AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- While Attorney General Eric Holder continues to “stonewall,” as Congressman Issa (R-CA) describes it, and make excuses concerning Operation Fast and Furious, the Mexican Government is making arrests.

According to the LA Times, over the weekend Mexican authorities arrested Jose Antonia Torres Marrufo, “a reputed enforcer for the country’s most powerful drug cartel — a man also alleged to have amassed weapons from the U.S. government’s failed Fast and Furious gun-smuggling operation.” (Italics mine)

Torres  “was in charge of operations in the border state of Chihuahua,” which includes the crime-ridden city of Juarez: a city that is just across the border from El Paso, TX, and one to which Fast and Furious weapons were believed to have been transported. Moreover, Torres, “[who] was wanted in connection with numerous crimes including murder, extortion, kidnapping and the sale and distribution of drugs,” had “two assault rifles and two  [semi-automatic] pistols” with him.

I can’t help but wonder, “Where did Torres get the rifles and the pistols?” Let’s see, he was “alleged to have amassed weapons” via Fast and Furious and he admits to taking over “armed operations for the organization in Chihuahua during the last two to three years.” Hmmm…it doesn’t seem like it should be difficult to figure this one out.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, where we’re all supposed to take comfort in the fact that Holder swears he did not authorize gun walking and that he believes gun walking to be a foolish tactic, this news just isn’t that comforting. In fact, this arrest should put the focus squarely back on any (and all) communications between Holder and Criminal Division Chief Lanny Breuer.

For according to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), on the very day the DOJ was denying it “would ever let guns walk,” Breuer was having discussions with Mexican officials about “plans to let guns cross the border.”

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- At one point during the hearings before the House Oversight Committee on February 2nd, Attorney General Eric Holder said he hadn’t learned of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death until 24 hours after it happened.

However, this timeline seems questionable at best when you consider that at 2:31 a.m. on very night of Terry’s death (Terry was shot on the night of December 14/15, 2010), then U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke received an email from an unnamed official that read:

On December 14, 2010, a BORTAC agent working in the Nogales, AZ AOR was shot. The agent was conducting Border Patrol operations 18 miles north of the international boundary when he encountered [redacted word] unidentified subjects. Shots were exchanged resulting in the agent being shot. At this time, the agent is being transported to an area where he can be air lifted to an emergency medical center.

Approximately one hour later, Burke received a follow-up email which said “our agent is dead.” The email was sent to Monty Wilkinson, Holder’s Deputy Chief of Staff at the time. And a few hours later, Wilkinson responded that the incident was “tragic” and added: “I’ve alerted the AG [Holder], the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.”

Here’s the problem: the time-frame doesn’t match up. What I mean is, if we go by the times the emails were sent and the time at which Wilkinson responded to say he had alerted Holder about Terry’s death, it’s not unreasonable to suppose Holder knew within 12 hours of the murder. Claiming that he didn’t learn about Terry’s death until 24 hours after the fact gave him 12 extra hours in which he could go golfing or play tennis or perhaps even get his team at the DOJ on the same page before news of Terry’s death broke(?).

Such a scenario isn’t that far-fetched when you consider the fact that Burke, who was the middle man for the emails in the wee hours of the morning of December 15, was also the attorney who actively tried to conceal the ties between Fast and Furious and Terry’s death. And moreover, as recently as November 2011, when Holder testified before the Senator Judiciary Committee, his stated position was that, “It is not fair…to assume that the mistakes that happened in Fast & Furious directly led to the death of Agent Terry.”

Honestly folks, no wonder Josephine Terry, Agent Terry’s mother, is so absolutely frustrated right now. She just feels like Holder isn’t giving straight answers and that he isn’t taking her son’s death seriously.

Wrote Josephine on her Facebook page:

Mr. Holder. How come you can never say my son’s name? You never have. All I ever hear you say is “I didn’t find out or I can’t say.” I’m actually tired of hearing your double talk in answering questions. What a joke you are. You know my son was a real AMERICAN, a WARRIOR, and a HERO, who was also protecting COWARD POLITICIANS like you. [I] hope you remember that.

Signed,

PROUD MOM OF BRIAN A. TERRY

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- As Attorney General Eric Holder sat before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday February 2nd, his answers were as predictable as they were unacceptable: predictable because they were the well-rehearsed answers he gives each time he’s asked about Fast and Furious (except when he gives different answers because the timeline demands it) and they were unacceptable because many of his answers were simply contrary to reality.

For example, consider how Holder continued to defend (and rationalize) the speed at which the DOJ is releasing subpoenaed documents to the committee. How he simultaneously maintained that the DOJ has “shared huge amounts of information” and promised to share more, albeit on the DOJ’s timetable rather than that of the Oversight Committee.

But the reality is that the DOJ has only released 8% of the subpoenaed documents, or approximately 6,000 documents. And according to a report from the Oversight Committee, among these 6,000 were many which consisted “of blacked-out pages containing no information,” as well as “many duplicate documents” meant only “to bolster [the DOJs] page count.” (In other words, among the measly number of documents delivered, many contain no information on them.)

At the same time, Holder & Co. have turned over 92% more materials (about 80,000 documents) to the DOJ’s in-house Inspector General. And I’m not the only one who views this through a skeptical lense, especially since the IG falls under the auspices of the DOJ. In fact, it’s easy to assume that Holder’s being more open with the DOJ’s IG because he fears them less than he fears Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and others on the Oversight Committee.

Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) certainly believes this is so. Thus during his exchange with Holder last week he said: “I think you’re hiding behind something here.  There [are] things you don’t want us to see.” Added Burton: “You ought to give us the documents.”

Stop for a moment and think about this: What would happen to the average American if they only provided a court or a federally-backed investigative committee with 8% of what that court or investigative body requested? Moreover, what if a portion of the 8% of documents they turned over were blacked-out pages “containing no information”?

Why then should Holder receive special treatment? (It’d be nice if the law were applied equally, to the ruling class as it is to the country class.)

The good news is that Issa is on record saying that if Holder hasn’t reversed course and complied with the document subpoenas by February 9th, the “committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold [Holder] in contempt of Congress.” Therefore, between now and the 9th Holder needs to hand over the documents  and we need to remind Issa that we expect him to follow through with the contempt charges if Holder simply thumbs his nose at the Oversight Committee again.

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

Democrats Praise Holder's 'Dignity and Honor' Then Call for More Gun Control

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- During the House Oversight Committee hearings yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder denounced what he called a “political gotcha game.”

And he was not without his defenders, Democrats all, who also tried to spin the hearing into nothing more than an election year sideshow orchestrated by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA).

Yet ironically, even as Holder and his defenders tried to make Issa and his Republican colleagues look like naïve political opportunists, the rhetoric of the Democrats was little more than a politically charged lesson in sycophancy 101.

For example, when Congressman Gerald Connolly’s (D-VA) time began, he addressed the room, and Holder, thus: “Thank you for being here and showing such dignity and honor in the face of some who are suggesting that you are other [than dignified and honorable].” And Congressman Mike Quigley (D-IL)  opened his time by referring to yesterday’s hearing as a “bonfire of the vanities.” He said this was so because “after nearly six hearings, [by those who] are looking for the perfect case to embarrass the AG and the President,” all that’s been learned is that “this is not it.” These two examples were indicative of the praise Democrats heaped upon Holder, and they clearly demonstrated that the facts don’t matter. Rather, they put party and power above the truth.

Yet as stomach turning as this was, perhaps even worse was the Democrats’ unabashed, open pursuit of more gun control during yesterday’s hearings. Almost to a man, once they finished praising Holder they took turns trying to alleviate the pressure he’s under by suggesting Fast and Furious couldn’t have happened if we had more stringent gun control laws. (In making this point, they conveniently overlooked the number of gun control laws that violated with impunity during Operation Fast and Furious.)

So as the saga unfolded yesterday, once Connolly had praised the “dignity and honor” of Holder, he and the AG basically had a conversation in front of the world about the supposed need for a new federal firearms trafficking law.

And Holder indicated that there is no significant federal straw-purchasing law either: so he wants that too. (Here, Holder was disingenuous at best because anyone who has bought a firearm within the last fifteen years knows that on the yellow federal background check form, the buyer has to declare that he’s the actual buyer of the weapon: that he’s not buying it for someone else who can’t legally buy it. In other words, the buyer is declaring that he’s not a straw purchaser.)

And I didn’t even get into the latter portions of Quigley’s time, where he also bemoaned the lack of a new federal firearms trafficking statute, spoke highly of the long gun reporting measure Holder & Co. implemented in the wake of Fast and Furious, and then actually expressed support for expanding the budget of the ATF, as well as boosting the number of ATF agents.

And hapless Holder concurred: “If we’re serious, as we all say we are,  in dealing with the problem of guns going to Mexico…we need more people than we have now in ATF.”

When Holder then tried to turn the hearing into a discussion about the need for the Senate to confirm a new head of the ATF, Chairman Issa interrupted and brought matters back to reality by saying the president had spent more than two years without even bothering to nominate a head for ATF.

The bottom line: It’s just not that important to them folks. And Holder (and his defenders) only bring these issues up now as a way to get Issa, Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and others, off Holder’s trail.

The Democrats have no intention of pursuing justice on the matter of Fast and Furious, and they proved it again yesterday.

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

Gun Owners of America

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- Appropriately, it’s Groundhog Day.

Because Attorney General Eric Holder has just testified that he spent another year hiding in a hole, oblivious to what was going on in his department or even what was in his inbox.

In testimony before Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Holder’s defense was – in the words of one DEMOCRAT -- the “Sergeant Schultz defense”: “I know nooothing!”

This, notwithstanding the fact that there were no fewer than seven memoranda sent to Holder (as early as July, 2010) briefing him on the Fast and Furious Operation, and the fact that his department was intentionally allowing guns to go across the border to Mexican drug cartels.

Those guns have already resulted in the deaths of over 300 Mexican nationals, in addition to U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry.

Yet, Holder smugly asserted that he didn’t have time to read memoranda forwarded to him by his subordinates detailing criminal conduct by his department under his watch. (Never mind Holder’s assertion today that his management style was one that is “hands on.”)

Which leads to this question: Could a hedge fund manager escape culpability by arguing that he didn’t read letters from his subordinates or attorneys warning him of criminal misconduct?

And another thing: What was Eric Holder doing that was so important that the deaths of 300 people didn’t warrant any of his “precious” time?

Let Holder explain to the families of the dead that their lives were trivial because he was so busy promulgating illegal regulations governing multiple gun sales reporting, unlawfully banning shotgun importation, and unconstitutionally justifying non-recess recess appointments.

Holder protested that questioners were “disrespecting” his office. But Holder has dragged his office and his department into the cesspool. The proper response to him is: “Disrespect? What about 300 murdered Mexicans?”

It is time for him to go.

About:
Gun Owners of America (GOA) is a non-profit lobbying organization formed in 1975 to preserve and defend the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. GOA sees firearms ownership as a freedom issue. `The only no comprise gun lobby in Washington’ – Ron Paul

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) opened this morning’s hearings by providing a timeline for Fast and Furious: a timeline that briefly described the role of every law enforcement agency involved.

He spoke about the debt we owe Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and agent Terry’s family. And he announced that ATF whistleblower John Dodson was present in the room for the hearings today. (Dodson is the Phoenix agent who risked his career and his life to inform Congress about details of Fast and Furious as they were visible to him on the street.)

Then Issa dug in deeper:

On Oct 11, 2011, after months and months and months of this committee trying to get further documents, we issued subpoenas for documents and were told they’re hard to get. Yet, ten times as many documents have been provided to the Inspector General. Mr. Attorney General, when is the primary investigative committee of congress going to be allowed the same access that the IG has? That the twelve thousand members of the IG have? We ask very little of government by contrast, …but we believe we deserve those answers in at least as timely a fashion as your own IG gets.

We’re going to ask you many things today, hopefully you came prepared to know [the answers to questions] on Fast and Furious. Questions like: What can you do to bring this to a close? What can you do to help the American people know this is no longer going on and will not happen again in the future?

Issa then went on to talk in detail of how frustrating it’s been to try to get information to date. In doing this he referenced former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, the attorney who covered up the connection between Fast and Furious and Brian Terry’s death. And he suggested that Burke “clearly didn’t do his job in a way that anyone can be proud of.” Issa then pointed to more stonewalling on the part of the DOJ, and specifically drew attention to Patrick J. Cunningham, who, when subpoenaed, invoked the 5th to keep from telling what he knew about Fast and Furious.

After Issa set the stage thus, it was time for the ranking Democrat on the committee, Elijah Cummings (MD), to provide his opening statement. And Cummings used the statement to let Holder know the Democrats were on his side. He then talked of how cooperative Holder has been and gave the A.G. credit for discovering that the roots of gun-running lie with George W. Bush, not the current administration. (Who knew?)

Said Cummings:

We’ve interviewed 22 witnesses and reviewed thousands of pages of documents. Because of our extensive work we’ve had concrete results. The committee has uncovered a 5 year practice of gun-walking out of the Phoenix ATF office.

