Justice Department memos obtained by CBS News show that Attorney General Eric Holder was aware of a controversial cross-border law enforcement operation in July 2010 – nearly a year earlier than he had previously acknowledged. Holder told congressional investigators in May that he had first heard of the operation only weeks before. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in May 2011, Holder said that he had “probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.” The Fast and Furious operation allowed “straw buyers” – … More

On January 21, 2009, Barack Obama stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and, in his inaugural address, pledged to America that he would “wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” What he did wield, of course, was a 2,000-page bill known as Obamacare. More than a year on, we now know that health care costs are soaring, and the President’s signature legislation is to blame. Most Americans know that medicine is getting more expensive, but a new survey puts a shocking sticker price … More

New revelations in the ongoing Fast and Furious investigation show that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) used taxpayer money to buy assault weapons that they then passed on to Mexican drug cartels. Sources have also claimed that ATF superiors ordered surveillance teams to stop tracking weapons once they were in the cartels’ possession. In June 2010, according to documents obtained by Fox News, undercover ATF Special Agent John Dodson purchased six AK-style CAI Draco 7.62x39mm handguns with cash provided to him by the ATF. Under orders … More

You wouldn’t know it if you solely paid attention to the mainstream media, but while President Barack Obama attempts to sell the country on hundreds of billions in new stimulus spending and $1.5 trillion in new taxes, his Administration is smack in the middle of several growing scandals: the Operation Fast and Furious gun-running debacle and the crony capitalism wrongdoing involving Solyndra and LightSquared. In the fall of 2009, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which is overseen by President Obama’s Department of Justice, launched an effort to sell … More

It’s the “interstate commerce clause” and it applies to everything.

Officials from the U.S. federal government have admitted to arresting, then releasing mere hours later, a man who admitted to manufacturing hundreds of improvised explosive devices for a Mexican drug cartel, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The man was arrested last week in Mexico, where authorities reportedly seized materials that could be used to manufacture 500 grenades. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix, AZ, declined to charge Jean Baptiste Kingrey, the Wall Street Journal reported, despite the strenuous objections of at least one agent from the … More

During the past week, the U.S. and Colombia indicted and arrested more than 50 individuals charged with organizing maritime and aerial smuggling of cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. via Central America and Mexico. The arrests again reflect the sustained nature of close law enforcement cooperation between the U.S. and Colombia. This cooperation has been nurtured patiently over more than a decade. By stark contrast, cooperation between Washington and Mexico has been harmed as a result of Operation Fast and Furious, the botched law enforcement operation that allowed more than … More

With the resignation this week of Dennis K. Burke, the Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney in Phoenix, we have the first high-level casualty in the burgeoning scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious. Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley is also being transferred from the criminal division to the civil division, although the Department of Justice (DOJ) claims that it was at Hurley’s own request. They join other key individuals—such as Kenneth E. Melson, who has been relieved as the Acting Director of the ATF and moved to the DOJ’s Office of Legal … More

The latest horror of August 25 has shaken Mexico. In a brazen and senseless assault, reportedly part of an extortion plot, members of the deadly Zetas criminal organization firebombed a casino in Monterrey, Mexico. In the ensuing inferno, 52 Mexicans—mainly middle-class women with no drug connections—died. Mexican President Felipe Calderon denounced the casino outrage as an unprecedented “abhorrent act of terror and barbarism.” He appealed forcefully to the U.S. and the Obama Administration to do something about drug consumption and the southward flow of guns into Mexico. On August 26, … More

A U.S. government gun-trafficking investigation gone horribly wrong has resulted in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol officer, some 2,000 firearms in the hands of criminals, and the dismissal of a 24-year veteran law enforcement official. This is the story of Fast and Furious, and yesterday the latest chapter unfolded when two top officials associated with the operation were removed from their positions, while a third individual resigned. The story begins in the fall of 2009, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) office in Phoenix, Arizona, began selling … More