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Posts Tagged ‘Eric Holder’

Executive Privilege

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on June 21, 2012| Leave a Comment »

They’re at it again in the District. Republicans would like to have the Justice Department’s 80,000 documents related to that vaudevillian program of gunrunning called “Fast and Furious.” I wrote about it here: https://mountainmornings.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/unintended-consequences/

Our President told them to just hold on a minute, and issued his Executive Privilege, which means they can’t have them. Ouch. Remember back in 2007 when Justice fired 9 judges and the Democrats thought this was a political move? The shoe was on the other foot as a Democratic Congress asked for some clarity from President George W Bush. He issued his privilege to keep Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten from testifying in front of Congress. It’s nothing new, in fact our first President thought it up!”President George Washington set the precedent in 1796 when he refused a House request for documents relating to how the Jay Treaty with Great Britain was negotiated.” http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/20/politics/executive-privilege-history/index.html?hpt=hp_mid

Isn’t this akin to a parent saying “Because I’m your Mom/Dad and I said so?” Now since all of you were kids at one time or another, I’m sure that tactic still irritates you. It’s the absolute last move in any disciplinary chess game. Ironically, we’ve all had to use it ourselves from time to time. Trust us, you’ll understand it when you’re grown. Kids can’t think ahead, not logically at least until a certain age. Hence the temper tantrum. And that’s what’s happening now.

Yesterday, by a vote of 23-17, the House Oversight Committee is recommending that Attorney General Eric Holder be cited for contempt – even though the President has said these documents are confidential. And this sets up our political landscape for a long-winded fight right before an election. The party of the NRA wants to know why the ATF was so loosey goosey with all those firearms. Now I’m all for quality control, maybe even calling in some outside consultants to figure out what went wrong. Although it seems pretty obvious to the casual observer; give Mexican drug lords more guns? Our gun culture, our failed war on drugs, our woefully inadequate Congress – where to start. Ms Bean agrees with me
It’s just that at some point, the boys will be boys club on the Hill has got to stop bullying from their pulpits and go about the business of running our Country before we sink into an even deeper economic hole.

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Unintended Consequences

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on October 13, 2011| 1 Comment »

The first time I heard the phrase, “A law of unintended consequences,” it hit the right note of understanding – that intuitive feeling that no matter what we mortals try to plan, chaos is just one or two steps away.Take our poor Attorney General, Eric Holder for instance. A House Republican has subpoenaed his documents dealing with the farcical operation called “Fast and Furious” that originated out of a Phoenix, Arizona ATF office. Here was a plan destined to go horribly awry. Why not allow ‘straw’ aka illegal gun buyers to sell more than 2,00 firearms in order to track them to drug cartels in Mexico?

It’s as if Shakespeare wrote a play for Cheech and Chong. What could go wrong? According to the experts, there are three categories of unintended consequences.

1) Unexpected benefits – For example, research has shown that after Roe vs Wade, there was a statistically relevant drop in crime in the 90’s. Now the House is supposed to vote tomorrow on a bill that would deny women a life-saving abortion in a hospital taking federal funds. We all know this would only have an effect on the poor – if this passed, we may have the opposite of “unexpected benefits.”

2)Unexpected drawbacks – Let’s look at Prohibition. Watching Ken Burns’ series on PBS this week was compelling. Congress passed the Volstead Act leading directly to the rise of organized crime. It seems we are still trying to legislate morality by our so called War on Drugs. Drug cartels and the increase in our prisons of non-violent drug offenders are the direct result of not treating this as a public health problem.

3) Perverse results – This is exactly what happened in Mexico. Two of those guns registered to that ATF sting were found in Arizona near the killing of a federal agent. The Mexican government has reported finding these guns at more than 170 crime scenes. So I guess the questions for Holder will be along the lines of “….what did you know and when did you know it?”

Anytime we hear about a horrible massacre, like the one in Norway, or this morning’s smaller tragedy at a beauty parlor in California, Bob – who has pulled many a bullet out of patients – will always say, “It’s the guns.” Maybe it’s time to look at gun violence from a different angle.


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