The Necropolitan Sentinel

Via Steve Bartin, Tim Stanley's very clean contextualization of Fast and Furious at The Telegraph:

It’s important to note that the Bush administration oversaw something similar to Fast and Furious. Called Operation Wide Receiver, it used the common tactic of “controlled delivery,” whereby agents would allow an illegal transaction to take place, closely follow the movements of the arms, and then descend on the culprits. But Fast and Furious is different because it was “uncontrolled delivery,” whereby the criminals were essentially allowed to drop off the map. Perhaps more importantly, Wide Receiver was conducted with the cooperation of the Mexican government. Fast and Furious was not.

So Obama’s operation is subtly different. But just as concerning is the heavy-handed way that the administration has handled criticism. Obama says that the Oversight Committee has been hijacked by Republicans who would rather talk about politics than creating jobs (because Obama is oh so very good at generating those). But there has been Democratic criticism too, and the Prez’s determined defence of Holder will only encourage conspiracy thinking that the scandal has hidden depths. Executive privilege is usually associated with protecting information that passes through the Oval Office. What did the documents reveal about Obama’s association with the operation?

Again, it’s important to contextualise. Executive privilege has been invoked 24 times since Ronald Reagan, and attempts to over-ride it rarely reach the courts. Moreover, Holder’s request for executive privilege made no reference to White House involvement in Fast and Furious, which seems to have been run exclusively by the ATF. Nevertheless, by refusing to sack Holder or push him to come clean, Obama may have made a very Nixonian mistake.

A lot of conservatives are writing at the moment that not only is Obama turning into Nixon Mark II, but Obama is worse because no one actually got killed during Watergate. The comparison is based on the myth that Nixon ordered the Watergate break in and that’s what he eventually had to resign over. But that’s not true. Nixon’s guilt was in trying to pervert the course of justice by persuading the FBI to drop its investigation of the crime.

I think the claim that it is "subtly" different is patronizing, but apart from that, RTWT.

Brian Terry? Who's he? We have important people to protect, here.

What we need is photos of the Mexicans who have been murdered with Fast and Furious supplied weapons.

UPDATE: Jimmie Bise, back to blogging, with a vengeance, recaps the sad history of Fast and Furious and the equally sad history of its non-coverage by the MSM.

EBL: Nothing to see here. Nothing atoll.

Sharyl Attkisson reports that Terry's family is filing a civil suit against the DoJ.

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