Cummings then referenced Operation Wide Receiver again and compared it to Fast and Furious, which is like comparing a toddler’s fastball pitch to that of Nolan Ryan, and added: “But the committee found no evidence that the AG authorized gun walking. None of the agents described talking to the AG about gun walking.” Cummings then directed the closing portion of his comments to Chairman Issa, instead of Holder, and said this was the 6th time the Attorney General had testified about these issues, and he criticized Issa for holding what Cummings described as “more of a political campaign than a real hearing.”

Bottom line: The opening salvo showed that Issa is all business and intends to get to the bottom of this today. However, the Democrats, for whom Cummings spoke, have let Holder know they’ve got his back, regardless of the facts.

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

Gun Owners of America

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee tomorrow morning to answer for his failed leadership in regard to Operation Fast and Furious.

This operation, which was shepherded by Obama’s Justice Department, has led to thousands of guns being smuggled into Mexico — and to the deaths of two federal agents.

Holder has already been caught in several lies and appears to be digging in his feet even further.

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa will be grilling Holder once again and has threatened the Attorney General with contempt charges if he continues stonewalling.

Issa warned that if the Attorney General continues to obstruct his investigation, “this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress.”

GOA staff has been working closely with House committee members, and we will be attending the hearings and reporting to you on developments — both public and behind-the-scenes.

About:
Gun Owners of America (GOA) is a non-profit lobbying organization formed in 1975 to preserve and defend the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. GOA sees firearms ownership as a freedom issue. `The only no comprise gun lobby in Washington’ – Ron Paul

Congressman Issa Threatens Eric Holder with Contempt of Congress

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- I just received an email from Congressman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office, and as I alluded to in my last post on Big Government, zero hour is fast approaching for Attorney General Eric Holder.

He is to appear before the  House Oversight Committee for questions over Fast and Furious this Thursday at 9 am, and the closer we get to that time, the greater the pressure that seems to be mounting on Holder.

At the head of the crowd applying pressure to Holder is Issa himself, who has simply grown sick and tired of waiting on Holder to comply with the numerous subpoenas he’s received for documents related to Fast and Furious. As a result, Issa has moved from a “wait and see” approach to one of demanding Holder comply or else. To that end Issa sent Holder a letter on January 31 warning him that he has until Feb. 9 to turn over all documents or face “contempt” charges.

Wrote Issa to Holder:

[Your] actions lead us to conclude that the department is actively engaged in a cover-up. If the department continues to obstruct the congressional inquiry by not providing documents and information, this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress.

Issa has plenty of reasons to suspect a cover-up, and he’s not alone in doing so.  After all, the most recent DOJ document dump (on Friday, January 27), proved that despite months upon months of denials, the DOJ did have knowledge of gun-running all along. Not only that, but the DOJ’s own Lanny Breuer actually suggested gun-running at a tactic.  Who knows how many more revelations await us if Holder will only hand over the rest of the documents Issa has subpoenaed?

One thing’s for sure, it seems we’ve finally reached a breaking point where there are only two options: Either Holder complies with Issa’s demands or he faces charges of contempt. One way or another, we’re getting closer to finding out where the blame lies for this criminal undertaking referred to as “Fast and Furious.”

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- February 2nd is fast approaching for Attorney General Eric Holder, who is set to appear before the House Oversight Committee for questioning on Fast and Furious.

This will put him in the hot seat in front of Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and other congressional members like Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who have been steady on Holder’s trail since details of Fast and Furious became public.

Holder’s last appearance before a congressional committee was on December 8, when Issa made it clear how irritated he was over the changing timeline, Holder’s perceived arrogance, and the ongoing refusal to turn over subpoenaed DOJ documents. In one of the best exchanges on Dec 8, Issa looked at Holder and asked, “Have you no shame?”

That was also the hearing in which Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), expressed his outrage over the fact that Holder’s DOJ had submitted inaccurate testimony then withdrawn it in an attempt to avoid being charged with providing false testimony.

But a lot has changed since that early December hearing. Most recently, the last minute release of subpoenaed documents which show that Holder learned about Border Agent Brian Terry’s death on the day it happened: a point Holder has heretofore denied. (Emails between Dennis Burke, former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, and Holder’s then-deputy chief of staff prove this.) Additionally, other emails in the recently released DOJ documents show that the head of DOJ’s “criminal division, Lanny Breuer, suggested letting some illicit ‘straw’ weapons buyers in the U.S. [to] transport their guns across the border into Mexico where they could be arrested.”

Then there’s Patrick J. Cunningham, Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, who was subpoenaed to appear for testimony on January 24, but pleaded the 5th in order to avoid being “compelled to be a witness against himself.” As a result, a determined Congressman Issa has demanded that Cunningham’s underling, Michael Morrissey, Assistant United States Attorney, “speak with Committee investigators about his role in and knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious.”

All this to say, as I watch the hearings this Thursday I hope to see the committee place Holder under oath and then ask tough, pointed questions about these and other recently revealed matters.

For example, in light of the emails, Holder needs to give a clear and binding answer regarding when he found out about Terry’s death. He needs to explain how the DOJ can claim ignorance regarding “gun running” while their own man, Lanny Breuer, was pushing it as a means making arrests. He needs to explain what, if any, interaction he or other DOJ officials/affiliates had with Patrick J. Cunningham between the time Cunningham was subpoenaed and the time his attorney announced he would plead the fifth. And he needs to describe what, if any, interaction he or other DOJ officials/affiliates have had with Michael Morrissey at this time regarding the testimony Morrissey is expected to give when he speaks with investigators.

One more thing: The question on Breuer’s push for gun running could easily be tied to Holder’s April 2, 2009 speech in Mexico wherein he bragged about the implementation of “Project Gunrunner.”

Perhaps Issa can ask Holder if he and Breuer worked out the details of that speech together?

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

Chuck Norris

Dallas, TX - -(Ammoland.com)- I think the mainstream media and Washington elite think the majority of voters just fell off the turnip truck.

But the South Carolina primary and other current voting trends show otherwise.

The MSM’s are working double time to get us to forget about the unprecedented results of the South Carolina primary, but they are a sign of what could be in Florida, Nevada and beyond. They are also proof that American citizens will not be outwitted by the political shenanigans of the powers that be.

Let me give you a few examples.
Despite the fact that ABC paraded Newt Gingrich’s bitter ex-wife across its airwaves two nights before the South Carolina primary, Newt won women’s votes 36-30 percent over Mitt Romney. And married women and evangelical women both backed Gingrich with 40 percent support.

Despite (or maybe on account of) Mitt’s creation of Romneycare in Massachusetts and promises for Social Security’s perpetuity, Newt gained 47 percent of the vote (to Mitt’s 36 percent) among those 65 or older.

Despite the MSM’s attempt to convey Newt as old and outdated, he received 27 percent of votes from those between 18 and 29 years old, only being beaten by Ron Paul’s 32 percent.

Despite the MSM and Washington elite’s campaign to convey that Newt would be dangerous to the country and world, 39 percent of U.S. veterans voted for Newt, compared with 32 percent for Romney.

Despite Romney’s spending millions on ads in South Carolina to convince voters that Newt is an ethically compromised Washington insider, Newt won 45 percent of the votes from very conservative voters, while Rick Santorum and Romney trailed with 23 and 20 percent, respectively.

Despite the MSM’s pro-Romney coverage and six years of Romney’s campaigning, Newt stole 31 percent of moderates’ votes from the Massachusetts moderate.

Despite Romney’s often-flaunted business credentials, 8 in 10 voters who said they were very worried about the direction of the economy also voted for Newt.

Despite the fact that 120 evangelical leaders met recently in Texas and claimed to have come to a consensus backing Santorum, the initial vote of those leaders split almost evenly between Santorum and Newt, 57-48, according to CBN News’ chief political correspondent. I don’t think it’s coincidental that a similar amount, 45 percent, of evangelicals also voted for Newt in his landslide South Carolina victory. Forty-five percent of pro-lifers also voted for Newt, compared with just 21 percent for Romney.

Even in Florida, Newt’s popularity is evident by the sizes of his audiences. Despite the fact that Washington heavyweights John McCain and Bob Dole have come out to endorse Romney — in a drive that The Boston Globe described as “GOP insiders (rising) up to cut Gingrich down to size” — the Los Angeles Times reported this past week that “Newt Gingrich (is) winning the crowd contest in Florida.”

And despite the fact that Romney and his cronies have and will spend millions more dollars in Florida and Nevada to perforate Newt’s character and record again — according to Newsmax, in Florida 20 times more money has been spent for Romney than has been spent there in support of any other Republican candidate — I believe that voters will be neither bought by his money nor directed by his political spin and rhetoric, just as those in South Carolina didn’t fall for the fool’s gold.

More proof came this past week via the triple-gang of the MSM, Romney and Washington elite.

They all pounced again on Newt, claiming he is not a Reagan conservative. But they were discounted again, as former President Ronald Reagan’s eldest son, Mike, who also has endorsed Newt, joined radio talk show legend Rush Limbaugh by lambasting Newt’s critics.

Mike said, “I am deeply disturbed that supporters of Mitt Romney are claiming that Newt Gingrich is not a true Reaganite and are even claiming that Newt was a strong critic of my father.” And Limbaugh added, “That kind of stuff is why people hate Romney so much.”

Newsmax reported that in a 1995 speech at a dinner honoring Reagan, former first lady Nancy Reagan said:

“The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.”

There’s a reason 34 percent of those who voted for Newt in South Carolina said they “strongly supported” the tea party, dispelling another MSM myth (or is that a wish?) that the tea party’s influence has dwindled. Thirty-one percent of independents also voted for Newt.

To the naysayers of Newt, these words from Theodore Roosevelt are appropriate:

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause, who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

I think it’s time again that “we the people” showed the media and Washington elite exactly who is in charge.

South Carolinians were not duped by the titans of political swing. Floridian and Nevadan patriots, don’t you let them manipulate and muscle your votes, either.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CHUCK NORRIS

About Chuck Norris:Action hero and Second Amendment activist, Chuck Norris is one of the most enduringly popular actors in the world. He has starred in more than 20 major motion pictures. His television series “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which completed its run in April 2001 after eight full seasons, is the most successful Saturday night series on CBS since “Gunsmoke.”In 2006, he added the title of columnist to his illustrious list of credits with the launch of his popular Internet column. Now Chuck is a regular contributor to AmmoLand, click the following link to See more of Chuck Norris on AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

And Your Father Smelt Of Elderberries, An Open Letter To The Attorney General

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- Mr Attorney General, I have followed with great interest your performance, testimony and numerous statements to the press regarding the Fast and Furious Scandal.

And frankly, as an American Citizen I find you to be an embarrassment, an utter failure in upholding the Rule Of Law and a contemptible person.

You are unworthy of the title of US Attorney General, in fact, you have revealed, by your own words and actions that you are not even suitable to serve as a janitor in any Court of Law in the Country, let alone as an attorney and certainly not as ” The Chief Law Enforcement Officer in the Nation “.

You have clearly forgotten or more likely given your apparent hubris, simply do not care that you swore an Oath to defend and uphold the US Constitution and the laws of the United States. That means you are required to follow the laws, not disregard the ones you don’t like, in furtherance of your personal ideology and political goals. There is ample evidence to support the contention that you personally , along with several other high ranking Administration Officials, including but hardly limited to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Dept of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, your collective staff and underlings have committed numerous criminal violations of Federal and State Law, including violations of International Arms Treaties and weapons exporting laws, conspiracy to commit those same violations, perjury, providing aid or comfort to an enemy of the United States, Obstruction of Justice, and being an accessory to murder with depraved indifference.

Any single one of these violations, were they committed by a Citizen, would have resulted in near instantaneous charges being filed and a public “shaming” in the form of a publicized “perp walk ” of the accused, for all the major media to follow and report on.

But for you and your acolytes, things are different. There are clearly special rules for you and your associates. You go on television and claim ignorance, you assert (falsely and blatantly) I might add, that you are committed to bringing the perpetrators to justice and smugly expect the American People to believe that. Had you ever possessed even a shred of a sense of personal honor, integrity, character, respect for the institutions of law or responsibility, you would long ago have tendered your resignation from your position.

Instead you choose to allow retaliation against several whistle blowers who exposed this program, actively shielded personnel that implemented and carried out this Operation and proclaimed to the media that anyone seeking to hold anyone, including yourself responsible was doing so out of “racism” , clearly not caring that every time someone plays the “race card” for the obvious purposes of distracting others from their own culpability, it is not only transparent, it cheapens the term to the point that people become inured against actual cases of racist behavior.

Your clear contempt for the intelligence of the American People and for the tenants of the Rule of Law, applied equally to all is breathtaking in its scope and breadth. You have single-handedly managed to cast a long and dark shadow of dishonor on yourself, your Office, Law Enforcement and the so called “ Justice System” I would take this opportunity to remind you of the thoughts of a former Supreme Court Justice, commenting on behavior such as has been seen during the investigation into the Fast and Furious Scandal.

