Supporters of "Occupy" Movement

Supporters of the "Occupy Wall Street, etc." movement.

1. The American Nazi Party.  See it here.
2. Communist Party USA.  See it here. 
3. China.  See it here. 
4. President Barack Obama.  See it here. 

Really??

I'm so glad Sean Penn speaks for conservatives

I'm not really sure what to say about this. Projection + Overcompensation = Hippie Actors preaching politics? Read the original here.

Sean Penn Calls Tea Party the ‘Get the N-Word Out of the White House Party’ Which Wants to ‘Lynch’ ObamaBy Brent Baker | October 15, 2011 | 01:39

Left-wing actor Sean Penn slimed the Tea Party as motivated by racism, charging on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight on Friday evening that an impediment to President Obama’s success is “what I call the ‘Get the N-word out of the White House party,’ the Tea Party.”

At a time when Herman Cain tops polls of Republican primary voters, Penn proceeded to allege, without citing any evidence, that “there’s a big bubble coming out of their heads saying, you know, ‘can we just lynch him?’” (video below)

In between Penn’s two jabs intended to discredit the Tea Party, Piers Morgan helpfully boasted of how actor Morgan Freeman, on his show three weeks ago, “was very passionate about that very subject, saying there are elements of the Tea Party who just, as he said, want to get the black man out of the White House. He said it on this show.”

Video: http://www.mrctv.org/videos/sean-penn-calls-tea-party-‘get-n-word-out-white-house-party’-which-wants-‘lynch’-obama
Audio: MP3 clip which matches the video

Indeed, Piers Morgan’s program has become the place for celebrities to disparage the Tea Party. As recounted by NB’s Noel Sheppard, on the September 23 show, Morgan Freeman asserted the Tea Party’s attitude is “we’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man outta here.” The night before, actor Alan Cumming of The Good Wife, denounced the Tea Party as driven by “homophobia and racism.”

Of course, Penn is not opposed to all protest movements: “I applaud the spirit of what’s happening now on Wall Street.”

From the pre-recorded interview on the Friday, October 14 Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN:

SEAN PENN: I would love to see Barack Obama be Bulworth. I’d love to see what I’ve always wanted to see, somebody run as a one term President and show me that people aren’t stupid. They do care about each other. And when he does the right things and takes on the controversies, he’s going to win the next election.

And, and there, yet there’s another problem. You have what I call the “Get the ‘N’-word out of the White House party,” the Tea Party, this kind of sensibility, which is much more of a distraction-

PIERS MORGAN: Well, I had Morgan Freeman on, one of your movie colleagues, and he was very passionate about that very subject, saying there are elements of the Tea Party who just, as he said, want to get the black man out of the White House. He said it on this show.

PENN: I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. If you ask a representative of the Tea Party, “okay, Social Security, socialist, get rid of it,” they're going to get very confused. What the, what they're -- at the end of the day, there's a big bubble coming out of their heads saying, you know, “can we just lynch him?”

If we just focus on the basics, together, I think this is a country that if it -- if it -- if we kind of wake up and look at each other in a room, it's like the light's off. You turn the light on, people are good....

Read more: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2011/10/15/sean-penn-calls-tea-party-get-n-word-out-white-house-party-which-wants#ixzz1b2ynMSmm

About the AuthorBrent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Brent Baker on Twitter.

Thoughts on Occupy Wall Street

1. They are adamant that they don't have a list of demands.  Then what are they all doing there?
2. The 1% they hate so much doesn't care that they're sitting in a park.  The 99% who are trying to keep small businesses going care that these protesters are doing drugs, being stupid, trying to steal, and generally mooch off of the city in front of their businesses.
3. The celebrities that they love and that love them back are part of that 1%.  Russell Simmons has been at the protests.  Russell Simmons is a very successful American Entrepreneur who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  Russell Simmons could easily make a company that could hire all of these protesters   
4. Is Russell Simmons protesting himself?
5. If they are protesting the "fat cats" in Washington DC that are not paying attention, why are they in Manhattan and not in front of the Capitol building?
6. In my opinion, these people are the perfect example of soft, self entitled hippies, that are jealous that people who work hard are more successful than them.  That a person who studies their ass off, then works 80 hour weeks for a large paycheck, can afford whatever they want, and that a protester who went to the same school, smoking weed with a philosophy degree, working 20 hours a week at Starbucks can't.
7. Simple economics: Supply and Demand.  People will pay good money for people who can turn medium amounts of money into large amounts of money and large amounts of money into REALLY large amounts of money.  People will not pay good money for philosophers who are trained to ponder stuff.
8. The American dream is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".  It is not "life, liberty, and the guarantee of happiness that more successful people owe you."  Being an American is about equal opportunity, not equal outcome.  What you do with your opportunity is up to you, and it's on you.

Saw this on Facebook:

When did Attorney General Holder know about the gunwalking scandal?

Aka, Holder should be fired. Read the original here.

Obama Talked About "Fast & Furious" Months Before Holder Claimed He Knew

CNN's John King plays Holder's testimony to Congress on MAY 3, 2011, where he said he had only just recently heard about the Fast & Furious gunrunning program. "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks," Attorney General Eric Holder said.

Then CNN compares Holder's testimony to what President Obama said in MARCH to CNN Espanol about the operation. "I heard on the news about this story that -- Fast and Furious, where allegedly guns were being run into Mexico, and ATF knew about it, but didn't apprehend those who had sent it." Transcript of the segment that aired on "John King USA" below:

KING: Well, Congressman Cummings, let's get to one of the questions here. Let's first listen to the attorney general. He came before this committee back in May. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ISSA: When did you first know about the program officially I believe called Fast and Furious? To the best of your knowledge, what date?

ERIC HOLDER, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: He says over the last few weeks.

