Sipsey Street Irregulars: WSJ: "GOP Lawmakers Press Investigation of Gun Operation."

Thursday, June 9, 2011

WSJ: "GOP Lawmakers Press Investigation of Gun Operation."

Republican lawmakers are preparing their biggest push yet to try to force the Justice Department to explain a troubled federal investigation that they say inadvertently fueled arms trafficking to Mexico.

House Oversight Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)Rep. Darrell Issa, (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee has scheduled hearings next Monday and Wednesday on how the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives’ “Operation Fast and Furious” backfired.

Among those called to testify are ATF whistleblowers who have provided information to congressional investigators.

The ATF investigation in 2009 and 2010 was aimed at gathering evidence against major gun traffickers believed to funnel weapons to Mexican drug cartels, whose battles have claimed 40,000 lives since 2006.

Two assault rifles that lawmakers say were tied to suspects in the Fast and Furious operation were found at the scene of a December shooting in Arizona in which border patrol agent Brian Terry was killed. The weapon that was used to kill the agent hasn’t been identified. A Mexican national has been indicted in the killing.

Mr. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley, (R.,Iowa) have been investigating the operation, and say evidence indicates the ATF instead allowed more than 2,500 weapons to fall into the hands of traffickers.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that a weapons arsenal found in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in April included at least five AK-47 style rifles that U.S. authorities trace to suspects in the ATF’s troubled operation. ATF documents show the guns were entered into a database of suspect guns.

The discovery appears to be the first confirmation of GOP fears that because of a poorly conceived operation, Fast and Furious guns ended up with drug gangs in Mexico.

“The reckless decisions of ATF and Justice Department officials in Operation Fast and Furious have devastated lives and put fear into communities on both sides of the border,” Mr. Issa said.

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"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Thursday, June 9, 2011

WSJ: "GOP Lawmakers Press Investigation of Gun Operation."

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