 by Chris HayesStory of the Week, Up w/ Chris Hayes |
Given what we know about the Republican Party, and the way the House of Representatives conducts itself when run by Republicans and with a Democrat in the White House, it shouldn't really count as news when a House committee finds the Democratic attorney general in contempt of Congress.
After all, the last time we had a GOP house and a Democratic attorney general—during the Clinton administration— the House Oversight Committee voted on a party-line vote to find Janet Reno in contempt for failing to turn over two memos regarding whether an independent prosecutor was needed to investigate allegations regarding Democratic campaign-financing.
So this week's news that the same committee voted on a party-line vote to hold Eric Holder in contempt for refusal to turn over a trove of documents shouldn't really count as news.
But, alas, conservatives and House Republicans are good at ginning up outrage and their target is the Fast and Furious program, an attempt begun under the Bush administration to track illegal guns as they made their way through the hands of Mexican drug traffickers. The tracking wasn't very well executed, and at least one of the guns that should have been monitored was used instead to shoot and kill Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. (This horrible tragedy was one of about 30-thousand people killed every year by guns. Somehow we don't see much outrage and grief from Republicans about those).
Most importantly in understanding the politics of this psuedo scandal, you have to know that the NRA scored the vote for contempt, meaning that it will consider that vote when it gives lawmakers their NRA grade for the election. And this reveals much of what the Fast and Furious fracas is really about, and it brings to mind a phrase I first heard from a Democratic operative when I was conducting interviews for my book.
The operative told me we have to confront the fact that we are living in the era of what he called "post-truth politics." And he had a very specific definition for what this meant. In a media environment where conservative media has a monopoly on the information its audience receives, you can no longer create viable opportunities for political compromise by making substantive concessions. 'What does that mean?' I asked.
Well, at the time we were talking, the negotiations over the Affordable Care Act were heated, and the White House looked like it was pretty clearly going to sacrifice the public option in those negotiations. At least part of the thinking was, if you get rid of the public option—in other words a substantive policy concession to the right—you'll gain some political ground because people could no longer attack the Affordable Care Act as a government takeover of healthcare.
Except, as it turned out after passage... well, wrong.
Rep. Todd Akin: "We want to get rid of this tremendously expensive government takeover of the healthcare in America."
Mitt Romney: "The President's attention - it was elsewhere. Like a government takeover of healthcare..."
It didn't matter, my source was telling me, what the actual policy details of the bill were, of course they were going to get attacked for a government takeover of healthcare.
The White House had yet to understand this dynamic. It still believed it could gain political traction by compromising on policy substance.
The same dynamic played out in immigration. After the President took office, the Department of Homeland Security ramped up enforcement, deporting more people each of the first 3 years Obama was in office than George W. Bush ever had. This was, quite explicitly, part of a political strategy on the part of the White House to prove it was serious about enforcement, so that it could have the credibility to make progress on comprehensive reform. The President even said as much at the State of the Union:
"I believe as strongly as ever that we should take on illegal immigration. That's why my administration has put more boots on the border than ever before. That's why there are fewer illegal crossings than when I took office. The opponents of action are out of excuses. We should be working on comprehensive immigration reform right now."
But of course none of it mattered to the Republicans, conservatives and immigration restrictionists who still pummeled the president as being soft and weak and bent on drowning America in an ocean of Mexicans.
Fox News Host Eric Bolling: "Mr. Obama talked to La Raza and then he went ahead and did go in fact usurp this document right here, the constitution, and provide a backdoor amnesty for 300,000 illegals."
Which brings us to gun control. This president has done basically nothing to restrict the use or sale of guns. He has pushed no major legislation, issued no major executive orders. And if anything he's been good for business. Heck, the Brady Campaign, the premiere gun control advocates, have given him a grade of F. But that hasn't earned him any credit with the right and the NRA. They are still talking like this:
NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre: "It's all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the second amendment in our country."
Mitt Romney: "It's time to elect a President who will defend the rights President Obama ignored or minimizes, and I will protect the second amendment rights of American people."
And so, that's why promoting this implausible conspiracy theory about a secret plot to make gun owners look bad by giving guns to Mexican traffickers is so important to the right and the NRA. It's why they've been flogging Fast and Furious and why the NRA scored the vote on contempt. Since there is no actual case that the President wants to crush gun-rights, they have to make one.Because this is post-truth politics. Because you cannot make political gains with substantive concessions. They're still going to call you a gun-hating Kenyan socialist.
