Contempt Vote Tomorrow

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Last week the Congressional Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 23 to 17 (down party lines) to hold to hold US Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress for attempting to Obstruct thier ivestigation into the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry who was killed by a rifle registered to the US Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (BATFE).

It has since been revealed that BATFE Agents along the Arizona/Mexico Border had been providing weapons to the Signolla Drug Cartel. I posted about the story when initially broke here.

Holder initially denied any knowledge of of the policy, and later defended it as simply the continuation of a Bush-era program called "Operation Wide Reciever". He has since withdrawn those statements. Holder has not yet been formally held in contempt of Congress. The full House still needs to approve the resolution in order for that to happen. But President Obama has elected to support Holder by asserting executive privilege over the documents subpoenaed by the Oversight Committee.

This raises some interesting questions...

Actual lawyers feel free to corrct me, but as I understand it executive privilege allows the president to withhold documents and other materials that would reveal advisory opinions and recommendations by which governmental policies are formulated. By invoking executive privilege Obama and Holder are essentially admitting that "allowing" guns into Mexico was a policy descision.

Cynics have theorized that this was an effort to justify increased Gun-Control and Federal intervention in southern states. Others see it as simply stupidity and negligence. But what the question I find truly fascinating is "Why has the Obama adminisration chosen to make a stand here?"

I've been expecting Holder to get the boot for a couple of years now but it still hasn't happened. Historically Obama has been willing to sever ties with people who's association has become a liability. Holder is becoming a massive target for the Right and seems to rate an indifferent shrug from the left, so why protect him?

I have a few theories which (in order of increasing cynicism) are...

1: Holder and Obama are friends and Obama is genuinely prepared to risk his own reputation to protect him.

2: Obama doesn't think the charges will stick and sees this as an opprotunity to fuck over a Republican-lead investigation.

3: In relation to #3 Obama and Holder have bought into thier own hype and actually believe that nobody cares about violence in Mexico, they just hate black people.

4: The subpoenaed documents include information that could implicate Obama in wrong doing.

5: Holder has dirt on Obama and is blackmailing him.

Anyone else have any ideas?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Sigh, wow. This icon really is appropriate. What I'm saying is perfectly elementary, and has nothing to do with Dems or GOP. And (here's where it starts): only those inclined to see people out to get them who don't exist, arguing things never said, making points never made, in a discussion that never happened think otherwise. I have repeatedly stated I think F & F is a bad thing, but that it's another transparent example of selective morality. It's a very simple concept, but to some people it's like doing the oral version of the Illiad scenes where Achilles drags Hector around in the original Classical Greek wearing cheap Hoplite armor replicas.

That you see "it's not the evil that led to people dying, but that this is merely a tool" as meaning "Democrats shouldn't be prosecuted" is at the very *least* a strawman, at the worst it's a pattern of either illiteracy or deliberate lies based on something never said invented for the purpose of pure self-congratulation.

[foreverbeach.livejournal.com]

What I see is excuse-making. Let's cut to the chase:

Do you support the prosecution of Holder, and if implicated, Obama, for the F&F program and subsequent coverup or not? Yes or no?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Quoting myself above; The problem with this is that when the concept begins under Bush but blows up under Obama, the problem is that the concept was flawed from the get-go. If Holder is held accountable, so should Bush's last attorney general and the Bush Administration morons that came up with this idea to start with also be strung up by their Buster Browns, unless a government operation going bad in a lethal way is somehow worse under a Democrat than a Republican.

So the answer is yes, with the caveat that the prosecution be motivated by justice, not by politics. Precisely what I don't expect from the BJ in the Oval Office is the pits of evil crowd.