Internet Scofflaw

In an interview, Justice Ginsberg explained that she doesn’t like the Constitution:

“I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,” she said. She recommended, instead, the South African Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the European Convention on Human Rights.

That’s certainly consistent with her rulings. She’s done her best to make the Constitution into something else.

(Via the Corner.)

The news for religious freedom out of the Supreme Court isn’t all good, though. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal filed by a Bronx church that meets in a public school against a decision by the Board of Education to evict it. (The Board said that it was protecting the minds of “impressionable youth”!)

The church seemed to be on good legal grounds, since the courts have found that if a public facilities decides to rent out its space, it cannot discriminate as to who may do so. The Alliance Defense Fund found the Court’s decision not to take the case “befuddling“.

Earlier this month religious people of every stripe scored a major victory against the Obama administration when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC. It’s quite astonishing what the administration was trying to pull, even from that bunch: they asserted that the government has the power to dictate to a church who its ministers will be.

The case involved a woman, Cheryl Perich, who was hired as a “called teacher” at the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church. The position carried the official title of “Minister of Religion, Commissioned.” Perich became ill and was unable to begin work on schedule. Part way through the year, Perich reported for work, but the church disputed whether she was really ready to return to work. At this point, according to the church, Perich behaved badly and was dismissed.

Perich filed a claim with the EEOC, which agreed with her and filed suit. The lower court ruled in favor of the church, finding that the ministerial exception prevented the case from going forward. The exception, which is grounded in the First Amendment, says that the government cannot regulate a church’s choice of ministers. However, the court of appeals vacated the decision, finding that the position of “called teacher” is not really a minister.

The appeals court’s position that some church ministers weren’t really ministers was troubling, but then the Obama administration dramatically raised the stakes. The Justice Department filed a brief arguing that there should be no ministerial exception at all! (This position was even more radical than the one taken in the atheists’ brief.)

Instead, the DOJ argued that churches must rely on the same freedom of association that protects all Americans. Freedom of association has been shown to be a porous “freedom” offering very little protection, which is precisely what the administration intended.

The Supreme Court rejected the administration’s radical contention 9-0, observing:

Their position, however, is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations. The Court cannot accept the remarkable view that the Religion Clauses have nothing to say about a religious organization’s freedom to select its own ministers.

The court also found that Perich was a minister covered by the ministerial exception.

A more brazen attempt to undermine the First Amendment can hardly be imagined. Let’s please not have any more nonsense about this president’s respect for civil liberties. He is quite the opposite.

(Via Bench Memos.)

UPDATE: It should be obvious that giving the government any foot in the door in regard to churches’ choice of ministers is inimical to religious freedom. In case it isn’t, this article explains how even anti-discrimination law could be leveraged into a substantial burden on religious freedom.

A reminder of why Dodd-Frank is so bad, and why it has nothing whatsoever to do with consumer protection:

The CFPB is a constitutional affront, the crowning achievement of this White House’s mantra of never letting a crisis go to waste.

The agency has the power to regulate any practices it deems “unfair” — primarily the practices of institutions and businesses that had nothing whatsoever to do with the financial crisis.

Indeed, it has blank-check power to write the rules it wants to enforce. Worse, it cannot be reined in by Congress, because Dodd-Frank gave it a self-funding mechanism. It can simply take up to 12 percent of the Federal Reserve’s operating expenses to do whatever it wants. The power of Congress is ultimately the power of the purse. But in their finite wisdom, Democratic lawmakers gelded themselves. They also insulated the rogue agency from the courts, requiring that judges defer to the CFPB’s legal theories.

It’s pretty clearly an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power, although you can’t count on the Supreme Court enforcing the Constitution any more.

Some thoughts on President Obama’s recess appointments, now two weeks old:

• Clearly it’s appallingly hypocritical, even by the low standards of Congress, for Democrats now to oppose a tactic they invented just a few years ago to frustrate President Bush’s recess appointments.
• I think that Jonah Goldberg is right that Obama did this in order to try to pick a fight, for political purposes, and that Republicans are smart not to take the bait. And indeed, they don’t have to. There are plenty of other parties that have standing to challenge this appointments in court.
• In regard to the “Consumer Protection” agency, they will certainly win too, because the law is clear. Regardless of the legitimacy of the Cordray appointment itself, the law makes clear that Cordray will have no power until he is confirmed by the Senate, which still hasn’t happened (and now probably never will).
• John Elwood makes the case that the appointments are valid, because otherwise the Congress would have the power to frustrate the President’s constitutional authority. But I find John Yoo and Richard Epstein’s analyses more convincing. Both of them point out that President Obama is arrogating the authority to decide for Congress whether Congress’s session is a real one. To the contrary, the Constitution always grants each branch of government the power to make such decisions itself. (Epstein goes further and challenges the entire power of recess appointments as it is now used, but I don’t think we need to reach that.)
• The President’s claim that the Senate was not really in session because it didn’t do any work is particularly problematic because it actually did do some work during the session in question. This seems to make the White House’s position entirely untenable.
• Making the White House’s position even more absurd is the fact that just two years ago the Justice Department wrote an opinion acknowledging that the Senate could block recess appointments with pro forma sessions. (The letter was written by Elena Kagan, now a Supreme Court justice.) The White House sought and obtained a new opinion just two days before the recess appointments.

The DEA helped a Colombian drug lord smuggle cocaine and launder money:

U.S drug enforcement agents secretly helped a Colombian cocaine supplier launder millions of dollars in drug proceeds so they could infiltrate cartels working through the Mexico border, it has been revealed. . .

They carried out wire transfers for tens of thousands of dollars, smuggled millions in bulk cash and even escorted a shipment of cocaine through Ecuador, Dallas and finally Madrid.

This isn’t the first time either. With all of its effort spent assisting criminals, one wonders if Federal law enforcement has any time for actual law enforcement.

(Via Instapundit.)

The city of New London, Connecticut, has won a lawsuit over a discrimination claim filed by an applicant to the police force who wasn’t hired because he scored too high on an intelligence test.

As a matter of law, I think this is right. Smart people are not a protected class under discrimination law. On the other hand, it seems indefensible as public policy. Of course this is the same city that won the right to use imminent domain to condemn a neighborhood in order to turn it into a garbage dump, so stupidity must reign supreme there.

However, in a related item, the EEOC has ruled that employers may not require a high-school diploma without showing a business necessity. So it seems that (according to the Obama administration) uneducated  people are a protected class.

Eric Holder says that all the criticism of the Gunwalker scandal is because he is black:

“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” he said, “both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

Really, Mr. Holder? Really?! The ATF trafficks thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, makes no effort to track them, and won’t explain why. The Justice Department promotes the perpetrators, and punishes the whistleblowers, and obstructs the Congressional investigation. The US Attorney spits in the face of the victims. Holder himself can’t keep his story straight. And the only possible reason for someone to be upset is because Eric Holder is black?!

No, the person bringing race into this is you, Mr. Holder.

(Previous post.) (Via Ed Morrissey.)

More quotations from administration and ATF officials tying Gunwalker to the administration’s domestic gun-control agenda have surfaced:

There is no evidence the administration initially considered using the operation to justify stronger gun laws. But as the investigation dragged on, and Washington saw more and more weapons from U.S. gun stores show up at Mexican crime scenes, at least some officials saw a political argument developing to support their legislative agenda.

In March 2010, Holder’s Chief of Staff Gary Grindler attended a detailed briefing on Fast and Furious in Washington. In handwritten notes, Grindler wrote the words “long rifle,” “multiple sale” and “need regulation” in the margin of a briefing paper.

On July 14, 2010, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Assistant Director Mark Chait asked then-ATF Phoenix Special Agent in Charge Bill Newell “if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long-gun multiple sales.”

On Jan. 4, 2011, Newell apparently saw the opportunity to publicly push for the new gun regulation. The Fast and Furious news conference provides “another time to address multiple sale on long guns issue,” he wrote Chait.

A day after that news conference, Chait replied in an email: “Bill — well done yesterday … in light of our request for demand letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this case.”

The “demand letter” would require border-state gun stores to report buyers who try to purchase multiple rifles or long guns in a one-week period.

Two months earlier, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke had an email exchange with his counterpart in Washington state, Jenny Durkan. Burke informed her of the Fast and Furious case and its use of straw buyers to deliver guns to Mexico that “have been directly traced to murders of elected officials in Mexico City by the cartels.”

Durkan wrote back: “Let me know when you have time to talk. I want to discuss our approach in enforcing gun sale laws at (gun stores) and gun shows.”

Some of these quotes are new; some we knew already.

As the article points out, this doesn’t mean that Fast and Furious was conceived as a scheme to promote domestic gun control (although the administration has yet to offer any alternative explanation consistent with the facts), but at the very least they did decide to exploit it that way after the fact.

