While the mainstream media continues to cover important stories about the “racist” Tea Party, the need to tax the ultra-rich, or Michelle Obama’s recent shopping spree at Target, details of Fast and Furious continue to effervesce below the surface. And while Obama tweaks his jobs plan for the umpteenth time, takes a few more vacations, and blames the American people for the misery he himself has caused, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) continue to demand answers as to who knew what and when regarding the 2,500 weapons that were sold to straw purchasers and then carried into Mexico without so much as a whimper from ATF supervisors.

Let me make a correction: part of the news that’s effervescing is that all the weapons weren’t sold to civilian straw purchasers. We now know that some of them were sold to ATF agents who paid cash for the weapons and then turned around and sold them to men with proven criminal ties.

Of course, this raises a whole new problem for the ATF supervisors and DOJ officials who are doing their best to stonewall Issa and Grassley’s investigation into this monstrously criminal action: and that new problem is that the funds ATF agents used to purchase the weapons were taxpayer funds.

Read that again and let it soak in – taxpayer monies were used to buy at least some of guns that were purchased during Fast and Furious (and which were then passed on to criminals).

How could this happen? It could happen because this was not a bottom up operation. It was top down, and those at the top had access to funding and the power to keep those beneath them from blowing the lid off of it (for a while at least).

For example, at one time, ATF agent John Dodson was ordered to buy six semi-automatic handguns with cash and then take them to “illegal buyers” who then took them to a “stash house.” (FYI – numerous laws were broken in the manner in which the guns were sold to Dodson and other agents, insomuch as the normal paperwork that a gun store owner fills out on a weapons sale was bypassed completely, and also in the fact that the guns were knowingly purchased for someone who was unable to legally purchase a gun themselves.)

Moreover, it’s been verified that on more than one occasion the ATF agents who made purchases, like Dodson, were not happy that guns were being put on the street and asked permission to apprehend the criminals to whom they has passed the weapons. In all cases, they were told to stand down.

In other words, although Dodson and others saw what was happening they were ordered not to intervene.

(To be clear, former ATF agent John Dodson has been a whistleblower on this mess and deserves nothing but our gratitude.)

At this point in time, Attorney General Eric Holder, DHS’s Big Sis, and other Obama administration officials continue to either plead ignorance on Fast and Furious or provide cover for those who have already been implicated. To this Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County, AZ, says: “It is insanity that they [ATF/DOJ] could try and rationalize this and still withhold and try to cover up information that implicates them.”

Echoing the sentiment of Sheriff Babeu regarding the ATF, DOJ, and others, Senator Grassley has said: “There’s something sinister going on. They’re doing everything they can to avoid the issue; they want to stonewall us and string us along.”

There’s something sinister alright. And the worst part is, more than a thousand weapons are still unaccounted for.

Someone in the Obama administration needs to go to prison over this mess.