That is on May 3, 2011. Listen to this interview the president of the United States, not the attorney general, the president of the United States, had with CNN Espanol back in March.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There have been problems, you know. I heard on the news about this story that -- Fast and Furious, where allegedly guns were being run into Mexico, and ATF knew about it, but didn't apprehend those who had sent it.

Eric Holder has -- the attorney general has been very clear that he knew nothing about this. We had assigned an I.G., inspector general, to investigate it. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It begs the question, how did the president know about this in March, and how did the president know the attorney general knew nothing about this in march, when the attorney general says in May he just learned about it a couple weeks ago?

Pelosi's quote of the day

I swear, if Pelosi's, Biden's, Reid's, Durbin's, etc. quotes were actually true on what they accuse Republicans of, the GOP would be worse than a SAW movie villain. Read the original here.


Pay For Abortion, Or Women 'Die On The Floor'




House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., accompanied by House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., attend a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday Oct. 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)




Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was essentially stripped of any formal input into the legislative process in last November's election. I heave a sigh of relief over this fact every time I see her say something like this:





She's talking about a bill that simply protects taxpayers from having to subsidize abortions through Obamacare. This is about just how out-of-touch progressives are on social issues. If you fail to show sufficient enthusiasm for paying to kill someone else's baby, it is a sign that you're heartless.

Mayor Bloomberg folds like a chair

A couple of things. Way to be a strong leader Bloomberg. And this quote: "But protester Nick Gulotta, 23, was jubilant...'It shows when people work together, you really can make a difference and make justice happen,' Gulotta said." I don't think this 23 year old Manhattan-ite knows the definition of 'work', 'justice', or for that matter, 'trespassing on private property'. Anyone want to wager what his degree might be in (if he has one)? Read the original here.

My Way News - NYC Official: Protest Cleanup Is Being Postponed

NEW YORK (AP) - The cleanup of a plaza in lower Manhattan where protesters have been camped out for a month was postponed early Friday, sending cheers up from a crowd that had feared the effort was merely a pretext to evict them.

Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said the owners of the private park, Brookfield Office Properties, had put off the cleaning. Supporters of the protesters had started streaming into the park in the morning darkness before the planned cleaning, forming a crowd of several hundred chanting people.

"I'll believe it when we're able to stay here," said protester Peter Hogness, 56, a union employee from Brooklyn. "One thing we have learned from this is that we need to rely on ourselves and not on promises from elected officials."

But protester Nick Gulotta, 23, was jubilant.

He originally held up a sign referring to Mayor Michael Bloomberg that said: "Bloomberg Don't Evict Occupy Wall Street." People cheered and clapped him on the back when he scratched out the "don't" and replaced it with "didn't."

"It shows when people work together, you really can make a difference and make justice happen," Gulotta said.

A confrontation between police and protesters, who had vowed to stay put through civil disobedience, had been feared. Boisterous cheers floated up from the crowds as the announcement of the postponement circulated, and protesters began polling each other on whether to make an immediate march to Wall Street, a few blocks away.

"Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park - Brookfield Properties - that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation," the deputy mayor's statement said.

The New York Police Department had said it would make arrests if Brookfield requested it and laws were broken. The deputy mayor's statement Friday said Brookfield believes it can work out an arrangement with the protesters that "will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use," it said.

Brookfield, a publicly traded real estate firm, had planned to power-wash the plaza section by section over 12 hours and allow the protesters back - but without much of the equipment they needed to sleep and camp there. The company called the conditions at the park unsanitary and unsafe.

The company's rules, which haven't been enforced, have been this all along: No tarps, no sleeping bags, no storing personal property on the ground. The park is privately owned but is required to be open to the public 24 hours per day.

In a last-ditch bid to stay, protesters had mopped and picked up garbage. While moving out mattresses and camping supplies, organizers were mixed on how they would respond when police arrived.

Many protesters said the only way they would leave is by force. Organizers sent out a mass email Thursday asking supporters to "defend the occupation from eviction."

Nicole Carty, a 23-year-old from Atlanta, had hoped the group's cleaning effort would stave off any confrontation. It wasn't clear early Friday whether that had anything to do with the company's decision to postpone the cleanup.

"We tell them, 'Hey the park is clean, there's no need for you to be here,'" she said. "If they insist on coming in, we will continue to occupy the space."

The demand that protesters clear out had set up a potential turning point in a movement that began Sept. 17 with a small group of activists and has swelled to include several thousand people at times, from many walks of life. Occupy Wall Street has inspired similar demonstrations across the country and become an issue in the Republican presidential primary race.

The protesters' demands are wide-ranging, but they are united in blaming Wall Street and corporate interests for the economic pain they say all but the wealthiest Americans have endured since the financial meltdown.

A spokesman for Bloomberg, whose girlfriend is a member of Brookfield's board of directors, had said Thursday that Brookfield had requested the city's assistance in maintaining the park.

"We will continue to defend and guarantee their free speech rights, but those rights do not include the ability to infringe on the rights of others," Bloomberg spokesman Marc La Vorgna said, "which is why the rules governing the park will be enforced."

Protesters have had some run-ins with police, but mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge and an incident in which some protesters were pepper-sprayed seemed to energize their movement.

Bill de Blasio, the city's public advocate, had expressed concern over the city's actions as he inspected the park Thursday afternoon and listened to protesters' complaints.

"This has been a very peaceful movement by the people," he said. "I'm concerned about this new set of policies. At the very least, the city should slow down."

And attorneys from the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild - who are representing an Occupy Wall Street sanitation working group - wrote a letter to Brookfield saying the company's request to get police to help implement its cleanup plan threatened "fundamental constitutional rights."

The protest has led sympathetic groups in other cities to stage their own local rallies and demonstrations: Occupy Boston, Occupy Cincinnati, Occupy Houston, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Philadelphia, Occupy Providence, Occupy Salt Lake and Occupy Seattle, among them.