(Previous post.)

A flashback to the genesis of the Gunwalker scandal:

The president has directed us to take action to fight these cartels and Attorney General Eric Holder and I [Deputy Attorney General David Ogden] are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration’s comprehensive plan. . .

DOJ’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is increasing its efforts by adding 37 new employees in 3 new offices using $10 million dollars in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify it’s Project Gunrunner- which is aimed at disrupted arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.

The announcement obviously didn’t say that those efforts would include trafficking guns to Mexican drug cartels while making no effort to track them. That, they didn’t know yet (probably). But, at the very least, it’s easy to see how it could happen: “Here’s a blank check — go do something!”

(Previous post.)

PJ Media reports:

A career employee in the Voting Section of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has confessed to committing perjury, sources say. The employee, Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi, reportedly told investigators from the Inspector General’s Office that she perjured herself during an inquiry into Justice Department leaks during the previous administration. Despite the admission, she has not been fired for criminal malfeasance. Indeed, it appears she has not been disciplined in any meaningful way at all. . .

Amazingly, despite Ms. Gyamfi’s admission of committing perjury not once, but three times, she so far has been neither terminated nor disciplined by the Justice Department. In fact, her boss, Voting Section Chief Chris Herren, continues to assign her to the most politically sensitive of matters, including the Department’s review of Texas’s congressional redistricting plan.

Now why on earth would the Justice Department let perjury slide? Wonder no longer:

The genesis of Ms. Gyamfi’s perjury is apparently rooted in political attacks on the Bush Justice Department. Throughout 2005-2007, numerous attorney-client privileged documents, confidential personnel information, and other sensitive legal materials were leaked from inside the Voting Section to the Washington Post and various left-wing blogs.

Now, the Obama administration cannot be held responsible for Gyamfi’s malfeasance, but they should be held responsible for their failure to discipline her. Not only have they let her off scot-free, they have continued to use her in precisely the area in which she has shown she cannot be trusted. And thus they support her actions after-the-fact.

(Via Hot Air.)

Four Democratic officials and operatives have pleaded guilty to a crime that we’re told never, ever happens.

And yes, there’s an ACORN connection.

I week ago I was troubled by reports that the new defense bill would give the president the power to detain US citizens indefinitely if they were supporting various terrorist groups. But almost immediately I read other reports that said that the bill actually did not change the law in this regard. Both reports came from respectable, knowledgeable people, and I was left confused.

Today I read two posts on law blogs that have left me convinced of the latter position, that the bill does not change the law in regard to detention of US citizens. In fact, it seems that the bill contains an amendment that states explicitly that it does not change the law on detention of US citizens.

Robert Chesney explains where the case law currently stands, and it strikes me as pretty reasonable. On foreign battlefields, US citizens can be detained like anyone else. On US soil, probably not. In a foreign theater but outside a battlefield, the law is uncertain, as no test case has yet arisen.

Kenneth Anderson adds that none of these detainees are beyond the reach of legal appeals:

Lastly, I’d add that in virtue of being statutorily prescribed as the court for hearing detainee appeals, the DC Circuit has emerged as something of the US’s de facto national security court; it has been gradually working out the contours and standards of habeas review and all the procedural and evidentiary questions that are implied by that.

I’d rather the rules were instituted by legislation, rather than made up by the courts, but that said, the rules the courts are adopting seem pretty reasonable.

The biggest question in the Gunwalker scandal is also the simplest: Why? The ATF trafficked thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, making no effort to track them. Why do such a thing?

The administration has refused to answer this simple question. They continue to call it a “botched” operations, as though they accidentally gave criminals the money for weapons, they accidentally let the weapons walk, they accidentally ordered ATF agents not to track the weapons, and when one ATF agent did track the weapons in violation of those orders, they accidentally refused his calls for backup. Moreover, the people responsible for Gunwalker have all been promoted, which is not how one responds to a botch.

No, they sent those weapons to Mexican drug cartels on purpose, and they won’t say why.

In the absence of any explanation, we are left to speculate on our own. Did the administration deliberately channel weapons to Mexican drug cartels in order to bolster the false story that most guns used in Mexican crimes come from the United States, and thereby advance its domestic gun-control agenda?

I don’t want to believe that any American administration, even this one, could be capable of such a thing. But the evidence is mounting.

We learned in July that William Newell, the agent in charge of Fast and Furious, was being pressed for evidence to support a new policy restricting gun sales in border states. (The new policy was later put into effect despite the scandal.) But we didn’t have any information that specifically linked Fast and Furious to the political agenda. Until now.

Last week, the Justice Department handed over documents to Congress detailing the DOJ’s internal deliberation on how to respond to Congress’s demand for information on Gunwalker, and how it happened that nearly everything the DOJ ended up saying in response was false. What caught my eye in those documents was this:

[US Attorney Dennis] Burke wrote, “By the way, what is so offensive about this whole project” of response “is that Grassley’s staff, acting as willing stooges for the Gun Lobby, have attempted to distract from the incredible success in dismantling” Southwest Border “gun trafficking operations” . . .

(ASIDE: Burke’s name has come up in this story before.) By referring to the “Gun Lobby” here, Burke indicates that the administration’s gun-control agenda was a consideration in how it responded to the scandal. This doesn’t prove that Fast and Furious was originally conceived to advance a political agenda, but it does tie it to that political agenda after the fact.

The connection grew much stronger this week, with new documents obtained by CBS News:

On Jan. 4, 2011, as ATF prepared a press conference to announce arrests in Fast and Furious, Newell saw it as “(A)nother time to address Multiple Sale on Long Guns issue.” And a day after the press conference, Chait emailed Newell: “Bill–well done yesterday… (I)n light of our request for Demand letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this case.”

These emails make it clear that the gun-control agenda was part of Fast and Furious. Was there any other purpose to Fast and Furious? It’s high time the administration gave us an answer.

(Previous post.)

That’s Jon Corzine, Democrat, former US Senator and governor of New Jersey, testifying that he has no idea where the $1.2 billion stolen from his firm might have gone.

Kevin Williamson adds:

Anybody remember that this Wall Street Democrat used to sit on the Senate committees on banking and the budget?

Question: Why should we believe that the motives of people in (cough, cough) “public service” are different from the motives of people in the for-profit sector? Was Jon Corzine a rapacious self-seeker at Goldman Sachs, then a public-spirited man when he was in the Senate and in New Jersey’s governorship, only to revert to form when he went to MF Global? If you doubt that this is true, and suspect that Jon Corzine was the same guy all along, why would you want to give government more power?

Indeed.

The essence of the rule of law is that everyone knows what the rules are and can make decisions accordingly. It is antithetical to the rule of law that the government would have secret rules, rules that are not disclosed but that the country is answerable to nonetheless.

The Chicago machine is infamous for its contempt for the rule of law, so it’s not too surprising that, if you put the Chicago machine in charge of the federal government, you would get the same contempt at the federal level.

Two examples of secret rules from the Obama administration recently came to light:

One is out of the Justice Department, in which the voting section draws up its own redistricting plans to promote minority representation. The Justice Department rejects plans that don’t look enough like their own, but they won’t come out and reveal their plan.

The other is out of the Department of Education, in which the online colleges were audited using a new accounting rule that had never been disclosed to them.

Note that both instances advance the administration’s political interests. In the former case, the administration wants as many minority representatives as possible. In the latter case, the administration wants to hurt on-line schools (traditional schools were not judged using the new secret rule).

Holding back this sort of Chicago politics is exactly what the rule of law is for.

A few updates in the Gunwalker scandal:

• The Justice Department has taken its cover-up to a new level, deciding to seal all the records pertaining to Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder. (Via Instapundit.)
• A new theory has been floated suggesting that an FBI informant is implicated in Terry’s murder. This would help explain why the FBI denies the existence of a third gun in Terry’s murder despite convincing evidence to the contrary. According to the theory, the FBI’s informant was carrying the third gun, so the FBI has covered it up to protect the informant.
• All of the managers of Operation Fast and Furious have been promoted, while most of the whistleblowers have been demoted.

I have to add, this third point is an outrage. The Justice Department has said that no one important was aware of Gunwalker. This is almost certainly a lie, but even if true, the DOJ’s leadership is certainly responsible for what they did after the scandal broke. What they did was reward the perpetrators. They have endorsed the operation after-the-fact.

(Previous post.)

The union on whose charges the NLRB based its horrible Boeing decision has dropped those charges. This is surely good news for Boeing in the short run; it is free to build its new plant in South Carolina. But I agree with Mario Loyola that this is a bad thing for our country (and for Boeing, in the long run).

