Fast and Furious Exposes Obama’s Lack Of Transparency
June 22, 2012 5 Comments
President Obama claimed he would have the most transparent administration in history. He’s gone so far as to order Federal agencies to release all sorts of documents, even those which could be held back under the FOIA law. That is until Fast and Furious came along. Now the most transparent White House in history is hiding behind executive privilege in order to prevent House Republicans from exercising their Constitutional right to oversee the executive branch. We’re told the House Republicans are being “partisan” as though the White House somehow is not.
At the end of the day several thousand illegal weapons were sent by our government to Mexican drug cartels. Over 200 Mexicans are dead as is one American border patrol agent. To the Obama administration the House Republican’s interest in this is partisan. Never mind that hundreds lay dead thanks to their program. We have serial morons such as Al Sharpton claiming this is all about race, that Holder is being “stopped and frisked” by the House GOP. To believe race plays a factor here would require ignoring the fact that 200+ Mexicans are dead.
Jay Carney insists the evoking of executive privilege is a matter of “principle.” In short, it’s a matter of principle that the American people don’t get to discover why their government was arming Mexican drug cartels. As a matter of principle Obama isn’t going to let us know who knew what and when. Ignore those dead Mexicans and the dead border patrol agent. Ignore those thousands of weapons, largely lost and untracked by our government. It’s a matter of principle that you and I don’t get to know anything about it. After all, the Republicans are just playing partisan games. The Obama administration, Eric Holder and the Fast and Furious gang included, is sugar and spice and everything nice.
Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post believes the Obama administration is trying to bait House Republicans via the recent immigration decision and the executive privilege claim. His theory is that the Obama administration is using these two issues to get the focus off the economy, create a vocal division between himself and the House GOP all so he can run against those dastardly jerks in the House. It’s an interesting theory and perhaps it’s something the Obama administration is actually trying to do.
The problem though is that there has been a near media blackout of Fast and Furious. Other than Fox News and the blogs, the major networks have completely ignored the scandal. NBC Nightly News for example until this week spent less than 30 seconds on Fast and Furious over the last two years. The major papers have all buried this story. With the Obama administration now taking the GOP head on, forcing a contempt vote and claiming executive privilege, now all of a sudden the general public is being made aware of Fast and Furious.
It ought not surprise anyone when more than a few people say “hey wait a minute” when they find out the Justice Department was handing off illegal guns to Mexican drug cartels and there are now 200+ rotting Mexican corpses and one dead border patrol agent. It should surprise people even less when the “hey wait a minute” gang doesn’t like the Obama administration hiding documents. They might think the House Republicans are up to no good but they’ll detest the lack of transparency from Obama. They’ll wonder, why isn’t the President handing these documents over? The notion that the public will view this as a total witch hunt and even view Obama sympathetically is preposterous. People died because of this program, this is beyond a political game.
Obama is taking a huge risk by evoking executive privilege. He’s no longer a transparent President but rather he’s a President who appears to be covering things up. At the end of the day over two hundred people are dead because of Fast and Furious. Congress deserves to know the truth, so do the American people. The family of Brian Terry, the dead border patrol agent, deserves to know the truth. That the Obama administration is trying to hide documents, that they want to prevent the public from knowing who in the administration knew what and when is an outrage. If Obama thinks going to war with the House over these documents is a good idea politically he’s sadly mistaken. Now everyone is paying attention to Fast and Furious and no one is going to be happy that the administration is stonewalling the investigation.
About Steven
Of course his administration is transparent, and he’s doing just what he said he would do,(Transforming America). Right now he is urgently doing as much harm to the country as possible before November. Socialism isn’t the agenda as much as his rewarding HIS constituency.
Fast and Furious was a tool to regulate U.S. citizens gun rights, which it accomplished to a degree by limiting sales in border states. The Obama organization didn’t get the bang for the buck when it backfired in their faces, (all possible puns intended) and they had to cover their southern borders. Executive privilege is being misused so they can cover their butts. Watergate didn’t get anyone killed, Fast and Furious did. Holder and his boss need to go.
Thanks to the whistle blower that brought this Fast and Furious fiasco to light. And thank goodness that everyone doesn’t get their news from NBC or the other networks.
I can’t argue with anything you’ve said.
You have brought up something that many seem to miss. Fast and Furious was obviously meant to perpetuate the lie that a large percentage of guns in the Mexican drug war can be traced back to America. Anything liberals can do to give them a reason to limit our 2nd Amendment rights, they will do.
I wonder sometimes about our President. He is supposed to be a smart man, but the invoking of executive privilege wasn’t a smart move. It has done the one thing many of us have tried to do for the past several months, namely to pull Fast and Furious out of obscurity and to give it the attention it deserves. I seriously doubt he saw this coming.
He seems to be acting like a community organizer and thinking politically only from that world. I’m reading Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals” and it’s been clear that the Obama administration has followed Alinsky’s guidelines repeatedly. The problem though is that Alinsky is writing to rabble rousers on the street, not to the President of the United States. So Obama’s political maneuvering is woefully lacking. As such he doesn’t consider the unintended consequences of his decisions and we end up with a Fast and Furious move that now exposes the program to a public that otherwise knew nothing about it.
Another theory I have on the President is that because he’s a narcissist he believes that whatever idea he has come up with is the best and the one that must be implemented. This may explain the Alinsky and community organizing political strategy coming from the White House. His advisers are weak, save for Valarie Jarrett who shares Obama’s mindset. If only he had a stronger adviser who was skilled at making Obama think he’s the one coming up with a brilliant strategy that he didn’t actually come up with I suspect this administration would be doing a lot better right now and would likely win re-election.