The situation was tense near Colorado's state Capitol, where hundreds of Occupy Denver protesters were told to clear out or risk arrest. Dozens of police in riot gear moved into the park, declaring it closed and removing dozens of tents, but no clashes were reported early Friday.

Occupy Seattle protesters running a live video feed from their corporate power protest at Seattle's Westlake Park said police started making arrests Thursday. Police confirmed that 10 people were arrested. City law bans camping in parks.

Several protests are planned this weekend across the U.S. and Canada, and European activists are also organizing.

---

Associated Press writers Larry Neumeister, Tom McElroy, Cara Anna, Deepti Hajela, Colleen Long, Cristian Salazar, Verena Dobnik, and Meghan Barr contributed to this report.

Themed National Parks?

I have a few questions about this.

1. Why do we have racially themed national parks. Are national parks supposed to be for the country as opposed to shoving more racial politics down everyone's throat?
2. Is the national park service the right avenue for a cultural preservation?
3. If I remember my history classes correct, we do a pretty bad job of preserving American history and culture, let alone Hispanic culture.
4. Is this what we need to spend public money on right now?

5. I'm sure this has nothing to do with pandering to a minority for votes in 2012.

Read the original here.

Ken Salazar Urges More Latino-Themed National Parks, Sites

“Less than 3 percent of all the national landmarks that we have — the highest designation you can receive as a historic landmark — are designated for women, Latinos, African Americans or other members of minority groups,” Salazar said in a meeting with reporters last week. “That tells you that the score is not even.”

The secretary’s concerns will be one of several issues discussed at White House meetings on Latino heritage scheduled for Wednesday. The meetings, set to bring together a who’s who of Latino business, political, religious and entertainment leaders, are slated to focus on whether the government is properly serving Hispanic students, small business owners, military veterans and artists.

The meetings, held in the closing days of Hispanic Heritage Month, come as both President Obama’s reelection campaign and Republican presidential contenders are reaching out to Latino voters. Obama administration officials are meeting regularly with hundreds of Latino leaders in hopes of rekindling excitement among Hispanic voters, while Republicans and conservative activists are preparing a series of Spanish-language radio and television ads blasting Obama’s record.

But Salazar said the White House-sponsored meetings have nothing to do with electoral politics — and are instead designed to improve the country’s poor preservation of Hispanic history and culture.

“I think when you look at the way Americans most understand the history of Latinos in this country, a lot of it is being told now through the lens of what’s happening with the immigration debate,” Salazar said last week at a meeting hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “While that’s an important debate that has security and moral implications, in my view, there’s also a huge history of Latinos in the United States that’s never been told.”

Salazar, who oversees the National Park Service, in June ordered a national study of people and places worthy of national historic preservation. He said he has also met with Park Service rangers in California to try to identify Latino-themed sites in the state.

One location, the “Forty Acres” site used by labor activist Cesar Chavez in the 1960s to raise awareness about the plight of migrant farm workers, earned national historic landmark status in February. The agency is asking the public to weigh in on other sites that could be used to commemorate Chavez’s legacy.

The most ambitious attempt to date to memorialize Latino history will come with construction of the National Museum of the American Latino, whose planning commission is pushing to build on a site near the U.S. Capitol. The project would cost about $600 million and be financed with a mix of private and federal dollars.

Waterboarding is to torture, as Assassination is to ?

I understand if you don't approve of waterboarding. However, it may just be me, but it seems a bit disingenuous to rail against George Bush for have lawyers approve enhanced interrogation, but no one seems to care that Barack Obama's lawyers have approved a secret government hit list that may contain more than 1 confirmed US citizen. I didn't say it's secret. Press Secretary Carney said it was. Read the original here.

Carney On Secret Kill List: "Not Going To Engage In A Conversation About That"

Bill Press, questioner: "Jay, the New York Times reported Sunday on a memo that the Justice Department gave the White House authorizing the assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki. Can you confirm the existence of the memo, and will it be released as Senator Feinstein requested?"

Jay Carney, White House press secretary: "Bill, as you know I'm not going to discuss matters of that nature. I can simply say as a general matter of fact that Mr. Awlaki was an operation leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). He was directly involved in plots to perform terror that would have resulted in terrorist acts against the United States, and, you know, it is, I think it is important to remember that when we assess the overall question.

Press: "Were there any other Americans or targets on that list?"

Carney: "Again I'm not going to, as others who are here when this happened, I'm just not going to engage in a conversation about that."

No alarmism here...

Oh Joe Biden. What can I say about Joe Biden. I'll let him say it for me. Read the original here.

Biden Warns of More Rapes and Murders If Jobs Bill Is Not Passed
1:21 PM, OCT 12, 2011 • BY DANIEL HALPER

In Flint, Michigan, Vice President Joe Biden suggested that more rapes and murders could occur if President Barack Obama's jobs bill is not passed.

"In 2008, when Flint had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city," Biden said. "In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the murder rate climbed to 65 and rapes--just to pick two categories--climbed to 229. In 2011, you now only have 125 shields. God only knows what the numbers will be this year for Flint if we don't rectify it."

The vice president also seemed to suggest that the Obama administration's first stimulus is the reason rapes and murders were not even higher in 2010 and 2011." And God only knows what that number would have been had we not been able to get a little bit of help," Biden said.

I have nothing to say about this...

Investor's Business Daily editorial on diplomatic cables that have come to light. Read the original here.  Emphasis throughout is mine.

Apologies Not Accepted - Investors.Com
In November 2009, Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to bow to Japan's emperor.

Leadership: Leaked cables show Japan nixed a presidential apology to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for using nukes to end the overseas contingency operation known as World War II. Will the next president apologize for the current one?

