The Washington Post had this article yesterday about how the Obama-backed National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), run by former Attorney General Eric Holder, recently donated $500,000 to the Ralph Northam campaign. The group is hoping to end the stranglehold that Republicans have on a large number of congressional delegations and state legislatures by turning the redistricting process over to so-called "non-partisan" redistricting commissions.
“This first campaign investment marks the next stage of the NDRC’s work for fairer maps in Virginia and around the country,” Holder said. “Ralph Northam is the clear choice for fairer maps that better reflect the values of Virginia’s communities. Virginians deserve a political system that works for voters, not politicians.”
Why should this matter to gun owners in Virginia? The Governor elected in November will sign the redistricting plan after the 2020 Census. You can bet that if Ralph Northam is elected, he will veto every redistricting map that does not give more seats to his anti-gun friends. If you like Virginia's pro-gun legislature, this should be an extra incentive to get involved in this year's campaign. You can do that by contacting one of the NRA-ILA Campaign Field Representitives below and find out how you can help. VSSA is working to get the news to gun owners about campaign activities of the NRA-ILA Campaign Field Representatives. If you don't want Virginia to become California or New Jersey, you have the ability to insure that doesn't happen.
NRA-ILA Campaign Field Representative - Fredericksburg
Britton Ross · britton@nrailafrontlines.com · (919) 902-1787
According to Fox News, the report claims former attorney general Holder repeatedly lied to the Terry family about the weapons used in the slain border patrol officer's death. You may recall that Border Patrol Officer Brian Terry died in a gunfight between Border Patrol agents and members of a six-man cartel "rip crew," that patrolled the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border looking for drug dealers to rob. Terry’s death exposed Operation Fast and Furious, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) scheme where the federal government allowed criminals to buy guns in Phoenix-area shops with the intention of tracking them as they were transported into Mexico. However, BATFE lost track of more than 1,400 of the 2,000 guns they allowed smugglers to buy. Two of those guns were found at the scene of Terry's killing.
TownHall.com Editor and Fox News Contributor Katie Pavlich also spoke with Cam Edwards of NRATV's Cam and Company about the House Oversite Committee hearing.
National Review has this article today by Frank Miniter that describes an April 13, 2013 meeting between U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and W. P. Gentry, president of Kodiak Arms. Gentry told Holder about technology his company had been working on called the Intelligun. Gentry showed Holder how the "smart gun" technology he had been developing worked. He told Miniter:
“This interested Eric Holder,” Gentry says. “He wondered how we might be able to control who was or wasn’t authorized. I stopped him right there. I looked right across a table at Eric Holder — yeah, the attorney general of the United States — and told him, ‘If you try to mandate my smart-gun technology, I’ll burn it down.’ The Intelligun is designed to save lives, not restrict freedom.”
Gentry told Miniter that the meeting ended after that exchange.
Something you won't here from the mainstream media, but that Miniter pointed out, manufacturers (and the NRA) aren't against the technology. They just want the market, not the government to dictate when it is available. The problem is that the government keeps getting in the way:
If he can keep the government out of the way, Gentry says, he sees a lot of possibilities for the technology. Theoretically, a villain couldn’t take a gun from a police officer or armed citizen and then use that gun — as the Navy Yard killer did. Also, a parent would have another safety mechanism to help prevent a child from firing a self-defense gun.
Unlike the Armatix "smart gun" the Intelligun doesn't rely on sending a signal to a bracelet or other device worn by the gun owner. The best way to describe it, it's kind of like installing grips similar to those with Crimson Trace laser sites. You install a conversion kit (currently on a 1911 pistol), changing out the grips and the mainspring. It doesn’t read a person’s fingerprints but instead takes a series of photos of a person’s fingertips and overlaps them. The sensor then looks for enough points that match an algorithm. Gentry expects to have the technology ready for other popular models within the next year.
Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at he IACP Conference in Philadelphia yesterday. Apparently not all in the room were pleased to hear what he had to say. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
But despite his pledge of continued support for local law enforcement, not all at Monday's conference welcomed the attorney general's pledges. At the back of the hall, a handful of uniformed officers could be heard grumbling, "Three more years of this?"
The Inquirer noted that under Holder's tenure, the number of mass shootings have tripled from an average of 5 per year to 15 per year.
This Washington Post article on the new campaign to change attitudes on firearms (or as AG Eric Holder might say - brainwash) is a perfect example of why every gun owner must call their congressman and U.S. Senators. Not once, but at least once a week until we have won this battle:
A trial run for the burgeoning campaign came this week when the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence ran hard-hitting ads in North Dakota and Capitol Hill newspapers against Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who said Sunday that some of the gun measures Obama is considering are “extreme.” After the ads — which told Heitkamp “Shame on you” — the freshman senator’s office issued a statement opening the door to supporting some gun-control measures.
The other side is doing all they can to scare previously pro-rights legislators into betraying our rights. They will not stop. Will you counter them now and call your congressman and senators today?
The Hill newspaper reported today that the Justice Department Inspector General (IG) report faults ATF and four high ranking officials at DOJ for the debacle known as Fast and Furious, but says Holder knew nothing of the scheme until he received a letter from Senator Charles Grassley.
The Hill report stated that Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that fAssistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, knew enough about the scheme that they should have raised concerns with their immediate superiors.
According to The Hill, Weinstein has resigned.
In typical cover for Holder fashion, House Oversight Committee ranking Democratic member Elijah Cummings said the report completely exonerates Holder, and took the customary swipe at the Bush Administration, blaming the gun walking scheme on the previous administration.
The IG will appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee tomorrow morning at 9:30.
One of only two Republicans to not support the Contempt of Congress Resolution against Attorney General Eric Holder is Virginia 2nd District Representative Scott Rigell. Constituents should ask him why he thinks it is okay for Holder to withhold documents related to the outright lie that guns never walked, told by Justice in a letter to congress, then walked back.
We know of at least four Democrats who have said they will vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Estimates are that as many as 20-30 mostly moderate Democrats will support the contempt vote. By the Obama Administration's measure, this should be conisidered a "bipartisan" vote as the administration calls a vote where at least one moderate Republican (i.e. RINO) supports Obama's position a bipartisan vote. But the media is already using the "mostly along partisan lines" to spin the final result.
CQ Roll Call Daily Briefing reports the obvious this afternoon, that House Speaker John Boehner has confirmed tomorrow's scheduled vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder is on as no agreement was reached during a meeting at the White House yesterday among Representative Darrell Issa’s staff, Boehner’s staff and senior administration officials. Roll Call, in a rather snarky way, predicted it will be one of the more bipartisan votes in recent weeks:
Third — and maybe most importantly — the NRA is insisting on the vote and promising to make the roll call part of its annual gun rights congressional scorecard, which rather bizarrely guarantees the vote will be one of the more bipartisan affairs on the House floor in recent weeks. (At least 30 and perhaps 40 Democrats want to bend over backwards to do what the gun lobby wants in an election year.) The NRA is of the view that the administration told the ATF to intentionally lose track of the guns the agency allowed to walk from Arizona into the hands of Mexican drug lords so that there would be more violence along the border — which would then provide Obama with a rationale for tighter gun control laws.
Roll Call continued to profer that the GOP leadership believes that no one will really be paying attention as the news will likely be wall to wall coverage of the SCOTUS' ruling on Obamacare, meaning the GOP can appease their base without turning off the all important "indendent" voters. The story goes that
I know I shouldn't be, but I continue to be amazed that after over a year, the media simply cannot accurately describe Operation Fast and Furious. Yesterday, the New York Times had this story on how some Democrats are "feeling pressure from the NRA" to vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress for withholding documents related to the scandal. In the story, the Times once again repeats the familiar talking point:
...Fast and Furious was started by the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to track guns as they moved into Mexico from United States gun dealerships. Seeking to build a bigger case against high-ranking gunrunners, agents did not move quickly against weapons obtained by low-level smugglers, and they lost track of 2,000 guns, most of which probably reached Mexican drug cartels.