I think as evidenced by the White House's announcement last week of protections for DREAM Act eligible youth, that they are finally starting to wake up to that fact.
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Where The Money Go?
You are being used like toilet paper if you vote G.O.P. The people you elected robbed our social security funds. That's why you are borrowing money from China (click here). About half of health care costs occur in the population over 65 covered by medicare. That money was spent and it is gone.
People are screaming about medicare and Obama Care when that isn't even close to the real problem. Congress squandered your $2.5 Trillion social security trust fund fighting -
Now ask why national debt increased as soon as President Obama took office (click here).
Bush emptied the social security trust fund before the recession began in 2007.
The actual problem right now is that lifetime average health care costs is about 15% of income for all of us, which is affordable right now.
The coming problem is that health care costs are increasing at double the rate of inflation, and that won't be affordable 10 years from now.
A big problem for old people that have nothing left to do but vote and go to the doctor.
And it is a problem for schools. The No Child Left Behind program was intended to gut inner city schools to make up these costs.
Dr. Ron Paul and Dr. Rand Paul are both screaming about "evil socialized medicine" and "privatized social security" because physicians are afraid their $300,000/year income will be federally regulated to reduce medicare costs after everybody figures out how social security was robbed.
Don't believe me? It already happened in the European Union. US voters haven't figured out how this works yet because news agencies are uneducated on the topic.
Obama Care is the only game left now that your money has been spent.
Are you aware most of the "burdensome tax increase" mentioned for Obama Care applies to:
Unless you are a millionaire or a health care CEO, you don't pay those costs.
Now tell me why you don't like Obama Care.
Don't forget the tax cut for the rich. The Social Security surplus was added to the general fund to make up the for the hole the tax cuts for the rich made in our treasury.
That's why they're pretending Social Security is in trouble, when it won't really be in trouble for 25 years, and even then, it can pay out 75% of its obligations. Remember, Social Security does not add to the deficit in any way. It has it's own revenue stream, us.
Not true.
The US would not be borrowing money from China if there was anything left in the social security trust fund. Not enough people wanted to buy US treasury bonds during the Carter administration, and Reagan "fixed" the problem.
Ronald Reagan created a false "social security panic" that allowed the house of representatives to empty the social security trust funds directly instead of writing IOUs.
Bush #1 called that "voodoo economics."
It is empty.
Social security administration cannot approve any more disability claims and they can't handle the baby boomer retirements that began a few years ago.
When somebody (usually the "reasonable conservative") says that he or she is in favor of immmigration reform, but only after all illegal crossing from Mexico (oddly no mention majority-WASP Canada) are stopped, would that like saying we can't lower taxes until all cases of tax fraud are stopped?
You got that argument backwards Johanna, we can't RAISE taxes until all cases of tax fraud are stopped. Republicans will lower their own taxes at the drop of a hat because only Democrats and Independents should pay taxes, Republicans are entitled to live off the public tit, and they do it well.
Not just post truth politics, post truth everything. In business around the mid-eighties we would get young MBA college grads pushing some new way to do business. Everyone on the shop floor thought it was BS but we went along and then it became obvious it was not working but even with overwhelming evidence you could not say it is not working because management was committed to their failed policies. They would keep coming up with stupid buzzwords and a new flavor of the month program and everyone was expected to fall in line but it was BS and everyone knew it was BS. This is one of my biggest concerns about Romney because most of the CEO types I have met are idiots. I have never seen a group of people who are so detached from reality. Look at quality, it has really gone down hill but marketing is more important than quality. form over substance, all show no go. One question that really interest me and Chris should analyze this; When Obama wins the republicans will no long have the goal of preventing re-election because Obama will not be running for a third term. Will they continue to be on the opposite site just to ruin his legacy or will they finally get down to business?
Hell yeah, I'm in contempt of Congress. they're utterly contemptible.