The obsessive need of this president to apologize for American exceptionalism and our defense of freedom continued recently when Barack Obama's State Department (run by Hillary Clinton) contacted the family of al-Qaida propagandist and recruiter Samir Khan to "express its condolences" to his family.

Khan, a right-hand man to Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed along with Awlaki in an airstrike in Yemen on Sept. 30. We apologized for killing a terrorist before he could help kill any more of us.

It's yet another part of the world apology tour that began with Obama taking the oath of office to protect and defend the United States and its Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, something he immediately felt sorry for.

One stop on his tour was Prague in August 2009. There he spoke of "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," ignoring that before 1945 we lived in such a world and it was neither peaceful nor secure.

Another stop on the tour was in Japan, where Obama in November 2009 bowed to the emperor, something no American president had ever done. It could have been worse if plans to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima to apologize for winning the war with the atom bombs had come to pass.

A heretofore secret cable dated Sept. 3, 2009, was recently released by WikiLeaks. Sent to Secretary of State Clinton, it reported Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling U.S. Ambassador John Roos that "the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a 'nonstarter.'"

The Japanese feared the apology would be exploited by anti-nuclear groups and those opposed to the defensive alliance between Japan and the U.S.

Whatever Tokyo's motive, Obama's motive was to once again apologize for defending freedom, this time for winning with devastating finality the war Japan started.

While Obama envisions a world without nuclear weapons, and moves steadily toward unilateral disarmament of our nuclear arsenal, we envision a world without tyrants and thugs willing to use them against us. We do not fear nuclear weapons in the hands of Britain or France, countries that share our love of freedom and democracy.

It was not all that clear in August 1945 that Japan was ready to surrender. Okinawa, where 101,000 Japanese and 24,000 Americans died, was a clear indication of the fanatical resistance to come in an invasion of the Japanese home islands. That resistance ended only when Tokyo became convinced there would soon be nothing to defend.

Nuclear weapons in the right hands ended the violence of World War II. In the right hands, they kept Western Europe free and helped win the Cold War. And the fact that they'd been used made it less likely they would ever be used again.

The world that Imperial Japan envisioned was quite different than the one we now enjoy. That regime's dream was of an imperial rising sun blistering the globe. Good thing they saw a rising sun of a quite different sort, the fulfillment of Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamato's prophecy after Dec. 7, 1941: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

President Obama fails to realize that being the leader of the Free World, the last best hope for mankind, means never having to say you're sorry.

Attorney General Holder is complicit or ignorant?

Read the original here.

So Holder ignored not one, not two, not three, but five memos about Fast and Furious?
POSTED AT 1:25 PM ON OCTOBER 6, 2011 BY TINA KORBE

It was never a comforting thought to think the Attorney General just can’t be bothered to read his weekly briefings, but it was at least plausible to think Eric Holder overlooked one or two memos about the pernicious and fatal Fast and Furious program. But make that five memos and the AG’s incompetence and negligence appear especially gross:

Senator Chuck Grassley and Congressman Darrell Issa today said that Attorney General Eric Holder received at least five weekly memos beginning in July 2010, including four weeks in a row, describing the ill-advised strategy known as Operation Fast and Furious. The memos were to Holder from Michael Walther, the director of the National Drug Intelligence Center.

The Attorney General told Issa during a House Judiciary Committee in May 2011 that he had just learned of Fast and Furious a few weeks before. Yet, on January 31, in a previously scheduled meeting, Grassley personally handed him two letters about Fast and Furious. Grassley and Issa said they find it very troubling that Holder actually knew of Operation Fast and Furious much earlier, and in greater detail than he ever let on.

The memos specifically said that the straw buyers were “responsible for the purchase of 1500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”

As Sen. Chuck Grassley said, given the amount of information Holder had at his disposal, he should have thought to at least ask the question, “Why haven’t we stopped them?”

The president said it well today in his press conference: “I think both Holder and I would have been very unhappy if someone had suggested that guns were allowed to pass through that could have been prevented by the United States of America.”

OK, so someone did suggest to Holder that guns were allowed to walk and Holder either overlooked the tip (as he claims, but for which he has no excuse) or didn’t care. Either way, he proves the president’s supposition wrong. Whether he was ignorant of or indifferent to the memos, the AG’s lack of concern is disturbing.

Did President Bush also let guns slip into Mexico?

What do you think? Read the original here.

SF Chronicle Story Repeats AP 'Fast & Furious' Misinformation

Bush also did it!
Bush also did it!

That is the current talking point desperately being promoted by the Associated Press, and now picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle, to try to explain away the selling of guns to members of the Mexican drug cartel by the Obama administration. The only problem is that the Associated Press left out a key detail as pointed out by Katie Pavlich of Townhall. First the misleading claim by AP:

The federal government under the Bush administration ran an operation that allowed hundreds of guns to be transferred to suspected arms traffickers — the same tactic that congressional Republicans have criticized President Barack Obama's administration for using, two federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

When Bush, a Republican, was president, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Tucson, Ariz., used a similar enforcement tactic in a program it called Operation Wide Receiver. The fact that there were two such ATF investigations years apart in separate administrations raises the possibility that agents in still other cases may have allowed guns to "walk."

