely unexpected. Arizona is currently facing lawsuits from the Justice Department, the ACLU and the Mexican government over SB1070.

Justice Department spokeswoman Hannah August applauded the ruling.

"While we understand the frustration of Arizonans with the broken immigration system, a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement and would ultimately be counterproductive," August said.

[Note: 'Broken immigration system' is a phrase that's usually a preamble to 'Comprehensive immigration reform', which is in and of itself a euphemism of 'blanket amnesty' -NANESB!].

Yes- the Justice Department understands the frustration of Arizonans so well that they've decided to combat the rampant human smuggling and drug trafficking through the deserts of the border states with signs, lawsuits and calls for stricter gun control laws here in the USA.

No word on whether or not the Justice Department will go after Rhode Island next.

Feds Spring Into Action on Deteriorating Border Situation- Files Suit Against Arizona; Appoints Sanctuary City Police Chief as Top ICE Liason

With parts of Arizona effectively ceded to smugglers and cartels south of the border threatening US police officers, the Obama Administration and Department of Justice has sprung into action to protect the citizens of Arizona future community activists and Democrat voters by responding to the Arizona situation like they have for pretty much any crisis: by sending in the lawyers.

No- not to seize assets of the cartels or human traffickers but to sue Arizona, silly! The DOJ made it official today, joining such American as Apple Pie groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the nation of Mexico in challenging Arizona's SB 1070 law in the courts.

PHOENIX – The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona's new law targeting illegal immigrants, setting the stage for a clash between the federal government and the state over the nation's toughest immigration crackdown.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix argues that Arizona's law requiring state and local police to question and possibly arrest illegal immigrants during the enforcement of other laws such as traffic violations usurps federal authority.

So basically, the Feds are going to try and make the case that the state of Arizona is trying to usurp its authority when it comes to the enforcement of immigration laws- which curiously is being applied to a state that signed a measure proactively against illegal immigration as opposed to sanctuary cities like Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, Portland, Or. and Oakland, Ca that are proactively supporting illegal immigration through non-enforcement.

Speaking of sanctuary cities, former Houston police chief Harold Hurtt has been appointed to oversee cooperation with local and state law enforcement agencies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This announcement comes as the widow of a Houston police officer killed in the line of duty by a repeat offender who was in the country illegally sued Hurtt for failing to enforce already existing immigration laws. Rodney J Johnson was shot and killed during a September 2006 traffic stop by Juan Leonardo Quintero. Quintero had been in the country illegally and was deported in 1999, but managed to sneak back in and was arrested for DUI and lewd acts with a minor long before Houston PD officer Rodney Johnson pulled him over.

The widow- a current Houston Police officer herself- isn't seeking any monetary damages (outside of legal fees) but is hoping the civil suit will bring pressure to change some of the policies that led to the lapses that permitted an illegal immigrant with a rap sheet to be released back out into the public.

The lawsuit comes on the one year anniversary of another Houston PD officer being shot and killed by an illegal immigrant. Officer Henry Canales was fatally shot by Roberto Pedroza Carillo in June last year when Canales tried arresting him during an undercover sting. Carillo opened fire on another undercover officer before being killed by return fire.

Private William Andrew Long: June 26 1985- June 1 2009

Today marks what would've been the 25th Birthday of US Army Pvt. William 'Andy' Long of Conway, AR.

On June 1st, 2009, Long and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula were both shot outside a Little Rock, AR US Army recruiting center in broad daylight. Long was killed while Ezegwula was hospitalized and survived. American Muslim convert Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad- nee Carlos Bledsoe- was arrested the same day and confessed to the shooting.

The shooting took place one day after abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was gunned down in his Wichita, KS church, vindicating an earlier Homeland Security report naming gun owners, military veterans, the tea party and pro-life groups among others as potential domestic terrorists in the eyes of the Obama Administration and their unquestioning supporters on the left and in the mainstream media.

Almost immediately in the wake of Tiller's murder, Attorney General Eric Holder sent US Marshals to protect an unspecified number of abortion clinics. However, it took more than 4 days for Holder or the Justice Department to publicly comment on the shooting of Pvt. Long. The White House did issue a brief statement approximately 48 hours after the Little Rock murder took place, but if the media wasn't busy attempting to portray every last granny as a potential domestic terrorist, they were waiting in breathless anticipation for the President's June 4, 2009 speech to the Islamic world from Cairo's Al-Azhar University.

Long's death was considered to be the first time since the Septeber 11 2001 attack on the Pentagon that terrorists killed an active-duty member of the military on American soil.

