ATF Project Gunrunner

I expect the vote to be completely along party lines... wouldnt matter if they had video proving the allegations... Politics as usual...
 
The House has scheduled the floor vote on for contempt for this Thursday.
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Yeah, same day as a major expected Supreme Court ruling. That'll siphon off mindshare.

Even the most strident of the administration's supporters in the media are now acknowledging the incompetence and severity of the operation, but they're still swearing it doesn't lead to Main Justice. Even though it was an OCDETF op.
 
My guess is that if it's not party line or very close, it will be Republicans voting against rather than Dems voting for but I expect very close to party line.
 
While the committee vote was polarized along party lines, I think a vote in general assembly will be a different matter.

Many Democrats who took office in 2006 were moderates, and quite a few had favorable NRA grades. More than a few of those guys signed off in support of the plaintiffs in Heller and McDonald.
 
True, but the pressure from the party "leaders" will be IMMENSE on this issue. It's hard for me to imagine many of them withstanding that pressure.

I'm not bashing the Dems on this either. I would expect a party line vote if the tables were turned.

It's why the system is so broken. If Holder were a Republican, everything the Dems have said and done would be coming from Republican mouths, and vice-versa.
 
The thing about it is, each branch tends to get a little bit testy when its power in the checks-and-balances system is belittled or challenged.

IE, Congress tends to react in a more united front when its authority is actually challenged.

So, this could go by party-line - it being an election year as others have noted, but it could also surprise some and come as a Congressional slap to an Executive that has tried to run both around and over Congress.
 
How does the NRA grade a representative who is absent or decides not to vote? I could see some of that happening if a nose count shows approval of the contempt vote. The administration might let some reps off the hook.
 
The 'commentators' on MSNBC were cursing out the NRA for pushing the investigation. Uh, just answer the questions and defuse this. Stupid politicians - always the coverup.
 
I don't know if anyone has posted this, but here goes.

The Five Biggest Differences between Fast & Furious and Operation Wide-Receiver
  1. First and foremost, operation Wide Receiver did not result in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent or an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer. Fast and Furious did.
  2. Second, Wide Receiver, though flawed, was more of a gun-tracing operation than a gun-walking program. Gun-tracing involves putting specific safeguards in place to track firearms, such as RFID chips perhaps with video or aerial surveillance. Gun-walking is what happened in Fast and Furious, where ATF agents sold thousands of guns without a reliable way to recover them, apparently just hoping for the best.
  3. Third, one must take into account the size and scope of the operations.
    Speaking to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Holder said that “three hundred guns” were allowed to “walk” (although note the difference between “tracing” and “walking” above) in Wide Receiver. While there is no evidence that suggests otherwise, the figure is dwarfed by the approximately 2,000 firearms that walked in Fast and Furious.
  4. Perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence proving the two operations are separate from each other is the fact that Wide Receiver was shut down in 2007 shortly after it was clear the program was a failure. This was before Obama was even in office and nearly two years before Fast and Furious began. Fast and Furious wasn’t shut down until late 2010 after the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans, a border agent and an ICE officer.
  5. Finally, unlike Fast and Furious, officials involved in Wide Receiver were reportedly in close contact with Mexican authorities during the operation, though how involved Mexican officials were is not entirely known. What is known is that Mexican authorities were kept completely in the dark during Fast and Furious, according to the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. He announced on June 1, 2012, that Mexico would be launching its own probe into Fast and Furious.

Source: Jason Howerton, The Blog at TheBlaze.com
 
I beleive you're forgetting another important difference between F&F and Wide Receiver.

Operation Wide Receiver came before F&F and involved attempting some new tactics, there were no precedents when the operation was executed.

In Fast & Furious however, the appointees who planned the operation took a known failed tactic from a failed operation and repeated it - defying all logic and common sense.
 
In Fast & Furious however, the appointees who planned the operation took a known failed tactic from a failed operation and repeated it - defying all logic and common sense.
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Not just took a known failed tactic and repeated it; but took a known failed tactic, which they thought up in the first place, then removed every single safeguard in that tactic, and THEN repeated it. And if you believe Assistant AG Lanny Breuer's testimony, they did this within a month of him warning them about the previous failed tactic.

