This is President Obama's first use of executive privilege, despite having previously criticized his predecessor George W. Bush for using the power, saying Bush had a tendency "to hide behind executive privilege every time there's something a little shaky that's taking place." All of the past 10 presidents have invoked executive privilege, with George W. Bush using it six times and Bill Clinton using it 14.

The Department of Justice has turned over between 7,000 and 8,000 documents, but the congressional committee wants access to others they have declined to provide. (USNews)

You guys keep talking about the power and reach of the NRA. If this keeps going in this direction, you're going to see just how powerful and far reaching their pull really is. Holder's not going to get away with this, and if Obama keeps covering up for him, he'll go down with him. Mark my words.

If you understood Security and why Bush invoked Executive Privilege 6 times. No one should have to look up the reasons Presidents invoke Executive Privilege for you if you are interested.

Silly, silly....but that is getting to be expected/

The rumor mill will continue to churn out suppositions, while the truth remains... we simply don't know at this point in time.

Obama is going down anyway, wallstreet picked their horse in this year's race.

I am sure Romney will be the president of your dreams ... and all will be well in the land of nod once more.

In a week, all of what it is we are going to find out should be out there.

Keeping in mind that it won't be the first time, certainly, that this sort of thing has goine on, and since the conservatives have held that office the most often in the last 30 years, I'd say that nobody has a lot of genuine outrage alloted to them.

Which still doesn't make it right, but it is something to keep in mind when registering on the high end of the outrage meter.

I feel there has to be more to this story - something like this would NOT bode well for the future of the campaign of the President, who is, after all running for office with Nov. looming.

I think there is probably more to this story and am willing to wait to see what it might be precisly because of the looming election and the big, negative spin that can be played forever until then.

My take on it.

Issa, one of the most correct members of congess at that leading an inept and embarrasing investigation.

Not calling any members from the Bush adminstration to answer questions about this program.

Asking for documents that are AGAINST federal law to turn over including grand jury transripts and idenity of informants.

Holder has been before them 9 times and they keep moving the goal post.

They are a disgrace to our country and the truth.

Not excusing the prez ... have made my feelings clear on the current occupant of that chair.

Just not playing the partisan gotcha games that the puppet masters expect, no demand, we play.

Tis boring...

Then why aren't they part of the investigation? Why did Issa call none of them? Why is Issa asking for things that are against federal law to turn over.

What a joke! You interpret this as a reason for this administration to ban firearms!!! OMG would be funny!...if it wasn't!!!

WASTE OF TIME! This is the worst congress in our history bumbling most inept congress ever.

Had your chance already - now all you can try to go after is Obama in the last half of an election year!

Which, conservatively speaking, is very revealing, isn't it.

The sputtering outrage will be interesting to watch/read/listen to.

We've been going after this since Terry was killed on 2010.

Seems like most of these guys change quite a bit once they move into the BIG HOUSE.

Same old same old.

If Brian Terry was your son, would you want answers? I don't know how some can claim that it is about going after Obama. He has said from the very beginning that he knew nothing at all about Fast and Furious. So why doesn't he allow this investigation to go forward?

.....on another thread defending "secret covert" ops.

:)

A man with no principles.

A non-transparent president.

A man who terrorizes civilians with drone warfare.

and some of you expect responsible, transparent behavior?

Please.

Kind of like the old saying in New England, "if you don't like the weather, just wait a minute".

Funny thing, MA is in New England, Romney was governor of MA, maybe that's how he learned to flip flop so much, He follows the weather, and the "old saying."

of course it could be he just has lots, and lots of "epiphanies". You just never know with the "king of the flip flops."

......the end

"it's just humourous that the President stated to Larry King (Live) in 2007 that Bush was "hiding behind executive privilege and that the American people deserved to know the truth." '

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America 's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America 's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."
~ Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

littleone, you and I finally agree on something.

What a load of NRA crap - manufacturing a reason for gun nuts to fear Obama. I can't believe anyone would be taken in by such silly conspiracy theories. The operation was started by Bush NOT Obama. It screwed up bad - no one questions that but for a party of 2nd Amendment fanatics and Executive Privilege abusers to start crying crocodile tears over guns lost by the Gov't in a botched sting while shrugging their shoulders at the un-regulated flow of guns from commercial gun dealers across the border is pathetic. Conservatives don't give a sh$t about guns flowing to Mexico or the plight of US Gov't workers/agents.