There's more to why Holderhate is important to the NRA — money. It is very good for both gun manufacturers and the NRA when Democrats are in office, because they use that for fundraising and to promote stockpiling. When Obama was elected, gun sales went through the roof. The business had been in a slump for many dealers during the Bush years, and Obama has been great for business. Similarly, the NRA gets more donations and membership money when Democrats are in office. They're annoyed that Obama hasn't done or even said anything about gun control (Holder's said a few things, which is one reason why they target him — there are actual quotes), but as you point out, that isn't stopping them. The "Dems = Gun Grabbers" idea has been so carefully bred into much (not all) of the NRA membership over the last 30 or so years that it remains a great source of revenue regardless of what the Dems actually do.
Hey, Chris
Point in favor of President record on deporting immigrations, pls see copy below from PolitiFact.com re increasing percentage of criminals in increasing number of deportations.
Might have mention in discussion on UP yesterday. Love your show!
The Truth-O-Meter Says:
The Obama administration increased the deportation of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes by 70 percent.
Barack Obama on Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 in a speech in El Paso
Obama says deportation of criminals up 70 percent under his administration
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In a speech on immigration reform in El Paso, Texas, President Barack Obama said his administration has focused on deporting illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.
"Beyond the border, we’re going after employers who knowingly exploit people and break the law," Obama said in the speech on May 10, 2011. "And we are deporting those who are here illegally. And that’s a tough issue. It’s a source of controversy.
"But I want to emphasize we’re not doing it haphazardly. We’re focusing our limited resources and people on violent offenders and people convicted of crimes -- not just families, not just folks who are just looking to scrape together an income. And as a result, we’ve increased the removal of criminals by 70 percent."
Obama's claim that under his administration, deportation of criminals increased by 70 percent suggests a significant shift in policy, so we decided to check it out.
According to data provided by the Department of Homeland Security, the number of illegal immigrants "removed" rose about 6 percent -- from 369,221 to 392,862 -- between the end of September 2008 (four months before Obama took office) and the end of September 2010. But a much larger percentage of those deported were convicted criminals. In 2008, 31 percent were criminals; but by 2010, the percentage jumped to 50 percent.
The raw number of convicted criminals who were deported went from 114,415 in 2008 to 195,772 in 2010. That's 71 percent. So that squares with Obama's claim.
Data for the first half of the 2011 fiscal year (which began at the end of September) suggests that trend is continuing, with about 52 percent of the deportations involving convicted criminals.
In an Oct. 6, 2010, press release, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the numbers reflect the administration's "prioritizing the identification and removal of criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety."
"Our approach has yielded historic results, removing more convicted criminal aliens than ever before and issuing more financial sanctions on employers who knowingly and repeatedly violate immigration laws than during the entire previous administration," Napolitano said.
Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a group that favors reducing immigration into the United States, said it's true that the deportation rate, particularly deportation of convicted criminals, has been higher under Obama.
"My sense is that Obama deserves credit, for all the complaints about him, that he has done maybe a little better than Bush on deportations," Beck said. "I think the main context, though, is that the amount of deportations under Bush was rather small."
And even under Obama, Beck said, the administration is talking about fewer than 400,000 deportations in a country with an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.
DHS statistics show that under Bush, overall deportations more than tripled between 2001 and 2008 -- going from 116,782 to 369,221. But in the latter part of Bush's presidency, the biggest jump was in the deportation of illegal immigrants who were were not convicted criminals. During the eight years of Bush's presidency, deportation of convicted criminals rose from 71,079 in 2001 to 114,415 in 2008. That's a 61 percent increase over eight years.
In the first two years under Obama, the data suggest a policy shift toward prioritizing the deportation of convicted criminals. And Obama is correct that there has been a 70 percent increase. We rate his statement True.
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About this statement:
Published: Wednesday, May 11th, 2011 at 12:07 p.m.
Subjects: Border Security, Immigration
Sources:
White House website, Remarks by the President on Comprehensive Immigration Reform in El Paso, Texas, May 10, 2011
Department of Homeland Security, Press release: Secretary Napolitano Announces Record-breaking Immigration Enforcement Statistics Achieved under the Obama Administration, Oct. 6, 2010
E-mail interview with Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, May 10, 2011
E-mail interview with Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, May 10, 2011
Written by: Robert Farley
Researched by: Robert Farley
Edited by: Martha M. Hamilton
Funny that in a show about conservatives' embrace of post-truth politics, Chris and the rest of the panel got punked by a Douthat lie that even viewers of the Daily Show know to be laughably false. Douthat injected, during discussion of Obama's immagration enforcement policy shift, the "truth" that Obama had said he couldn't legally do what he then did.
