Nytimes news fast and furious scandal how to#
Nytimes news fast and furious scandal series#

From 2010, when Congress began investigating, to 2011, gun seizures by Group VII and the ATF’s three other groups in Phoenix dropped by more than 90%. But the public bludgeoning of the ATF has had the opposite effect. Meanwhile, Issa and other lawmakers say they want ATF to stanch the deadly tide of guns, widely implicated in the killing of 47,000 Mexicans in the drug-war violence of the past five years. 'Issa’s claim that the ATF is using the Fast and Furious scandal to limit gun rights seems, to put it charitably, far-fetched.

Nytimes news fast and furious scandal series#

AND that he somehow conspired to continue those tactics in the first place.įortune’s Katherine Eban, who has a balanced account of the series of events that led to the 'gunwalking-related murder' of ATF agent Brian Terry, concludes her piece this way: But you can’t argue both that he should have been better appraised. Maybe this is a bad thing maybe the AG should have been better appraised of controversial tactics. All indications are that it will find that Eric Holder’s inner circle was not cognizant of what was going on, on the ground. In a few months the Justice Department’s Inspector General will come out with its own investigation of what the Main Justice did and didn’t know. That they wouldn’t take the next step and begin to propose modifications to the law is a sign of how powerful the taboo is against any sort of gun law tightening.

Nytimes news fast and furious scandal how to#

Indeed, the Justice Department was trying to figure out how to prosecute the bad guys under existing laws, which aren’t adequate. That’s because there ARE no documents that exist to show that there was any interest at the higher levels of the Department in using the unfolding matter of the 'gun-walking' to change the law. They date to a time well after the ATF under Obama decided to modify and expand the Bush-era program. The documents that the Republicans seek have nothing to do with Fast and Furious. But because absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence and because the ecutive branch is going to have to protect its deliberate process privileges, IPSO facto, QED, it’s now Eric Holder’s job to prove that the unproven supposition of a conspiracy is not true.

There is no evidence (other than ATF e-mails taken out of context) that anyone EVER, anywhere, decided to use the 'gunwalking' tactic to make a case for back-door gun control (somehow).

After news broke last week that Volkswagen had partially funded a study that exposed both humans and monkeys to diesel exhaust, the. That’s why it is so crucial, almost comically so, for House Republicans, to keep the focus on anything other than the facts that have been revealed so far. Testing was reportedly conducted on both humans and monkeys. The NRA for years has been telling us that 'guns don’t kill people-people kill people.' But now, they’re arguing the reverse: forget about the people who used the guns to kill people: it’s all about the guns! But the investigations show that the US government cannot under current political and legal conditions effectively prosecute traffickers in long guns. But this, of course, is EXACTLY what Republicans cannot have.