“Decency,security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subject to the rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.

In a government of laws, existence of government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” ~ Supreme Court Justice Louis D Brandeis

Mr Attorney General, do you actually believe that you will escape any judgement or penalty for your actions ?

While it is true that you may escape punishment at the hands of a Court of Law, judgement and punishment comes in numerous forms and is not limited to laws. Everyone of us, at some point, will face accountability for our actions, either by man, karma, fate, or a Higher Power. Sooner or later we all must accept responsibility for our actions and pay a price, and that includes you.

You do not deserve the title of Attorney General, the American People are entitled to someone much better then you have demonstrated to represent them as the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in the land. In closing, I have one more thing to say. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries !

More articles, commentary and information by Dan Robert available at That Every Man Be Armed.com

Chairman Issa explained that the only legally valid reason to assert the Fifth Amendment was fear that testimony would incriminate the witness in a manner that could be used in a future prosecution.

NRA - ILA

Charlotte, NC --(Ammoland.com)- In a move that stunned members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona has cited his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to testify.

The hearing took place on Jan. 20. The official, Patrick J. Cunningham, had been subpoenaed by Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to appear before the committee to respond to questions about his knowledge of and involvement in the “Fast and Furious” gun running scandal.

Chairman Issa called the assertion of Fifth Amendment rights “extremely rare.”

“The assertion of the Fifth Amendment by a senior Justice official is a significant indictment of the department’s integrity in Operation Fast and Furious,” said Issa. “This is the first time anyone has asserted their Fifth Amendment right in this investigation and heightens concerns that the Justice Department’s motivation for refusing to hand over subpoenaed materials is a desire to shield responsible officials from criminal charges and other embarrassment.”

Cunningham’s attorney asserted that his client is innocent, “but he has been ensnared by the unfortunate circumstances in which he now stands between two branches of government.”

However, Chairman Issa explained that the only legally valid reason to assert the Fifth Amendment was fear that testimony would incriminate the witness in a manner that could be used in a future prosecution.

This is the latest in a long series of failures by the Department of Justice to cooperate with congressional investigations into the “Fast and Furious” scandal. It is clear that after more than a year, it is the policy of the Obama DOJ and Attorney General Eric Holder to deny Congress and the American people the truth about “Fast and Furious.”

NRA-ILA continues to call for Attorney General Holder to be fired—and for the DOJ to fully cooperate with this investigation and tell the truth about who approved and oversaw this reckless operation.

About:
Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America’s oldest civil rights and sportsmen’s group. Four million members strong, NRA continues its mission to uphold Second Amendment rights and to advocate enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation’s leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the military. Visit: www.nra.org

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- President Barack Obama has a problem, a problem much bigger than his plummeting poll numbers among black voters, the ever-worsening housing market, or the chronically high national unemployment numbers.

Although these are all bad and must be weighing down on him —whether he admits it or not— they are minor compared to his deeper problem, which is his inability to handle criticism, his inability to handle the truth.

We first saw this when Obama was starting to run for president and he put reporters “on notice” regarding comments about the size of his ears. Since then we’ve seen it in the way he locks out reporters who ask hard questions and, most recently, in the way he appears to have lodged a complaint with Gov. Jan Brewer regarding her criticism of the way he has gone to war with Arizona to keep that state from defending its southern border.

If you’ll recall, in December 2006, after New York Times’ reporter Maureen Dowd had written about how Obama’s “ears stick out,” Obama tracked her down at a speaking engagement and said: “I just want to put you on notice. I’m very sensitive,” adding, “I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.” (Rush Limbaugh was then criticized for seizing on that comment and warning people that it demonstrated Obama’s skin was too thin for the rigors of the presidency. And in retrospect, Limbaugh was right.)

Perhaps you remember the April 2011 exchange that took place between Obama and Dallas news reporter Brad Watson, during an interview wherein Watson asked the president pointed, probing questions instead of the kind of light and fluffy stuff a CNN reporter asks when he or she gets the chance. For example, as the two sat face to face, Watson looked right at Obama and asked: “Why do you think you’re so unpopular in Texas?” And when Obama tried to make it look like he wasn’t that unpopular in Texas, saying he’d only lost in 2008 by a “few percentage points,” Watson countered: “Well, you lost by about 10%. 55 to 44.” And because Obama can’t handle criticism, he became noticeably bothered as the questions continued. When the short interview was over, an angry Obama whispered to Watson: “Let me finish my answers next time we do an interview.”

Of course Watson won’t get another interview, because Obama locks reporters out if they dare take him to task. As Keith Koffler wrote of Obama’s reaction to Watson back in April, “Look how thin-skinned he can be.”

Speaking of thin-skinned, that’s the exact phrase Gov. Brewer used to describe Obama after he walked across the tarmac in Phoenix on Wednesday and greeted Brewer not with “hello” or “good to see you,” but with a complaint about how she’d described his efforts to deep-end Arizona’s S.B. 1070. He said he’d read the complaint in a passage from her book, “Scorpions for Breakfast.”

There Brewer wrote:

[Obama] has repeatedly made fun of those of us who want to see the law enforced, saying we want a ‘moat’ with ‘alligators’ in it around our country. The reason he has resorted to these failed attempts at humor, I think, is that he supports a policy that is fundamentally undemocratic, and he knows it.

Said Brewer of the exchange: “He brought up my book and he was a little tense. He said he read the excerpt and didn’t think I was very cordial. I said we’d have to agree to disagree. He was a little thin-skinned and tense, to say the least.”

The bottom line: Obama can’t handle criticism. Obama can’t handle the truth. Dowd proved it in 2006, Watson proved in 2011, and Gov. Brewer proved it again two days ago.

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

Gun Owners of America

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- Attorney General Eric Holder — recently caught lying under oath concerning his knowledge of his department’s Fast and Furious program — may be moving a step closer to the inside of a jail cell.

On Thursday, February 2nd, Chairman Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold another hearing on the disastrous Fast and Furious operation.

Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, a member of that committee, is also pushing a resolution of “no confidence” in Holder’s management – or lack of management – of the Justice Department.

That resolution, H. Res. 490, provides a course of action for the momentum generated by that hearing.

H. Res. 490 finds that, as a result of “Holder’s failure to properly control, monitor, or establish Operation Fast and Furious, it is likely Mexican nationals were killed or wounded by weapons sold through this scheme” — and that the victims of Holder’s incompetence included U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

It goes on to resolve that the House has “lost confidence” in Holder, which is, basically, a call for him to resign.

Clearly, the Justice Department believes it can stonewall Issa’s inquiry and bull its way through questions concerning its criminal malfeasance. Adoption of the Gosar resolution would make it much, much more difficult to do so.

ACTION: Contact your Representative and urge him or her to cosponsor H.Res. 490. Click here to send a prewritten message to your Rep.

About:
Gun Owners of America (GOA) is a non-profit lobbying organization formed in 1975 to preserve and defend the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. GOA sees firearms ownership as a freedom issue. `The only no comprise gun lobby in Washington’ – Ron Paul

NRA News

Fairfax, VA --(Ammoland.com)- NRA-News is a valued partner that continues to cover breaking gun rights news with a new and improved short video format in the “NRA News Minute” videos.

To view the current firearms or gun rights news video, please click above:

Cam Edwards talks to State Rep. David Burnell Smith (R-AZ) on his states investigation into Fast & Furious crimes in Arizona.

Read More on these topics:

• Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu on Fast and Furious
• Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin on Fast & Furious
• Arizona to Prosecute Those Responsible for Fast & Furious

About:
Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America’s oldest civil rights and sportsmen’s group. Four million members strong, NRA continues its mission to uphold Second Amendment rights and to advocate enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation’s leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the military. Visit: www.nra.org

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- Just received an email from Congressman Darrell Issa’s office, which indicates that the House Oversight Committee “demands“ that Assistant United States Attorney Michael Morrissey “speak with Committee investigators about his role in and knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious.”

As stated in the email:

[Morrissey’s] supervisor, Patrick Cunningham, has stated he will exercise his Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer any questions pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious – such an assertion is extremely rare and suggests possible criminal culpability on the part of a high ranking Justice Department official.  Morrissey, who reported directly to Cunningham’s and was intimately involved with Operation Fast and Furious.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Issa wrote:

Since August, the Department has identified Patrick Cunningham as the best person in the U.S. Attorney’s Office to provide information about Fast and Furious to the Committee. The Department has refused to make Michael Morrissey and Emory Hurley, both Assistant United States Attorneys supervised by Mr. Cunningham, available to speak with the Committee, citing a policy of not making “line attorneys” available for congressional scrutiny.  Mr. Morrissey, however, was Mr. Hurley’s direct supervisor, and an integral part of Fast and Furious.  Importantly, both Morrissey and Hurley are unique in their possession of key factual knowledge about Fast and Furious not readily available from any other source.

For anyone not familiar with Hurley, he was a member of the three-person shuffle Holder tried to pull to get the dogs off the scent back in August 2011. That’s when Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson was re-assigned, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke retired, and Emory Hurley was moved from “the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix” to the civil division.

At the time, it appeared Holder thought these three fall guys would reduce the investigative momentum Issa had theretofore accumulated, but it didn’t work.

The bottom line, according to Issa’s latest letter: The investigation moves forward to the next attorney (Morrissey), but with the caveat that Cunningham is still on their radar screens, having acted guilty by refusing to testify. By the way, Issa also “reiterated that the Justice Department still has not complied with the subpoenas issued to date, including subpoenaed documents from Cunningham, Morrissey and Hurley.”

Is anyone really ever going to be prosecuted for this heinous operation?

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- As I wrote in a post for Big Government this past Sunday, January 22, the Arizona’s legislature has decided once more to do the job the feds won’t do, and has launched its own investigation into Fast and Furious.

And during an appearance on FOX NEWS this morning, Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin explained why they’ve taken this step. He said that constituents were flooding their offices with questions about the gun-running operation, and he said one recurring question was, “You’re not waiting for the feds [to do something] are you?” He then said the answer to that question was “No.”

Said Tobin:

This is an incident that occurred on Arizona soil, with Arizona business owners, [where we lost] an Arizona agent (Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry), and quite frankly we felt it needed a lot more attention. We felt our citizens needed a place to go to share their stories. Maybe there’s more there. This was a failed program right from the start and I think the idea is to put more light on it.

Tobin explained that as he’s watched this story unfold, and learned about the tactics used in Fast and Furious, it just hasn’t made sense: “I’m from the family of a law enforcement officer and I don’t think that the process by which they were going was the direction in which we fight back on border security and drug infiltration.”

He went on to explain that the Arizona House has been disappointed in the way Eric Holder has handled things up till now, and added:

It doesn’t appear he had a grasp on it right from the beginning when the inquiries started coming in. And forgive me for being concerned when I hear that the federal government’s here and they’re here to help. [We’re] the state that had to pass S.B. 1070 so we could help secure our borders, and the fed sued us…we’ve lost millions of acres of forest land [to fires] because the feds won’t let us clean them, we’ve got a Navajo power plant that the EPA may close…I meant the list goes on and on.

Without ambiguity Tobin added:

The public deserves some answers and we can’t wait for the fed to give us some of those answers. So let’s put some light on it, let’s have some transparency in government. Let’s go ahead and bring some Arizona citizens in to testify and see where this leads us.

I’m all for what Tobin and the rest of his colleagues in the Arizona legislature are doing. It’s time to put some heat on the feds and see if Holder changes his story (again).

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

Arizona to Prosecute Those Responsible for Fast & Furious Who Feds Won't

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- Nationally, Fast and Furious has entered the vernacular.

As a result, Americans of all walks of life now know that the ATF and DOJ oversaw the sale of approximately 2,500 guns to straw purchasers who, in turn, passed them to criminals in Mexico and elsewhere.

Moreover, Americans know that the plan from the get-go was to have these guns carried across an international border and passed to criminals whom the ATF then planned to arrest (but they never got around to arresting them because they hadn’t bothered tracing the guns from the point of sale).

Therefore, Americans also know that of the 2,500 guns originally sold, approximately 1,300 are still on the streets and unaccounted for. At least two of these guns were found at Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder scene in December 2010, and Americans increasingly know that while Terry may have been the first American victim, odds are he won’t be the last with such a large number of weapons on the loose.

Lastly, Americans know that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have both denied complicity in Fast and Furious, particularly in the gun-running aspects of it. Throughout the course of denying complicity, Holder has changed his story more than once, Obama has demonstrated confusion over when he first learned about Fast and Furious, and former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke (Arizona) was allowed to retire without charges although he was demonstrably involved in covering up the connection between Fast and Furious and Agent Terry’s death.

Perhaps through all this, the one thing the American people have witnessed to a sickening degree is the stark failure to prosecute those involved in Fast and Furious to the full extent of the law. Holder has been handled with kid gloves, Burke is now living a private life, and Obama is not being asked to clear up the many discrepancies in his timeline.