Please tell me how the point of an inititive can be to "track guns" when there was no mechanism in place to track them after the sale. No tracking device on the firearm, no following of the buyer, nothing. Then, after knowing that, you have this:
Among the thousands of pages of internal e-mails and documents Congressional investigators have gathered about the operation, they found a few showing that A.T.F. officials considered using some examples of documented gun flows to build a case for requiring greater reporting of multiple “long gun,” or rifle, sales by federally licensed gun shops. They singled out AK-47 assault-style rifles and their variants.
Why is it so hard to even entertain the idea that someone in the federal bureacracy might have thought Fast and Furious would have been a neat way to build that case?
MSNBC political analyst and Democratic consultant Karen Finney has an opinion piece in The Hill that says the Fast and Furious story line laid out by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the National Rifle Association, Rush Limbaugh and others, is full of holes.
They believe the administration’s “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking program was used to flood Mexico with guns from America, foment violence and create political pressure to re-instate the assault weapons ban and weaken Second Amendment rights.
Finney's Op/Ed follows the same storyline that NBC News anchor Brian Williams laid out last Wednesday after the House Oversight Committee voted to hold Holder in contempt - that this is all a partisan witch hunt. Someone should ask Finney, how else do you explain a scheme where the aim was for ATF to tell gun dealers to sell thousands of guns to individuals, individuals by the way that the gun dealers believed were "straw purchasers", and ATF had no plan to track said firearms after they were sold. The scheme allowed over two thousand firearms to cross the border. Had Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry not been killed with one of them, who knows how many guns would have made it to Mexico.
Ms. Finney also repeated the claim that former Bush AG Michael Mukasey was aware of the use of gun-walking tactics, something that that Holder asserted in testimony before a Senate committee, then walked back last week.
Today's CQ Roll Call Daily Briefing predicts that a possible Thursday vote in the full House on Eric Holder's contempt charge will be greatly overshadowed by the Supreme Court's ruling on Obamacare the same day:
With the Supreme Court set to rule on the health care law that morning, cable TV and Web coverage will be so all-consuming for the rest of the day and afterward that — no matter whether the law is altogether upheld, totally struck down or somewhere in between — the House’s vote will have a nearly impossible time getting on the mental radar screens of millions of Americans. And there was a strong hint yesterday that the GOP thinks the distraction might be just as well, anyway, because the party doesn’t have its overall story straight anymore and is concluding that it’s better to get the focus back on the economy (and the next steps on health care) sooner rather than later.
Roll Call also noted the mixed messages that were sent on yesterday's Sunday news shows by Chariman Issa:
Chairman Darrell Issa went on three of the Sunday shows to defend his stewardship of House Oversight’s investigation of the calamitous Fast and Furious gun-walking operation — but then made news by totally contradicting the rationale for the hard-charge offered by Boehner, his reluctant partner in pushing the contempt vote. Issa said his panel has no evidence to support what the Speaker claimed last week, which is that Obama or his top aides were part of a scheme to mislead and that’s why Holder decided to assert executive privilege in not complying with parts of the panel’s subpoenas.
One of the bloggers who originally broke the Fast and Furious story questioned several months ago whether Rep. Issa was slow walking the contempt process because the GOP Leadership is not completely behind this action. We'll know if Rep. Issa is serious about the contempt charge, and by extension if Boehner's recent comments on Fast and Furious was just hot air, if they do nothing after Thursday's vote, or if Issa goes to court as the advice given to him last week by lawyer and talk show host Mark Levin suggests should be the next step.
Anyway, if you think Bush using his Constitutional authority to replace U.S. Attorneys is a giant scandal, but shrug your shoulders at the federal government sending guns to Mexico, where drug cartels use them to kill a U.S. Border Patrol agent, then you are a hopeless partisan hack who is literally willing to overlook murder to advance your political agenda.
