Are Chinese Banks Hiding “The Mother of All Debt Bombs”?

Seems to be the case.

And what happens to the regime when the bomb goes off? Scared totalitarians usually find an excuse to go to war.

ATF’s latest gun grab

Agency reduces due process for seizing firearms.

David Codrea Exclusive: ATF document admits to retaliation and ‘ethical violations’. Congressman Issa, are you paying attention?

Go to link here to read entire document.

An undated internal “Quick Hits” problem identification analysis forwarded to Gun Rights Examiner by an insider source yesterday points to “poor management,” an “unfair disciplinary system” that includes “retaliation,” and “ethical violations” from the Chief Counsel’s office among the issues requiring management resolution.

The document, represented by the source as the result of meetings between Deputy Director Thomas E. Brandon and a “working group” that took place earlier this year, accuses Counsel of “inhibit[ing] leaders from doing the right thing” by having “too much involvement in all bureau processes,” and among its solutions recommends “Do not tolerate ethical violations from Counsel” and “Establish transparency wherein counsel cannot mask activities, records, etc. with ‘privilege.’”

“Poor management has killed morale,” the document admits, recommending that the concern that “management takes care of management” requires the bureau “Punish managers commensurate with their level of responsibility…higher position + intentional malfeasance = greater discipline and accountability.”

Among related problems specified were an “unfair disciplinary system…disparity of discipline between management,” and, significantly, “retaliations.”

Tom Brandon, ATF's Great Hope?

. . . This new document containing admissions of many of the things reported and alleged outside the bureau should be of interest to those investigators, insider advisers to this columnist, insist, particularly because of the anticipated testimony of the Justice Department Inspector General, initially scheduled for September 11, but now perhaps to be postponed if the report currently under draft review is delayed—something advisers have cautioned to watch out for, and a concern seemingly confirmed in a story filed yesterday by The Los Angeles Times that cited a letter from the IG.

“I think that as a basis for the oversight hearings that we have been promised but not yet seen, this is wonderful stuff,” one adviser told Gun Rights Examiner about the Quick Hits document. “ It shows that Brandon and Company are willing to reform and provides a template for questions by the Congresscritters that would get to the heart of the matter. Indeed, an honest performance by Brandon at such a hearing may be the only thing that can save the institution. I found the criticism of CC (Chief Counsel's) Office to be magnificently spot on.”

“This could be real fodder for the hearings,” another agreed.

Congressman Issa, are you paying attention?

Praxis: the 5.56 NATO M855A1 "Brown Tip" cartridge.

"New M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round smashing expectations."

David Codrea: Marine police training response ignores civilian rights concerns

"Inquiries about police personnel training with United States Marines have resulted in a boilerplate response that glosses over civil liberties concerns and fails to acknowledge and address specific questions about those operations, a September 5 letter from USMC Public Affairs shows."

Your tax dollars at work. CDC seeks to prepare for the zombie apocalypse.

Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse

I have been asked by some of the uninitiated if I have anything to do with this . . .

Kerodin's latest con. I do not. I generally don't subscribe to anything proposed by a convicted -- and self-admitted -- federal extortionist who has also had contact with the ATF in a criminal case. (Making him, if nothing else, eminently blackmailable by the Feds. Heh. If so, an ironic end for an extortionist, wouldn't it be?)

I've spent quite a while ignoring Kerodin lately but when someone brought this spot-on post from California Yankee to my attention and then someone else asked me, in all uninformed innocence, if I had anything to do with III Arms, I realized I needed to put up this disclaimer.

Sadly, anybody who sends this guy money will likely get more (and less) than they bargained for.

Thanks, Diane, for reminding us of the collectivist threat to our liberty and property.

"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an out-right ban, picking up every one of them... 'Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in,' I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here." -- Diane Feinstein on CBS "60 Minutes", February 5, 1995.

Senator Dianne Feinstein says she'll reintroduce assault weapon legislation.

Dianne Feinstein announced Wednesday that she’s re-entering the battle over gun control during her keynote speech to the California delegates to the Democratic National Convention. . .

She promised California delegates she’d return to Congress to reintroduce “an updated assault weapons bill.”

At the delegates' breakfast, she said that, "Weapons of war do not belong on our streets, in our classrooms, in our schools or in our movie theatres."

Nice of her to remind us all in prime-time of the collectivist threat to our liberty and property.

Oleg Volk's latest.

Home invader repellent.