Enter Arizona.
Where the same state that brought you S.B. 1070 —the immigration law aimed at allowing the state to do the job the feds won’t do— is set to open their own investigation into Fast and Furious and bring state charges against those the feds have heretofore refused to charge. Andy Tobin, Arizona’s Speaker of the House, will announce tomorrow (Monday, January 23rd) the scope of the investigation, and will call for state investigators to have their findings back to him no later than March 30.

The bottom line: Arizona is about to the do the job the feds won’t do – again.

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- Yesterday, I had a post on Big Government which focused on a subpoena Rep. Darrell Issa had sent to Patrick J. Cunningham, Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona.

In both the subpoena and a letter accompanying it, Issa made two complaints: 1. That Cunningham had theretofore refused to voluntarily testify before the House Oversight Committee, and 2. That members of the DOJ had informed Issa that some of their inaccuracies in testimony were due to false information they’d been provided by Cunningham.

The subpoena demanded Cunningham testify before the committee on January 24, 2012. And yesterday, Cunningham’s attorney, Tobin J. Romero, made it known that although his client will show up as demanded, he will not be providing any information to Issa and the rest of the committee.

Here’s an excerpt from Romero’s letter:

My client, Patrick Cunningham, has spent his entire 32-year career in government service, including as a JAG officer in the United States Army, as a state court prosecutor, and as a federal prosecutor. He also served on the State Bar of Arizona’s Committee on Rules of Professional Conduct (Ethics Committee) from 1995 to 2002. When he returned to the United States Attorney’s Office in 2010, he did so to advance the law enforcement interests of the United States. Regrettably, he now finds himself caught in the middle of a dispute between the Legislative Branch and the Executive Branch, with both, according to the allegations in your letter, finding it convenient to make accusations that are inconsistent with the documentary evidence and the public record.

The body of the letter then highlights how Cunningham had, in fact, not knowingly provided inaccurate information to the DOJ (according to Romero). It also addresses the charge that Cunningham “approved…unacceptable tactics used in Fast and Furious” by asserting that this charge has not been backed up with documentation by the House Oversight Committee, and then hints at the fear that others may be positioning Cunningham as a fall guy for the Fast and Furious debacle.

Therefore, Romero wrote:

As a professional courtesy, and to avoid needless preparation for the Committee and its staff for a deposition next week, I am writing to advise you that my client is going to assert his constitutional privilege not to be compelled to be a witness against himself.

Last night, as a guest on NRA Radio’s Cam & Company, Cam and I discussed this very issue. We talked about whether or not Cunningham was being set up as a scapegoat for others who are much higher up the food chain in the Fast and Furious saga. Personally, I’m still not sure.

However, it certainly is a possibility, and it’s clearly one that his attorney is using to justify his client’s silence on the gun-running scheme.

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

Senate Legislation, Could, Shut Down, Gun Websites

Gun Owners of America

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- By now, you are no doubt aware that several websites have either gone totally or partially “dark” today in protest of the pernicious internet legislation that will be coming to a vote next week. Wikipedia and Google are just two of the websites which are protesting in this manner.

And while you may have not paid much attention to this story, you need to know that the “muzzle the web” legislation these sites are protesting could also affect your ability to get gun-related information on websites like GOA’s.

The reason is that S. 968 could, in its final form, allow the Brady Campaign to partially shut down our GOA website and our organization (plus many other pro-gun websites) with a series of factually accurate, but legally frivolous complaints.

The Senate bill and its House counterpart have accurately been called “a direct attack on the underpinnings of the web.”

True, many of the most serious “gun problems” are in the House counterpart. But the reality is this: We are within a few votes of killing the whole concept next week in the Senate with only 41 Senate votes.

But if we allow the so-called “anti-piracy” bill to go forward on the HOPE that the worst provisions will not make it into the final version -– and we fail to eliminate them -– the bill may be unstoppable.

Here are the “gun problems,” as we see them:
Section 103(b)(1) of H.R. 3261 allows any “holder of an intellectual property right” to demand that PayPal and other payment and advertising services stop providing services to organizations like ours, thereby shutting off our income.

How would they do this? Perhaps by arguing that we were stealing their intellectual property by quoting their lying misrepresentations in our alerts.

Is this legally frivolous? Sure it is. But the Brady Campaign is the King of Frivolous Complaints:

• Remember when the Brady Campaign asked the Federal Election Commission in 2007 to shut down GOA’s ability to post its candidate ratings on the Internet? They claimed that we were in violation of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act. Thankfully, the FEC ruled in GOA’s favor, thus enabling us to continue posting candidate ratings without restraint.
• Remember when the Brady Campaign got 36 state and local jurisdictions to bring frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers –- not in the expectation of winning, but to drain the resources of the manufacturers in order to halt the manufacture of guns in America?

This “muzzle the web” legislation will throw the doors open to even more frivolous complaints. Could we defend ourselves? Yes, we could. We could file a counter notification under section 103(b)(5) and spend years defending ourselves. But the one thing we did learn during the 36 frivolous lawsuits is that the anti-gun forces in America have very deep pockets.

And the other problem is that, under section 104, our Internet providers would be insulated from liability for shutting us down. But they would receive no comparable insulation from legal liability if they refused to cut us off.

The Senate version, S. 968, has been amended, at the behest of Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley and others, to provide many protections which were not in its initial form.

Under section 3, the Attorney General would go to court and would have to claim that, because of a hyperlink to an offending site, we were “primarily” engaged in the theft of intellectual property.

We would feel a lot better about these protections if the Attorney General were not Eric Holder, a ruthless ideologue who has demonstrated that he will go to any lengths to destroy the Second Amendment.

So the bottom line is this: H.R. 3261 and S. 968 would potentially empower the Brady Campaign and Eric Holder to go after our Internet site. To do so, they would have to make the same frivolous arguments and engage in the same lawless activity that they have done so often in the past.

But -– given that we’re within a few votes of snuffing out that risk by killing the bill in the Senate -– we believe it’s the better course of action to do so.

ACTION: Click here to contact your Senators. Ask them to vote against S. 968, every chance they get.

About:
Gun Owners of America (GOA) is a non-profit lobbying organization formed in 1975 to preserve and defend the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. GOA sees firearms ownership as a freedom issue. `The only no comprise gun lobby in Washington’ – Ron Paul

Obama Weakens the Military

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” If you want peace, plan for war.

The adage is attributed to the 4th or 5th century Latin author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus’s tract De Re Militari book 3.

This fundamental wisdom is being ignored by President Obama, one of two recent Commanders-in-Chief who never spent a day in uniform, let alone under fire.

In a recent American Thinker commentary by Jim Yardley, he said, “It is apparent that the president, in developing his strategy, used the same extensive knowledge, his superior intellect, and worldly wealth of experience that he brought to his strategy for his $800-billion stimulus, his strategy for providing cost-free health care to millions of Americans, and his strategy for using ‘smart diplomacy’ to defuse not spots around the world.”

Perhaps receiving the Nobel Peace Prize barely months into his first year as President has convinced Obama that he is the man to get all our enemies to join hands and sing Kumbaya. Obama accepted the prize that has gone to other seekers of peace like Yassir Arafat, founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization or co-winners, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore. The IPCC and Gore have led the greatest hoax of the modern era, global warming, and Arafat rejected every effort at peace offered by Israel by going back on his word and using terrorism to achieve his goals.

There is no question that the announced cuts to the U.S. military budget are, in part, the result of the domestic run up of debt and borrowing the followed the financial crisis of 2008; itself the result of bad government policies regarding the wholesale granting of mortgages to people who could not afford homes, then bundling those bad mortgages and selling them as assets to the banks.

While the economy is showing some small signs of regaining its footing, the government is still borrowing forty cents of every dollar it spends and has shown no real intent to reduce spending.

While this is occurring we have a President who has made clear his antipathy of the role of the military. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial noted that “The Pentagon shouldn’t be immune to fiscal scrutiny, yet this Administration has targeted defense from its earliest days and has kept on squeezing. The White House last year settled with Congress on $450 billion in military budget cuts through 2012, on top of the $350 billion in weapons programs killed earlier,” adding “Taken altogether, the budget could shrink by over 30% in the next decade.”

Following a 1993 attempt to destroy the World Trade Center Osama bin Laden, a still largely obscure Islamic fanatic, declared war on the United States in 1996. In 2001, al Qaeda succeeded, killing nearly 3,000. To underestimate the intent of his successors to destroy the nation would be a grave error. To think that his assassination along with the killing of a relative handfull of other al Qaeda leaders has ended the threat is wishful thinking.

To think that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq will not at some point result in the possible breakup of that nation or the withdrawal from Afghanistan will rid us of the threat of Islamic fanaticsim is still more wishful thinking.

Right now and ever since 1979, the threat of Iran is the largest facing the Middle East and the West. Its leaders have never made a secret of its intent to acquire nuclear weapons, to threaten all other Middle Eastern nations, as well as Europe and America is on a par with the threat the rise of Nazism posed in Germany in the 1930s.

After World War Two, America emerged as a superpower and it took on the role of global policeman. No military prescience predicted the attack on South Korea by North Korea, nor was our strategy in Vietnam successful. We had earlier failed to anticipate the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor despite efforts to keep out of the war that had begun in 1939.

The lesson that should have been learned is that overwhelming military strength contributes greatly to avoiding wars.

President Obama is ignoring that. It is not, however, to say that he is taking Iran lightly. In early January, thousands of U.S. troops were deployed to Israel and senior U.S. military sources say they anticipate they will remain through the year. Obstensively, they are there to participate in joint U.S.-Israeli war games. They will be joined by a U.S. aircraft carrier and, as we know, we have a task force in place in the event the Iranians try to close the Strait of Hormuz through which passes one sixth of the world’s oil supplies.

The U.S. could be energy independent in a decade if the Administration and Congress would remove the obstacles to accessing our enormous reserves of coal, oil and natural gas, but that remains unlikely as this is written.

The decision to reduce the size of our military to 490,000 troops from 570,000 could not come at a worse time. Air and naval assets, we’re told, will be maintained. Holding evacuated or captured territory requires “boots on the ground.” The decision of former President Bush to “surge” in Iraq by increasing troop strength turned a potential defeat into a success. A war-weary America and the current Iraqi regime wanted us out and we are out.

Meanwhile Egypt that underwent “the Arab Spring” has fallen into the hands of a militant, anti-American and anti-Israel Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey has joined the Islamic frenzy, the future of Syria remains unknown, so anyone who thinks that military action anywhere, but especially in Iran, is not a real potential is not paying attention.

President Obama’s claim that “the tide of war is receding” is likely to rank with British PM Neville Chamberlains claim of “peace in our time” after a visit with Hitler.

It is wishful thinking or worse. It is the deliberate effort to ignore the dangers in the world. Shifting military personnel and assets to Asia acknowledges China’s rising power, but U.S. military leaders have warned against a war in Asia for decades. It is doubtful the Chinese want one.

What is not in doubt is that this is the wrong time to reduce our military strength and capabilities.

We did that after World War One and paid a price for it. President Obama’s policies put us in the same peril.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

About:
Alan Caruba’s commentaries are posted daily at “Warning Signs” his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews.

Orrin Hatch Fighting Two Pro-gun Challengers in Re-Election Efforts

Gun Owners of America

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- Two pro-gun conservatives recently announced they were running against Utah Senator Orrin Hatch.

This is welcome news for gun owners. In a Senate career that has lasted more than thirty five years, Hatch has not been a particularly good friend of the Second Amendment.

During negotiations over the 1986 McClure-Volkmer Firearms Owners Protection Act – designed to protect gun owners from abuses of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms -- Hatch sat at the negotiating table next to officials of the ATF and argued against the pro-gun positions of Sen. Jim McClure.

Though a senior member of the Senate, Hatch did nothing to block camels-nose legislation slammed through by Republican leader Bob Dole in the late 1980s to regulate armor-piercing bullets and outlaw non-existent “plastic guns.”

As ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1993-4, Hatch refused to filibuster the Brady Law, even though it would have been possible to kill it.

He supported the 1996 Lautenberg amendment to impose a lifetime gun ban on people guilty of “domestic misdemeanors” – a term so amorphous that it could apply to spanking your kid or engaging in a verbal argument.

In the wake of the Columbine shooting, Hatch voted for amendments which would have effectively banned gun shows, made it more difficult to keep a loaded gun in your home for self-defense, and codified the Bush-era semi-auto import ban.

This package of legislation was stopped in a conference committee only after Hatch and others were pummeled relentlessly by tens of thousands of GOA activists.

In 2007, Hatch supported the Veterans Disarmament Act—which could strip the Second Amendment rights of honorably discharged veterans who seek professional counseling following traumatic wartime experiences.

Over the following two years, while GOA was working with pro-gun Senators to repeal the gun ban in national parks, Hatch voted against repeal before voting for it in 2009.