And now Pavlich explains how incredibly misleading that AP claim about Bush allowing guns to walk is:

The problem is, the "same tactic" under heavy criticism by the House Oversight Committee was not used under President Bush. Operation Fast and Furious started in Fall 2009 and was an offshoot of the Project Gunrunner program implemented under the Bush Administration. Project Gunrunner started as a pilot program in Laredo, Texas and went national in 2006. Project Gunrunner involved the surveillance of straw purchasers buying weapons, but those purchasers were immediately apprehended before crossing back into Mexico or tranferring arms to dangerous criminals. Shortly after Obama took office, Operation Fast and Furious allowed straw purchasers working for Mexican drug cartels to purchase mass amount of weapons in the United States and then take them back to Mexico in addition to allowing them to be lost at stash houses and tranferred to dangerous cartel members. ATF agents who have testified before Congress about the program said the idea was to "trace" those weapons, but the tracing ended up being a total failure as GPS batteries ran out and thousands of guns were lost in Mexico and only found at final violent crime scenes. Did both operations allow for straw purchasers to buy guns under ATF/DOJ surveillance? Yes, however, the key difference between Operation Fast and Furious under Obama and Project Gunrunner under Bush is that under Obama guns were allowed to go back into Mexico without interdiction or arrests. According to Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, straw purchaser arrests and prosecutions have been way down under this administration, so much so it's almost as if the Obama Justice Department has no interest in prosecuting illegal straw purchasers at all. (A straw purchaser is someone who buys guns illegally for those who cannot buy them. In this case, cartels members can't buy guns, so they hired "straw purchasers" to buy weapons for them).

So what the AP conveniently neglects to mention is that under the Bush administration, the guns were quickly apprehended BEFORE crossing the border. And now that the AP has set up a Fast & Furious excuse to pathetically explain away the Obama administration allowing guns to cross the border, the San Francisco Chronicle has latched onto the same excuse by citing this misinformation promoted by AP as you can see in this article by the Hearst Washington Bureau correspondent, Puneet Kollipara:

Texas GOP Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday demanded an independent investigation of whether Attorney General Eric Holder misled Congress on what he knew about the botched gun-tracking operation known as "Fast and Furious" - and when he found out about it.

Also on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that the George W. Bush administration conducted a program similar to Fast and Furious, in which Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents were instructed to let Mexican drug cartel straw purchasers buy guns in the Phoenix area to follow the trail to higher-ups.

Known as Operation Wide Receiver, the Bush-era operation also let guns be transferred to suspected arms traffickers. Justice Department prosecutors have brought charges against nine people involved in the operation, according to AP; two have pleaded guilty.

And now we await a correction of this misinformation making it seem that the Bush administration also allowed guns to cross the border from both the Associated Press and copycat misinformer Kollipara in 5...4...3...2...

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/pj-gladnick/2011/10/05/sf-chronicle-story-repeats-ap-fast-furious-misinformation#ixzz1ZvEsWgdQ

I'm sure this will be good for the economy...

Yeah, let's have everyone dump their funds and flee banks, that will help stabilize the economy. Read the original here.

Durbin To Bank Of America Customers: ‘Get The Heck Out Of That Bank’
Oct 3, 2011 6:51pm

Holding up a plastic debit card on the Senate floor this afternoon, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., had some advice for Bank of America customers angry about the new $5 monthly fee: leave.

“Bank of America customers, vote with your feet, get the heck out of that bank,” Durbin said on the Senate floor. “Find yourself a bank or credit union that won’t gouge you for $5 a month and still will give you a debit card that you can use every single day. What Bank of America has done is an outrage.”

Durbin said consumers are rightfully outraged about last week’s announcement.

“It is hard to believe that a bank would impose such a fee on loyal customers who simply are trying to access their own money on deposit at Bank of America,” he said. “Especially when Bank of America for years has been encouraging their customers to use debit cards as much as possible.”

Most basic checking accounts at Bank of America will see a 40 percent jump in monthly costs and the bank says the debit fee will be waived for customers who upgrade to “premium” accounts that require higher minimum balances.

The Dodd-Frank financial law this month lowers “interchange fees” that banks can charge retailers for debit transactions. Fees for retailers will shrink from 44 cents to a cap of 24 cents, which has led some debit card issuers to seek other ways to make up that lost revenue. Some people have blamed Durbin for his amendment, which capped the so-called swipe fees that banks can charge retailers.

“I am honored to be connected with this effort,” Durbin said today. “What we are doing is fair to try to strike some balance in an industry that has shown little or no balance. And one of the worst offenders in this is Bank of America, the largest bank in the United States.”

Meanwhile, the Bank of America homepage was down today for the second consecutive business day, which bank officials attributed to traffic and not hackers or malware.

ATF Fast and Furious: New documents show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed in July 2010

Read the original here.

ATF Fast and Furious: New documents show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed in July 2010
BySharyl Attkisson
October 3, 2011 5:59 PM

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

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

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

Read the July 5, 2010 memoRead the "It's a tricky case" email Read the memo to AG Holder from Asst. AG Lanny A. Breuer

The documents came from the head of the National Drug Intelligence Center and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer.

In Fast and Furious, ATF agents allegedly allowed thousands of weapons to cross the border and fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

Gunwalking scandal uncovered at ATF

It's called letting guns "walk," and it remained secret to the public until Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered last December. Two guns from Fast and Furious were found at the scene, and ATF agent John Dodson blew the whistle on the operation. Agent: I was ordered to let guns "walk" into Mexico

Ever since, the Justice Department has publicly tried to distance itself. But the new documents leave no doubt that high level Justice officials knew guns were being "walked."

Two Justice Department officials mulled it over in an email exchange Oct. 18, 2010. "It's a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked but is a significant set of prosecutions," says Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division. Deputy Chief of the National Gang Unit James Trusty replies "I'm not sure how much grief we get for 'guns walking.' It may be more like, "Finally they're going after people who sent guns down there."

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

Emails show top Justice Department officials knew of ATF gun program

Read the original here.

Emails Show Top Justice Department Officials Knew Of ATF Mexico Gun Program
richard.serrano@latimes.com

Reporting from Washington—

Senior Justice Department officials were aware that ATF agents allowed firearms to be "walked" into Mexico, according to a series of emails last year in which they discussed two undercover operations on the Southwest border, including the failed Fast and Furious program.