Start at 3:30 in this clip () for the actual truth.
This was a little disappointing.
The site seems to remove URLs. Great. Last time I'll try to communicate here.
Here's a question for the unnamed democratic operative. In American history, have we never before seen this "monopoly on the truth" exercised by Fox/Limbaugh-et al? What about Hearst's "You provide the. pictures, and I'll provide the war", or the media reporting in the 1770s or in the 1860s. The propensity of subcultures to narcissistically seek information sources that reinforce the tribal view is hardly a new phenomenon. In the field of culture history and sociology, it is an outlier point of view to suggest that is anything other than ancient.
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Progressives understood by 2010 that the US President had an model of politics based on idealistic rationalism. It is an old ideal, one all of the founding fathers espoused but none of them practiced. It became clear that Obama did not understand power. He does not understand forcing the other party to come to him. His view is very sensible- that both parties ought to do the responsible thing and find common ground. The practical problem is that by announcing his intentions, he places himself in a poor political position.
Obama simply does not understand the irony that if he announces he will compromise that he shall not achieve it, and that only overtly partisan and seemingly immovable president can force a compromise.
The great mystery that historians will toil over is how such a charismatic leader who repeated demonstrated such a strong emotional connection with voters could turn his back on his gifts and behave as if emotion didn't matter- that what is crucial in politics is constructing rational propositions to the exclusion of emotion and brutal punishing use of power.
Obama has been a cultist of the Enlightenment. Let's hope his second term is not so indulgent in magical thinking about how to best play games of politics and poker.
Dear Chris: I enjoy your contributions to the public dialogue and your topics; I enjoy your enthusiasm for these topics and your erudition. I have one small criticism; please take it kindly, because it is meant kindly. Can you, please, cut out of every sentence the words, "sort of"? These words cut down your brain-power with ideas that matter to you. They buy time--precious on tv--but do nothing in terms of presenting your thinking. Then, awful of awful, your guests use "sort of" all willy-nilly. More straight-up thinking, less "sort of." As in Eric Holder was, sort of, answering the committee; or Obama sort of responded; or, the issue, sort of, is transparency. Just --well-- put a buzzer on your wrist, and program it to buzz every time you say "sort of." I counted eleven in two sentences. I wish you well--and better than well! And your new baby, and all else. And look. I said that without saying, I sort of wish you well with your sort of new baby and sort of everything else. I mean this kindly. Truly kindly.
Marian, I agree with you and hope he gives it a thought. Also, Ed Schultz and a few others often make a great statement and then end with a question by adding, "don't they?". Chris and Melissa are great and I hope their ratings are climbing.
You say
without addressing the issue of whether this withholding of documents was worthy of a contempt finding. Isn't that the main point? Why brush over it so easily?
WHY are you using the euphemism "post-truth"? Some things are so bad and do so much harm to our society that they should be called what they are. To use euphemisms for those bad things makes them more "acceptable" and more tolerable. Do you want to make LYING to the American Public "acceptable" or "tolerable"?
Now, I understand you journalists hate to out and out "insult" anyone, but REALLY, when your child lies to you, do you just shrug your shoulders and say: "Oh, he's in his "post-truth" phase?"
Maybe you should read Ralph Keyes book from 2004: "The Post Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life".
Have you not heard? We are living in the "post-judgemental" multicultural reality. Never mind that this "tolerance" and "forgiveness" is precisely at the heart of what enables the Sandusky's, Jaimie Dimon's and Church pedophiles live to get a pass to perpetuate their activities.
Hayes's book is fundamentally wrong. The world is brimming with empathy- it's just tightly focused on those who share the same zone as "us". This has nothing to do with values or a breakdown in trust for elites or meritocracy. It is tribalism plain and simple.
Hardly the twilight of the elites, this is a dawn of a starkly lit new age of them, judging from the strength of the tribal forces they are harnessing.
@JohnMesserly
I read your post in #11.1 and previous one in #8. I am perplexed.
Some statements I think I understand and agree with like this one in first paragraph #8:
I, apparently, belong to the subculture - "tribe" - that agrees with views expressed on MSNBC. My mother watches Fox.
