No documents from Holder.......

[Oldgringo]

Well now that is a horse of an entirely different color. Now the white house is complicit. Way to go Mr. President. Remember Nixon, I was not alive, but it was the cover up that destroyed his presidency not the actual original incident. Dumb Donkeys.

The White House has always been complicit. Government employees don't do nothing that will jeopardize their entitlements without approval from above.

[VMI77]

I don't think that contempt of Congress is going to mean anything either.

Most of America holds them in contempt (isn't it 80% by the most recent poll?) and it hasn't meant anything. More seriously though, just what has Congress done that wouldn't earn them contempt from this administration? --the Obama Mafia flouts the law with impunity and Congress does absolutely nothing. Why would a thug like Holder have any respect for them?

Anyway, while I understand what you mean, the Obama Mafia holds the entire country in contempt, even the useful idiots that support them, so why would they care about Congress?

[VMI77]

Well now that is a horse of an entirely different color. Now the white house is complicit. Way to go Mr. President. Remember Nixon, I was not alive, but it was the cover up that destroyed his presidency not the actual original incident. Dumb Donkeys.

Yeah, but back then the rule-of-law hadn't yet expired and Nixon was hated by the media. Obama is "The One," and he is worshiped by the media. Their lying to hang Zimmerman is a pale shadow of what they'll do to save The One.

[AEA]

Remember this statement by MaoBama to Brady Campaign concerning his lack of action on Gun Control during his term:
"We are working under the radar".

Now......we know what that meant.
Had it not been for the whistle blower, we would have never known anything, except more Gun Control to law abiding Citizens.

[G.A. Heath]

The thing about claiming executive privilege this late into the process shows that the administration has something to hide. In all fairness that something to hide may (although it is very unlikely) have a legitimate reason for remaining hidden. These documents should have been given executive privilege protection when they were first requested instead of forcing congress to demand, redemand, threaten a contempt vote, schedule said contempt vote, try to negotiate a resolution, reject white house demands, then prepare to proceed with the contempt vote. The contempt of congress vote is, in my opinion, more legitimate now than before because of the late claim of executive privilege. I would suggest that any married man here that doesn't agree try the same stunt with their wife and see if they get away without punishment of some sort.

[Heartland Patriot]

Remember this statement by MaoBama to Brady Campaign concerning his lack of action on Gun Control during his term:
"We are working under the radar".

Now......we know what that meant.
Had it not been for the whistle blower, we would have never known anything, except more Gun Control to law abiding Citizens.

IMHO, I am convinced that the whole thing was to drum up support for a reboot of the sunsetted AWB, at minimum. This time it would be made permanent, though, and much more restrictive. The only problem was a lack of public support. So, they needed to drum up public support. Therefore...Quote outrageous numbers about the percentage of firearms that were traceable back to the USA using shady (or fraudulent) math. Plaster pictures of FULL-AUTO AKs and ARs taken in drug raids in Mexico in the news and constantly equate them with the semi-auto clones American citizens can buy. (Yes, you can buy full auto firearms...but they are REALLY expensive and there aren't really that many of them, and they are tracked by the government.) Get the Presidente of Mexico to the USA and have him give a speech denouncing American firearms owners and sellers as the root cause of drug gang violence in Mexico. Show constant stories in the news of drug violence in Mexico. Push for a UN treaty on "small arms" to get control of "gun trafficking", as if that were a major problem here in the USA, of course in light of the statistics pushed by the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the State Department, in a full-court press. (Any of that ringing a bell with anyone?) And remember, AT THE TIME, the Democrat Party had a lock on Congress...and likely didn't foresee the loss of the House to the Republican Party. However, Agent Terry was killed in the line of duty with one of the F&F guns. And despite the seeming core rottenness of the BATFE, there were obviously a few folks working there that understood the meaning of the word "integrity", unbeknownst to their political bosses...and the whole story came tumbling out bit at a time, with the crooks in the mainstream media doing as little as possible to cover it...almost a cover-up by omission. And since the Republicans DID retake the House in 2011, there was now an outlet for this information, enough to spawn an investigation. Now we have come to where we are today...this thing is NOT over, and it WILL do damage now...the only question is: HOW MUCH?

[Texas Dan Mosby]

There is no doubt in my mind that one of the main objectives of "fast and furious" was to drum up public support for more restrictive firearms laws here in the states.

No doubt at all.

I would like to say that this whole deal shocks me, but I can't.

Our citizens simply don't much care what this administration does, or any other IMO.

