Feds used taxpayer dollars to buy and sell illegal weapons to Mexican drug lords in “Operation Fast & Furious”

Oh, I’m furious, no doubt.  New details:

Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel — the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.

This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice’s previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a “botched” operation where agents simply “lost track” of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another. Instead, it heightens the culpability of the federal government as Mexico, according to sources, has opened two criminal investigations into the operation that flooded their country with illegal weapons.

So what was Operation Fast and Furious?

Operation Fast and Furious began in October 2009. In it, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives encouraged gun stores to sell weapons to an arms smuggling gang, then watched as the guns crossed the border and were used in crimes. Each month, the agency allowed hundreds of guns to go South, despite opposition from some agents.

All told, the gang spent more than $1.25 million for the illegal guns.

In June 2010, however, the ATF dramatically upped the ante, making the U.S. government the actual “seller” of guns.

According to documents obtained by Fox News, Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy six semi-automatic Draco pistols — two of those were purchased at the Lone Wolf gun store in Peoria, Ariz. An unusual sale, Dodson was sent to the store with a letter of approval from David Voth, an ATF group supervisor.

Dodson then sold the weapons to known illegal buyers, while fellow agents watched from their cars nearby.

This was not a “buy-bust” or a sting operation, where police sell to a buyer and then arrest them immediately afterward. In this case, agents were “ordered” to let the sale go through and follow the weapons to a stash house.

According to sources directly involved in the case, Dodson felt strongly that the weapons should not be abandoned and the stash house should remain under 24-hour surveillance. However, Voth disagreed and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office. Dodson refused, and for six days in the desert heat kept the house under watch, defying direct orders from Voth.

A week later, a second vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons. Dodson called for an interdiction team to move in, make the arrest and seize the weapons. Voth refused and the guns disappeared with no surveillance.

David Voth and a slew of others within the administration should be fired over this.  With the exception of FNC, the rest of the MSM is quieter than MSNBC’s prime time coverage of the Solyndra scandal.

County supervisor, a Democrat, needs remedial U.S. geography

Edyookashun iz kool.  From Milwaukeestan:

There was an odd moment during the debate when Supervisor Peggy West stood up and seemed to be confused about her geography.  “If this was Texas, which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this saying that they had a major issue with undocumented people flooding their borders, I would have to look twice at this.  But this (AZ) is a state that is a ways removed from the border,” West said during debate.

I don’t know how to break this to you, Magellan, but Arizona does indeed share a border with Mexico.  While she was telling people to Google AZ’s law, she might have heeded her own advice and utilized Google maps to see exactly where AZ is located.

How humiliating…and delicious!  😆

Mexico tells America how to police its own borders

Holy frijoles, Señor Batman!  Calderon sure has huevos grandes to say this:

Regarding the Administration’s decision to send 1,200 National Guard servicemen to the US Southern border, the Government of Mexico trusts that this decision will help to channel additional US resources to enhance efforts to prevent the illegal flows of weapons and bulk cash into Mexico, which provide organized crime with its firepower and its ability to corrupt.

Additionally, the Government of Mexico expects that National Guard personnel will strengthen US operations in the fight against transnational organized crime that operates on both sides of our common border and that it will not, in accordance to its legal obligations, conduct activities directly linked to the enforcement of immigration laws.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?  The National Guard should not “conduct activities directly linked to the enforcement of immigration laws”?  What does he think they are there for, free burritos?  Have they been smoking some quality peyote or what?

He should be thankful that America isn’t as barbaric as Mexico in protecting our borders
.

Rep. Tom McClintock blasts Mexico’s president for assailing the AZ law

Most of you have seen the shameful display by B.O. and his minions in Congress, giving a standing ovation to the president of Mexico who came to our country, stood before our elected officials, and lambasted our immigration laws.

Two observations here:

1.  President Calderon was grilled by Wolf Blitzer on Mexico’s immigration policy, which is far more brutal and exclusionary than our immigration policy.  Calderon was apparently oblivious to the hypocrisy coming out of his burritohole:

BLITZER: So if people want to come from Guatemala or Honduras or El Salvador or Nicaragua, they want to just come into Mexico, they can just walk in?

CALDERON: No. They need to fulfill a form. They need to establish their right name. We analyze if they have not a criminal precedent. And they coming into Mexico. Actually…

BLITZER: Do Mexican police go around asking for papers of people they suspect are illegal immigrants?

CALDERON: Of course. Of course, in the border, we are asking the people, who are you?

And if they explain…

BLITZER: At the border, I understand, when they come in.

CALDERON: Yes.