The second paragraph #8 includes this:
I would argue that the current hyper-partisan environment is what you get when "idealistic rationalism" meets - what is the opposite -- idealistic obstructionism. And the failure lies with those of us who wanted bi-partisan compromise staying silent and essentially allowing the loud obstructionists to get away with it. We disarmed the President.
I totally don't understand what you are getting at in #11.1
Ummm ... has something to do with tribes ... sorry, you lost me.
As for the rest, I think there is some disagreement about what the role of the "Elite" is, and even which people actually qualify as a member of the "Elite".
Take a quote from the blurb about Chris's book, "the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters."
[BTW - I have not read the book - is next on my list.]
This sounds to me like the "Elites" are the sub-set of the population that rise in political power and economic influence but are ultimately answerable to the ordinary citizen - "social contract". A member of the political "Elite" that violates the trust of the ordinary citizen gets voted out next election. A member of the economic "Elite" loses that influence if the ordinary citizen stops buying what they are selling. Let's call this the "Old Ideal"
The way you are using the term is that the powerful "Elite" have lost this social contract, are not answerable to the ordinary citizen and are, instead are retaining power by identifying powerful "tribes". Let's call this the "New Reality".
If this description of what is meant by "Elite" is true, there doesn't seem to be a contradiction between what the book says - the "Old Ideal" is gone - and you say - here is the "New Reality".
Either way, the big question is - What do we want? How do we get what we want?
I don't think we disarmed the President. I think his advisors has little regard for progressives. As Van Johnson put it, they wanted us to sit down and shut up so that they could take care of business. My thought was they were squandering the power that the massive Obama for America network of supporters represented.
The enlightenment established a false dichotomy between rationalism and emotionalism. Cognitive scientists understand everything from the brain stem up is based on emotion. George Lakoff talks about the disconnect between the Salinsky children of the Enlightenment running around identifying interests and rational and technically building political structures. But they are structures that are all thought and no heart. The members feel they are cogs and operatives, not part of an organic soulful organism. It is why Obama for America was a failure, and why the Dems' cynical letters soliciting "grassroots support" and the input of their constituents are so transparently mass mailing hype that it is more corrosive and dispiriting than the Fox News propaganda. So what I and Lakoff/ Manuel Castells and others are telegraphing movement towards is neither a cold technocratic constructions of the Alinsky types nor the emotional excess of Andrew Jackson populists. Lakoff calls it a New Enlightenment. I think his cosmology of political archetypes are as mechanical as Jung's pat system, but at least he is on the right track of thinking about the primal and central role thinking about the metaphoric thinking that is operating within issues. Anyway, that is the conceptual framework that I was alluding to in my quips about rationalism/ Enlightenment delusional thinking that long ago captured the President's imagination about how to best approach politics and use his gifts of communication.
One of the key mysteries Hayes attempts to get at is why other elites create an environment that enables the perpetuation of recognized misbehavior by another elite. Hayes points our that the elites are insular and feel greater emotional distance from the non elite victims. But asserting that people need to be more horizontally empathetic towards others is a motherhood statement without any real substance. Knowing where you want to be is not the same as knowing the paths you can take to get there, where you are now, or how you got so lost in the first place.
We need to understand about how we use people and thoughts as proxies for exercising judgement. Elites are proxies we rely on to perform services we value. We rely on them as proxies to exercise good judgement in our place. We rely on thoughts as a proxies for thinking. We size a person up early in our relationship with them, we exercise our judgement about them but after that we interact with the mental construct we created for who that person is. When the behavior of that person diverges from the construct as in the case of Sandusky, the cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable for our narcissism. Really our narcissism is predicated on establishing a comfort zone free of the cognitive labor of exercising our emotional, intuitive and logical faculties required for making judgements in our daily life.
And there is a great deal of cultural support for this resistance to using our human faculties. Being non judgmental and accepting is something laudable both on the left on the right when applied within the circle of the tribe. Outside the group, the world is a morality play painted in harsh Manichean terms. Let's not mistake these judgmental proxies for thinking with actual judgement though. What we need is not less willingness to judge the actions of others, but more.