This is why I am puzzled when sympathizers of Fast & Furious keep bringing up Wide Receiver. Surely they have to realize that continually bringing up Wide Receiver is eventually going to lead to a comparison between the program and Fast and Furious is going to look even worse when that happens? I don't think that is a comparison you want the average American to even think about making if you are trying to defend Fast and Furious.

From a spin control standpoint it just seems like amateur hour at the White House. When even the New York Times is going "If it is so straightforward, then just give them the documents already and put this to rest", you've got a publicity problem.
 
In Fast & Furious however, the appointees who planned the operation took a known failed tactic from a failed operation and repeated it - defying all logic and common sense.
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The appointees did not plan Fast and Furious: They approved a flawed plan concocted by career bureaucrats of the BATFE. F&F was planned in the Phoenix office of the BATFE by many of the same folks who ran Wider Receiver.

Project Gunrunner was the program under which Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious operated. Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious were run by the same career bureaucrat; SAC Newell of the BATFE.

Gunrunner remains an ongoing BATFE operation.

http://www.atf.gov/firearms/programs/project-gunrunner/
 
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This is why I am puzzled when sympathizers of Fast & Furious keep bringing up Wide Receiver. Surely they have to realize that continually bringing up Wide Receiver is eventually going to lead to a comparison between the program and Fast and Furious is going to look even worse when that happens?
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FWIW I think this position was intended as a carefully aimed tactic to defuse potential criticism of F&F by diehard left-wing supporters of the President. Spokespeople have defused controversies amongst this crowd by saying that other Obama policies this constituency dislikes (automaker bailouts, Gitmo staying open for business, etc.) are simply continuations of bad Bush policies. This is one of two themes the administration likes to use when it goes on the defensive; the other is "...the president's mean-spirited far-right-wing critics are blowing it all out of proportion", which has also been invoked here.
From a spin control standpoint it just seems like amateur hour at the White House.
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+1; despite what I just wrote, I think the comparison is backfiring in the President's face with the decision to invoke executive privilege- a decision that can be seen as an implicit admission that Cabinet officials have actually done something so seriously wrong that the spin doctors won't be able to handle it.
 
BillCA said:
[Second, Wide Receiver, though flawed, was more of a gun-tracing operation than a gun-walking program. Gun-tracing involves putting specific safeguards in place to track firearms, such as RFID chips perhaps with video or aerial surveillance. Gun-walking is what happened in Fast and Furious, where ATF agents sold thousands of guns without a reliable way to recover them, apparently just hoping for the best.
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F&F had nothing in place to track the guns once they crossed the border. Perhaps I've missed some new information, but it is my understanding that not only weren't Mexican authorities informed, our own BATFE agents in Mexico weren't informed. The intent of F&F apparently didn't involve "tracking" the guns at all. The intent was specifically to allow them to enter Mexico and to be used in crimes and recovered at the crime scenes (or afterward), at which point they could be "traced" (not "tracked") back to the U.S. and to gun shops in Arizona.

Thereby "proving" the administration's (and the Mexican government's) dubious claim that the cartels were arming themselves through gun shops in the U.S.
 
Fortune Magazine: The Truth About Fast and Furious

An article was just published in Fortune Magazine titled "The Truth About Fast and Furious"

"A Fortune investigation reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust."
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http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/

It's a long arduous read but very insightful. It is either a smoking gun about political intrigue or one of the best constructed smokescreens in the history of a free press. The timing of this article is "too coincidental to be coincidental", considering the vote on Holder. I have to wonder if somebody was holding this back for just the right moment.

In either case, it's a must read for anyone interested in this case.
 
It's a long arduous read but very insightful. It is either a smoking gun about political intrigue or one of the best constructed smokescreens in the history of a free press
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Just made my way through the Fortune article. A very interesting read. Will have to read it through again later, as it's full of detail.

Glenn is probably right in his assessment, but I've seen few articles that covered what is known this thoroughly.
 
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