BLITZER: But once they’re in…

CALDERON: But not — but not in — if — once they are inside the — inside the country, what the Mexican police do is, of course, enforce the law. But by any means, immigration is a crime anymore in Mexico.

BLITZER: Immigration is not a crime, you’re saying?

CALDERON: It’s not a crime.

BLITZER: So in other words, if somebody sneaks in from Nicaragua or some other country in Central America, through the southern border of Mexico, they wind up in Mexico, they can go get a job…

CALDERON: No, no.

BLITZER: They can work.

CALDERON: If — if somebody do that without permission, we send back — we send back them.

Hypocrisy: it’s not just for dessert with flan and sopapillas anymore.

2.  Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) had a fiery retort to Calderon’s and the liberals’ disgusting and shameful behavior.  Read the transcripts here, an excerpt of which follows:

The Mexican government has made it very clear for many years that it holds American sovereignty in contempt and President Calderon’s behavior as a guest of the Congress confirms and underscores this attitude.

It is highly inappropriate for the President of Mexico to lecture Americans on American immigration policy, just as it would be for Americans to lecture Mexico on its laws.  It is obvious that President Calderon does not understand the nature of America or the purpose of our immigration law.
…
Unlike Mexico, our nation embraces immigration and what makes that possible is assimilation.
…
The largest group of immigrants now comes from Mexico.  A recent RAND study discovered that during most of the 20th Century, while our immigration laws were actually enforced, assimilation worked and made possible the swift attainment of the American dream for millions of immigrants seeking to escape conditions in Mexico.
…
It is an outrage that a foreign head of state would appear in this chamber and actively seek to do so.  And it is a disgrace that he would be cheered on from the left wing of the White House and by many Democrats in this Congress.

Arizona has not adopted a new immigration law.  All it has done is to enforce existing law that President Obama refuses to enforce.  It is hardly a radical policy to suggest that if an officer on a routine traffic stop encounters a driver with no driver’s license, no passport, and who doesn’t speak English, that maybe that individual might be here illegally.

And to those who say we must reform our immigration laws, I reply that we don’t need to reform them, we need to enforce them, just as every other government does.  Just as Mexico does. …

If the left insists on fighting on ther wrong side of an issue on which 73% of Americans disagree with them, that’s fine with me.  Then again, all that the left has done since assuming power is wipe their backsides with the Constitution and flaunt their contempt for normal America.

Dem Congressman wants to close the Mexican border

Finally, a Dem with some common sense about the security risk posed by a porous border with Mexico!  At long last, a leftie who recognizes the economic drain on this country by the hordes of criminal immigrants taxing our social infrastructure with demands on our criminal justice system, health care system, etc.!

Just kidding.  His sole concern is the swine flu problem.  All those other problems are no big whoop.

To recap: Closing the border due to reasons unrelated to swine flu is not feasible, but closing the border due to to swine flu is totally doable and a moral imperative.

Got it.  Thanks for the clarification.

World Court tries again to usurp American sovereignty

The World Court ruled in 2004 that the U.S. could not execute Mexican nationals who had been convicted in Texas (for gang-rape and murder of two teenage girls) and sentenced to die.

Anywho, the lame open-borders administration attempted to get Texas to abide by the overreaching World Court, and Texas told Bush to go to Hell.  The case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, whereby a 6-3 ruling in favor of common sense and national sovereignty was handed down.  SCOTUS said that the World Court had NO authority to intervene in the American legal system and that the president did NOT have the power to order Texas to abide by the World Court’s ruling.

Well, old habits die hard, because the World Court is trying to meddle again.  Details:

The World Court ordered the United States on Wednesday to do all it could to halt the imminent executions of five Mexicans until the court makes a final judgment in a dispute over suspects’ rights.

The row, which has strained relations between the neighbors, centers on the fact that the United States failed to inform 51 of its citizens sentenced to die in U.S. jails of their right to consular assistance.

One of the five Mexicans on death row, Jose Medellin, is due to die on August 5 in Texas.

In 2004, the World Court ruled in favor of Mexico, finding the United States had violated international law, and ordered it to review the 51 cases to see whether the lack of consular assistance had prejudiced the outcome of their trials.

A year later, U.S. President George W. Bush ordered Texas to review Medellin’s case but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in March that Bush had no authority to do so, leading Texas to schedule Medellin’s execution for August.

“The court indicates that the United States of America shall take all measures necessary to ensure that five Mexican nationals are not executed pending its final judgment,” Judge Rosalyn Higgins said.