There is no question we need proxies for thinking, and it is probably to challenge some thoughts for authenticity and currency less frequently than others. Yet the public yearns for a world where they can trust proxy thoughts and proxy actors with the certainty they can place in the Pythagorean theorem. The church, winning football team, and political ideologies are warm blankets people want to immerse themselves in.
Around about the time I start advocating that we judging people more, the Alinsky crowd rolls their eyes because the stock formula is that building a movement around common values and judgements is doomed with a non homogeneous electorate, but organizing based on common interests is much more practical and politically realistic. From this perspective, the less talk and judgement exercised among the rank and file the better. The more trust in technocratic proxies the better. The role for the members of the tribe is to contribute money and phone bank. When the election is won, we are to shut up, sit down and let the smart guy professional elites execute on satisfying the interests.
The message is, we don't care about you or your individual thoughts. You and your volunteer work doesn't really don't matter, but your money does. As for public opinion, we'll statistically identify the popularity of the demands being made and choose the ones that will motivate the largest segments of the electorate to vote their self interest.
This where liberal elitism has carried us. Not taking public financing was judged in 2007 to be the technocratically "smart" move to make. For the progressive base to not commit more than a billion dollars of their severely drained resources for single political campaign is an ill-advised expression of naivete, with misplaced clinging to principle about PACs. Goldberg's admonishment was that we need to out corrupt the right wing.
The trouble is, that this appeal to not exercise good judgement is a race to the bottom that has no end in this sort of appeal to escalation. Eventually the sides devolve to genocidal raids using WMDs, and those that do not respond in kind are claimed to be naive.
Maybe it is the conventional liberal establishment that is the more naive about where the technocratic path takes us.
Maybe this New Reality you speak of involves progressives who insist on engaging the world constantly with our hearts and minds rather than rely on proxies as a substitute for exercising judgements- whether they are proxy thoughts, or elites. Maybe we want to be appealed to based not on identification of our narrow self interests, but we want to be offered a way to recover our sense of self worth- to be offered the opportunity to serve together with brothers and sisters in order to achieve something bigger than any of our individual wants or needs.
That might be something a leader would do with a superorganism of supporters who were there for him in 2007 and could deliver the country from a ruinous path in a second term.
That is, if he is willing to exercise his gifts with the electorate, and is willing to play hardball with his political adversaries.
I realize this was a long winded response and possibly more confusing that my earlier post. This has been a 40 year quagmire for progressives, and it is time we awaken from our self indulgent slumber.
This looks like a good place for me to butt in.
I should probably figure out a way to explain this that will make soda pop shoot out of people noses.
Truth?
What truth?
We don't need no stinkin' truth.
@JohnMesserly
Thank you for the effort and ummm ..... that certainly clears things up :)
@Crackhead Awards
A few questions:
I apologize for the typos, too many to mention... EG Van Jones, not Van Johnson, and I didn't explain his position in the Obama administration of the context of the quote.
Anyway, I tried to tighten up my theme of the error of the idolatry of proxies in a slight rewrite I posted on my blog here. I really ought to put in some explanatory links but duty calls- I must go feed the children their breakfast.
If there is no conspiracy then why use Executive Privilage?
Wide Receiver under Bush used GPS electronic tracking. Fast and Furious did not. Why? Wide Receiver under Bush worked in conjunction with the Mexican government. Fast and Furious did not. Why? Wide Receiver ended under Bush. Fast and Furious was started under Obama in 2009 and didn't even end when the DOJ was first being questioned about it. Why did the DOJ lie about whether they knew it existed or not? Why did they lie about when they knew? I would expect a "journalist" to be curious. Why were whistle blowers ignored and later punished? Why do all the pages that the DOJ sends over have most if not all of the information redacted? What a waste of paper. I hope they are at least recycling. When the truth finally comes out can we remind you of your stupid article?
Because there are other perfectly valid reasons why Executive Privilege should be used.
Any guesses as to why he is using Executive Privilage this time?
Then what are they? EP protects communications to/from the Pres and his closest advisors in the WH. The Committee is seeking records concerning internal DOJ communications about the Feb. 4 letter to Congress, and communications between DOJ and the WH on the subject. If there are specific communications between DOJ and the WH that fall within EP, then the WH can catalogue them. But everything else is subject to legitimate Congressional oversight of DOJ as a cabinet level department created by Congress and funded by Congress. That's the way oversight works.
