Let us remember...No one died in Watergate.

It appears the Democrat Party-funded national news organizations cannot be bothered with the details of this story.

Holder Lied, Agents Died?

 Posted 07/26/2011 06:41 PM ET

Scandal: As hearings reveal the attorney general to be either a charlatan or a boob, word comes of possible FBI complicity in letting guns "walk" into Mexico, ordered by an administration pushing gun control.

If there was any doubt that Project Gunrunner and its offshoot, Operation Fast and Furious, had little to do with stopping gun-trafficking into Mexico and a lot to do with creating an atmosphere for more gun control, it ended with the revelation by Fox News that two convicted felons were allowed to buy and move more than 300 guns into Mexico, something the FBI should have caught but didn't.

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 through its National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

According to court records reviewed by Fox News, two of the 20 defendants indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation — and, yes, there have been indictments — have felony convictions. Jacob Wayne Chambers and Sean Christopher Stewart obtained more than 360 weapons despite criminal records that should have prevented them from buying even one gun.

When asked about the breakdown, Stephen Fischer, a spokesman for the NICS System, said the FBI had no comment. We are not surprised. Since day one, you could here crickets chirp every time the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or the Department of Justice was asked about an operation that got two U.S. agents killed.

We suspect the FBI was ordered to look the other way just as ATF agents were told to every time they had a chance to interdict weapons going to Mexico, allegedly the whole purpose of the operation. That order could only have come from Attorney General Eric Holder.

"Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals — this was the plan," ATF agent John Dodson testified before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Government Oversight Committee. "It was so mandated." Agent Olindo James Casa said that "on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms."

Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast

One ATF agent who talked to Fox News said that NICS officials called the ATF in Phoenix whenever their suspects tried to buy a gun. Instead of stopping the transactions, the green light was usually given to allow the transaction to proceed it.

Both President Obama and Attorney General Holder have disavowed any knowledge of the ATF's actions, though we have documented how Holder boasted of the program to Mexican officials and a deputy attorney general said things were done as "the president has directed us."

Rep. Issa is certain that the Fast and Furious operation was known by most top officials at the Justice Department and that Holder either knew and misled Congress or was so out of the loop he was guilty of incompetent mismanagement. Issa's not sure which is worse: "He knew and he's lied to Congress, or he didn't know, and he's so detached that he wasn't doing his job."

Border Patrol Agent Agent Brian Terry and Immigration Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata were killed in separate incidents where weapons allowed to "walk" into Mexico were recovered. "Brian Terry's loss was preventable," says Issa. So was Jaime Zapata's.

Now the FBI may have been coerced into being an accessory. "It is unconscionable and goes beyond just being a terribly ill-conceived investigation to bordering, if not crossing, into criminal activity," says Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., a former federal prosecutor and member of Issa's committee.

The lies, the intimidation of witnesses, the administration denials — all are part of a cover-up strongly reminiscent of Watergate except for one thing: Nobody died at Watergate.

Congress is derelict on Black Panther case

My numerous personal letters to each of my Senators and my State representative have gone unanswered.  Something is radically amiss here!  Our Congress has become totally unaccountable.

~article~

In the matter of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party, it's long past time for Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees to start protecting the institutional powers of Congress and of independent agencies.

Eleven months ago, the Justice Department suddenly and surprisingly dropped its case against three defendants and accepted a weak injunction against a fourth, stemming from the incident in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008 in which Black Panthers disrupted a neighborhood polling place. Since then, the Justice Department has stonewalled multiple requests for information from news organizations, a number of congressmen and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Despite a legal requirement that all federal agencies must comply with subpoenas issued by the Civil Rights Commission, the Justice Department has objected to "each and every" question and document request submitted via subpoena. The department also refused to let its line attorneys be interviewed by the commission and even transferred one of the key attorneys to South Carolina to put him out of the commission's subpoena jurisdiction.

The Civil Rights Commission is "an independent, bipartisan, fact-finding agency" with the duty to investigate and report on instances in which it appears that citizens' voting rights have been abridged because of race, sex, ethnicity or disability. Technically an executive-branch agency, the commission features four of eight commissioners who are appointed directly by leaders of Congress.

Congress long has recognized that the commission's independence and ability to issue reports to Congress makes the commission an invaluable safeguard for Congress against executive malfeasance.

Congress therefore should take heed of an April 1 letter that commission Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds wrote to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. demanding his "direct response" to the commission's repeated requests for more information. Calling the department's lack of cooperation a "dangerous precedent," Mr. Reynolds blasted the department's original decision to dismiss the case. The Justice Department "appears to have provided hate groups of every ilk a precedent that will assist them in avoiding liability for voter intimidation," he said.

An even lengthier letter two days earlier, this one from commission General Counsel David P. Blackwood to Joseph H. Hunt of the Justice Department's Civil Division, requested that the department appoint a special counsel on the matter because the department had demonstrated "an inherent conflict of interest." So far, Mr. Blackwood wrote, "the department's existing discovery responses fall short of an even minimum level of cooperation."

Congress needn't look far to understand that the department's unseemly obstruction of the commission's work is an indicator of a more generalized secrecy that will hamstring Congress' own, justifiable oversight efforts. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, and Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, have been similarly rebuffed on the same Black Panther issue on multiple occasions.

If Congress lets the Justice Department get away with such obstinacy, it will be setting a worrisome precedent.

A Congress that won't keep the Justice Department honest is a Congress that has been emasculated. And a Justice Department accountable to no outside agency or branch of government is a department whose powers could easily become sinister.

(Click on bold headline for complete story)