Last year, Hatch opposed an amendment offered by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to exempt gun buyer information from the Obama administration’s virtually unlimited ability to seize “business records” under the reauthorization of post-9/11 legislation.

Sen. Hatch hasn’t exactly stood up to the Obama administration, either. He voted in favor of regulatory “czar” Cass Sunstein, who favors a ban on hunting and who would grant animals legal protections in court.

And, despite repeated pleas from GOA members, he voted to confirm Eric Holder as Attorney General. In addition to being mired in the Fast and Furious scandal, Holder was the point man on gun control for President Bill Clinton and is a vocal supporter of banning many semiautomatic firearms.

Thankfully, Orrin Hatch is facing a serious challenge in this year’s Republican convention.

Former State Senator Dan Liljenquist is a stalwart pro-gun conservative who understands the dangers of compromising with the likes of President Obama.

And State Rep. Chris Herrod also jumped in the race because, he said, “we don’t have much time to fix our challenges” as a nation. Both Herrod and Liljenquist are “A” rated on gun rights issues.

The candidates will face off in the state Republican convention in April. If no candidate receives more than 60 percent of the delegate votes, the top two vote-getters will run in a June primary.

Gun Owners of America welcomes the challenge to a Senator with a long history of compromising on Second Amendment rights.

About:
Gun Owners of America (GOA) is a non-profit lobbying organization formed in 1975 to preserve and defend the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. GOA sees firearms ownership as a freedom issue. `The only no comprise gun lobby in Washington’ – Ron Paul

NRA News

Fairfax, VA --(Ammoland.com)- NRA-News is a valued partner that continues to cover breaking gun rights news with a new and improved short video format in the “NRA News Minute” videos.

To view the current firearms or gun rights news video, please click above:

Cam Edwards talks to Katie Pavlich from Townhall.com about the recent suspension of ATF individuals responsible for Fast & Furious on NRA News…

Read More on these topics:

• Chairman Issa Subpoenas ATF for ‘Project Gunrunner’ Documents
• Congressman Darrell Issa to Eric Holder – You Own Fast and Furious
• Issa Strikes A Blow for the 2A & Holder Could Face Impeachment

About:
Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America’s oldest civil rights and sportsmen’s group. Four million members strong, NRA continues its mission to uphold Second Amendment rights and to advocate enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation’s leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the military. Visit: www.nra.org

National Association for Gun Rights

Colorado -–(Ammoland.com)- First they called you an “extremist.”

Then they called you a “terrorist” and “out of the mainstream.”

Now they’re calling you racist.

You see, they’re trying to marginalize you . . . they want you to cower and go away.

As the most anti-gun President and Attorney General in our nation’s history, Barack Obama and Eric Holder are doing (and saying) everything in their power to crush any investigation into the ATF’s deadly gun-running scandal, “Fast & Furious.”

When all other insults have seemingly failed to stop an investigation into their actions, President Obama dispatched Eric Holder to the gutters – to participate in the worst kind of politics – to play the “race card.”

Recently, in an effort to deflect attention from “Fast & Furious,” and brand patriots like you as “racist,” Eric Holder said this:

“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him – both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

To be honest with you, this type of insult isn’t anything new to anyone who’s been involved in conservative politics. Personally, I’ve been called everything under the sun (though I can’t repeat most of those words in print).

From my experience, every time the “race card” is played by any politician, that politician is attempting to get you to back off and run for cover — to go away.

It usually works. For more than two decades, I’ve seen activists and politicians run for the hills for fear that their name would be attached to the word “racist.”

But my answer to such a charge is quite simple — don’t back off, and crank up the pressure.

Now is as good a time as any to remind you of the outrageous, and deadly, actions of Eric Holder’s ATF . . .

. . . and ask you to take action.

“Fast & Furious” was a tool used by the ATF to push gun control on the American people.

This is the very scandal that found the ATF using taxpayer funds to walk firearms across the border into the hands of Mexican narco-terrorists.

But dig even deeper, and gun activists will find out this scheme was concocted as a public relations blitz by the Obama Administration to advance their anti-gun agenda with the UN Small Arms Treaty, a renewed so-called “Assault Weapons” ban, and a host of dangerous gun controls.

The “Fast & Furious” program itself was nothing but a manufactured crisis designed to scare Americans into banning firearms.

“Fast & Furious” was also the same program that led to the death of at least three American border patrol agents.

Eric Holder can call gun owners anything he wants, including racists, but I won’t back down. And I don’t want you to either.

The investigation into Holder’s actions would not have been possible without your activism and pressure.

He’s feeling your heat… and reverting to his Alinsky-taught tactics to try and get you to shut up.

I want you to crank up the heat on Congress to renew the push to “Fire Eric Holder.”

With less than one year before the November elections, Barack Obama and Eric Holder are going to do anything they can to appease their big-money gun control backers.

I’m going to do my best to keep you up-to-date on all the latest developments in the “Fast & Furious” scandal.

Please continue to pressure Congress to “Fire Eric Holder.”

The National Association for Gun Rights is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, single-purpose citizens’ organization dedicated to preserving and protecting the Constitutionally protected right-to-keep-and-bear-arms through an aggressive program designed to mobilize public opposition to anti-gun legislation. The National Association for Gun Rights’ mailing address is P.O 7002, Fredericksburg, VA 22404. They can be contacted toll-free at 1-877-405-4570. Its web address is www.NationalGunRights.org/

Not produced or e-mailed at taxpayer expense.

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington, DC - We have a President currently running for reelection against Congress, Wall Street, Republicans, and the right of citizens to be free of an overly intrusive government.

Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution says: All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in the Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

All appointments of the President must be approved by the Senate while it is in session and the Senate, even over the Christmas and New Year’s vacation has remained in session, if only in a pro forma, technical manner. Every three days it has been convened to assert its powers.

Even so, President Obama has announced several “recess” appointments, all clearly a challenge to the Senate and all clearly a tyrannical power grab. He appointed Richard Cordray as the first director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new function that puts government between the lender and the citizen.

In theory, all loans in the future will be subject to government approval. This is Communism, not Capitalism.

In addition, he appointed three members to the National Labor Relations Board, intended to arbitrate disputes between unions and corporations. None of them have appeared before a Senate committee for vetting. It was this board that demanded Boeing shut down its new factory in South Carolina, one of many “right to work” states that empower workers with the right to determine whether they want to join a union or not.

Neither Obama, nor any president who preceded him can make appointments without the “advice and consent” of the Senate. (Article II, Section 2). As recently as the first week of the year, referring to the Senate, Obama asserted that “I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them.”

He has no such obligation. Those are the words of an incipient tyrant.

These actions put me in mind of Niccolo Machiavelli, famed as the author of “The Prince”, a book of advice to Lorenzo de Medici who was the ruler of the former republic of Florence, one of many city states in Italy. Born in 1469 and died in 1527, Machiavelli living during the early years of the Renaissance, a period that saw the flowering of literature, science, art, religion and politics. Historians consider it a bridge between the Middle Ages and the modern era.

The renaissance was a period of social and political upheaval, one in which the various princes ruled so long as they could protect their principalities against wars by others seeking to expand their powers. “The Prince” is largely seen as advice on how a prince may have to resort to the methodical use of brute force and deceit to hold onto power, but it was more than that. It was a guide to ruling people with a minimum of oppression.

“It should be borne in mind,” Machiavelli wrote, “that there is nothing more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes in a state’s constitution.” Obama is engaged in an attack on the U.S. Constitution.

Of princely power, Machiavelli wrote, “The people are everywhere anxious not be dominated or oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles are out to dominate and oppress the people. These opposed ambitions bring about one of three results; a principality, a free city, or anarchy.” The Constitution ensures a free nation with limited federal powers and is a guard against anarchy.

Evidence of Obama’s narcissism and drive for complete power is ample. He is on record as saying the Constitution is composed of “negative” limits on power. Others regard the Constitution as the ultimate protection against the unlawful use of power. This is particularly evident in the Bill of Rights which was appended to the Constitution because several of the first States would not ratify without it.

In his advice to Lorenzo de Medici, Machiavelli raised the question of “whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. Within the context of the time, he said, “it is far better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.” In the run up to Christmas, Americans bought guns in record numbers which suggests there is considerable fear of Obama and the results of his policies over the past three years.

We have witnessed and been victimized by a Democrat-controlled Congress that forced Obamacare on an unwilling public. We have seen the rise of Islamic fanaticism as the result of his failed policies toward Iran and the Middle East. We have had record breaking debt imposed on us by his failed “stimulus” policies. We have seen continued efforts to reduce our military power and to thwart access to our ample energy resources of oil, natural gas, and coal.

It is a long list of usurpations of power that endanger the nation domestically and internationally. Whether it was done out of stupidity or a deliberate effort to harm the nation can be debated, but the most outstanding attribute of Obama has been his continual lying and Machiavelli notes that “the deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived.”

In this effort, Obama has been greatly aided by the mainstream media with a few notable exceptions. The trust that once reposed in the nation’s print and broadcast media has been eroded and will be hard to regain. The trust given Obama is long gone by all but a few ignorant and lazy citizens content to have their lives ruled by an over-reaching executive branch of government.

The election process will rid us of Obama and likely many of those Democrat legislators who have supported his policies. The House is controlled by the Republicans and the Senate is likely to follow.

Meanwhile, we must guard against the present occupant of the White House. Americans waged a war against oppression in the past and will, if necessary, do so again.

c Alan Caruba, 2011

About:
Alan Caruba’s commentaries are posted daily at “Warning Signs” his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews.

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- I just received an email update from Congressman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office, stating that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 2.

The questions will center on the Department of Justice’s knowledge of, and response to, the gunwalking tactics that were used in Operation Fast and Furious.

The A.G. will also be asked to address the DOJ’s “steadfast refusal to disclose information following the February 4, 2011 letter to Senator Grassley, which the [DOJ] has withdrawn because it contained false information denying allegations made by whistleblowers about Operation Fast and Furious.”

Wrote Issa:

The Department of Justice’s conduct in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious has been nothing short of shameful. From its initial denials that nothing improper occurred, to efforts to silence whistleblowers who wanted to tell Congress what really happened, to its continuing refusal to discuss or share documents related to this cover-up, the Justice Department has fought tooth and nail to hide the full truth about what occurred and what senior officials knew. Attorney General Holder must explain or reverse course on decisions that appear to put the careers of political appointees ahead of the need for accountability and the Department’s integrity.

The last portion of the letter provided me via Issa’s email highlights new (and startling) information on the DOJ’s refusal to cooperate with investigators to date.

According to the letter, in December 2011 the DOJ “explicitly informed the Committee that it would not deliver subpoenaed documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious created after February 4, 2011.” Moreover, “in interviews with committee investigators, senior Justice Department officials who had management responsibilities for Operation Fast and Furious have also refused to answer questions about decisions and conversations that occurred after February 4, 2011.”

Whatever happened to the transparency Obama & Co. promised us when running for office in 2008? And what exactly could Holder & Co. be hiding that forces them to go to such extremes to prevent a discovery of the truth?

It is high time for prosecution to begin. Holder & Co.’s contempt for Congress knows no bounds.

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

National Rifle Association

FAIRFAX, Va. --(Ammoland.com)- From the first moment that the American people became aware that senior BATFE officials ordered agents in the field to allow guns sold in the U.S. to be smuggled on an all-but-certain path to Mexico’s vicious drug cartels, many of us have wondered “why.”

What possible legitimate purpose could be fulfilled by allowing a large number of guns —over 2,000, by some estimates— to disappear across our southwestern border without the Mexican government’s knowledge?

There has been only one logical answer possible. Someone within the BATFE or higher in the Department of Justice wanted the smuggled guns to be recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, and traced to sources within the U.S., so that the Obama Administration could claim a need for one or another gun control measure being pushed by anti-gun groups.

Someone who values gun control more than the lives of innocent people killed by cartel operatives armed with the BATFE’s “walked” guns. Someone who believes, as one BATFE official put it, that “to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs.”

Until now, there was no proof, however. Recently, CBS News reported that the BATFE “discussed using their covert operation Fast and Furious to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.” In particular, agency officials wanted guns to fall into Mexican drug cartel hands and be traced back to gun dealers in the U.S. to make a case for requiring dealers to report individuals who buy more than one detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifle over .22 caliber in a five day period.

According to CBS, “emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called Demand Letter 3. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or ‘long guns.’”

CBS singled out a July 14, 2010 email sent by BATFE Field Operations Assistant Director Mark Chait to Bill Newell, the agency’s Special Agent in Charge in Phoenix, from which Fast and Furious was based.

In the email, Chaits asked Newell to “see if these guns were all purchased from the same [licensed gun dealer] and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales.”

Pro-Second Amendment U.S. Senator John Cornyn (Texas), the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Immigration, Refugees and Border Security subcommittee, quickly responded to CBS’s revelation, saying “If these reports are true, even by Washington standards this reaches a new level of arrogance and corruption.” With Attorney General Holder again appearing before Congress to testify about Fast and Furious this week, Sen. Cornyn added, “again, the Attorney General has some explaining to do.”