And clearly not part of EP are any documents that were created as part of the process of establishing Op. F&F which was a multi-agency OCDETF operation. This means much of the money to conduct the operation comes from a special allocation given by Congress each year to specifically fund OCDETF operations. To get designated as an OCDETF operation requires a detailed Op. Plan which must be accepted by the Regional OCDETF coordinator -- in this case the US Attorney in San Francisco -- and then approved by DOJ. This document would spell out all the operational tactics that are intended, as well as a cost estimate and timeline for them.
So, what's the justification for including this document under EP?
Maybe..perhaps...because the release of those documents would endanger personnel and provide intel on how we are going about getting information on those people we are trying to prosecute?
Obama decided to hold back wire taps and transcripts that would allow drug gangs to hunt down law enforcement agents and kill them.
Congress has leaked every classified document that they got their hands on.
That is a pretty good reason to use executive privilege.
Obama is going with the statute that requires wire taps and transcripts to remain in the charge of the original judge that authorized them.
My bet is that the problem will go away when Bohner has the people fired that violated federal law by leaking the classified documents they already got.
If 300+ gays and lesbians lost their lives because of these guns would liberals care? I guess if its just 300+ dead Mexicans its no biggie to the libbies.
How ironic that the Brady Campaign has inadvertantly caused so many deaths.
Post-truth politics and its abettor, post-shame politics. In this era, what would it take to make Michelle Bachmann ashamed of her religulous political pedigree? Or even just her creepy list of recommended reading? There's always a pundit, commentator, think tank, network, cable outlet, or dominionist preacher to "vouch" for her ideologies. Was McCain ashamed to select Sarah Palin? Is Sarah Palin ashamed to be Sarah Palin? No. While there's more coverage, there's less accountability. Romney's healthcare "conversion" can easily be rationalized in any number of partisan funhouse mirrors. Through the looking-glass, eh?
Based on his recent New Yorker piece "Unpopular Mandate: Why do politicians reverse their positions?" I would like to see Ezra Klein back on the show to hammer home this funhouse narrative of healthcare and the individual mandate. Republicans invented, championed, and voted for this policy for decades. The mandate is their brainchild. Now they've done a 180 and declared the policy unconstitutional. How do they account for writing and championing unconstitutional policy for two decades? Bob Bennett (R-UT) supported the Chafee bill and co-sponsored the Healthy Americans Act in 2006. Both featured individual mandates. The lineage of Obamacare is as Republican as lip-service to constitutionality. Bennett did a 180 of his own when faced with a Tea Party primary opponent, explaining, "I just wanted to express my opposition to the Obama proposal at every opportunity." With no accountability and no shame, opportunism runs amok.
Anyway, Robert Trivers has some recent, interesting evolutionary thoughts on the adaptive behavior of self-deception. As in, we practice deceiving others by deceiving ourselves. I'd like to see Jonathan Haidt back on the show because Ezra cites his work and several studies regarding political confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. Specifically, the studies of Geoffrey Cohen and Achen & Bartels. Dworkin would be a good choice to re-make the case for the constitutionality of the individual mandate.
Sorry for my pie-in-the-sky panel of heavyweights. But if "the remarkable and confusing trajectory of the individual-mandate debate" is the "new norm," then we need heavyweights to deconstruct why this is so, because it's almost certainly a losing paradigm of abjectly delusional, absolutist, and unproductive partisanship.
This is video of Holder admitting Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious are oo totally different operations.
That is not possible.
Different groups within the federal government are authored to operate under individual charters that specify unique things that eliminate the possibility of prosecution as long as agents do not operate outside the boundaries established by the charter.
The same group would have to have been assigned to both.
Holder may not know that.
The name of the charter is the only thing that shows up on funding line items that go up to Holder's level.
Classification restrictions eliminate all other inquiries on a need to know basis.
This video shows what AG Holder has been giving congress. Heavily redacted reems of paper.
You want to reveal the true identity of the enforcement agents so that drug lords can hunt and kill them and their whole family?
Or is your goal to compromise any future drug enforcement efforts?
Just curious which one you want.
Oh wow. My video short cuts have disappeared. And after I took the trouble to post them and then edit to post them again. What? Doesn't NBC want you to see the truth. Its just Holder testifying. Sheesh.
