CNSNews.com) Attorney General Eric Holder claimed during congressional testimony today that internal Justice Department emails that use the phrase Fast and Furious do not refer to the controversial gun-walking operation Fast and Furious. They refer to, umm, something else entirely.
Under questioning from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who read excerpts of the emails at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Justice Department oversight, Holder claimed that the phrase Fast and Furious did not refer to Fast and Furious but instead referred to another gun-walking operation known as Wide Receiver. Which really refers to Lying Weasels.
However, the emails refer to both programs -- "Fast and Furious" and the "Tucson case," from where Wide Receiver was launched -- and reveal Justice Department officials discussing how to handle media scrutiny when both operations become public. Who ya gonna believe? Eric Holder or those Lying Weasel emails?
Among three of the emails the second, dated October 17, 2010 11:07 PM, was sent by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein to James Trusty and it states: Do you think we should have Lanny participate in press when Fast and Furious and Lauras Tucson case [Wide Receiver] are unsealed? Its a tricky case, given the number of guns that have walked, but it is a significant set of prosecutions. In other words, we gotta cover our asses and blame Bush.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/07/2012 16:34 ||
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Seems to me this goes to the Monty Python school of Congressional testimony.
Holder's responses today were so incredibly ridiculous, I doubt anyone will be running cover for him. I bet even that idiot over at DailyKos is looking for a place to hide instead of writing some cover story for him.
Pinch Sulzberg at the NYT probably gagged on his caviar and champaigne listening to the testimony and the guys at WaPo aren't answering the phone.
Holder's conduct during this Charlie Foxtrot is a campaign issue for Romney.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
06/07/2012 19:27 Comments ||
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On the evening of January 11, 1996, while Mitt Romney was in the final years of his run as the head of Bain Capital, Barack Obama formally joined the New Party, which was deeply hostile to the mainstream of the Democratic party and even to American capitalism. In 2008, candidate Obama deceived the American public about his potentially damaging tie to this third party. The issue remains as fresh as todays headlines, as Romney argues that Obama is trying to move the United States toward European-style social democracy, which was precisely the New Partys goal.
In late October 2008, when I wrote here at National Review Online that Obama had been a member of the New Party, his campaign sharply denied it, calling my claim a racist crackpot smear. Fight the Smears, an official Obama-campaign website, staunchly maintained that Barack has been a member of only one political party, the Democratic Party. I rebutted this, but the debate was never taken up by the mainstream press.
Recently obtained evidence from the updated records of Illinois ACORN at the Wisconsin Historical Society now definitively establishes that Obama was a member of the New Party. He also signed a contract promising to publicly support and associate himself with the New Party while in office.
Minutes of the meeting on January 11, 1996, of the New Partys Chicago chapter read as follows:
Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He signed the New Party Candidate Contract and requested an endorsement from the New Party. He also joined the New Party.
Consistent with this, a roster of the Chicago chapter of the New Party from early 1997 lists Obama as a member, with January 11, 1996, indicated as the date he joined. Of course, this is basically a statement of intent, and he didn't actually change his party membership when he registered to vote. Who could argue with that? After all, intentions and promises mean nothing to this man, and he by definition is right, so all this fuss about ethics, claims, and following through on political promises is much ado about nothing. Knowing that Obama disguised his New Party membership helps make sense of his questionable handling of the 2008 controversy over his ties to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). During his third debate with John McCain, Obama said that the only involvement hed had with ACORN was to represent the group in a lawsuit seeking to compel Illinois to implement the National Voter Registration Act, or motor-voter law. The records of Illinois ACORN and its associated union clearly contradict that assertion, as I show in my political biography of the president, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.
Why did Obama deny his ties to ACORN? The group was notorious in 2008 for thug tactics, fraudulent voter registrations, and its role in popularizing risky subprime lending. Admitting that he had helped to fund ACORNs voter-registration efforts and train some of their organizers would doubtless have been an embarrassment but not likely a crippling blow to his campaign. So why not simply confess the tie and make light of it? The problem for Obama was ACORNs political arm, the New Party.
The revelation in 2008 that Obama had joined an ACORN-controlled, leftist third party could have been damaging indeed, and coming clean about his broader work with ACORN might easily have exposed these New Party ties. Because the work of ACORN and the New Party often intersected with Obamas other alliances, honesty about his ties to either could have laid bare the entire network of his leftist political partnerships.
Although Obama is ultimately responsible for deceiving the American people in 2008 about his political background, he got help from his old associates. Each of the two former political allies who helped him to deny his New Party membership during campaign 08 was in a position to know better.
The Fight the Smears website quoted Carol Harwell, who managed Obamas 1996 campaign for the Illinois senate: Barack did not solicit or seek the New Party endorsement for state senator in 1995. Drawing on her testimony, Fight the Smears conceded that the New Party did support Obama in 1996 but denied that Obama had ever joined, adding that he was the only candidate on the ballot in his race and never solicited the endorsement.
Weve seen that this is false. Obama formally requested New Party endorsement, signed the candidate contract, and joined the party. Is it conceivable that Obamas own campaign manager could have been unaware of this? The notion is implausible. And the documents make Harwells assertion more remarkable still.