Also, CBS reported another means by which Mexico’s drug cartels have acquired a large enough number of U.S.-made firearms to partially explain the high tallies repeated time and again by Mexican president Felipe Calderon, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, and other gun control supporters.

Apparently, hundreds of firearms sent to Mexico by U.S. firearms manufacturers, through Direct Commercial Sales approved by the State Department since 2006, cannot be accounted for by Mexican officials and are presumed to have made their way to the cartels.

As CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson relates it, “The Mexican military recently reported nearly nine thousand police weapons missing. Yet, the U.S. has approved the sale of more guns to Mexico than ever before.” The government of Mexico now buys more U.S.-made firearms than Iraq, whose security forces American and allied troops trained from the ground up, after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Providing some insight into the scope of the problem, after one U.S.-made rifle sold to the Mexican military ended up in a cartel arms cache, the State Department asked Mexico to account for 1,030 more rifles, but received no reply. Between 2006 and 2009, 2,400 firearms were sold to Mexico through direct sales. But trying to avoid further embarrassment, State refuses to provide the numbers for 2010 and 2011.

Attkisson says, “With Mexico in a virtual state of war with its cartels, nobody is tracking how many U.S. guns are ending up with the enemy.”

About:
Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America’s oldest civil rights and sportsmen’s group. Four million members strong, NRA continues its mission to uphold Second Amendment rights and to advocate enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation’s leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the military. Visit: www.nra.org

Gun Owners of America

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) recently introduced a resolution expressing “no confidence” in the Attorney General of the United States for his role in the Fast and Furious scandal.

Attorney General Eric Holder has been hauled before Congress multiple times to explain a government operation that led to thousands of firearms going to violent drug cartels in Mexico, and which have turned up at crime scenes on both sides of the border.

Holder initially denied knowing about the operation before admitting that “mistakes” were made, yet he remains uncooperative with Congress’s efforts to get to the bottom of the gunrunning scheme.

The Department of Justice provided some carefully selected information to the House Judiciary Committee, but nothing that would reveal who authorized the multi-million dollar, multi-agency, international operation.

There are “materials we have not and will not produce,” Holder said defiantly in testimony before the committee last month.

In fact, no one within the Department of Justice is being held accountable for approving the operation. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) told Holder during the December hearing that bureaucrats have put the wagons “in a pretty tight circle.”

“The American people need the truth,” added Rep. Sensenbrenner. “They haven’t gotten the truth from what has been coming out of the Justice Department in the last year.”

Holder’s refusal to provide any information regarding who is responsible for Fast and Furious has led many lawmakers to suspect that the Attorney General himself was intimately involved in the operation from the start.

The Gosar resolution sends a strong message to the Justice Department that the government’s reckless disregard of the law will not be tolerated. It will also help to raise public awareness of a misguided government operation that has contributed to the deaths of two U.S. law enforcement officers and some 200 Mexicans.

“It is imperative that the citizens of our nation have confidence in our Attorney General,” Congressman Gosar said in a statement. “After months of evasive answers, silence and outright lies it is time that Congress speak up on behalf of the many people who have or will fall victims to the firearms in the flawed gunrunning operation Fast and Furious.”

GOA, which is rallying Congress to use every means available to hold the government accountable for wrongdoing in Fast and Furious, applauds Rep. Gosar for authoring this resolution.

Click here to contact your own Representative today and urge him or her to cosponsor House Resolution 490, stating that Congress has “lost confidence” in the Attorney General.

About:
Gun Owners of America (GOA) is a non-profit lobbying organization formed in 1975 to preserve and defend the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. GOA sees firearms ownership as a freedom issue. `The only no comprise gun lobby in Washington’ – Ron Paul

How Not to Go Crazy in 2012

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- Election years tend to create a level of frenzy concerning the selection of the nominees and the outcome.

The media feed this in order to keep readers reading and viewers viewing. The history of American elections has always been one of vituperation between the parties, so there is nothing new about this.

Indeed, since so much depends on it, the political free-for-all is a healthy exercise.

It can, however, make for a difficult environment in which to go about one’s life; the air filled with charge and counter-charge, polls going up and down, and a general sense that something is very wrong with the way the government functions.

On the bright side, a gridlocked Congress may bring a measure of relief to everyone. Writing about gridlock in January 2011, Marcus E. Ethridge, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, noted that “By fostering gridlock, the U.S. Constitution increases the likelihood that policies will reflect broad, unorganized interests instead of the interests of narrow, organized groups.” In 2011, we saw what happens when advocates of “renewable energy”, wind and solar power, or electric cars, get priority over the needs of most Americans for reliable energy and transportation.

At the heart of the 2012 election will be the recognition that the economy is still not recovering, that government is seeking to extend and expand its control over our lives, and, even among former supporters of Barack Obama, that he has been a failure of historic proportions.

A Friday Rasmussen Reports said that “Voters right now give the edge to Republicans when asked which political party is likely to win the White House and control both the House of Representatives and the Senate in next November’s election”, adding that “a lot of voters are undecided.” Those voters may actually wait until entering the polls to cast their vote.

Another bad piece of news for President Obama is a new comparative analysis of current voter registration data in key electoral states of Nevada and North Carolina. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, there has been “a drastic drop from 2008 levels when a record-high proportion of young Americans turned out overwhelmingly to cast their votes to elect Barack Obama as President.” This is significant because more than two-thirds of young voters supported the Obama/Biden ticket in 2008.

The President had a low moment following the passage of Obamacare that transformed itself into the Tea Party movement and an even worse one in 2010 when it propelled a large number of Republicans into the House of Representatives, causing its control to change hands. He has had, in fact, only one truly high moment and that occurred when he announced the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011. At the time, he typically took complete credit.

In a speech at Fort Bragg to returning troops from Iraq, the word “victory” was never spoken.

Americans are not unmindful that the downgrade of the rating of the nation’s sovereign debt, the first in the nation’s history, was announced on Obama’s watch. The rate of “official” unemployment has receded to 8.6% but most Americans are well aware that it is far closer to 11% or more. America continues to experience that longest period of long-term unemployment since the 1930s.

For these and a myriad of other reasons, there is little reason to conclude that President Obama has any chance whatever of being reelected. The widespread contempt for Congress is also a hopeful sign for change. These are reasons to remain calm amidst the din of electioneering in the months ahead.

There is, however, all manner of troubles brewing in the world. Europe will have to find a solution to what will happen if its southern tier of nations elects to default on their sovereign debt. Cracks in the European Union are evident. If it falls apart, it will be very messy, but Europe existed before the EU and would if it disbands.

The Middle East is in the midst of a huge struggle between its fanatical Muslim faction and a population unhappy enough with former dictators to have forced out several in 2011 with the prospect that Syria’s Bashar Assad will fall in 2012.

Iran remains the wild card and its nuclear dreams will likely end with a well-timed and well-executed attack by Israel. Israel saved the world from a nuclear Iraq in 1981 and a nuclear Syria in 2007. An attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities could trigger an internal movement to overthrow the mullahs.

There are other wild cards in the Middle East. The Palestinians show no indication of giving up their dream of destroying Israel. That will not happen. Without Iranian support, both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza will be set adrift. Muslim atrocities in nations such as Nigeria where Christian churches were bombed on Christmas Day will contribute to a growing movement against Islamic terrorism. It will not happen overnight, but it will happen.

Even the Russians show signs of tiring of their post-Soviet ruling class led by Vladimir Putin.

America faces a long period of restructuring the socialist programs that began in the 1930s and reached their peak in the 1960s. Should the GOP gain control of Congress and Obama is defeated, real change will occur.

Two other factors signal better times ahead. They are the failure of the global warming hoax and the disdain the “Occupy” movement engendered.

In 2012 Americans will take steps to end the scandals and deprecations of the Obama administration.

• We shall ignore the anticipated shouts of racism.
• We shall see the Supreme Court disembowel Obamacare or set in motion its repeal by a GOP controlled Congress.
• We will select a President and a Congress to put things right.

`

About:
Alan Caruba’s commentaries are posted daily at “Warning Signs” his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews.

AmmoLand Gun News

WASHINGTON, DC --(Ammoland.com)- The District of Columbia has been ordered to pay more than $1 million in attorneys’ fees as a result of a historic gun case that was ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dick Heller sued the city in 2003 over its ban on handgun ownership and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ban in June 2008, saying it violated the Second Amendment.

A federal judge on Thursday issued an opinion awarding Heller’s attorneys $1,137,072.27 in fees and expenses. The attorneys had argued they should be awarded $3.1 million. Attorneys for the city said the figure should be closer to $840,000.

District of Columbia Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan, the head of the office that represents the city in legal matters, said in a statement that Heller’s lawyers had requested an “outlandish fee.” Nathan praised the U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision not to accept the full hourly rate the attorneys had requested or the full number of hours they had billed for.

Heller’s lead lawyer, Alan Gura, says his team is still studying the opinion and possible next steps. Gura said he is pleased with much of the opinion, but he said the fee calculation the judge used was outdated and that lawyers doing similar work in Washington are typically compensated at a higher rate. The judge’s opinion awards Gura approximately $662,000 for more than 1,500 hours of work on the case, paying him at a rate of $420 per hour. Five other members of Heller’s team are also compensated.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2008, the city rewrote its gun laws and for the first time in more than 30 years permitted handgun ownership. The new laws, however, include numerous registration requirements.

Those requirements prompted Heller to sue again, saying that the new laws are too restrictive. That case is still pending, with a federal appeals court ruling in October that the city must provide evidence justifying what it called “novel” handgun registration requirements including vision tests. The city is considering changes to the law that, if implemented, could impact the case.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Gunlaws.com

PHOENIX, AZ --(Ammoland.com)- The lamestream media told you:

“WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers told Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday to fire some Justice Department subordinates over the flawed arms-trafficking investigation called Operation Fast and Furious,” according to Pete Yost, writing for the Associated Press, about Holder’s testimony to Congress in early December. [Democrats, by implication and omission, see no problem here and have asked for no action.)

“Why haven’t you terminated the people involved?” asked Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that is investigating the arms-tracking operation.

“The operation’s goal was to follow the gun supply chain from small-time gun buyers at a number of Phoenix-area gun shops and make cases against major weapons traffickers,” AP writer Yost claims.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:
It is widely recognized that the BATFE claims in Fast and Furious do not match the facts. There was a concerted effort NOT “to follow the gun supply chain” which BATFE helped smuggle out of the country. The conclusion, if facts matter, is that the smuggling operation increased the number of U.S.-supplied firearms to drug cartels, which were then found at crime scenes domestically and abroad. This manufactured increase was then used publicly to advance an imaginary threat, to justify increased government power, controls, and infringing on the Second Amendment.

The congressional committee, after an initial flurry of remarks and verbal jousting, stunningly refused to place Holder under oath, since he more than once said, “I’m here to tell the truth,” instead of taking an oath. That made my mouth hang open. This helps insulate him from a potential charge of felony perjury before Congress. He failed to testify under oath. The “news” media failed to report this tiny insignificant fact.

What the “news” also failed to report was only the most significant parts of the hearings. Holder, who repeatedly claims he is not stonewalling, performed a “document dump” on Congress, delivering more than 5,000 documents, most of them emails, and not a single one came from or was sent by Mr. Holder, the main unindicted conspirator in the smuggling scheme and the main target of the investigation. Actually no one has been indicted, thanks to Holder’s stonewalling.

That became obvious during questioning by Ben Quayle, who happens to be my representative. After noting that many in Congress seek Holder’s resignation, Quayle asked, “Will you resign?” Holder said, “No.” Naming and asking if the underlings just below him would resign, Holder replied “No.” Naming the underlings under them with the same question, Holder said, “No,” the three shortest answers he gave in the whole charade. Time ran out for Mr. Quayle, so the Chair of the committee asked the obvious last question, will anyone be forced out, and Holder continued with his terse replies, saying, “No.” In the AG’s opinion, as delivered to Congress, no one should be held accountable for these gross violations of law and multiple murders.

This is hard news, so was unreported for reasons that remain unclear.

Nearly a year after it began, Holder has refused to identify the person who authorized the operation, a very simple task, though it might implicate him or his boss, the current occupant of the White House.

A democrat at the hearing said that “2,000 automatic rifles” had walked. The AG said, “Yes, that’s correct.” No automatic weapons were involved, since these were retail store purchases. Hey, it’s such a small point, what do you expect. A big thank you to Rep. Ted Poe of Texas for asking some really hard-as-nails questions. The AG though ducked every one.

Daryl Issa threatened the AG with Contempt of Congress for failure to turn over documents. Contempt of Congress! This extremely serious development was also not widely reported, though Mr. Sensenbrenner’s vague allusion to an impeachment of someone (unnamed) did make the “news.” The AG’s omitted communiques in the document dump was perhaps dwarfed by the Justice Department’s flat refusal to release anything after Feb. 2, 2011, probably the most significant material. A Feb. 4 email which was a blatant lie to Congress, now admitted, has been “withdrawn.”

When Holder had previously said his 4-state long-gun registration scheme is a “reasonable requirement,” none of the officials challenged him — on the fact that it’s strictly illegal, he is specifically denied authority to do it by law, and in fact such action has been specifically outlawed by Congress. Maybe they didn’t know. And he didn’t know.

Holder and his department’s preposterous position that there is no statute against gun smuggling is a naked power grab without support. Not one official challenged that statement. Making each purchase is a separate federal felony, that’s 2,000 right there; lying about the nature of the purchase is a federal felony; delivering the guns to the real buyer is a federal felony; smuggling the guns across state lines is a federal felony; delivering the guns to foreign nationals without an export license is a federal felony; using undeclared income to make the purchases is a federal felony; handling illegal obtained cash is a federal felony; conspiring to do any of this with anyone is a federal felony.

Holder has acknowledged that the mess is a fiasco, inexcusable and a prohibited policy, and of course, people have been murdered as a result. In his opinion, no one pays for it. Prediction: That shall not stand.

About GunLaws.com:
Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Bloomfield Press, founded in 1988, is the largest publisher and distributor of gun-law books in the country. Our website, gunlaws.com, features a free national directory to gun laws and relevant contacts in all states and federally, along with our unique line of related books and DVDs. “After Your Shoot” for media review is available on request, call 800-707-4020. Our authors are available for interview, call to schedule. Call for cogent positions on gun issues, informed analysis on proposed laws, talk radio that lights up the switchboard, fact sheets and position papers. As we always say, “It doesn’t make sense to own a gun and not know the rules.” Visit: www.gunlaws.com

National Rifle Association

FAIRFAX, Va. --(Ammoland.com)- In all of my years fighting on behalf of the National Rifle Association to defend the Second Amendment, I never thought I would see a White House so vehemently opposed to gun ownership that it would be willing to arm violent criminals and endanger American lives in pursuit of a gun control agenda.

Readers will recall that a little over two months ago, in this same space, I wrote:

“I would like to believe that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder — no matter how much they oppose our Second Amendment rights — would never break the law and endanger human lives in their mission to score political points against gun owners…

“However, to believe all of this, I would have to ignore a lot of facts.”

And now, according to new documents obtained by CBS News, we are faced with the fact that the Obama administration helped transfer illegal guns to drug cartels in Mexico to build a case for gun control — specifically, gun registration — here in America.

“If these reports are true, even by Washington standards this reaches a new level of arrogance and corruption,” remarked Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). Unfortunately, Sen. Cornyn is not exaggerating.

On July 14, 2010, Mark Chait, who served as Assistant Director for Field Operations for the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives (BATFE) sent an email to Bill Newell, BATFE’s special agent in charge of operation “Fast and Furious.” Chait’s email said:

“Bill, can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time? We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long-gun sales. Thanks.”

Just six months later, after a press conference to announce arrests made in “Fast and Furious,” Chait emailed Newell again, saying:

“Bill–well done yesterday… (I)n light of our request for Demand letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this case.”

“Demand letter 3″ is a letter sent to U.S. firearms dealers in the four southwest border states, demanding that they register sales of more than one semi-automatic rifle to the same person within five business days.

Under its “Fast and Furious” operation, Obama’s BATFE had been forcing licensed firearms dealers to sell semi-automatic rifles to shady straw purchasers, who would then supply them to drug cartels in Mexico.

Chris W. Cox, Executive Director, NRA Institute for Legislative Action

About Chris W. Cox:
As the NRA’s chief lobbyist and principal political strategist, Chris oversees eight ILA divisions: Federal Affairs; State & Local Affairs; Public Affairs; Grassroots; Finance; Research & Information; Conservation, Wildlife & Natural Resources; and Office of Legislative Counsel. Chris also serves as chairman of NRA’s Political Victory Fund (NRAPVF), the Association’s political action committee.

About:
Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America’s oldest civil rights and sportsmen’s group. Four million members strong, NRA continues its mission to uphold Second Amendment rights and to advocate enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation’s leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the military. Visit: www.nra.org

List of Congressmen Calling for Holder’s Resignation Continues to Grow

National Rifle Association

FAIRFAX, Va. --(Ammoland.com)- Attorney General Eric Holder remains embroiled in controversy over the highly publicized and ill-fated “Operation Fast and Furious.”

When we reported on this issue on December 9, 52 U.S. Representatives, two U.S. Senators, and multiple GOP Presidential candidates had called on Attorney General Eric Holder to resign as a result of the scandalous “Fast and Furious” operation.  As of this week, at least 90 congressmen have either signed Rep. Paul Gosar’s (R-Ariz.) “no confidence” (in Holder) resolution or believe he should quit.

According to a December 20 article in The Daily Caller, Gosar’s “no confidence” resolution alleges that Holder’s actions have proven he is not “competent, trustworthy and beyond reproach,” and that he has sought to “cover up” mistakes rather than cooperate with Congress “in disclosing the events and circumstances and transparently addressing the issues.”

The article further notes that, including Gosar, there are 81 members of Congress who no longer trust Holder to continue to hold office, and 60 congressmen have now demanded that Holder resign.  Between the two lists, which don’t perfectly overlap, there are now at least 90 members of the House who don’t approve of Holder.

In addition to the 60 congressmen, two U.S. Senators, all of the top GOP presidential candidates and two sitting governors have demanded that Holder resign.

NRA has also called for Holder’s resignation.  In fact, NRA-ILA has prepared a video that all freedom-loving Americans need to watch showing that Holder’s actions prove he can’t be trusted with the sanctity of our freedoms, the powers of his office, or the lives of our law enforcement officers.  To watch the video, please click here.

Please help spread the word and forward this video to family, friends and fellow gun owners.

To view a NRA News video of reporter Ginny Simone talking with Rep. Sensenbrenner about Holder’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, please click here.

To view videos of Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) questioning Holder before the House Judiciary Committee, please click here and here.

About:
Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America’s oldest civil rights and sportsmen’s group. Four million members strong, NRA continues its mission to uphold Second Amendment rights and to advocate enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation’s leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the military. Visit: www.nra.org

Eric Holder Calls Americans Racist for Questioning Him on Fast and Furious

NRA News

Fairfax, VA --(Ammoland.com)- NRA-News is a valued partner that continues to cover breaking gun rights news with a new and improved short video format in the “NRA News Minute” videos.

To view the current firearms or gun rights news video, please click above:

Ginny Simone talks to Congressman Allen West (R-FL) on Eric Holders recent comments that the Race Card is all they have to say when they are caught lying.

Read More on these topics:

• Holder Answers Fast and Furious Charges By Calling Accusers Racists
• New York Times Stacks Deck So Holder Can Play Race Card
• Attorney General Eric Holder Blames Americans for Gun-Running

About:
Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America’s oldest civil rights and sportsmen’s group. Four million members strong, NRA continues its mission to uphold Second Amendment rights and to advocate enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation’s leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the military. Visit: www.nra.org

NRA News

Fairfax, VA --(Ammoland.com)- NRA-News is a valued partner that continues to cover breaking gun rights news with a new and improved short video format in the “NRA News Minute” videos.

To view the current firearms or gun rights news video, please click above:

Ginny Simone talks to Congressman Joe Walsh (R-IL) on Eric Holders recent comments that any one that questions his Fast & Furious attack on the Second Amendment, is Racist.

Read More on these topics:

• Holder Answers Fast and Furious Charges By Calling Accusers Racists
• New York Times Stacks Deck So Holder Can Play Race Card
• Attorney General Eric Holder Blames Americans for Gun-Running

About:
Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America’s oldest civil rights and sportsmen’s group. Four million members strong, NRA continues its mission to uphold Second Amendment rights and to advocate enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation’s leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the military. Visit: www.nra.org

Conservation Reserve Program - Cost Versus Value

Delta Waterfowl

Bismarck, ND --(Ammoland.com)- The U.S. fiscal crisis has put all government expenditures under the microscope or on the chopping block.

Politicians of every persuasion are talking about ways to remedy our burgeoning federal deficit.

Super committees have been created and have died. And despite the rhetoric from pundits and economic experts, there is no clear pathway forward to address our chronic problem of too much expense and too little revenue in our federal government.

For the record, I am a fiscal conservative who is wary of burgeoning spending. I, too, am concerned about the litany of reports of governmental inefficiency or out-right waste.

But a recent indictment of the Conservation Reserve Program from policymakers, duck hunters and other sportsmen and women indicate an information vacuum of epic proportions. Boiled down, the perception is one of program costs versus program benefits.

CRP is continually the focus of policymaker’s budget thrashing. It is, after all, the 900-pound gorilla of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s conservation programming. It impacts more acreage, is costly and thusly gets more scrutiny than any other conservation action. CRP is also in the crosshairs of some interests groups because they believe eliminating CRP would increase crop acreage, increase commodity inventory and drive commodity prices down.

Looking at any expenditure independent of its value proposition is a dangerous game. Taking shots at CRP’s price tag (roughly $2 billion annually) while not considering the program’s broad conservation, environmental and societal benefits is weak policy analysis. It is superficial hacking with no understanding of the implications.

So while the 2.5 million ducks produced annually on CRP lands (and I think this estimate is grossly low for about 2.5 million reasons), bumper crops of ring-neck pheasants and abundant bobolinks and meadowlarks certainly doesn’t justify the price tag, consider the following stats cited by a recent article in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune:

• CRP lands retained 1.86 billion pounds of nitrogen
• CRP lands retained 420 million pounds of phosphorous
• CRP lands secured 1.8 billion tons of top soil
• CRP reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 200 million tons in the last four years

Furthermore, those figures don’t quantify the value CRP has in terms of cleaning up our water supply, mitigating flooding (which costs untold billions annually), and providing access to quality hunting lands.

I know I can’t associate the value of reductions of nitrogen or phosphorous pollution or what the public value of 1.8 billion tons of top soil are, but I do know the federal government was pondering a cap and trade program that would have had untold costs to reduce carbon emissions when CRP is at least partially carrying the load right now with so many other benefits and at likely a much lower cost. Here we have the societal, or taxpayer benefits, of CRP.

A study by the University of Tennessee’s Agriculture Policy Analysis Center in 2006 deduced that eliminating CRP would cost the American taxpayer $33 billion over a ten-year period. Why? Because agriculture support on those acres would cost taxpayers far more on a per acre basis than CRP rental rates. It’s true that commodity prices are changing and agricultural support programs are different, but have they changed to the degree that it would erase a $33 billion deficit I find it hard to believe it has changed that much. So the long-term consequences of eliminating or even cutting CRP may well represent an increase in government spending—not exactly the outcome budget hawks in D.C. (or the American public) is after.

And let’s not forget America’s farmers and ranchers—they own the land upon which our ducks and other critters are raised. CRP has been, by any measure, the most significant partnership between agriculture and conservation. Its sheer scale of impact dwarfs any other conservation action that has ever graced North America.

Why? Because it worked within a farmer’s operation, provided a new product on marginal land, provided a hedge against the highly volatile commodity markets and provided insulation against the vagaries of weather. Many farmers are not re-enrolling their CRP lands. That is their prerogative. But with recent reductions in national CRP acreage caps, farmers willing to enroll in the program are being turned away. Yes, despite high commodity prices, surging cash rent, etc., farmers still want CRP because they want to contribute to conservation and environmental outcomes on their land.

I know our country needs to get its fiscal house in order. There is no denying the criticalness of the task. No aspect of the federal budget should be off limits for debate, dialog and evaluation for spending reductions. CRP may need to be amongst the good programming that needs trimming. If so, so be it.

But it is our role as hunters and anglers to ensure policymakers and the public at large know the facts. Let’s make decisions with the best information at hand. Let’s look at value. Let’s look at benefits. Let’s look at outcomes. I have a hunch CRP will come out better than a goodly chunk of government spending.

Rant over.

About:
Delta Waterfowl provides knowledge, leaders and science-based solutions that efficiently conserve waterfowl and secure the future for waterfowl hunting. Visit: www.deltawaterfowl.org

Wildlife Management Institute

Gardners, PA --(Ammoland.com)- With Congress looking to reduce the federal budget deficit and the “Super Committee’s” failure to reach a compromise on future funding levels triggering more than $1 trillion in cuts to domestic spending, several keystone conservation programs are facing significant funding reductions, according to the Wildlife Management Institute.

As a result, conservation organizations are seeking ways to build support and justify these programs focusing on how conservation and recreation impact local economies.

A recent report quantifies the importance of providing outdoor recreational opportunities, focusing on job creation and revenues in what are typically small, rural towns near public lands. Conducted by Southwick Associates for the America’s Voice for Conservation, Recreation and Preservation (AVCRP) coalition and commissioned by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, it is the first report to capture numerous existing studies on the economic impacts of conservation and outdoor recreation in one overview.

