Much to the chagrin of President Barak Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and yes, even Big Sis, the “Fast and Furious” saga continues. Over a month after ATF supervisors William G. McMahon and William Newell were shuffled away from their supervisory positions in the operation, and more than a week after ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson was reassigned, Congressman Darrell Issa maintains that the House Oversight Committee will continue their investigation.
Moreover, there is a growing interest in Fast and Furious among Americans at large, as more and more news of it reaches the public eye.
As result, even though U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke has resigned his post in Arizona and federal prosecutor Emory Hurley has been reassigned, Senator John McCain is calling for the Senate to jump into the fray and open an investigation overseen by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Oh, I almost forgot – McCain wants Holder and Big Sis to testify under oath.
Compounding matters for those who wish that Fast and Furious would simply vanish from the national memory is the fact that we know that hand grenades, whether in part or in whole, were also moved to cartel members via the border between Arizona and Mexico. And as with gun sales associated with Fast and Furious, these grenades crossed the border after the ATF failed to track both the grenades themselves and the man transporting them, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Additionally, there are allegations of a Fast and Furious-like operation out of Tampa, FL, an administration-sponsored gun-smuggling operation out of El Paso, TX and Columbus, NM, and a Fast and Furious-like operation in Indiana.
According to reports, straw buyers were allowed to buy guns out of a gun store in Indiana even though many of the straw purchasers were felons and incapable of passing the necessary background check for gun purchases. When the owner of the store would contact the ATF to express concern over the people who were coming in to buy weapons, he was told the sales had been okayed. (Sound familiar?)
The difference between Indiana and the Fast and Furious operation in Arizona is that the weapons sold in Arizona were supposedly intended for cartel members while the weapons sold in Indiana were supposedly intended for gang members.
Either way, I keep waiting for Rod Serling to show up and start narrating this crazy mess.
To date, Holder & Co. have done what they could to move McMahon, Newell, Melson, Burke, and Hurley out of the public eye, and it looks like they need a similar plan for Robert J. Browning, ATF Special Agent in Charge, Columbus, OH, and Joseph H. Hogsett, U.S. Attorney, Southern District of Indiana. (These are the two men on whose shoulders the Fast and Furious-like operation in Indiana seems to rest.)
I’m glad the Senate is going to start a second leg of investigations into this matter because there are a lot of dots to connect here. Hopefully, it won’t be long until someone in the House or Senate takes the advice of the National Rifle Association and calls for a special prosecutor.
And that prosecutor will have his hands full, because from Tampa to El Paso, and from Indiana to Phoenix, serious interstate and international gun crimes seem to have been committed.
Call me crazy, but Bill Clinton is starting to look like saint.
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