David Codrea: Nugent, NRA hold key to Romney executive privilege pledge.

Is it too much to expect that politically influential people who represent themselves as gun rights leaders use that influence to persuade Mitt Romney to do the right thing and show some leadership himself on this? It’s only small fry desperate to get an important story out who need to resort to incessantly banging pots and pans for media attention, political attention and “gun lobby” attention. Nugent and Cox would get the right people’s attention immediately.

Mr. Romney, Tear Down This Stone Wall. Revoke executive privilege on Fast and Furious.

Mitt Romney addresses the NRA.

As I was very ill yesterday, my partner in anti-crime David Codrea broke the story: Romney asked to revoke executive privilege on Fast and Furious if elected.

Here's our letter:

September 4, 2012

Mitt Romney

Via electronic correspondence

Subject: Revocation of Presidential Executive Privilege on “Fast and Furious” Documents

Dear Candidate Romney,

On June 20, 2012, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole wrote a letter to Rep. Darrell E. Issa, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform informing him “that the President has asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-February 4, 2011, documents” subpoenaed as part of the committee’s Operation Fast and Furious “gunwalking” investigation.

These documents are essential to determining the truth about falsehoods stated to the committee and later withdrawn by the Justice Department. Former federal prosecutor.

Rep. Trey Gowdy has demonstrated the Obama White House cannot legally assert executive privilege to shield these documents.

“The reason we have privileges is to protect the relationships…No privilege is absolute,” Gowdy has stated. “Every privilege can be defeated, and usually they can be defeated by an indication of criminal conduct."

“There was a demonstrably false letter sent from the Department of Justice on DoJ letterhead to a United States Senator and therefore to all of Congress,” he continued. That letter was misleading, deceptive, and provably wrong. We are seeking the documents that would help us understand how a letter that materially false could be drafted, approved, delivered to a United States Senator. That’s the information that Congress was seeking. The White House and the Department of Justice are seeking to prevent us from getting that information by asserting that third tier, lowest level, weakest form of executive privilege.”

You recognized the wrongness of the administration’s actions in your July 17 release, “Transparent Hypocrisy: Obama's Fast And Furious Broken Promises,” when your campaign informed voters “After Slamming The Use Of Executive Privilege During His 2008 Campaign, President Obama Is Now Using It To Avoid Telling Americans The Truth About Operation ‘Fast And Furious.’”

A few months earlier, in April at the NRA Annual Meeting in St, Louis, you expressed your personal enthusiastic support for Congressional investigations.

“I applaud Congressman [Darrell] Issa and Senator [Chuck] Grassley for their work in exposing the Fast and Furious scandal,” you proclaimed to an enthusiastic assemblage of NRA members.

“And of course I applaud NRA leadership for being among the first and most vocal in calling upon Attorney General Holder to resign or get fired,” you added.

Sir, we need more than your applause.

If elected president, you will have the authority to revoke claims of executive privilege made by your predecessor. You will be able to give the American people the truth about the “materially false” information first provided, then rescinded, and then covered up by the Obama administration. You will be able to demonstrate your leadership and commitment on determining the truth about Operation Fast and Furious and holding those responsible for it truly accountable.

Mr. Romney, tear down this stone wall.

Will you pledge and commit, that if elected in November, you will rescind Obama’s executive privilege order and direct your Attorney General to fully cooperate with and assist the Committee in document production and whatever else it needs to finally determine and tell the American people the truth?

Sincerely and seriously,

David Codrea

Mike Vanderboegh

Issa: Key Fast and Furious report coming by next week.

From Politico: "A long-awaited report by the Justice Department's internal watchdog about Operation Fast and Furious is expected to be released shortly, in time for a House hearing next week, House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) announced Tuesday."

The official announcement from the Issa committee:

***Hearing Announcement***

DOJ Inspector General to Testify Next Week Following Release of Investigative Report on Operation Fast and Furious

WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa today announced that Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, following the release of his report of the investigation into reckless conduct in Operation Fast and Furious, will testify before the Full Oversight Committee on Tuesday, September 11, 2012. In Operation Fast and Furious, agents failed to interdict firearms destined for Mexican drug cartels while hoping the guns, once recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, would lead them to higher ranking cartel officials. Guns from the reckless Justice Department program, however, contributed to the deaths of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and an unknown number of Mexican citizens. It also created an ongoing public safety hazard on both sides of the border.