In the emails that the department turned over to congressional investigators, Justice Department officials last October discussed both the Fast and Furious gun-trafficking surveillance operation in Phoenix and a separate investigation from 2006 and 2007 called Operation Wide Receiver. In Wide Receiver, which took place in Tucson, firearms also were acquired by illegal straw purchasers and lost in Mexico, the emails say.

The term "gun walking" is central to the failure of Fast and Furious. Agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them. But they lost track of more than 2,000 weapons, and the Mexican government says some of them have turned up at about 170 crime scenes there. Two were recovered at the scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent's slaying in Arizona in December.

Justice Department officials have said repeatedly that they knew nothing of Fast and Furious tactics until ATF whistle-blowers went public this year with allegations that guns were being illegally purchased with the ATF's knowledge.

Justice Department officials, who asked not to be identified because of the ongoing investigations into Fast and Furious, said that although senior department officials knew that guns were "walked" in the Wide Receiver investigation, they were unaware that ATF agents were using similar tactics in Fast and Furious.

Jason Weinstein, deputy attorney general in the criminal division, brought up both cases in an October 2010 email, apparently concerned that they were going to overlap.

"Do you think we should try to have Lanny participate in press when Fast and Furious and [the] Tucson case are unsealed?" he asked about his boss, Lanny A. Breuer, head of the criminal division. "It's a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked but it is a significant set of prosecutions."

James Trusty, acting chief of the department's organized crime and gang section, responded, "I think so but the timing is tricky too."

He said the Tucson case would be ready for indictments before Fast and Furious, and that "it's not clear how much we're involved in the main F and F case."

Either way, he added that "it's not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX, so I'm not sure how much grief we get for 'guns walking.' It may be more like, 'Finally they're going after people who sent guns down there' "

Investigators working for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, view the emails as strong evidence that Justice Department officials knew about "gun walking" tactics in Fast and Furious.

Fast and Furious ran from fall 2009 to January, culminating in charges against 20 people — none of them cartel leaders. It was unclear whether any indictments were issued in the Wide Receiver operation.

July 2010 memos, part of weekly reports, discussed an illegal straw purchaser in Fast and Furious who bought 1,500 weapons "that were then supplied to Mexican drug-trafficking cartels."

October and November memos said that "Phoenix-based 'Operation Fast and Furious' is ready for takedown" — several months before the investigation was officially closed.

Copies of all of the memos were heavily redacted.

Justice Department officials said Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. routinely received reports about myriad ongoing investigations around the country, and that the reports did not disclose that ATF agents were purposely "walking" the weapons. They said Issa received a similar Fast and Furious update last year.

But congressional investigators said the memos suggested Holder had hedged what he knew.

According to the emails, Holder was told generally about Fast and Furious in the memos in July, October and November 2010, well before he told congressional committees he had first learned of the program.

On March 10, Holder testified before a Senate subcommittee that he had just learned about the Fast and Furious gun-walking allegations and had asked for the inspector general's investigation. "We cannot have a situation where guns are allowed to walk," he said.

On May 3, he was asked by Issa when he first learned about Fast and Furious. "I'm not sure of the exact date," Holder testified. "But I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Justice Department officials said Holder was referring to the date when he first learned about the operational details of Fast and Furious, not the program itself.

Who increased the debt?

Read the original here.

Who Increased the Debt?

If you have a bunch of dumbass friends who post ill informed political tripe on their Facebook walls, you've probably seen this making the rounds lately:



This chart came from House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, and has been out since April of this year. Politifact looked in to, and gave the chart its lowest rating of Pants on Fire. One of the more glaring problems with that the debt from the first year of Obama's administration has been shifted to Bush, despite the dates on the chart not reflecting this. (Pelosi has released an updated chart, showing Bush at 86% and Obama at 35%.)

Now, there are some fair arguments that a lot of what happens early on in a president's term is due to the policies of the prior administration. But, the chart didn't do the same thing for other presidents on the chart. And, with Democrats controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, it's hard to blame Bush for the Democrats not acting to undo his mistakes, and in some cases doubling down on his policies.

The chart also looks only at the raw debt numbers, and not debt as a percentage of GDP. According to the Office of Budget Management, debt at percentage of GDP went up by 5.6% under Bush. Under Obama, it has increased 21.9%.

But really, the biggest problem with the chart is that it acts as if the President increases the debt. The real taxer and spender is the Congress.

What drove up spending from 2001-2009? "Bush's Wars," right? But, the vote to go to war in Afghanistan was nearly unanimous, opposed by only 1 Democrat. The vote to go in to Iraq was supported by 40% of Democrats. For both votes, Democrats controlled the Senate, and could have stopped either war.

Remember the bank bailouts? Sure, Bush was in office, but Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate at the time.

The fact of the matter is that the debt belongs to the mainstream of both parties. So, to reflect this, we've created a different, more accurate chart:

Use Debit Cards? Prepare for fees (surprise!)

Read the original here.

Remember the “Durbin Fee” while using your debit cards
POSTED AT 10:45 AM ON OCTOBER 3, 2011 BY ED MORRISSEY
Government imposes new price controls on an industry. Industry raises prices elsewhere to make up for the artificial cap on cost recovery. Government expresses shock, shock at the development. For those of us old enough to remember the 1970s, this seems like deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra once said. For those either too young or too “dim,” as the Washington Examiner puts it, the surprise should be a learning experience, even for a “dim bulb” like Dick Durbin:


During the debate over the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, when Democrats controlled Congress, Durbin insisted on including an amendment that had nothing to do with Dodd-Frank’s stated aims of stable banks and consumer protections. The Durbin amendment granted regulators the authority to establish price controls on what banks could charge merchants that accepted their customers’ debit cards as payment. The resulting regulations, which took effect Oct. 1, limit what banks can charge merchants to no more than 24 cents per debit card transaction.