Partisan Hack, that pretty much sums up Attorney General Eric Holder.
After the Holder Contempt of Congress vote by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, talk radio was almost wall to wall Fast and Furious on Thursday. Rush Limbaugh dedicated most of his show Wednesday and Thursday to the President claiming executive privilege and Fast and Furious. Wednesday night, Mark Levin put the issue into a legal context that was easy for the non-lawyer to understand.
The full House is scheduled to vote on the charge against Eric Holder next week if he does not comply with the subpoena issued by the House Oversight Committee. So what does a vote by the full House mean? Yesterday's Roll Call Daily Briefing offered their take:
And, after that vote, there’s no reason to believe the Justice Department will do anything other than what other Justice Departments in other balance-of-power clashes with other presidents have done, which is to slow-walk or outright stonewall its response to the contempt order. (Federal prosecutors, in other words, are not going to move against their own boss to make him turn over the records the House GOP wants.) And at that point, Boehner and the other GOP leaders are extremely unlikely to escalate the standoff by suing (or sending the House sergeant-at-arms to arrest the attorney general) because what they really want is to use the contretemps to illustrate their view that it’s the fault of Obama and the Democrats that Washington is a non-functioning cesspool.
Lawyer, former Chief of Staff to Ed Meese (President Reagan's Attorney General), and talk show host, Mark Levin, offered some advice to Rep. Darrell Issa and the GOP members of the House Oversight Committee.
Levin stated his belief that this is all part of the administration's plan. It was all calculated to stretch this as far as possible. We will see if they have miscalculated.
The right way to proceed is to hold Holder in contempt by resolution of the House and seek authorization from the House for the Committee, by its Chairman, to proceed by civil action to compel production of the documents. (Holder will not enforce a holding of contempt against himself -- and by the way, he should have authorized, say, the assistant attorney general for legal counsel, to handle the contempt matter once the House voted as at that point he is representing his own interests and not those of the nation generally). Chairman Issa should file suit in federal court in DC and seek expedited action. There is no need for Senate action. The use of this procedure has been acknowledged by the Congressional Research Service in a 2007 study. Further, a privilege log should be sought by Issa and ordered produced immediately by the court, in camera inspection done promptly by the judge, and a final order entered compelling production of all documents for which no legitimate reason justifies Executive Privilege.
Tomorrow, June 12, Virginia will hold a primary to choose candidates for U.S. Senate and several contested congressional districts.
Candidates for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate are former Governor and former U.S. Senator George Allen, former Richmond Tea Party President Jamie Ratke, Delegate Bob Marshall, and E. W. Jackson. Two of the four have held elective office and have voting records on issues important to gun owners and sportsmen.
There are also several incumbent congressmen that are being challenged for nomination as well as primaries for opposing candidates. Below is a list of those races that will also be on the ballot tomorrow.
In the 7th Congressional District, 2010 "Independent Green" candidate Floyd C. Bayne is challenging House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, for the GOP nomination. Cantor has used Bayne's "Independent Green" label in this year's campaign to question whether Bayne is really a Republican. Bayne has responded that he cut ties with the Independent Green Party after the 2010 election and that he also submitted a letter to the Chesterfield County Republican Committee repudiating his ties to the Green Party and making clear his desire to return to the Republican Party.
Cantor has been a good friend to gun owners since his time as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. He recently signed on to a letter to President Obama urging him to have Attorney General Eric Holder to comply with a congressional subpoena regarding Operation Fast and Furious. Cantor spoke at the 2012 NRA Annual Meetings in April.
The winner of the Cantor - Bayne primary will face Democrat E. Wayne Powell, a Richmond-area attorney, in the fall.
In another Richmond-area GOP contest, Bonnie Girard of Petersburg is challenging 4th District Rep. Randy Forbes for the Republican Party's nomination. Forbes is another pro-rights elected official, having voted numerous times in the House of Delegates, State Senate, and now Congress, for legislation that would protect or expand our rights.