The family, understandably distrustful of the media, has been mostly reluctant to talk to the press- although the William's father did do an interview with Little Rock's KATV and William's uncle penned an op-ed for the Racine, WI Journal -Times earlier this month.

Parts of Arizona Considered Under Control of Mexican Cartels and Smugglers: Feds Respond With Lawsuit Against Arizona

The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management has taken to posting warning signs regarding the potential dangers of encountering human and drug smugglers along lands under their jurisdiction in Southern Arizona last week. While not an outright prohibition of entering BLM lands, the signs warn about encountering armed criminals and smugglers in unusually blunt terms.

The signs were posted over a month after a Pinal County Sheriff's Deputy was shot by suspected drug traffickers while patrolling the area around the junction of Interstate 8 and Arizona Highway 84. Last week, two bodies belived to those of drug mules were found shot to death in the same area where the deputy was ambushed. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said in an interview Tuscon's KGUN TV that the cartels are in increasing control of parts of Arizona, including Pinal County.

The sheriff admits the cartels are operating in his county and without the federal government's help they can't get control. KGUN 9 News asked Babeu flat out if cartels control parts of Arizona. "Absolutely, they have in terms of the remote areas in the drug corridors in the desert here in west Pinal County. Our government has even erected signs warning citizens to beware this is a known drug corridor," Babeu said.

But don't worry! The Obama Administration is on the case! Besides fighting the spillover from Mexico's narcoinsurgency the blue state way (gun control and blanket amnesty for illegal aliens), US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton let slip in a June 8 interview with Ecuador's NTN24 News that the Department of Justice will be filing a lawsuit against Arizona over their recent anti-illegal immigration bill [still wondering if anybody from the DOJ has actually read it yet- NANESB!]. This was confirmed on Friday by White House officials.

*WHEW!* Good thing all those other problems along the US/Mexican border have been taken care of so that the Obama Administration and the Justice Department can take on one of the 57 states (and a red state his 2008 Presidential opponent currently represents as a senator).

Here's an exit question for you, gentle NANESB! reader- if President Obama wanted to give the middle finger and say 'You don't matter' to red states like Louisiana and Arizona, what would he do differently?

Palmetto State Politics: Curiouser and Curiouser

Well, since as far as I know there's that god-awful video still of Helen Thomas that can't be un-seen on the front page (not to mention you were thiiiiis close to some Pelosi images) I figured I could at least treat you to a little Nikki Haley. 'Who is Nikki Haley?' you're probably wondering. She's the daughter of Sikh immigrants from India and is currently a state representative from Lexington County who's also running for governor of South Carolina on the GOP ticket.

As some of you might remember last year, incumbent Governor Mark Sanford opted out of governing and hiking to Appalachian Trail to personally improve relations with Argentina- one Argentine at a time.

From there, things only got more bizzare. With Haley's gubenetorial campaign gaining momentum and the state lawmaker getting endorsements from Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, Gov. Sanford's former press secretary Will Folks claimed "Yeah- I hit that" on his blog. These claims could not be independently verified, however.

Then, Republican state Senator Jake Knotts described both Haley and President Obama as 'ragheads' on an internet broadcast earlier this month. Knotts later apologized amid criticism from both the Democrats and GOP.

On Tuesday, Haley was the winner in the state's GOP gubenetorial primary- getting 49% of the vote. However, since she didn't win more than 50% of the vote, she faces a runoff with the next closest candidate, Gresham Barrett.

But if you thought all the Palmetto State wierdness was confined to epithets and bogus extramarital affair claims on the GOP side, guess again.

On the Democrat primary for US Senate, former state legislator Vic Rawl- who was expected to challenge incumbent Republican Jim DeMint in the November general election- didn't even make it past the primary. Rawl lost by 16 points to complete unknown Alvin Greene, a 32 year old unemployed Army Veteran who basically forgot to campaign once he registered as a candidate- no website, no bumper stickers, no speeches and no yard signs [talk about your stealth candidate!- NANESB]. Apparently he was too busy trying to get into the University of South Carolina's women's dorm by showing dirty pictures on his cell phone, with a felony obscenity charge the only result of his efforts. South Carolina Democrats have urged Greene to step down, but so far he apparently isn't budging.

Never one to shy away from wasting taxpayer funds, US House Majority Whip and alleged tea-party spittle recipient Jim Clyburn (D- South Carolina's 6th district) has accused Greene of being a GOP plant and is calling for an investigation from the Department of Justice.

The sad part is that since it's the Democrat party that's been made a fool of, there probably will be a full-scale Federal investigation ignoring the fact that even if Greene was a plant, he was still chosen by the voters over the candidate who actually had money, ads, speeches, yard signs and a website.