We needed to strike down definitively the notion that the NLRB could tell businesses where to invest. That didn’t happen. We will certainly see this tactic again now, and until it happens, the possibility of a baseless lawsuit will hang over every business that considers investing in a right-to-work state.

The NLRB broke the law by coordinating its defense of its horrible Boeing decision (more on this in the next post) with the NLRB’s general counsel. Briefly:

Because the NLRB has within itself all of the governing powers our Founding Fathers believed should be separated (legislative, executive and judicial), its creators also wrote rules making it illegal for board employees who perform different functions from communicating with each other under certain circumstances.

If those protections don’t work any more, let’s abolish the board.

The NLRB may soon find itself without the necessary quorum to do business, and under the Obama administration, the NLRB’s business is to impose costly and oppressive labor rules on struggling businesses. Alarmed by the possibility that the NLRB may soon be neutered, the NLRB’s Democrats have hatched a plan whereby they would delegate their power to their general counsel Lafe Solomon.

ASIDE: This is the same Lafe Solomon who announced the NLRB’s appalling order barring Boeing from building a plant in South Carolina, and then made light of killing jobs in South Carolina and damaging the US economy.

Can they get away with this? Can the NLRB’s statutory requirement for a quorum be so easily side-stepped by having someone other than the board take actions on its behalf? I suppose the courts will decide.

A few updates in the Gunwalker scandal:

• Dennis Burke, a US Attorney appointed by President Obama who resigned three months ago, admits leaking a document that smeared a whistleblower. (Via Instapundit.)
• Eric Holder has changed his story regarding when he learned of Fast and Furious. This is not surprising, since we already knew Holder’s timeline was false.
• Andrew McCarthy explains why the Democrats’ efforts to distract us from Gunwalker using the Bush-era Operation Wide Receiver are nonsense. (His explanation is similar to mine.)
• The Justice Department stonewalled Congressional requests for information on Operation Wide Receiver for over a month so they could save those documents to make a big splash in the media on the eve of Congressional hearings. (Via Hot Air.)

(Previous post.)

Opposition to religion goes beyond preventing coercion. The Freedom from Religion Foundation, at least, wants to ban even voluntary prayer wherever they can see it. Thanks to them, Clay County, Florida, has banned morning prayer sessions at school flagpoles.

Alas, this is hardly atypical, and it got me thinking. If religion is going to be completely banned from the public square (not to say that that is going to happen, but it’s clearly what the militant atheists want), it’s another argument against having a public square. Privatize everything, and then free people can decide what free people will do. Religious people will frequent establishments that allow prayer, and militant atheists can stick to ones that ban it.

The White House is refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas for documents pertaining to the Solyndra scandal. The excuse they’ve concocted is that the subpoenas are too broad:

White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said in a letter to GOP leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee that the information that they’ve demanded via subpoena appears focused on a “general curiosity about internal White House communications.”

I guess this is a White House lawyer thing, because this doesn’t sound so broad:

The subpoenas seek “all documents referring or relating to any investor in Solyndra” including financial contributions from investors and “the influence of campaign contributions on the decision whether or not to grant or restructure the Solyndra loan guarantee.”

That sounds like exactly what we want to learn: how much influence Solyndra and its investors bought, and what happened as a result.

(Previous post.)

No one accuses the Obama administration of excessive transparency, but the administration still wants to spare itself the heavy burden of defending its denials of FOIA requests:

Under the new rules, the government could falsely respond to those who file FOIA requests that a document does not exist if it pertains to an ongoing criminal investigation, concerns a terrorist organization, or a counterintelligence operation involving a foreign nation.

There are two problems with the Obama proposal to allow federal officials to affirmatively assert that a requested document doesn’t exist when it does. First, by not citing a specific exemption allowed under the FOIA as grounds for denying a request, the proposal would cut off a requestor from appealing to the courts. By thus creating an area of federal activity that is completely exempt from judicial review, the proposal undercuts due process and other constitutional protections. . .

Under FOIA’s current national security exemption, bureaucrats can already deny access to documents without acknowledging their existence. . . In instances where there is a legitimate grounds for not confirming a document’s existence, “the agency should simply respond that ‘we interpret all or part of your request as a request for records which, if they exist, would not be subject to the disclosure requirements of FOIA pursuant to section 552(c), and we therefore will not process that portion of your request.’ This response requires no change to the current FOIA regulation.” Such a response would preserve a requestor’s right to appeal to a federal court.

Getting rid of those pesky appeals is the point.

Additionally, the administration wants to be able to stall FOIA requests indefinitely by resetting the clock every time they refer a request between departments; they want to remove the duty of department heads to stand by their FOIA denials; they want to create lots of new flimsy excuses to deny FOIA requests; and they want to make it much harder to qualify for fee waivers.

So let’s please not have any more nonsense about the left’s dedication to transparency.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Having received a lot of well-deserved bad press over this, the administration is giving up for now.

The FBI has released documents on its quiet investigation of the late John Murtha (D-PA). The FBI’s conclusions will not be surprising to anyone familiar with Murtha:

The FBI field agents concluded that “the relationships between Congressman John Murtha … and employees and partners of KSA Consulting provide for a potential Honest Services Fraud … if Congressman Murtha influenced the awarding of contracts to KSA-controlled entities or clients, in exchange for some personal benefit to the Congressman. KSA principals may also have committed Honest Services Fraud by lobbying Murtha to direct earmarks to KSA clients who ‘passed-thru’ the funds to subcontractor firms that did little actual work and were owned by KSA principles.”

No one was ever charged in the investigation. The reason is not clear from the documents.

(Via Instapundit.)

How would an administration behave if it were innocent of wrongdoing? Not like this:

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is investigating to what extent the White House was aware of — or involved in — the “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal.

The committee recently requested to speak with former White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. According to CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson, the Obama administration answered:

O’Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

Through a tip, PJ Media learned that Kevin O’Reilly was unexpectedly named director of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau for Iraq (INL-Iraq). Long-time INL-Iraq employee Virginia Ramadan had been expected to get the position — many were quite surprised when she did not.

The previous occupants of the Director, INL-Iraq position — Joe Manso and Francisco Palmieri — were not considered “unreachable” to press or government access. A quick internet search reveals Palmieri, while director, attended a media event on August 23, 2010.

On October 21, PJ Media reporter Patrick Richardson called the number for Office of the Director, INL-Iraq. . . Richardson reached a voicemail message confirming that it was indeed the correct number. He left a message that was not returned.

On Monday Richardson called again, and an assistant answered. Richardson asked to speak with Kevin O’Reilly, and the assistant asked who was calling. Richardson gave his name and stated he was with PJ Media. The assistant said O’Reilly was currently on a conference call, and asked if Richardson wanted to leave a message. Richardson gave his phone number. His call was not returned.

This morning, Richardson called again. He received a prerecorded message saying “this number is not in service.”

(Previous post.)

Remember the Ground Zero Mosque? It faded from the headlines when it seemed that all the obstacles to the project were exhausted, but another legal battle has arisen. The mosque developer has a lease on the neighboring property, and its owner, Con Ed, is demanding $1.7 million in back rent.

I hope the mosque developers lose, because what they are trying to do is extraordinarily unseemly. But more than that, I hope that the legal process is carried out without political interference. The terms of the lease (which I have not seen reported anywhere) should govern the dispute.

(Previous post.)

Andrew Stiles takes a look at the creative legal reasoning the Obama administration used to justify ignoring the plain meaning of the law and go ahead with the ill-fated Solyndra loan.

(Previous post.)

The Justice Department is categorically denying that a third gun was recovered from Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder. Or maybe not; the denial seems to be carefully worded to leave some wiggle room:

“The FBI has made clear that reports of a third gun recovered from the perpetrators at the scene of Agent Terry’s murder are false,” the department said in a statement Monday.

Meanwhile, Bob Owens reviews the extensive evidence suggesting a third gun was recovered.

(Previous post.)

On May 3, Eric Holder said that he had learned of the Gunwalker scandal “over the last few weeks”. But President Obama was aware of the scandal by March 22. That’s six weeks.

It’s just not plausible that the president would be aware of the scandal weeks before the attorney general, so I’m sure they will argue that six weeks counts as a “few weeks”. But that’s certainly not the impression that Holder was trying to give by saying “last few weeks” instead of “last couple of months”.

(Previous post.)

Darrell Issa has sent back a blistering response to Eric Holder’s disingenuous Gunwalker letter. There are two points to highlight. First, Issa reveals more about the briefing that Gary Grindler (former Deputy Attorney General and now Holder’s chief of staff) received:

Gary Grindler, the then-Deputy Attorney General and currently your Chief of Staff, received an extremely detailed briefing on Operation Fast and Furious on March 12, 2010. In this briefing, Grindler learned such minutiae as the number of times that Uriel Patino, a straw purchaser on food stamps who ultimately acquired 720 firearms, went in to a cooperating gun store and the amount of guns that he had bought. When former Acting ATF Director Ken Melson, a career federal prosecutor, learned similar information, he became sick to his stomach. . .

At the time of his briefing in March of last year, Grindler knew that Patino had purchased 313 weapons and paid for all of them in cash. Unlike Melson, Grindler clearly saw nothing wrong with this. If Grindler had had the sense to shut this investigation down right then, he could have prevented the purchase of an additional 407 weapons by Patino alone. Instead, Grindler did nothing to stop the program.

Following this briefing, it is clear that Grindler did one of two things. Either, he alerted you to the name and operational details of Fast and Furious, in which case your May 3, 2011 testimony in front of Congress was false; or, he failed to inform you of the name and the operational details of Fast and Furious, in which case Grindler engaged in gross dereliction of his duties as Acting Deputy Attorney General.

Second, he notes that the Justice Department has repeatedly lied as the scandal unfolded:

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this intransigence is that the Department of Justice has been lying to Congress ever since the inquiry into Fast and Furious began. On February 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transport into Mexico.” This letter, vetted by both the senior ranks of ATF as well as the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, is a flat-out lie.

(Previous post.)

Eric Holder has said that no one in the “upper levels of the Justice Department” knew about Gunwalker. Recently he has refined that blanket statement, explaining that officials were briefed on Fast and Furious, but were unaware that it involved “unacceptable tactics”.

Is it true? It seems hard to believe that so many agencies could be involved in Gunwalker, and that so many officials could be briefed on the operation, without anyone demanding some details. We have a specific case in Gary Grindler, former Deputy Attorney General and now Holder’s chief of staff.

Grindler has been on our radar screen for a while, but we now have learned that he received a detailed briefing on Fast and Furious in March 2010. Holder says he doesn’t pay attention to all his briefings but we know that Grindler paid attention to this one because he took notes:

In handwritten notes about Fast and Furious that are not all legible, Grindler writes about “seizures in Mexico” and “links to cartel.” He also noted “seizures in Mexico” on a map of Phoenix, the home base for Fast and Furious, and Mexico locations where some guns ended up. And Grindler made notations on a photograph of several dozen rifles.

There is no specific mention of the controversial tactic known as “letting guns walk” which, law enforcement sources say, was the heart of the Fast and Furious case.

Okay, so there’s no specific mention in the notes of letting guns walk deliberately. But there is specific mention that the guns are making it to Mexican drug cartels. So, at a minimum, it was clear that the operation was a disaster. Grindler should have demanded to know how the guns were getting away. Did he? If not, it sounds like willful blindness.

(Previous post.)

In Eric Holder’s recent letter to Congress proclaiming his innocence in the Gunwalker scandal, he alluded to a similar operation that took place during the Bush administration:

It has become clear that the flawed tactics employed in Fast and Furious were not limited to that operation and were actually employed in an investigation conducted during the prior Administration.

If true, this would hardly excuse the administration, since the scandal is at least as much about the ham-handed cover-up as it is about the original malfeasance. Nevertheless, I was skeptical. If the Bush administration had really run a similar operation, surely the Obama administration would be shouting it from the rooftops.

I was right to be skeptical. It seems that Holder was referring to Operation Wide Receiver, which was similar to Gunwalker in that it allowed straw purchases of weapons to go forward, and ultimately lost track of the weapons.

But there is a major difference between Wide Receiver and Gunwalker. In Wide Receiver, the ATF actually tried to follow the weapons! In Gunwalker they did not.

Wide Receiver was ill-conceived and poorly executed, but it was intended to track weapons. No one in the Justice Department has yet produced a plausible explanation for what Fast and Furious was intended to do. If Holder really thinks the two are similar (unlikely), he completely misunderstands the nature of the scandal.

Wide Receiver also differs from Gunwalker in magnitude. Wide Receiver lost track of 450 guns and was quickly shut down. Gunwalker lost thousands in Fast and Furious alone, and there are allegations of similar operations in several other cities.

It would not excuse Gunwalker even if the two operations were similar, since the ATF ought to have learned from its earlier mistakes, but, in fact, the similarity is only superficial.

(Via Pajamas Media.) (Previous post.)

Months after the Gunwalker scandal erupted, Eric Holder has undertaken to write a letter to Congress on the subject. It breaks very little new ground. He:

• continues to deny any knowledge of the “unacceptable tactics” employed in Fast and Furious,
• says that Fast and Furious was a flawed response to the important problem of gun trafficking into Mexico (ASIDE: it’s not nearly as important as gun-control advocates pretend),
• berates Congress for not doing anything about that problem,
• demands that Congress “denounce” a Republican member (presumably Paul Gosar) who said those responsible for Gunwalker are “accessories to murder”,
• and claims that gunwalking was going on during the Bush administration as well.

The final claim is interesting, but I won’t believe it without hearing some details. If it were true, they would have been trumpeting it for some time now.

Questions Holder did not address include:

• Why were those responsible for Gunwalker promoted instead of disciplined?
• How could so many different agencies be involved in Gunwalker without any high-ranking officials being aware of it?
• Is the FBI covering up a third Gunwalker gun used in the Terry murder, as multiple sources suggest?
• Why was the ATF permitted to retaliate against the agents who blew the whistle on Gunwalker?
• Why was the ATF permitted to stonewall Congress’s investigation, to the extent that it required contempt proceedings before they produced any documents?
• Why was the ATF permitted to limit its agents’ testimony to Congress?
• Why did the Justice Department withhold information it had in its possession from Congress?
• Why did the Justice Department say that no ATF agents witnessed the transfer of weapons to third parties, when the opposite is true?
• Why is Holder so concerned about harsh rhetoric directed at ATF agents who broke the law and trafficked weapons to Mexican drug cartels?
• Finally, what was the ATF trying to accomplish by trafficking guns to Mexican drug cartels and making no attempt to track them? Why hasn’t anyone tried to answer this question, even at this very late date?

(Via the Corner.) (Previous post.)

The Washington Post reports:

Energy Department officials were warned that their plan to help a failing solar company by restructuring its $535 million federal loan could violate the law and should be cleared with the Justice Department, according to newly obtained e-mails from within the Obama administration.

The e-mails show that Energy Department officials moved ahead anyway with a new deal that would repay company investors before taxpayers if the company defaulted. The e-mails, which were reviewed by The Washington Post, show for the first time concerns within the administration about the legality of the Energy Department’s extraordinary efforts to help Solyndra, the California solar company that went bankrupt Aug. 31.

But the Energy Department didn’t go to the Office of Legal Counsel for advice (which saved them the trouble of ignoring their conclusions). Instead they went with an in-house attorney that produced the demanded result:

An Energy spokesman, Damien LaVera, said agency officials had listened to Treasury’s advice to consult the Justice Department on the loan restructuring but felt it was appropriate to move forward. “Ultimately, DOE’s determination that the restructuring was legal was made by career lawyers in the loan program based on a careful analysis of the statute,” he said.

By the way, the statute seems quite clear:

(3) SUBORDINATION.—The obligation shall be subject to the condition that the obligation is not subordinate to other financing.

I don’t see the wiggle room by which the DOE lawyer turned “is not”  into “can be”.

POSTSCRIPT: The Washington Post story has another revelation too. A key administration official pushed for the Solyndra loan despite being recused for a conflict of interest:

[Steve] Spinner came from Silicon Valley to serve as a senior adviser on the loan program, and his wife was a lawyer with Wilson Sonsini, the law firm representing Solyndra in its application. Despite an ethics agreement under which he said he would recuse himself from Solyndra’s loan application, correspondence shows that Spinner defended the company, worked to get the president or vice president to visit its factory, and pushed for a final decision on approving the company’s loan.

“How [expletive] hard is this?” Spinner wrote to a career staffer on Aug. 28, 2009, asking for answers about final approval from an OMB official. “What is he waiting for? Will we have it by the end of the day?”

In an Aug. 19, 2009, e-mail, an aide to then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel asked Spinner if he could discuss any concerns among the investment community about Solyndra.

Spinner dismissed the idea that Solyndra had financial problems. “I haven’t heard anything negative on my side,” he said. . .

Spinner is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank.

(Previous post.)

Newly released emails show that the White House received and disregarded several warnings about the insolvency of Solyndra. Nevertheless, President Obama says he had no regrets sinking half a billion dollars into Solyndra.

(Previous post.)

Try to watch this video without becoming enraged:

Why is the government picking on Caswell? As Willie Sutton famously (and apocryphally) said, that’s where the money is:

Of course, the Motel Caswell is not the only property in Tewksbury that has had run ins with crime. According to police logs, the Motel 6, the Fairfield Inn, and even the nearby Wal-Mart and Home Depot parking lots have similar problems. But those properties are corporate-owned, which means the government would have to fight teams of lawyers to take them. And, importantly, the Caswells own their property free and clear, which makes them the perfect target for a government interested in policing for profit: the Caswells are vulnerable and their property is valuable.

The Tewksbury government is engaging in robbery, pure and simple. And they’re being abetted by the federal government. The only difference between this and a criminal enterprise is a lot of criminal enterprises deliver products that people actually want.

(Via Instapundit.)

A group called the Independent Democratic Conference wants to revoke the right to free speech, and replace it with a privilege that the government can revoke. They write (yes, they really did issue their report in all caps):

PROPONENTS OF A MORE REFINED FIRST AMENDMENT ARGUE THAT THIS FREEDOM SHOULD BE TREATED NOT AS A RIGHT BUT AS A PRIVILEGE – A SPECIAL ENTITLEMENT GRANTED BY THE STATE ON A CONDITIONAL BASIS THAT CAN BE REVOKED IF IT IS EVER ABUSED OR MALTREATED.

Of course, we’ve sadly had plenty of occasion this year to learn what the left views as an abuse of free speech.

The authors of this piece aren’t major policy players, thankfully, but they aren’t nobodies either. According to TechDirt (the piece itself doesn’t list any authors), they are New York state senators.

(Via Instapundit.)

In our latest instance of corruption in Eric Holder’s Justice Department, an official in the Civil Rights Division abused his government-issued credit card to take romantic trips at taxpayer expense, and even took out cash advances. Once his actions were discovered, not only was he not disciplined, they didn’t even take the card away, and he continued to abuse it.

(Via Instapundit.)

CBS News reports:

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.”

CBS uncovered two memos addressed to Holder that mentioned Fast & Furious, one from July 2010 and the other from November 2010. The July 2010 memo contained some various specific information:

From July 6 through July 9, the National Drug Intelligence Center Document and Media Exploitation Team at the Phoenix Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Strike Force will support the Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ Phoenix Field Division with its investigation of Manuel Celis-Acosta as part of OCDETF Operation Fast and the Furious. This investigation, initiated in September 2009 in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Phoenix Police Department, involves a Phoenix-based firearms trafficking ring headed by Manuel Celis-Acosta. Celis-Acosta and [redacted] straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels. They also have direct ties to the Sinaloa Cartel which is suspected of providing $1 million for the purchase of firearms in the greater Phoenix area.

(Emphasis mine.)

So Holder was definitely informed of an operation called Fast and Furious. The document doesn’t specifically refer to guns walking, but it does say that the firearms in question were supplied to Mexican drug cartels, which (as Allahpundit points out) is never supposed to happen in ATF sting operations. This should have raised a red flag.

Some of Holder’s chief deputies were certainly aware of guns being walked. (Eric Holder’s chief of staff for one, according to Rep. Issa and Senator Grassley.) Another document obtained by CBS shows an email conversation between Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division, and James Trusty, Deputy Chief of the National Gang Unit. They discuss gunwalking explicitly:

WEINSTEIN: Do you think we should try to have Lanny [Breuer, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division] participate in press when Fast and Furious and Laura’s Tucson case are unsealed? It’s a tricky case, given the number of guns that have walked. . .

TRUSTY: I think so, but the timing will be tricky, too. . . 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.”

(Emphasis mine.)

This shows that Weinstein and Trusty specifically knew that guns were walking. (Eric Holder said last month that no one in “the upper levels of the Justice Department” knew about Gunwalker.) It also shows that the “tricky” issue of gunwalking was specifically being considered by the people who set Lanny Breuer’s schedule.

ASIDE: Worse, the email also shows that these guys were thinking about gunwalking in the context of “going after people who sent guns down there”, which is to say, their gun-control agenda.

The DOJ replied to this with a howler:

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.

Impossible. The documents mention Fast and Furious by name. The DOJ also said:

And tonight they tell CBS News, Holder misunderstood that question from the committee – he did know about Fast and Furious – just not the details.

We can believe that, or not. It’s not very plausible, given how many people around him knew, and anyway, Holder’s words were quite specific:

I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.

That statement, incidentally, was made under oath.

Now the Justice Department has fallen back on an even more basic defense. They say that Holder doesn’t always read his briefings. Terrific.

(Via Power Line.)

UPDATE: Holder must have ignored at least five memos.

(Previous post.)

The ATF never should have existed in the first place. It was originally the Bureau of Prohibition, formed to enforce Prohibition. After Prohibition was repealed it became an agency without a purpose, pressed into service to perform various different functions as part of various different departments. Every one of those functions could have been carried out by another agency (or, better yet, not carried out at all), but that would have left the agency with nothing to do. It couldn’t simply go away, because that is the one thing a government agency never does.

Which is why I’m not very excited about the reports that the Department of Justice is considering eliminating the ATF. The ATF has done the one thing that would actually make it possible to eliminate it: through its astonishing incompetence and malfeasance, it has become a political liability. But despite all that, it’s very hard to imagine it happening.

Pajamas Media has an update on the scandal of political hiring in the Holder Justice Department. Every single one of the 113 lawyers hired in the Civil Rights Division under Eric Holder has been a leftist. Not one of them have been conservative, libertarian, centrist, or even apolitical.

In case you are wondering, yes, this is improper, and not merely unseemly. The Department of Justice prohibits discrimination on the basis of political affiliation. The left used to understand this. They attacked the DOJ’s hiring record under President Bush, even though that record was much better than what we’re seeing from Holder now.

(Previous post.)

A red-light camera in Port Lavaca, Texas issued this truck a ticket:

The town is cancelling the ticket, but that’s not good enough. The thing is, machines are not supposed to issue tickets; humans issue tickets. So, supposedly, humans review the material and then sign the ticket, which includes a statement — under penalty of perjury — confirming the machine’s findings.

Clearly, the man who signed this ticket — a police sergeant — did not review the material. Will he be prosecuted for perjury? Not bloody likely. But if the police can lie on these statements without any consequence, they are of no value. Every single ticket issued in Port Lavaca pursuant to a red-light camera ought to be thrown out.

Moreover, does anyone believe that this one town is the only place in which the authorities are not diligently reviewing the red-light camera data?

As astonishing as it is that the Gunwalker scandal could get worse again, it has done just that. Not only did the ATF facilitate the trafficking of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, they did it themselves! They bought weapons with taxpayer money, and then delivered them to the criminals:

Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel — the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.

This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice’s previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a “botched” operation where agents simply “lost track” of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another.

Well, that defense (that they simply “lost track” of the weapons) was undermined long ago. We’ve known for some time that the ATF never followed the weapons. The new revelation here is the astonishing lengths to which the ATF went to avoid following the weapons:

According to sources directly involved in the case, [Agent John] Dodson felt strongly that the weapons should not be abandoned and the stash house should remain under 24-hour surveillance. However, [ATF supervisor David] Voth disagreed and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office. Dodson refused, and for six days in the desert heat kept the house under watch, defying direct orders from Voth.

A week later, a second vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons. Dodson called for an interdiction team to move in, make the arrest and seize the weapons. Voth refused and the guns disappeared with no surveillance.

Read that twice and see if you can comprehend it. The ATF was determined to see these guns end up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels without any surveillance.

It is now clear that, whatever the purpose of Operation Fast and Furious was, it certainly was not to follow the guns back to the “big fish”. ATF’s management took pains to avoid following the guns! So what was the purpose of the operation? No one has yet suggested any plausible, legitimate purpose. The only theories on the table are the gun-control theory, and the anti-Zeta theory.

POSTSCRIPT: More here, including a document that purports to be Voth’s written authorization to buy the guns.

(Previous post.)

I’ve been lax about reporting the Solyndra affair as it has grown from a typical screwup of the sort that arises whenever the government tries to supplant the marketplace and pick winners, into a huge political scandal. Let me catch up by listing what we know:

After Solyndra went belly-up (after blowing through half a billion in taxpayer money), the FBI raided their offices. We know that one of Solyndra’s top backers was a major fundraiser for President Obama, that Solyndra officials were frequent visitors to the White House, and that federal officials sat in on Solyndra board meetings.

We know that the White House pressured the OMB to approve the loan, and quickly (in time for a presidential speech), despite the OMB’s concerns that they hadn’t done due diligence (that’s for sure!):

“We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week),” one official wrote. That Aug. 31, 2009, message, written by a senior OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeny, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, concluded, “We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews.”

And it wasn’t just the Obama-era OMB with reservations. The Bush administration shelved the loan application (despite recent attempts on the left to blame Bush for the mess). PriceWaterhouseCoopers warned that Solyndra’s troubles “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.” And it wasn’t just finance people, either. According to a former Solyndra employee, everyone working there knew the company was doomed. They were making a product for $6 that they could only sell for $2-3. The Obama administration was aware of these warnings, but ignored them.

Worse, this isn’t merely a situation where political pressure resulted in a terrible decision. The process violated federal rules and the law. The General Accountability Office found that the loan process bypassed required steps. The law specifically forbade the DOE from subordinating the government’s stake (i.e., placing the government after other creditors in any bankruptcy proceeding), but the Obama administration disregarded that provision.  Thus, the loan was not only unwise, not only improper, it was illegal.

Solyndra’s actions were not proper either. Once they received the government’s “investment”, they lavishly wasted money. They spent over a million on lobbying, hiring lobbyists connected to John Kerry (D-MA) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD). And, in fact, they violated the terms of their loan starting in December 2010.

Solyndra officials took the Fifth at a Congressional hearing last week. That surprised Congressional investigators who had earlier agreed to delay the hearing in exchange for a promise that the officials would testify. However, many other people did agree to testify. (Andrew Stiles summarized the proceedings here and here.)

One who did agree to testify was DOE official Jonathan Silver, who admitted that the conditions for Solyndra have been unfavorable for years (since before the latest loan!), and that the DOE has known since last July that Solyndra would go under.

One of the strangest aspects of the scandal is that somehow the California Democratic Party ended up a Solyndra creditor. No one will admit to knowing how that happened.

Alas, the Obama administration has learned nothing from the scandal. They have just announced three more solar loans totaling more than $2 billion, and have billions more to throw away this week. One of those loans, for $737 million, is to the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a project connected to Ron Pelosi, the House Democratic Leader’s brother-in-law. The political connections of the other projects have not yet been determined.

UPDATE: A nice video summarizing the scandal.

(Previous post.)

Over 200 murders have been linked to weapons trafficked to Mexican drug cartels by the ATF.

That’s at least 200 more than were murdered in Watergate, our government’s second-worst scandal.

(Previous post.)

The government of San Juan Capistrano, California, show themselves to be unqualified for any position of public trust:

An Orange County couple has been ordered to stop holding a Bible study in their home on the grounds that the meeting violates a city ordinance as a “church” and not as a private gathering.

Homeowners Chuck and Stephanie Fromm, of San Juan Capistrano, were fined $300 earlier this month for holding what city officials called “a regular gathering of more than three people”.

This reminds me of China’s crackdown on house churches. There’s obviously a difference in severity (a $300 fine does not compare to torture), but it’s not a field of endeavor that American officials are supposed to be in at all. Tarring and feathering is too good for them.

(Via Instapundit.)

A British man who killed a home invader with the invader’s own knife has been arrested for murder. The only way this makes any sense at all is if the police suspect that the home invasion story is false:

Chief Superintendent Tim Forber of Greater Manchester Police said: ‘We believe the dead man was one of two men who were attempting to carry out a burglary at the house.’

Well, scratch that theory I guess.

So in England today, not only are you forbidden to have the means of self-defense (heck, you can’t even have a Swiss Army Knife), you’ll be arrested even if you use the criminal’s own weapon against him. If you want to stay on the right side of the law, you have to roll over for the criminal and hope he doesn’t kill you. I’m sure “he obeyed the law” will look great on your tombstone.

But the reaction of the authorities isn’t the worst part of this story. Read this and weep:

[The home invader’s] family were too upset to comment but they left floral tributes at the scene referring to him as ‘Ray’ and ‘Uncle Raymondo’.

One read: ‘Love you son, going to miss you more than anything. You mean the world to me. Love you loads, Dad.’

And it goes on. There are photos of weeping friends. Friends of the criminal that is. England is now a place where the family of a criminal killed in the midst of a home invasion feel they can go back to the home he tried to invade and place a tribute to him! They will even get their sorrow reportedly sympathetically in the press. That place has truly lost its moral compass.

(Via Instapundit.)

Pajamas Media reports:

The final tally in our hiring expose is staggering. Since Barack Obama installed Eric Holder at the Justice Department, there have been 113 new career lawyers hired into the Civil Rights Division. There isn’t even a single token conservative in the bunch. Worse yet, as this PJMedia series has demonstrated conclusively, the breakdown of the new hires reveals that not even moderates are welcome. Here are the numbers:

Liberals: 113

Conservatives: 0

Apolitical Attorneys: 0

As has been said repeatedly, there is nothing problematic with hiring liberals to work in the Division. But contrary to the views of many in the civil rights community — including the current leadership of the Justice Department — there is also nothing wrong with hiring conservative or apolitical attorneys to undertake this work. Yet such professionals have been categorically blackballed from joining the career ranks of the Division. That is not only unjust, it is illegal. . .

Notwithstanding the claims of revisionist historians, the Bush Civil Rights Division hired and promoted lawyers from all across the political and ideological spectrum. Even in the three sections of the Division that were the focus of a libelous report from the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility and Inspector General, nearly a third of the new career attorneys hired and promoted were clearly liberal and many others were entirely apolitical. Meanwhile, enforcement figures in nearly every section were through the roof (in some cases, such as the Voting Section, putting the Obama administration numbers to shame), while not one nickel had to be paid out in sanctions.

Now, less than three years later, all semblances of ideological balance in the Division have been utterly eliminated, and proudly so. . . Reports from inside the Division by individuals familiar with the work of the hiring committee describe the resumes of one qualified applicant after another being tossed in the “No” file merely because the candidate could not satisfy the newly imposed liberal litmus test.

What’s the big deal if a liberal administration hires only liberals? Don’t forget that, not very long ago, the hiring record of the Bush administration — which was much, much better — was billed as scandalous.

(Previous post.)

When police do their job — which is to protect innocent people from criminals — they earn our respect, and earn a special place in society. Today especially, we remember the sacrifice of New York City police who gave their lives saving others in the World Trade Center. But when police exploit their powers to advance their own selfish interests,  such as to suppress scrutiny or criticism, they turn an honorable profession into thugs with badges. They diminish our respect for good cops as well as themselves.

Case in point:

Drivers honking their horns near a “Justice for Kelly Thomas” protest in Fullerton on Saturday were cited by police officers on suspicion of illegally using that vehicle feature, the Fullerton Police Department has confirmed. Thomas was a 37-year-old homeless man fatally injured after a confrontation with six Fullerton police officers. The incident is still under investigation.

They ticketed people for criticizing them. Thugs with badges. (See also this.)

(Via Instapundit.)

It seems that the ATF was running a very similar program to Gunwalker in Indiana. Is it really plausible that the Justice Department would be running all these similar, insane operations all around the country without anyone in the “upper levels” of the Justice Department being aware of it?

(Previous post.)

In a major new development in the Gunwalker scandal, a third Gunwalker gun was at the scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder, and sources say the FBI covered it up:

A third gun linked to “Operation Fast and Furious” was found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, new documents obtained exclusively by Fox News suggest, contradicting earlier assertions by federal agencies that police found only two weapons tied to the federal government’s now infamous gun interdiction scandal.

Sources say emails support their contention that the FBI concealed evidence to protect a confidential informant. Sources close to the Terry case say the FBI informant works inside a major Mexican cartel and provided the money to obtain the weapons used to kill Terry.

Unlike the two AK-style assault weapons found at the scene, the third weapon could more easily be linked to the informant. To prevent that from happening, sources say, the third gun “disappeared.”

If the FBI was covering up evidence of Gunwalker malfeasance, that’s a pretty big deal.

ASIDE: Investigative journalism isn’t really Fox News’s bread and butter, but they are one of very few media outlets interested in the story. You have to wonder what would come out if the Washington Post were looking into the story.

There’s another revelation in the story as well. Not only was the ATF facilitating illegal gun purchases, but the FBI gave the buyers the money:

The two AK-type assault rifles were purchased by Jaime Avila from the Lone Wolf Trading Co. outside of Phoenix on Jan. 16, 2010. Avila was recruited by his roommate Uriel Patino. Patino, according to sources, received $70,000 in “seed money” from the FBI informant late in 2009 to buy guns for the cartel.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

This story of wrongful arrest for recording police and — at length — legal vindication is typical, but notable because it took place right here in Pittsburgh:

The American Civil Liberties Union has won a $48,500 settlement of a lawsuit stemming from a Hill District man’s arrest for videotaping police, it announced today.

Elijah Matheny was arrested in April 2009 when he used his cell phone to record the arrest of a friend by University of Pittsburgh police. The police said they got Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office approval to accuse him of wiretapping. All charges against Mr. Matheny later were dropped.

It’s awful to see this happening here. The University of Pittsburgh ought to be ashamed of themselves. But it seems that they aren’t: the university (which is funded by the state) will pay the officer’s settlement. Stephen Zappala, the Allegheny County DA, should be tossed out of office.

When police persecute people for doing nothing more than documenting their activities, they are declaring that they, the enforcers of the law, are above the law themselves. That is utterly unacceptable.

(Via Instapundit.)

Eric Holder has now said explicitly that neither he nor any other official in “the upper levels of the Justice Department” knew about Gunwalker. He must have a pretty narrow definition of “upper levels” since the Assistant Attorney General was briefed, as were the heads of the FBI and DEA.

Nevertheless, I think it’s good that he has made an unequivocal statement at least in regards to himself. If he does turn out to have been briefed, as seems very likely (his Chief of Staff was briefed), he’ll be nailed.

Also, Investor’s Business Daily takes a look a look at Dan Restrepo, the National Security Council’s top man for Latin America, who was briefed on Gunwalker. He’s quite a piece of work. (Via Instapundit.)

(Previous post.)

The thriving New London community that — with the blessing of the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision — was taken from its residents to give to Pfizer, and was abandoned by Pfizer shortly after it was razed, has now been turned into a dump.

The LA Times reports:

Newly obtained emails show that the White House was better informed about a failed gun-tracking operation on the border with Mexico than was previously known.

Three White House national security officials were given some details about the operation, dubbed Fast and Furious. . . The supervisor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation in Phoenix specifically mentioned Fast and Furious in at least one email to a White House national security official, and two other White House colleagues were briefed on reports from the supervisor, according to White House emails and a senior administration official.

But the senior administration official said the emails, obtained Thursday by The Times, did not prove that anyone in the White House was aware of the covert “investigative tactics” of the operation.

And recall that these aren’t the only times the White House was briefed.

(Previous post.)

President Obama’s Department of Education has been pushing colleges to abolish due process in sexual harassment cases:

Back in April, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued a letter ordering colleges and universities to get more aggressive about investigating and prosecuting alleged incidents of sexual assault and harassment. But while the 18-page missive began with the cordial salutation “Dear Colleague,” it was anything but a casual communication sent from one friend to another. Backed by the full force of the law, this detailed directive set new standards for the resolution of sexual assault claims at colleges and universities. It was formulated, moreover, without hearings, comment periods or other mechanisms aimed at avoiding unintended consequences that could cause more harm than good.

The effects of the letter, which called for dropping higher evidentiary requirements in favor of the lesser “preponderance of the evidence” standard, were immediately felt.

Better ten innocent men be expelled than a single guilty man go free, I guess. In a real court, the administration’s new rules would be unconstitutional, but it seems the Department of Education has the power to force them onto colleges’ quasi-courts. Yet another reason to abolish the Department of Education.

UPDATE: The White House’s own summary of the letter is here.

Fox News reports:

Just hours after the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, federal officials tried to cover up evidence that the gun that killed Terry was one the government intentionally helped sell to the Mexican cartels in a weapons trafficking program known as Operation Fast and Furious. . .

Also late Thursday, Sen. Charles Grassley’s office revealed that 21 more Fast and Furious guns have been found at violent crime scenes in Mexico. That is up from 11 the agency admitted just last month.

The story doesn’t elaborate on who the federal officials were or exactly how they tried to cover up the evidence, but I’m sure we will hear more about this soon.

UPDATE: More details:

In a letter, Grassley and Issa say the lead prosecutor on Fast and Furious, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley, learned almost immediately that guns allowed onto the street in his case, had been recovered at Terry’s murder. “(I)n the hours after Agent Terry’s death,” says the letter from Grassley and Issa, Hurley apparently “contemplated the connection between the two cases and sought to prevent the connection from being disclosed.” The Justice Department recently transferred Hurley out of the criminal division into the civil division.

An internal ATF email dated the day after Terry’s death reveals the quick decision to not disclose the source of the weapons found at the murder scene: “… this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case.”

Another ATF email indicates that the justification both offices used to not charge the suspect with crimes related to the murder scene “was to not ‘complicate’ the FBI’s investigation.”

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Recently released Justice Department documents show that Eric Holder has hired almost exclusively liberals for the Civil Rights Division. (As always, the Holder Justice Department stonewalled requests for the documents. It relented only when faced with a lawsuit.)

No big deal? Of course liberals hire liberals? Not according to the left, if they were remotely consistent. The supposedly political hiring by the Bush administration was put forward as a scandal by the left, and the slant in the current DOJ is much greater than President Bush’s DOJ was even accused of.

When Illinois made it illegal to record your dealings with the police, wasn’t that basically a tacit admission that their police are going to lie? Could there be any good faith reason for such a law?

POSTSCRIPT: The woman being prosecuted in the case was acquitted. Hooray for jury nullification.

Fox News reports:

In a surprise move in a controversial case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona is opposing a routine motion by the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry to qualify as crime victims in the eyes of the court. . .

Such motions are routinely approved by prosecutors, but may be opposed by defense attorneys. However in this case, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke argues because the family was not “directly or proximately harmed” by the illegal purchase of the murder weapon, it does not meet the definition of “crime victim” in the Avila case. Burke claims the victim of the Avila’s gun purchases, “is not any particular person, but society in general.”

What, was Eric Holder too busy to personally spit in their faces?

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A federal judge has thrown out the Obama administration’s drilling rules (again). The administration actually had the chutzpah to suggest that the oil developers were not harmed by the rules, which were specifically designed to impede oil development.

(Via Instapundit.)

John Hinderaker takes a look at actual political violence; not quasi-martial metaphors (like “I want people to be armed with the facts”), but actual gunfire. If you set aside crazy people and terrorists, it almost invariably comes from unions.

This is to be expected from general economic considerations. In contrast to company-town scenario that forms the basis of union mythology, today’s unions almost always are in settings in which there are plenty of alternative workers who would be happy to have the union’s jobs. In order for the union to exercise monopolistic power over labor, it needs a way to exclude those alternative workers from the market. Federal laws written by Democrats specifically to give unions more power does some of that. For example, employers are required to negotiate with the union, rather than with individual workers. But those legal powers aren’t enough, “buy union” campaigns are ineffective, and the only other tool unions have to exclude non-union labor is coercion. So that’s what we see.

POSTSCRIPT: Although it’s weak beer compared to the incidents Hinderaker discusses, we have a recent case from around these parts in which someone with a key shut off phone and internet service to Verizon customers in Uniontown while a strike against Verizon was ongoing.

In a major victory for gun rights in Florida, Florida will now enforce a law that prohibits municipalities from enacting gun restrictions beyond those imposed by the state.

Documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that the Department of Health and Human Services campaigned for Democrats using taxpayer money. And yes, that’s illegal.

This ought to be a huge scandal, but given the massive malfeasance from this administration already, it probably will barely be noticed.

(Via Instapundit.)

Fox News reports:

Weapons from the failed federal operation “Fast and Furious” have reportedly been linked to 11 more violent crimes in the U.S., including in places like Arizona and Texas where a total of 42 weapons were seized.

As early as January 2010, guns tied to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosions were found at crime scenes in cities like Phoenix, Glendale and El Paso, the Los Angeles Times first reported. . .

Republicans leading the congressional probe into Fast and Furious replied to Attorney General Eric Holder in a letter Tuesday, saying that many of his answers to their inquiries were “non-responsive.”

“We are disappointed that the Department has chosen to play word games rather than simply responding with as much detail as possible about these additional 11 cases,” wrote Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

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Even after everything that has come to light in the Gunwalker scandal, I would not have thought that the ATF would be so brazen as to promote three of the supervisors responsible for the agency’s misconduct, and to do so while the scandal was still unraveling.

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UPDATE: OMG! It’s even more brazen than I thought:

McMahon was promoted Sunday to deputy assistant director of the ATF’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations — the division that investigates misconduct by employees and other problems.

(Emphasis mine.)

This administration’s dealings with Mexican drug cartels continue to shift the boundaries of what seems crazy. Earlier this year, I would have thought it absurd to suggest that the ATF and five other federal agencies would traffic weapons to Mexican drug cartels in order to promote gun-control in the United States. Now we know they did exactly that, and the only thing disputable is their motive.

The latest development is from the El Paso Times:

U.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court.

The allegations are part of the defense of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago. . . The case could prove to be a bombshell on par with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ “Operation Fast and Furious,” except that instead of U.S. guns being allowed to walk across the border, the Sinaloa cartel was allowed to bring drugs into the United States. Zambada-Niebla claims he was permitted to smuggle drugs from 2004 until his arrest in 2009.

We don’t know yet if this is true; the Justice Department has refused to say. (The judge ordered them to respond by September 11.) But if it is, we will have to redraw the entire envelope of misconduct that we consider possible from this administration.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

Former Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) has proved the voters’ wisdom in turning him out of office by suing the Susan B. Anthony List. The group criticized his Driehaus’s vote for health care nationalization as a vote for abortion (which it was).

Driehaus says that the group’s position was dishonest and that the First Amendment doesn’t protect liars. Which, of course, is what every politician and tyrant always says whenever they try to stop people from criticizing them.

Unfortunately, the judge in the case, Timothy Black, is allowing the case to go forward, because he agrees with Driehaus that the Susan B. Anthony List’s criticism was untrue:

Black wrote in his opinion that voting for a bill that might have a loophole allowing for abortion coverage “is entirely different from providing for ‘taxpayer funded abortion,'” as the Susan B. Anthony List claimed of Driehaus’ voting record.

One might thing that the question of whether allowing abortion coverage in a taxpayer-funded pool constitutes taxpayer-funded abortion is — at the very least — protected political opinion. But not Judge Black.

Black, incidentally, is an Obama appointee.

The LA Times reports:

The claim by senior ATF officials that none of the weapons lost in the botched Fast and Furious sting operation were used in the shooting of a Border Patrol agent is not supported by FBI ballistics tests, according to a copy of the FBI report on the shooting.

Last week, spokesmen Scot Thomasson and Drew Wade of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told The Times that the FBI had assured them that neither of the two Fast and Furious weapons found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry’s death were the ones that killed the agent. . .

A copy of the FBI report obtained by The Times’ Washington bureau shows ballistics tests did not rule out the Fast and Furious guns.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

Given how many people knew about Gunwalker, it seemed extremely unlikely that the White House didn’t know, but now we have confirmation:

At a lengthy hearing on ATF’s controversial gunwalking operation today, a key ATF manager told Congress he discussed the case with a White House National Security staffer as early as September 2010. The communications were between ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office, Bill Newell, and White House National Security Director for North America Kevin O’Reilly. Newell said the two are longtime friends. . .

It’s the first time anyone has publicly stated that a White House official had any familiarity with ATF’s operation Fast and Furious.

Recall that Eric Holder’s chief of staff was also informed. The separation between Gunwalker and the principals is getting very small indeed.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

NPR reports:

The Justice Department’s inspector general has opened an investigation into possible retaliation against a whistle-blowing agent at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to two people briefed on the inquiry.

Watchdogs are examining whether anyone at the Justice Department improperly released internal correspondence to try to smear ATF agent John Dodson, who told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last month that he repeatedly warned supervisors about what he called a reckless law enforcement operation known as “Fast and Furious.”

This sounds like a different case of ATF retaliation than the one I noted a month ago. I’m not at all confident that an internal investigation will get to the bottom of this, but at least they are going through the motions.

(Via Pajamas Media.) (Previous post.)

The ATF has directed its agents due to testify before Congress on the Gunwalker scandal to limit their testimony. (This is in addition to the earlier allegations that ATF has been tampering with witnesses.)

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It’s getting hard to keep track of all the agencies that were part of the Gunwalker scandal. It now appears that the FBI was involved, rigging its background-check system so that felons could buy guns:

In the latest chapter of the gunrunning scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious, federal officials won’t say how two suspects obtained more than 360 weapons despite criminal records that should have prevented them from buying even one gun. Under current federal law, people with felony convictions are not permitted to buy weapons, and those with felony arrests are typically flagged while the FBI conducts a thorough background check.

However, according to court records reviewed by Fox News, two of the 20 defendants indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation have felony convictions and criminal backgrounds that experts say, at the very least, should have delayed them buying a single firearm. Instead, the duo bought dozens of guns on multiple occasions while federal officials watched on closed-circuit cameras.

Congressional and law-enforcement sources say the situation suggests the FBI, which operates the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, knowingly allowed the purchases to go forward after consulting with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which initiated Operation Fast and Furious. . .

When asked about the breakdown, Stephen Fischer, a spokesman for the NICS System, said the FBI had no comment. However, an ATF agent who worked on the Fast and Furious investigation, told Fox News that NICS officials called the ATF in Phoenix whenever their suspects tried to buy a gun. That conversation typically led to a green light for the buyers, when it should have stopped them.

If this is true (as seems likely), the NICS had these criminals flagged so the FBI would contact ATF whenever they tried to buy a gun, and the FBI then allowed the purchases.

In addition, William Newell, the former head of the Phoenix ATF, said in testimony before Congress that three other agencies were “full partners” in Fast and Furious: the DEA, the IRS, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. When asked if they knew “that guns were being walked to Mexico,” Newell said “they were aware of the strategy.”

That’s five government agencies from three different departments: Justice, Treasury, and Homeland Security.

But that’s not all. According to Phil Jordan, a former director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center, the State Department has been selling military-grade weapons directly to the Zetas, the Mexican drug cartel originally formed by mutinying Mexican special forces.

It is not alleged that the Zeta sales were connected with Fast and Furious, but that only makes it worse. At least Fast and Furious was ostensibly a law enforcement operation.

So we have four departments of the Obama administration all working to make sure that Mexican drug cartels have weapons. But at the same time, the Obama administration is tightening gun controls on law-abiding Americans.

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I’ve been reluctant to believe that our government, even under this current administration, would deliberately traffic guns to Mexican drug cartels in order to promote a gun-control agenda in the United States, but it’s getting very hard to deny now.

We already know that the ATF stopped tracking the guns once they were in criminal hands, which undercuts any legitimate law-enforcement purpose. Now an email has surfaced that makes an explicit political connection.

Mark Chait (the ATF’s assistant director for field operations) wrote (via Instapundit) to William Newell (director of the Tucson ATF) on July 14, 2010 to ask for anecdotal evidence to support a new proposed ATF policy restricting gun sales in border states:

Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations.

As I understand it, Fast and Furious was already underway on July 14, 2010, so this email doesn’t explain how the operation got started. However, it does prove that the Tucson office was involved in promoting an anti-gun agenda, and it could explain why Newell never reeled the program in, despite numerous pleas from rank-and-file ATF agents. (ASIDE: The ATF got its wish, despite its malfeasance becoming public. Shameless.)

There’s more. It now appears that Gunwalker was not limited to the Tucson ATF, but was a nationwide strategy. In addition to the Tampa ATF, there may have been similar operations in Texas and Oklahoma.

That’s not all. Rep. Issa and Senator Grassley, who are heading the Congressional investigation, have written to the Department of Justice naming 12 people they know for a fact were aware of Gunwalker. The list includes Gary Grindler, Eric Holder’s chief of staff. Is it plausible that Holder’s office knew but Holder himself was never informed?

Plus, the Department of Justice is actively obstructing the Congressional investigation. In addition to ordering its employees to remain silent, the DOJ is engaging in witness tampering, by its own definition.

The ATF and Department of Justice might still turn out to be innocent, somehow, but they are certainly acting guilty.

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UPDATE: This story casts doubt on whether the Tampa operation was so similar to Gunwalker. One certainly hopes not. But if this was above board, why did they conceal it from Congressional investigators? (Via the Corner.)

If this report from Examiner.com is accurate (and, given what we’ve learned about the Gunwalker scandal, I have no reason to disbelieve it), it wasn’t just the Phoenix ATF that was trafficking guns to Mexican drug cartels. The Tampa ATF was walking guns to Honduras, from whence they were then sent on to Mexican drug cartels.

The isn’t just another outrage in the burgeoning scandal. This shows that the Gunwalker strategy was not merely one ATF office gone horribly wrong, it was a national strategy. The Examiner.com report also adds that the Tampa ATF decided to conceal their actions from the Congressional investigation:

There are emails in existence where [Tampa ATF director Virginia] O’Brien has advised those involved that Tampa does not have to report their walked guns because Tampa FD is not a part of Southwest Border or Project Gunrunner.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has granted the ATF the top item on its wish list:

The Obama administration on Monday granted new powers to federal regulators fighting gun traffickers on the violence-plagued Mexican border. Issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the new rules require border-state gun dealers to report bulk purchases of assault weapons made by individual buyers over short spans of time — a tool requested in December by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

This is astonishing. In this ongoing scandal, in which the ATF has shown its inability to carry out its duties legally or responsibly, the ATF is not being served with the indictments it deserves, but is instead being granted new powers! One might even get the idea that the DOJ doesn’t take this scandal seriously. . .

For now the ATF’s new powers are good only in the Mexican border states, but you know it’s only a matter of time until they take them nationwide.

(Via the Corner and Instapundit.)

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, is this even legal? Can the DOJ and ATF really impose new burdens on gun merchants without an act of Congress?

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