Mexico has asked the World Court or International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an interpretation of its 2004 ruling, given U.S. assertions that its federal states have a large degree of legal autonomy and it .cannot compel them to review the cases

Will the open-border amigos of Jorgé W. Bush in the administration pay attention to OUR court this time, or will they try to ignore OUR court to placate the UN’s court?

ABC News: Second Amendment is arming Mexican drug lords

The Always Biased Company blames the arming of Mexico’s drug gangs on our constitutional right to self-defense.  Nope…no liberal media bias!

Government cracking down on criminal immigrants

Of course, it’s not our government…it’s Mexico’s!  From the AP:

Central Americans without documents now face increased security within Mexico, including checks on the train for stowaways. It’s also harder for them to head north once they cross into Mexico because of hurricane damage to the train tracks.

The result: The number of non-Mexican migrants stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol has dropped almost 60 percent from 2005, despite increased detention efforts. About 68,000 non-Mexican migrants — mostly Central Americans — were detained last year, compared to 165,000 in 2005. Non-Mexicans make up about 10 percent of all migrants caught by Border Patrol officers.

Mexico itself is also seeing fewer illegal immigrants — 120,000 were arrested last year, a 50 percent drop from 2005, when Hurricane Stan hit and destroyed the railroad, according to the National Immigration Institute. Since President Felipe Calderon took office two years ago, Mexico has added more soldiers and federal police on its border with Guatemala and more immigration and military checkpoints throughout the south. 

Kudos to Calderon for taking national security and sovereignty seriously.  It’s good to see someone who recognizes the importance of those things.

What?  Wait, you mean this Calderon?

The Mexican government, he said, would continue to “energetically protest unilateral actions” of the U.S. Congress on the immigration front that he said “exacerbate the persecution of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S.”

Calderon, usted es un hipócrita!  (My online English-to-Spanish translator choked on deciphering “chutzpah”, so “hypocrite” had to do.)

Mexico: Hey, what are we supposed to do with all these Mexicans coming back here?

BEVERAGE ALERT!  Put down your coffee, beer, tea, or whatever else before reading this.  From the LA Times:

No one knows how many immigrants have left the state, and the most recent government figures show Arizona growing robustly — as of July, Maricopa was the fastest-growing county in the nation.

But enough immigrants have left that the government of Sonora, the Mexican state bordering Arizona, has complained about how many people have arrived on its doorstep.

Someone dial “9-wah-waaaaah!” and get a “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah-mbulance” dispatched pronto.  Cry me a Rio Grande, Sonora!

Jorge W. Bush to give $1.4 billion to secure Mexico’s southern border

The jack#ss won’t secure our border with Meheeko, but he wants to keep criminal aliens from illegally entering Meheeko from the south?  When will this madness freakin’ end?  From Michelle Malkin:

A reader asked me to check into information that President Bush was pushing a massive foreign-aid package to Mexico to help them secure their southern border against the flow of illegal aliens from Central America.

“We can’t even get our own border straight, and we are going to provide Mexico with funding so they can solve their problem,” the reader fumed. “I doubt the Central Americans are staying very long in Mexico anyway. We know where they are going!”

Too outrageously outrageous to be true?

Well, I checked it out and it’s even worse than the reader described. Far worse.

The plan is called “The Merida Initiative.” Seems that the White House has had this plan in the works for nearly a year with little congressional input on either side of the border.

We can’t finish our own border fence, properly supply our immigration agents and border patrol with all the equipment and resources they need, or get our house in order. Yet, the Bush administration wants to fork over $1.4 billion to Mexico and Central America–with much of it going into the hands of corrupt law enforcement officials and government bureaucrats who have worked tirelessly to undermine our immigration laws. The funding is tucked into the 2008 supplemental budget.

Naturally, the State Department has taken a lead role. They’ve held meetings in secret and cut out members of Congress from discussion. You’ll love the explanation for the secrecy: Mexico is “sensitive,” you see. Also, according to one expert, “Mexico is very protective of its sovereignty and very worried about any incursion of U.S. security forces or private contractors—like Blackwater—coming in to train Mexicans.” Yeah, they’re worried about incursions and sovereignty.
…
At a little-noticed hearing (finally) on the plan last week, seems there was some opposition.

Rep. Gabrielle Gifford, D-Ariz., questioned whether it was wise to assist Mexico at a time when the U.S. economy appears to be headed toward a recession.

“Unless we have our house in order, putting millions into Central America and Mexico is not the solution,” she said.

But I haven’t read about any opposition from Republicans. Yoo-hoo. Anybody home? … 

There’s more, but you get the gist.  Contact your elected leaders (those NOT named Jorge W. Bush) and demand that this funding be cut ASAFP!