“Natural resource conservation and historic preservation programs provide hundreds of thousands of jobs and strong returns on public investments that primarily help rural communities and cannot be exported abroad,” said John L. Nau III, chairman emeritus of the Civil War Trust and co-chair of the AVCRP. “This country needs jobs that leverage private investment and conserve our precious natural resources and historic spaces.”

The argument is gaining traction as the Western Governors Association has launched its “Get Out West” marketing campaign in an effort to capitalize on the great outdoor recreation resources in the region. In addition, more than 100 economists recently wrote the White House urging continued investment in public lands infrastructure to create jobs and support businesses.

Outdoor Recreation Impacts on the Economy
While the economy has yet to recover fully, the outdoor industry has been largely recession proof. The Outdoor Industry Association (OIA)—the trade organization for “human-powered” outdoor recreation (hiking, biking, paddling, etc.)—provides monthly reports on the state of the industry, and the one for October shows a 7-percent increase. In general, the outdoor industry has been outperforming the broader retail market with year-to-date outdoor product sales up 6.3 percent to $7.7 billion for the nine-month fiscal retail period running February through October. Overall, outdoor recreation sales (gear and trips combined) of $289 billion per year are greater than annual returns from pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing ($162 billion), legal services ($253 billion), and power generation and supply ($283 billion).

But the impacts go much farther than the retail sales numbers provided by OIA. The industry estimates that the total economic activity from outdoor recreation is $730 billion a year. The Southwick report’s compilation of economic data shows that outdoors and historic preservation generate a conservative estimate of more than $1 trillion in total economic activity, support 9.4 million jobs each year and provide $107 billion in federal, state and local tax revenues. As an example, 2010 activities associated with U.S. Department of the Interior lands provided more than 2.2 million jobs for Americans, which generated $377 billion in economic activity. This includes such activities as construction and maintenance; natural resource management; water, timber and forage use of public lands; and land acquisition.

“As a former Secretary of the Interior, governor, senator and mayor, I have witnessed firsthand how historic preservation, conservation and outdoor recreation result in tremendous benefits to our nation’s economy,” said Dirk Kempthorne. “This study is a valuable tool for reaffirming and quantifying those benefits.”

Beyond the topline numbers, the report evaluates the impact of public lands on nearby communities. Visitation of public lands provides specific returns to communities. In 2009, visitors to national parks spent $12.56 billion in “gateway” areas adjacent to the parks and more than 56 percent of the total spending was by visitors who stayed outside the parks. Nationally, this visitor activity accounted for 247,000 jobs, $9.66 billion in labor income and $16.46 billion in value added. The local impact across all parks amounted to direct and secondary effects of 149,500 jobs, $4.56 billion in labor income and $7.74 billion in value added. In addition, the combined spending effect of hunting, fishing and wildlife watching associated with National Forest System lands totaled $9.5 billion in annual retail sales. They supported 189,400 jobs and provided $1.01 billion in annual federal tax revenues. For national wildlife refuges, there were 36.7 million visitors in 2004, generating $1.64 billion of economic activity in regional economies.

Economic Benefit of Natural Areas
While spending on physical goods and services and trip-related costs associated with public lands are impressive, many of those expenses do not consider the economic returns from the protection of open spaces and natural habitat. The value of ecosystem services provided by natural habitat in the 48 contiguous United States amount to about $1.6 trillion annually, which is equivalent to more than 10 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product (GDP). As a specific case in point, the total value of ecosystem services provided by the acreage of natural habitats in national wildlife refuges totaled $32.3 billion per year, or $2,900 per acre per year. However the opposite impact occurs with loss of habitat. The loss of about 9.9 million acres of wetlands in the U.S. since the 1950s has resulted in an economic loss of more than $81 billion in all wetlands-related ecosystem services, including flood control and water quality.

Another way to assess the importance of open spaces and protected land is to evaluate the property values near these conserved areas. There has been no nationwide assessment, but individual analyses of specific public land units provide a snapshot of how these areas have impacted private land values. One study included in the Southwick report looked at 20 years of research into property values near different categories of parks, from urban to specialized recreational parks, and included natural parks. Overall, the study found a 20-percent value increase of properties next to a passive park; it suggested that these numbers can be used more widely to estimate the economic contributions of parks.

Increased Calls for Action
The strong economic return on investment for public lands is a message that conservation organizations are hoping is resonating in Congress and with the White House. The coalition, America’s Voice for Conservation, Recreation and Preservation has grown to more than a thousand organizations, ranging from traditionally conservative sportsmen’s organizations to some of the more “green” environmental organizations.

In addition, a recent letter by economists and academics was sent to the White House urging continued investment in conservation of public lands. “The rivers, lakes, canyons and mountains found on public lands serve as a unique and compelling backdrop that has helped to transform the western economy from a dependence on resource extractive industries to growth from in-migration, tourism, and modern economy sectors such as finance, engineering, software development, insurance and health care,” the letter authors wrote. “Today, one of the competitive strengths of the West is the unique combination of wide-open spaces, scenic vistas and recreational opportunities alongside vibrant, growing communities that are connected to larger markets via the Internet, highways and commercial air service.”

Even governors in the West are recognizing the link. At their winter meeting early this month, the Western Governor’s Association (WGA) officially launched its marketing campaign to urge tourists to “Get Out West.” The first step of the effort will be the development of a comprehensive report documenting the recreation industry’s contribution to jobs and the economy of western states and the nation. The OIA will be partnering with motorized recreation groups representing an industry with more limited research on the economic impacts from public lands.

“In the past, the motorized and non-motorized groups have published their own reports and analyses using different methodologies,” said Washington Governor Chris Gregoire, chair of the WGA. “With this joint effort, policy makers and the public will get a more complete picture of the positive impacts these industries have on the western economy.”

“The American West is an iconic place for outdoor recreation and draws enthusiasts locally and from around the world,” said Frank Hugelmeyer, President and CEO of the Outdoor Industry Association. “Our choice of activities may differ, but our interest in an accessible, well-managed, well-funded public lands infrastructure brings us together. It is critical that the outdoor recreation community works together to provide a comprehensive snapshot that reveals the true economic impact of our collective industries.”

While there is greater cohesiveness in the conservation community on the issues of funding and the value natural resource conservation efforts to the national economy, how the argument will resonate in Congress remains unclear. There is support building for permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the federal funding source for state and local parks and recreation as well as federal land acquisition. In addition, agriculture conservation programs and wetland management programs also have strong supporters in Congress.

But, as the overall budget “pie” shrinks, many conservation programs appear to be at risk in every appropriations cycle. (jas)

About:
Wildlife Management Institute: Founded in 1911, WMI is a private, nonprofit, scientific and educational organization, dedicated to the conservation, enhancement and professional management of North America’s wildlife and other natural resources. Visit: www.wildlifemanagementinstitute.org

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- Late yesterday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s office sent me an email with a copy of a letter the Congressman had sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on December 15 – a letter to which the A.G. has yet to respond.

In it, Issa informs Holder that the Committee would like him to appear for more testimony on January 24, 2012.

In other words, Fast and Furious isn’t going away any time soon.

Issa wrote:

The hearing will examine flaws in the management structure of the Justice Department as demonstrated in the genesis and implementation of ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious. Specifically, the hearing will focus on what senior Department officials could and should have done to put a stop to this reckless program, as well as the specific areas where failures in communication and management occurred.

As those of you who watched the hearings on December 8th certainly noticed, Holder isn’t a big fan of the way Issa deals with him.

For example, while other Congressman—specifically Democrats—were fawning all over Holder in December, Issa’s demeanor clearly demonstrated that he was sick and tired of Holder’s obfuscation and, dare I say, out and out lies. That’s why I love the fact that Issa’s recent letter pulls no punches. In black and white for all to see, Issa asserts there were “flaws in the management structure of the Justice Department,” as it pertained to Fast and Furious. Moreover, he makes it clear that the January hearing will focus on how those flaws “could and should” have been averted.

I continue to be an Issa fan because he won’t back down—and he shouldn’t.

Making his point clear, Issa added: “The Department’s February 4, 2011, letter to Congress will be but one example of these failures in management.”

In other words, one of the things that will get special attention on January 24th is the fact that the DOJ submitted a letter to Congress on Feb. 4 that was so misleading so full of errors that it had to be withdrawn. (Again, you’ll remember from the December 8th hearings that Issa said to Holder: “It is unheard of for letters or testimony to be taken back.”)

On the 8th Issa also said of Fast and Furious: “Brian Terry is dead today because of this program.” And if for no other reason than that, I hope the Honorable Congressman keeps Holder’s feet to the fire.

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

AmmoLand Gun News

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- In an interview published over the weekend by the New York Times, Attorney General Eric Holder reminded us he will go to any length to conceal his culpability in Fast and Furious.

His latest ploy is to declare as “racist” everyone who’s hounding him about the illegal guns sales, the gun smuggling, and the death, cover-ups, and other examples of lawlessness connected with the operation.

In the Times piece, Holder intimated that President Obama is disliked because of his race, and that people are piling on the bandwagon against Holder as a means to get Obama.

Holder’s exact words: “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him…both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

And who are the people going after Holder and Obama because of their race? Those rascally “conservative commentators and bloggers” of course. They are those who are part of what Holder describes as a “more extreme segment” of news reporting. (I suppose it’s extreme because it’s not news that’s run through a White House sensor or an MSNBC producer before being disseminated to the public.)

Besides informing us that we’re racists for making a big deal out of hundreds of deaths among Mexican citizens, thousands of weapons sold illegally (and over 1,000 still on the street), as well as the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, Holder also took a little time out to pat himself on the back during the Times interview.

Said Holder: “I think that what I’m doing is right” and “I think the stands I have taken are totally consistent with a person who is looking at things realistically, factually.”

By the way, last week 75 members of Congress voted that they had “No Confidence” in Holder’s ability to properly execute the duties of the office of A.G., and more than 60 have called for his resignation due to Fast and Furious.

But they’re probably all racists.

AWR Hawkins

About:
AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America’s Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA’s Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at awr@awrhawkins.com. You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.

"I tried to do the right thing. I took a risk letting these dirtbags into my house. It turns out there never was a plan to trace the guns to Mexico. Mike Detty, Owner Mad Dawg Global Marketing - Image: Thomas Prior, Businessweek

AmmoLand Gun News

USA --(Ammoland.com)- With all the fuss about Fast and Furious -much of it hyperbole and posturing- the readers of Ammoland.com might like some fresh information gathered on the ground in Phoenix and Tucson.

With all due immodesty, I offer my recent profile of the gun dealer who served as a confidential informant for the ATF in the precursor to Fast and Furious, an equally bone-headed investigation called Wide Receiver (when will federal police agencies stop giving their operations dumb names that sound so embarrassing in retrospect?).

This confidential informant, Mike Detty, a longtime FFL based in Tucson, told me a hair-raising story that ended with his falling out with the ATF and deciding that he should bring the whole sordid situation to light.

Good for him, I say.

I heard that Mike was ready to talk from a mutual acquaintance, Jim Shepherd, the publisher and editor of The Outdoor Wire.

Here’s a link to my piece for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, where I am Assistant Managing Editor and a Senior Feature Writer: http://tiny.cc/Businessweekartcle

(Yes, that Bloomberg. The mayor owns, among many other properties, the finest business magazine on the planet, for which I’m proud to work. Give Businessweek a look sometime, regardless of your opinion about Mike Bloomberg’s views on gun control.)

There are a couple of lessons to be learned from my reporting in Arizona:

1. The ATF’s performance was every bit as bumbling and pathetic as it appears from afar. I, for one, do not think there was any vast conspiracy to ship guns to Mexico as a way to lobby for a renewed assault weapons ban. What unfolded in southern Arizona was incompetency wrapped in stupidity and tied up with a bow of lack of adult supervision. You can draw your own conclusions from my shoe-leather reporting.
2. Detty’s account, which I corroborated with court documents and other interviews, contradicts the widely circulated myth that when the ATF allowed guns to “walk” during the Bush administration, they somehow did it in a more responsible way. False! Detty authoritatively explains that back in 2006 and 2007, when he was at the center of Wide Receiver, and privy to all of its ugly details, the ATF was NOT tracking the contraband guns any more closely than they did during Fast and Furious. In other words, this was a fiasco from start to finish, not a competent investigation that evolved into something nefarious only when President Obama took office. The same local ATF guys were involved throughout.
3. Something my reporting does NOT shed light on: The allegations that the main Justice Department in Washington “covered up” what had happened in Arizona, once ATF whistleblowers began sounding off. My work was confined to the Southwest.

We’ll all have to keep an eye on what happens in Washington to determine what happened there.

GLOCK - The Rise of America’s Gun

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAUL M. BARRETT is an assistant managing editor at Bloomberg Businessweek. He is the author of American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion and The Good Black: A True Story of Race in America. Barrett lives and works in New York City.

GLOCK
by Paul M. Barrett
Crown Publishers • On sale: January 10, 2012
Price: $26.00 hardcover • Pages: 304 • ISBN: 978-0-307-71993-5
www.glockthebook.com or www.crownpublishing.com