@magicbeans
I have trouble inserting links sometimes too. Sometimes they work, sometimes not.
You can assume it is some kind of conspiracy or chalk it up, as I do, to some kind of quirk of the interface.
Actually, I wonder whether using the XHTML mode (listed at the top there) would make a difference. Might be worth a try.
If you can get it to work, I would be interested in seeing the videos.
Trying XHTML Mode:
Here is a link:
{Well that didn't work!! - It was a link to the CBO website}
Another try:
Hey - it worked!!
Well I've done it 5 times and each time they appear and then they disappear. I'll keep trying.
Hey - where did it go!!!!!
The post up in #1 had lots - there must be a way to do it...
Try again...
www.cbo.gov/publication/42911
Leaving off the http://
So far its still there. Thank you so much for your help.
Links don't work on new accounts.
Just copy/paste the URL.
What Holder has been giving the oversite committee.
Holder admits Wide Receiver and Fast & Furious too totally different operations.
That is not possible.
Different groups within the federal government are authored to operate under individual charters that specify unique things that eliminate the possibility of prosecution as long as agents do not operate outside the boundaries established by the charter.
The same group would have to have been assigned to both.
Holder may not know that.
The name of the charter is the only thing that shows up on funding line items that go up to Holder's level.
Classification restrictions eliminate all other inquiries on a need to know basis.
What Holder has been sending the oversite committee
Well - I got it to at least save the link without the http:// (see #18.5)
Not a link you can just click - have to copy and paste into the address space.
Not perfect but an improvement.
Oh - there I see your links.
Holder has provided 7,600 pages of documents and access to personnel.
bcove.me/ewglnwbu
What Holder has been sending he oversite committee. This is my last try.
I didn't watch the entire 7 minutes.
Yes - the completely blacked out page is not terribly informative.
My assumption is that there were entire sections in that particular document that were either not relevant to the request or were restricted information that should not be released.
These pages were classified. That is why they are redacted/censored.
How did classified documents get into the hands of the press?
@Crackhead Awards
Senator Issa was holding up the blacked out page during the hearing.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bESZcRMCBKk
Holder admits Wide Receiver totally different from Fast and Furious.
Yes - there are very important differences between the two programs.
One difference is that the Wide Receiver program tried to use GPS to track the weapons. This apparently didn't work so well - the batteries failed.
The objective of both programs were similar though. Trace weapons sold in the US and identify the routes and individuals involved to try to limit or stop it.
There might be some differences, but the charter sounds identical.
FM radio versus AM radio.
Digital camera versus Polaroid camera.
Different groups within the federal government are authored to operate under individual charters that specify unique things that eliminate the possibility of prosecution as long as agents do not operate outside the boundaries established by the charter.
The same group would have to have been assigned to both operations. Personnel have unique training, education, and experience that cannot be reproduced.
The name of the charter/group is the only thing that shows up on funding line items that go up to Holder's level.
Holder probably funded the group without having any idea what they do based on the a recommendation from a subordinate that did not disclose the purpose.
Secret work can't be kept secret without that kind of isolation.
I suspect I would disagree with magicbeans (commenter above) about almost everything, but the more I find out about Fast & Furious the more appalled I am by it -- and by the blindly partisan way it's being discussed by people on the left. And I'm on the left myself, so I hate having to disagree with them!
Jon Stewart on the Daily Show is also no conservative, but he has taken an approach to the issue that's highly critical of the administration -- but he does it without the crazy talk that characterizes the far right.
And so far I haven't seen anyone on the left mention the reporting in December by CBS that showed officials in the ATF planning to use their illegal gun sales as a way to increase gun regulations they support. I assume this news is the basis for right wing conspiracy theories about Obama's supposed intention of using Fast and Furious to gut the 2nd amendment. Sure, that's crazy, but so were those ATF emails that wanted to politicize their secret gun tracking scheme.
The Republicans in Congress are insane. Let's stipulate that. But even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. If Obama or Holder or the Justice Dept or the ATF are engaged in some kind of illegal cover-up of the way they handled F&F, this could well become Obama's Watergate.
But even if nothing as serious as that is going on, it would behoove folks on the left to demand transparency on this issue -- and stop defending the administration at all costs.