Critics pointed out that banks, facing $6 billion annual losses from this change, would shift the costs of debit cards from merchants to bank customers. Sure enough, Bank of America and several of its largest competitors — including Wells Fargo, PNC, HSBC, SunTrust, TDBank, and Chase — will be imposing various new fees on their customers to make up for Durbin’s folly.

Congress set the cap not because it understands the costs and risks involved in issuing debit cards to consumers, but because they thought they knew better than the competitive market what constituted a “fair” price. Until Congress intervened, retailers paid the costs of the debit cards, which made sense since it made it a lot more convenient for their customers to make purchases. It also all but eliminated the use of checks at retail stores, which greatly reduced the risk that retailers had to make in parting with services or goods. That made debit cards a good deal for retailers, and the reduced risks kept consumers from paying more at the register.

Now, however, Congress has forced banks to shift a good portion of those costs back to the consumers instead. Every bank will have to make that adjustment, since none of them are in business to lose money, and their stockholders expect the best return possible on their investment. But for some reason, Durbin still doesn’t understand how a P&L statement works:


“Bank of America is trying to find new ways to pad their profits by sticking it to its customers,” Durbin said in a petulant statement released this week. This might almost pass the laugh test, if not for the fact that every bank is adjusting to Durbin’s dumb law in nearly the same way. …

Durbin shrugged off such warnings, suggesting that those who disagreed with him were motivated by greed and “on the side of Wall Street banks and credit card companies.” He absurdly claimed that the debit card fee cut would help to prevent banks “up on Wall Street” from causing another financial crisis — a non sequitur so completely disingenuous that it can only be called a lie.

It could also be called gross ignorance, or possibly even both. Price controls distort markets in exactly this manner. Retailers may have griped about the fees, but they could have easily refused to accept debit cards and insisted on checks or cash to conduct their business. Instead of allowing the market to work, government interfered on behalf of one set of stakeholders without having any idea what the obvious and predictable consequences would be. The only people shocked, shockedat the distortion that resulted are indeed great candidates for the Dim Bulbs of the Year.

Roseanne: Judge, Jury, & Executioner? aka Quote of the Day

I love that the dollar amount Roseanne came up with is conveniently higher than what she has. At what point will celebrities realize that just because they're famous they don't have a special claim to dictate economic policy? Read the original here.

Roseanne Barr: Behead Bankers, Rich Who Won't Give Up Wealth

OCT. 1, 2011
RealClearPolitics.com

Actress, comedienne and now author Roseanne Barr shares her solution for dealing with the rich and how the banks could repay the money the U.S. government bailed them out with in 2008.

"Part of my platform is, of course, the guilty must be punished and that we no longer let our children see their guilty leaders getting away with murder. Because it teaches children, you know, that they don't have to have any morals as long as they have guns and are bullies and I don't think that's a good message," Barr told Russia Today (RT).

"I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty.

"I first would allow the guilty bankers to pay, you know, the ability to pay back anything over $100 million [of] personal wealth because I believe in a maximum wage of $100 million. And if they are unable to live on that amount of that amount then they should, you know, go to the reeducation camps and if that doesn't help, then being beheaded," Barr said with a straight face.

More shady stuff with "Fast & Furious" investigation

Read the original here.

Corrupt as Hell: Acting DOJ Inspector General Tips Off Obama's Gunwalker Co-conspirators

Perhaps you've read about the audiotapes posted to CBS news, of a conversation between the gun dealer that sold many Fast and Furious guns and the ATF agent that was part of the operation.

Now we find out that those tapes came out after the acting Inspector General leaked them to the suspects in the case, jeopardizing the Oversight investigation.

In a letter released on Wednesday to Acting Justice Department Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar, they expressed deep concern over her decision to turn over to U.S. prosecutors in Arizona audio recordings obtained during her investigation.Representative Darrell Issa, head of the House Oversight Committee, and Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Schnedar apparently did not consider the significant harm caused by giving the recordings to those under investigation.
They criticized the move as potentially obstructing the congressional probe into the operation because potential witnesses may have colluded about what to tell investigators.

Schnedar needs to be fired, and if statutes allow it, charged for obstruction of justice and any related charges (aiding and abetting the enemy?).

This is mob-lawyer-level actions committed by a federal official in charge or one of the most important investigations in U.S. history... and considering the hundreds dead, I'm not overselling that at all.

Did Attorney General Holder know about "Fast & Furious"?

Is there a cover up? I don't think there's any doubt there's some stonewalling going on. Read the original here.

Republicans Step Up Pressure On Holder As More Details Surface On 'Fast And Furious'

Congressional Republicans once again are turning up the heat on Attorney General Eric Holder, asking more questions about whether he had a role in the controversial anti-gunrunning operation known as "Fast and Furious."

The new inquiry comes from Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. Despite recent personnel changes at the Justice Department, Smith told Holder in a letter Friday the department cannot "pin this scandal on a few individuals and expect it to be forgotten."

"Fast and Furious was a result of systemic problems at the ATF. Congressional interest will continue until we fully understand who authorized the failed program," Smith said.

The idea behind Fast and Furious, hatched in the ATF's Phoenix office, was to let so-called straw buyers purchase guns in the United States so they could be traced to big-time gunrunners in Mexico. But documents and testimony now show that U.S. officials lost track of thousands of guns, some of which later were found at the scenes of violent crimes, including the murder of a U.S. border agent.

On Friday, National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre accused Holder of stonewalling Congress.

"This is the biggest cover-up since Watergate, and it's time to ask the Watergate question. Who authorized Fast and Furious, and how high up does it go?" LaPierre asked during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando.

According to a source close to the investigation, despite numerous subpoenas and demands for potentially thousands of pages of records, the Justice Department has turned over just 12 documents. Unless the House Oversight Committee can cut lose more incriminating documents from the Justice Department or additional whistleblowers come forward, the investigation could stall, said a person familiar with the situation.