Also in the 4th District, Democrats Ella P. Ward and Joe T. Elliott are battling to take on the winner of the Forbes-Girard match-up.
In the 6th Congressional District, Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte faces Karen U. Kwiathowski, a retired Air Force colonel from Harrisonburg.
In the 8th Congressional District, anti-rights Democrat Jim Moran is being challenged for the party's nomination by Bruce B. Shuttleworth, a former Navy fighter pilot.
In the 11th District, Chris S. Perkins, a retired Army colonel, faces Ken L. Vaughn, a traffic engineer, for the Republican nomination. The winner will face Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-11th, for the party's nomination.
As the NRA state affiliate, the Virginia Shooting Sports Association provides VSSA members scores for federal candidates, directly and unedited, as provided by NRA-ILA. You can click here to access the NRA-PVF endorsements for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House Primary.
Polls will open at 6 AM Tuesday and remain open until 7 PM.
So, Eric Holder was upset when he thought Obama campaign guru David Axlerod was trying to politicize the U.S. Department of Justice. And here I thought given the cover-up involved with Fast and Furious, the pooh poohing of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation, and the stink over the various voter ID laws passed in states this year, that it was already politicized.
The Hill is reporting that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has circulated a draft copy of a resolution that would hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.
“The Justice Department’s failure to respond appropriately to the allegations of whistleblowers and to cooperate with congressional oversight has crossed the line of appropriate conduct for a government agency,” reads a 17-page memo attached to the draft copy of the resolution on contempt circulated to members.
It is yet to be seen if the House leadership (i.e. Speaker Boehner) will allow the resolution to move forward.
Fox News is reporting that Patrick J. Cunningham, the second highest ranking U.S. Attorney in Arizona, informed the House Oversight Committee late Thursday through his attorney that he will plead the Fifth to avoid testifying before Representative Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee. He had been subpoenaed by the committee regarding his role in the ATF scheme known as Fast and Furious, that sent more than 2,000 guns to the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel. Guns from the fatal operation were found at the murder scene of Border Agent Brian Terry. Cunningham believes he is being set up as a fall guy by the Department of Justice.
Things should be very interesting when Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on February 2nd.
This schism is the first big break in what has been a unified front in the government’s defense of itself in the gun-running scandal. Cunningham claims he is a victim of a conflict between two branches of government and will not be compelled to be a witnesses against himself, and make a statement that could be later used by a grand jury or special prosecutor to indict him on criminal charges.
There are supposed to be laws that protect "Whistleblowers" but that does not seem to bother ATF or Eric Holder and his cronies at the U.S. Department of Justice. While protecting those who knew of and likely approved of the fatal scheme known as Fast and Furious, the individuals who put it all on the line to bring the story to public light after the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, are being subjugated to meaningless jobs, and in one case, fired.
Case in point, he said, is field agent John Dodson. Dodson uprooted his family from Virginia in 2010 to join a new elite anti-gun trafficking group in Phoenix, known as Group 7. Dodson quickly witnessed what was wrong and loudly voiced his objections to Voth and Newell.
Management reassigned Dodson to weekend duty and the wire room, a relatively boring job monitoring telephone traffic and subordinate to junior agents. Soon thereafter, Dodson was temporarily assigned to another group for an additional menial assignment, until ultimately sent to an FBI Task Force, completely away from the ATF, even turning off his ATF building access pass.
Not only that, Holder scolds a Daily Caller coorespondant for daring to ask a question about calls for his resignation after a press event at the White House on Tuesday where the Administration was touting Department efforts to stop Intellectual Property crimes, for reporting calls for his resignation.
Holder apparently is not having a lot of fun these days.
Recent Oversight Hearings of DOJ by the House and Senate have increased the media exposure of the failed ATF program known as Operation Fast and Furious. The best coverage of the story however continues to be bloggers and NRANews.
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