The New Party had a front group called Progressive Chicago, whose job was to identify candidates that the New Party and its sympathizers might support. Nearly four years before Obama was endorsed by the New Party, both he and Harwell joined Progressive Chicago and began signing public letters that regularly reported on the groups meetings. By prominently taking part in Progressive Chicago activities, Obama was effectively soliciting New Party support for his future political career (as was Harwell, on Obamas behalf). So Harwells testimony is doubly false.
When the New Party controversy broke out, just about the only mainstream journalist to cover it was Politicos Ben Smith, whose evident purpose was to dismiss it out of hand. He contacted Obamas official spokesman Ben LaBolt, who claimed that his candidate was never a member of the New Party. And New Party co-founder and leader Joel Rogers told Smith, We didnt really have members. But a line in the New Partys official newsletter explicitly identified Obama as a party member. Rogers dismissed that as mere reference to the fact that the party had endorsed him.
This is nonsense. I exposed the falsity of Rogerss absurd claim, and Smiths credulity in accepting it, in 2008 (here and here). And in Radical-in-Chief I took on Rogerss continuing attempts to justify it. The recently uncovered New Party records reveal how dramatically far from the truth Rogerss statement has been all along.
In a memo dated January 29, 1996, Rogers, writing as head of the New Party Interim Executive Council, addressed standing concerns regarding existing chapter development and activity, the need for visibility as well as new members. So less than three weeks after Obama joined the New Party, Rogers was fretting about the need for new members. How, then, could Rogers assert in 2008 that his party didnt really have members? Internal documents show that the entire leadership of the New Party, both nationally and in Chicago, was practically obsessed with signing up new members, from its founding moments until it dissolved in the late 1990s.
In 2008, after I called Rogers out on his ridiculous claim that his party had no members, he explained to Ben Smith that we did have regular supporters whom many called members, but it just meant contributing regularly, not getting voting rights or other formal power in NP governance. This is also flatly contradicted by the newly uncovered records.
At just about the time Obama joined the New Party, the Chicago chapter was embroiled in a bitter internal dispute. A party-membership list is attached to a memo in which the leaders of one faction consider a scheme to disqualify potential voting members from a competing faction, on the grounds that those voters had not renewed their memberships. The factional leaders worried that their opponents would legitimately object to this tactic, since a mailing that called for members to renew hadnt been properly sent out. At any rate, the memo clearly demonstrates that, contrary to Rogerss explanation, membership in the New Party entailed the right to vote on matters of party governance. In fact, Obamas own New Party endorsement, being controversial, was thrown open to a members vote on the day he joined the party.
Were Harwell and Rogers deliberately lying in order to protect Obama and deceive the public? Readers can decide for themselves. Yet it is clear that Obama, through his official spokesman, Ben LaBolt, and the Fight the Smears website, was bent on deceiving the American public about a matter whose truth he well knew.
The documents reveal that the New Partys central aim was to move the United States steadily closer to European social democracy, a goal that Mitt Romney has also attributed to Obama. New Party leaders disdained mainstream Democrats, considering them tools of business, and promised instead to create a partnership between elected officials and local community organizations, with the goal of socializing the American economy to an unprecedented degree.
The partys official statement of principles, which candidates seeking endorsement from the Chicago chapter were asked to support, called for a peaceful revolution and included redistributive proposals substantially to the left of the Democratic party. Substantially to the left? Hardly. Dems have been voting according to their master's wishes. And they still would if they could. He's not so "radical" as we'd like to believe.
To get a sense of the ideology at play, consider that the meeting at which Obama joined the party opened with the announcement of a forthcoming event featuring the prominent socialist activist Frances Fox Piven. The Chicago New Party sponsored a luncheon with Michael Moore that same year.
I have more to say on the New Partys ideology and program, Obamas ties to the party, and the relevance of all this to the presidents campaign for reelection. See the forthcoming issue of National Review.
In the meantime, let us see whether a press that let candidate Obama off the hook in 2008 and that in 2012 is obsessed with the presidents youthful love letters will now refuse to report that President Obama once joined a leftist third party, and that he hid that truth from the American people in order to win the presidency.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
On the evening of January 11, 1996, while Mitt Romney was in the final years of his run as the head of Bain Capital, Barack Obama formally joined the New Party, which was deeply hostile to the mainstream of the Democratic party and even to American capitalism. In 2008, candidate Obama deceived the American public about his potentially damaging tie to this third party. The issue remains as fresh as todays headlines, as Romney argues that Obama is trying to move the United States toward European-style social democracy, which was precisely the New Partys goal.
Knowing that Obama disguised his New Party membership helps make sense of his questionable handling of the 2008 controversy over his ties to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). During his third debate with John McCain, Obama said that the only involvement hed had with ACORN was to represent the group in a lawsuit seeking to compel Illinois to implement the National Voter Registration Act, or motor-voter law. The records of Illinois ACORN and its associated union clearly contradict that assertion, as I show in my political biography of the president, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.
The revelation in 2008 that Obama had joined an ACORN-controlled, leftist third party could have been damaging indeed, and coming clean about his broader work with ACORN might easily have exposed these New Party ties. Because the work of ACORN and the New Party often intersected with Obamas other alliances, honesty about his ties to either could have laid bare the entire network of his leftist political partnerships.
In the meantime, let us see whether a press that let candidate Obama off the hook in 2008 and that in 2012 is obsessed with the presidents youthful love letters will now refuse to report that President Obama once joined a leftist third party, and that he hid that truth from the American people in order to win the presidency.