“For a year and a half, Attorney General Eric Holder has cited the ongoing Inspector General investigation as his reason for declining to hold those responsible for reckless conduct in Operation Fast and Furious to account. Next week, this excuse for delaying action ends,” said Chairman Darrell Issa. “Although I am concerned that the Justice Department has not given the Inspector General full and unfettered access to all relevant information, Inspector General Horowitz’s report and testimony should add to the understanding of the operation and numerous related management failures at the Department.”

Hearing Details

“IG Report: The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General Examines the Failures of Operation Fast and Furious”

9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11th in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building and streaming online at http://oversight.house.gov.

Witness

* Inspector General Michael Horowitz, U.S. Department of Justice

Pretty expensive digs, even for a pagan demi-god (or is it 'demo-god'?).

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." -- Barack Obama on election night, 2008.

Where does an unemployed demi-god go after retirement?

"Who Is Funding the Purchase of the $35 million Beachfront Hawaiian Estate for Barack and Michelle Obama to Move into Come January 2013?"

The estate consists of a main home and a guest home located on one and a half acres in an area called Beachfront, which is just before Lanikai on the Windward coast. . .

The interior of the main home is a sprawling 8,419 square feet, with another 5,359 square feet of lanai area. With five bedrooms, five baths, two powder rooms, and a professional media/movie room, you can find your own piece of privacy within this private estate—which you may want when you have guests, since it has 14 parking stalls (unless you’re using those for your car collection).

There’s a 450-square-foot cabana area adjacent to the pool and spa, as well.

But wait, there’s more: The guesthouse is larger than most regular houses, with 1,925 square feet of living area and a 318-square-foot lanai. It has its own two-car garage, three bedrooms, three baths, and a powder room.

I suppose the location is all the better for commanding the world's oceans to cease rising and to heal the planet.

"What would ‘President Romney’ really mean for gun owners?"

“Deadly assault weapons … are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.” - Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney

Pretty funny, and oh so true.

Rough week behind, another one ahead.

It seems likely now that I will be going back into the hospital to have some of the replumbing of my esophagus corrected. I still have fluid, which is apparently coming from a hole in the esophagus, leaking out a hole in my back left over from a post-surgical drain. This, plus the nausea created by the Gleevec, are my principal health problems at the moment. If my postings are a little erratic this coming week, you now know the reason.

Please keep us in your prayers.

"The myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished."

When democracy turns to tyranny, the armed citizen still gets to vote.

"You can . . . decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy."

What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.

Or else democratically elected governments can be replaced by puppet austerity regimes which are free to ignore the protests of the populace when they are deprived of their promised entitlements. You can, in other words, decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy. Both of these possible solutions are currently being tried in the European Union, whose leaders are reduced to talking sinister gibberish in order to evade the obvious conclusion: the myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished. This is the defining political problem of the early 21st century.

Janet Daley is correct, but I am not as optimistic as her that such a contradiction can be solved electorally. The collectivists, when faced with the checkmate of their appetites within the legal system, will simply resort to violence. We already see that in the Obamacare intolerable act -- "You will comply, or else."

We are not Europe, to be lorded over forever by a mandarin class of our "betters." For one thing, we have the means of resistance. The only question is, will enough of us have the will to use those arms when the collectivists' push comes to our shove. I think we will.

Oh fer cryin' out loud. . .

"Why the ATF should be bigger."

This moron wants to reward the ATF for Fast and Furious -- not reforming it or doing serious oversight -- but by making it BIGGER.

It's about what you'd expect from a think tank founded by a big-government GOP hack politician.

Octagenarian burglar says she “wouldn’t do all this nonsense if the government gave us more money.”

"Woman, 82, Suspected Of Burglary; Rap Sheet Dates Back To 1955."

Thompson has a 21-page rap sheet that includes arrests from 1955 for disturbing the peace, burglary, forgery and grand theft from Los Angeles to the South Bay to Beverly Hills, according to the Daily Breeze. She was arrested in connection with a homicide in 1957, but was deemed insane and committed to a hospital.

The octogenarian previously pleaded guilty two years ago for similar burglaries, and reportedly asked if she would be serving the entire three years of her sentence. Thompson was released on parole in November.

According to the newspaper, she reportedly told detectives at her sentencing that she “wouldn’t do all this nonsense if the government gave us more money.”

Kim reported that Thompson served time in state prison nine times and has 25 known aliases.

What Republicans forgot to say.

Anything about the Gunwalker Scandal, that's what.