[The Annoyed Man]

"Executive Privilege" must have been a last ditch effort, because as of about 7 a.m. talking heads were saying that the fact it had not been claimed made for an interesting twist. I think the reason the administration waited until now to claim it says two things:

1. They realize that being in any way associated with "Fast & Furious" would be toxic to their reelection efforts and as long as they avoided responding at the White House level they could keep the complicity of most of the MSM in not talking about it. So Holder could stonewall all he wanted and as long as the media didn't talk about it, the White House could refuse to get involved.
2. They know that the information sought by Issa et al. would indicate criminal malfeasance on the administration's part, and so when Issa & Co. refused to back down and accept the stonewalling, the administration's hand was forced and Obama had to claim executive privilege. Once they realized that Congress is dead serious about this and that Holder would be held in contempt, there could have only been limited possible outcomes, none of them good for Obama.

Borrowing heavily from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress):

While the law pronounces the duty of the U.S. Attorney is to impanel a grand jury for its action on the matter, some proponents of the unitary executive theory believe that the Congress cannot properly compel the U.S. Attorney to take this action against the Executive Branch, asserting that the U.S. Attorney is a member of the Executive Branch who ultimately reports only to the President and that compelling the Attorney amounts to compelling the President himself. They believe that to allow Congress to force the President to take action against a subordinate following his directives would be a violation of the separation of powers and infringe on the power of the Executive branch. The legal basis for this belief, they contend, can be found in Federalist 49, in which James Madison wrote "“The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, none of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers.” This approach to government is commonly known as "departmentalism” or “coordinate construction”[citation needed]

Others believe that, under Article II, the principal duty of the President is to execute the law; that, under Article I, the law is what the lawmaker—e.g. Congress, in the case of statutory contempt—says it is and the Executive Branch cannot either define the meaning of the law (such powers of legislation being reserved to Congress) or interpret the law (such powers being reserved to the several Federal Courts); any attempt by the Executive to define or interpret the law would be a violation of the separation of powers; the Executive may only—and is obligated to—execute the law consistent with its definition and interpretation; and if the law specifies a duty on one of the President's subordinates, then the President must "take care" to see that the duty specified in the law is executed. To avoid or neglect the performance of this duty would not be faithful execution of the law, and would thus be a violation of the separation of powers, which the Congress and the Courts have several options to remedy.

Personally, I don't believe that James Madison (the author of Federalist 49) would agree that the Executive is above the law. Wikipedia notes that Congress created the modern statutory process for Contempt of Congress charges in 1857. The president at the time (Franklin Pierce) would have certainly had the power of veto, and he didn't do it. Furthermore, the last time it was used in 1934, the Supreme Court in Jurney v. MacCracken apparently upheld the law's constitutionality. So, with SCOTUS precedent on the side of Issa and Congress, it seems like it would be very difficult for the Obama administration to simply shrug off such charges.

All of that said, I believe that, were all of this allowed to play out, the process would take so long that it would last beyond this coming November, and we would never see either Holder forced out of office, or Obama impeached. However, the good news is that if the process plays out, the media will HAVE to talk about it, and given the that view among those in the general public who were aware of it was overwhelming against Fast & Furious, Obama's reelection will simply go down in flames, and THAT is the most important thing. Cut the head off, and the snake dies. When the voters remove Obama from power, Holder and his tawdry actions will cease to affect us so long as Romney follows through on his promises to appoint conservative justices etc., etc.

Some interesting articles:

Pre-executive privilege claim: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/op ... TgIv6EV3pI

NYT upholds executive privilege (big surprise): http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/06/ ... ml?_r=2&hp

Senator Obama decries executive privilege :
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=bpwYh9TD6Nc[/youtube]

Grassley raises a good question http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... r-ff-docs/:

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who first began the Fast and Furious investigation, said the assertion by the White House of executive privilege raises “monumental questions.”

“How can the president assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the president exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme?

Indeed!

Holder retracts his claim that the Bush administration knew about F&F: http://washingtonexaminer.com/holder-re ... le/2500157

From the Romney camp http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/rom ... ous-decisi:

Romney Press Secretary Andrea Saul attacked President Barack Obama's decision to invoke executive privilege on documents pertaining to the Fast and Furious scandal requested by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“President Obama’s pledge to run the most open and transparent administration in history has turned out to be just another broken promise,” she said in a statement to BuzzFeed.

The scandal has largely been ignored by the media and the American public, but is entering the mainstream as the committee prepares to vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over the documents.

The administration is unraveling, and I couldn't be happier.