Thursday, June 21, 2012

Obama's Invocation Of Executive Privelege: Why Now? Why Not A Year Ago?

Since January of last year, a Republican lead Congressional Committee has conducted an investigation into the Department of Justice's gun-running program -- operationally called "Fast and Furious". As part of the "Fast and Furious" program, guns were purchased in this country and intentionally handed over to Mexican Drug Cartel members; resulting, not only in the deaths of many Mexican citizens, but, also, in the death of a U.S. Border Agent.

All along, Eric Holder and his Justice Department members have blocked the investigation from going forward.  From the very beginning, there have been nothing but lies; starting with the first lie that the program was some kind of "rouge" program that had been conducted by local people without approvals from above.  But, now we know that the program was pushed from very high levels within the Justice Department; with a scapegoated Assistant U.S. Attorney General being forced to step down over his involvement in the program. Beyond that, the Attorney General, himself, Eric Holder, has also been caught lying; with his lies being easily exposed by documents and emails.  So, it's no wonder that the Republicans smell a rat.  And, just maybe, the tail of that rat can be followed all the way to the White House.

Through the entire investigation, only about 5% of the thousands of "Furious" documents have been handed over to Congress; and, Holder has stonewalled on the access to any further documents for months.  The investigation finally came to a head when the Republicans threatened a "Contempt of Congress" charge and vote against Eric Holder.  Then, as of yesterday and in contradiction to Eric Holder's false promise that he would release an additional 1300 documents, President Obama stepped in and asserted Executive Privilege; thereby blocking any further document releases and, and as a result, effectively shutting down the investigation.

Anytime during the last year, the President could have played the Executive Privilege card.  But, he waited until "now"; only 4-1/2 months before the election.   Obama knows that "now" is too little time for Congress to go through the courts and get an override of the President's invocation of "Executive Privilege" and I believe this was strategically intentional.

Let's face it, if their wasn't anything in those documents that would point to high levels of involvement in "Fast and Furious",  many more could have been easily released; effectively forcing Congress to give up and shut down the whole investigation.  There's something there and Obama and Holder want it hidden; especially before the election.  Their argument that people and tactics would be exposed by releasing the rest of the documents is just bull.  It's bull because the heavy handed use of broad, black, permanent marker "redaction" could have been used to hide any truly sensitive names and facts.  Instead, stupidly, this President and his Attorney General may have just left the electorate thinking that they are  truly hiding something.  For some voters, this just might be enough to question voting for an Obama reelection.   And,  the Obama political blunders continue piling up.

pb

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