So far, the scandal has produced headlines but only one resignation, that of the U.S. attorney in Arizona.

The paper trail however has revealed blatant lying by the Justice Department, which originally told Sen. Charles Grassley the ATF did not "walk" guns. That position conflicts with agent testimony and pages of internal emails.

A document obtained Friday by Foxnews shows the following agencies all had some hand in Operation Fast and Furious: ATF, IRS, DEA, ICE, the U.S. Marshall's Service, Phoenix police and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The operation allowed members of the Sinaloa Cartel to buy in excess of 1,900 weapons for more than $1.25 million dollars over a one-year period beginning October 2009, according to a briefing paper dated last January. The briefing paper did not delineate the duties of each agency, but other records have shown the IRS investigated the income sources of the straw buyers, Phoenix police assisted occasionally with surveillance, the DEA shared its informant and ICE “saw everything and had access to everything” the ATF did, according to an agent tasked to Fast and Furious.

But throughout the operation, the agency recovered just over 10 percent of the weapons.

An ATF whistleblower agent told Fox News the agency made "absolutely no attempt to follow the weapons." And even though agents used electronic vehicle trackers, they only used them on the strawbuyers, not on those to whom they transferred the weapons.

This does not jibe with an amended statement issued Thursday by ATF Agent in Charge Bill Newell, who claimed in a letter to Congress his the agency used "a wide variety of well established law enforcement investigative techniques" to interdict and seize weapons.

In his letter to Holder on Friday, Rep. Smith demanded to know what oversight role the Justice Department had over Fast and Furious. He also noted that President Obama promised a new era of government "transparency and openness" when elected in 2008, a promise that Smith says rings empty.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/23/republicans-step-up-pressure-on-holder-as-more-details-surface-on-fast-and/#ixzz1ZbIA8bOV

"Fast & Furious" update: ATF directly bought sold guns to cartel?

Read the original here.

Fast & Furious “smoking gun”?
POSTED AT 11:25 AM ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2011 BY ED MORRISSEY

The New York Post’s Michael Walsh wonders when the media outrage will arrive in the aftermath of the disastrous and deadly Operation Fast and Furious. The latest revelation shows that the ATF wasn’t really interested in stopping illegal gun sales or stopping the movement of guns across the border, Walsh writes, but something else entirely. And until the national media exposes the “lies” coming from the Department of Justice, Americans simply won’t get answers as to what purpose the ATF and DoJ really intended:

This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy four Draco pistols for cash and even got a letter from his supervisor, David Voth, authorizing a federally licensed gun dealer to sell him the guns without bothering about the necessary paperwork. …

On orders, Dodson then sold the guns to known criminals, who first stashed them away and then — deliberately unhindered by the ATF or any other agency — whisked them off to Mexico.

At least one mainstream media outlet has stuck with the case. The Los Angeles Times’ Richard Serrano, who broke the news to which Walsh refers, extends the story today by reporting that F&F guns turned up in El Paso, Texas in January 2010 in what should have been a huge red flag that the operation had spun out of control:

A cache of assault weapons lost in the ATF’s gun-trafficking surveillance operation in Phoenix turned up in El Paso, where it was being stored for shipment to Mexico, according to new internal agency emails and federal court records.

Forty firearms along with ammunition magazines and ballistic vests were discovered in Texas in January 2010 during the early stages of the program, meaning the firearms vanished soon after the program began. …

The El Paso case is the first example of Fast and Furious weapons turning up on this side of the border outside the Phoenix area.

The big question is why the ATF didn’t suspend the operation after discovering that it had lost control of the guns. The answer seems to be that they didn’t care that they had lost control of the guns, since they were allowing the F&F guns to go across the border anyway. Walsh writes that this demonstrates that the explanations offered in defense of F&F are simply false. Instead, Walsh deduces that only two explanations are possible any longer — or maybe three:

There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

If this is true, then Holder & Co. have got to go — and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.

A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.

Of course, there’s a third explanation — that both scenarios are true, and that those in charge of Fast and Furious saw an opportunity to shoot two birds with one Romanian-made AK Draco pistol.

I’m going with option C. And if that’s the case, then include Leon Panetta among those who has to hit the road, too.

Update in the "Fast & Furious" GunRunning investigation

Gotta love trying to skip the weekly news cycle. Read the original here.

New Fast and Furious docs released by White House
By Sharyl Attkisson

September 30, 2011 9:35 PM

WASHINGTON - Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF "Fast and Furious" gunwalking scandal.

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell - who led Fast and Furious - and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O'Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O'Reilly are long time friends.

Newly-released White House documents (pdf)

ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.

ATF Manager says he shared Fast and Furious with the White House

The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF's gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O'Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office's gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as "letting guns walk."

A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: "none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to 'walk.'"

ATF Fast and Furious: Who at the White House knew?

Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF's Newell sent the White House's O'Reilly an "arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up." The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

Newell email (09.03.10) (pdf)
Arizona Gunrunner Impact Team chart (pdf)

In response, O'Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 "The arrow chart is really interesting - and - no surprise - implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year's TX effort develop a similar graphic?"

O'Reilly email (09.03.10) (pdf)

The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of "significant confidentiality interests."

Also included are email photographs including images of a .50 caliber rifle (left) that Newell tells O'Reilly "was purchased in Tucson, Arizona (part of another OCDTF case)." OCDTF is a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice and includes the US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS. Fast and Furious was an OCDTF case.

An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF's Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called "Wide Receiver." Sources claim ATF allowed guns to "walk" in that operation, much like Fast and Furious.

Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O'Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O'Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

One administration source says White House national security staffers were "briefed on the toplines of ongoing federal efforts, but nobody in White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk."