Newsbusted with Jodi Miller
DAILY CALLER
The Reason Fast and Furious Happened
by Richard Lorenc
June 21, 2012
Now that President Obama has exerted “executive privilege” — the president’s unique and quite imperial ability to avoid accountability to the public — the spotlight is shining even brighter on the lethally unsuccessful Fast and Furious “gun-walking” operation.
As a result of the ongoing investigation, the Department of Justice has shelved the imbecilic tactic of permitting known criminals to transfer weaponry to violent gangs, and Attorney General Eric Holder will, one way or another, soon be out of a job.
But amid the partisan-fueled scandal, too few are questioning the reason Mexican criminals find it profitable to murder so many people year after year. We know these thugs have an insatiable desire for powerful guns, but why?
The answer, as ever, is the official policy of the U.S. government to prohibit the legal trade of drugs from Mexico.
The War on Drugs is the reason Operation Fast and Furious was conceived. It’s also behind the deaths of 50,000 innocent Mexicans over the last five years, the deaths of 10,000 Americans each year, the imprisonment of 1 million Americans each year and the spending of $44 billion of taxpayer funds annually.
Mexican drug cartels create $39 billion in profits yearly through the trade of illicit substances such as marijuana. It is obvious prohibition does not make the drug lords’ costs of doing business high enough to dissuade them from engaging in this business. To the contrary, the policy itself permits the cartels to profit handsomely from many people’s deaths. By restricting the supply of drugs artificially, prohibition raises prices and pads criminal monopolists’ bottom lines.
In essence, $44 billion from U.S. taxpayers subsidizes $39 billion in profits for Mexican drug cartels.
THE NATIONAL REVIEW
Obama's Best Kept Secret
by Rich Lowry
June 22, 2012
Pity lead House Republican investigator Rep. Darrell Issa of California. It is his misfortune that he isn’t looking into matters about which the Obama administration can talk freely — namely, all its covert national-security programs.
If Justice Department documents that Issa’s committee seeks from Attorney General Eric Holder had been the subject of a top-secret meeting in the White House Situation Room, their contents already would have been splashed across the media. Issa could read the A1 New York Times story and be done with it.
But the Holder documents are an entirely different matter. They relate to the bizarrely misconceived Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed guns purchased from U.S. shops to fall into the hands of Mexican drug gangs on the theory that . . . well, it’s not clear exactly what the theory was. Somehow, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives thought that letting 2,000 guns “walk” into the arsenals of bad actors with no means of tracking them would be a devastating blow against gun-trafficking.
The cone of silence has slammed shut on the latest batch of Fast and Furious documents subpoenaed by Issa. When it is a secret, high-tech program to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program, administration officials are chatty and expansive; when it is documents that could further embarrass Attorney General Holder, their rule is “Loose lips sink ships.” President Barack Obama is making a dubious claim of executive privilege to protect documents that, if they are truly of no consequence, there’s no reason to protect.
The Coming DNC Disaster
by Michelle Malkin
June 22, 2012
There aren't Greek columns tall or wide enough to camouflage Barack Obama's impending North Carolina catastrophe. In September, the campaigner-in-chief will travel to Charlotte for his party's presidential nominating convention. For once, the incurable jetsetter may wish he had stayed home.
Obama's stage managers envision a triumphant, unifying coronation reminiscent of their 2008 DNC production in Denver. But the southern swing state is turning into a Democratic disaster zone.
Start with the North Carolina Democratic Party. At the state party convention last week, Obama for America was AWOL. The glaring absence of high-level national Obama surrogates was noted "as odd," according to the Charlotte News and Observer. There's good reason to steer clear. The party is embroiled in a sordid sex scandal that won't go away.
Earlier this year, former party communications staffer Adriadn Ortega, 26, accused former NCDP executive director Jay Parmley of repeated sexual harassment and physical groping. Documents leaked to the conservative Daily Caller news site revealed a hush-hush financial settlement involving the two men. Ortega was fired; Parmley resigned; state Democrats went into panic mode.
"If this hits the media, the Democratic Party, our candidates and our credibility are doomed in this election," a local candidate complained to NCDP chairman David Parker. A defiant Parker resisted statewide calls (including a desperate request from outgoing Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue) to resign. Ortega filed a defamation suit against Parker and the NCDP last week. The White House, which has trumpeted its stand against workplace harassment, has been mute on the story.
Other Democrats are boycotting North Carolina to avoid an entirely different taint: the scandal-plagued president himself. By TheDaily.com's count, at least seven Democratic officials will skip Obama-palooza: New York Democratic Reps. Bill Owens and Kathy Hochul; Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Mark Critz; three endangered Democratic politicians from West Virginia, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, Sen. Joe Manchin, and Rep. Nick Rahall; and Utah Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson.
The Democratic boycotters have dinged Obama on everything from his election-year illegal alien amnesty power grab to his failed jobs programs to his destructive war on coal. While "Forward!" may be the official Obama campaign slogan, "Back Away!" is quickly becoming the dissenting Democrats' rallying cry.
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