I remember Executive Privilege being used over and over in the Bush administration to cover up the reasons for a botched occupation that killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians without one peep from conservatives about getting the complete story of why their loved ones had to die in the 911 attacks and two wars. I guess the lack of actual attempts to control firearms by this administration requires that stories be concocted based on paranoid fantasies about Obama and conservatives swallow it hook, line, sinker, and pole.

You are right about one thing, Bush invoked executive privilege six times, something that Obama took him to task for, lack of transparency and all that. And I believe Bush's executive privilege was overturned in almost every case. As hopefully will be done here.

All this while a transporation bill collects dust that could create 1.6 million jobs ad a bill for vets.

A trumped up controversary that shows this congress to be even more exteme than known and you and Mrs. on here trumpeting your bad information because it fits your pre-cooked hatred and Brush as usual adding nothing of intelligence but petty snipes.

Thank yo urepublicans...going back to Newt in congress and the tea party for sinking our country. You suck!

I am so done playing nice with an obstructionist party enablers. The lies that come out of Fox News and that are repeated here are mind blowing.

They're hiding something. The DOJ hasn't been able to get its story straight about who knew what and when. Congress cannot even find out who authorized Fast and Furious. Who is the White House trying to protect? By invoking executive privilege, the president has put himself in the middle of something he has previously claimed to know nothing about. There is something in the documents Congress requested that the administration does not want members of Congress, or the American people to see.

Lanny Davis, former special counsel to Bill Clinton, says the documents are going to come out regardless of what the White House wants, and they might as well comply now. Holder has had months to comply. Did he think Issa was going to just go away? He should have done what the oversight committee told him to do, and this would not be happening now. His own stonewalling, not Congress, has put him where he is today.

Disputes over legislative access to executive documents occur in almost every presidential administration. Their resolution inevitably entails a set of legal and political considerations that change from episode to episode.

Unfortunately for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, its legal position is uncertain at best, and almost all political considerations would seem to favor the White House.

Whether or not the full House votes Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, the likeliest resolution will be an informal settlement in which the Justice Department expands slightly on its current offer of disclosure, the committee narrows the range of documents it is demanding, or both compromise in a mutual, face-saving gesture. At least, that would be likely in politically "normal" times.

The form of executive privilege at stake in the current dispute is "deliberative privilege."

Deliberative privilege aims to protect documents generated anywhere in the executive branch that embody only the executive's internal deliberations, not final policy decisions.

Deliberative privilege is not a legal absolute. The executive branch concedes that when another branch of government demands privileged documents within the executive's control, they sometimes have to be turned over.

They have to be turned over when the demanding branch can articulate a compelling need for the information to fulfill one of its own constitutional functions -- a need that outweighs the executive branch's interest in confidentiality.

A key problem now for the House Oversight Committee is thus far it has yet to state in a very concrete way why it needs the particular documents it is demanding.

In contrast, the executive branch has articulated a strong and highly specific reason for withholding the documents at issue: Forced disclosure to Congress of internal deliberations concerning how best to interact with Congress would undermine the executive's capacity to function as a co-equal branch. It would undermine the prospects for future candid deliberations about interactions with the other institutions of government.

The House could ask the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to prosecute Holder for contempt, but the Justice Department long ago took the position -- in a very careful opinion written by then Assistant Attorney General Theodore Olson -- that the department is not required by law to prosecute executive officials for contempt when the ground for subpoena noncompliance is a claim of executive privilege.

So that would leave the House with the one remaining legal option of launching an impeachment investigation, which brings us to the political side of things.

The reality Congress faces in separation of powers disputes, no matter how genuine or how principled, is that the public will almost certainly not rally around Congress if it perceives the dispute as more political food fight than anything else.

Point being that what is likely a very important issue is now being turned into a political circus, with the end result that now, with the contempt vote, Eric Holder - as the AG - will have to decide if he should investigate himself.

Not before the shooting, which were all released, indicating that they didn't know about it - as they stated.

IMOHO, this is a classic SNAFU with some hot-shot underlings in the DOJ who took some initiative to try and follow the guns, and it turned out horribly, and then they tried to cover their arses, and that didn't work to well either.

But I don't at all buy into the idea that this is part of some Obama-Librul conspiracy to take away Americans' semi-automatic weaponry.

The problem is they will rule everybody else, too.

How about those tea creatures, doing a good job are they with the alarming brand new farm subsidies and cutting food stamps dramatically - 50 percent of those using them being children and the elderly.

What a fine job your Tea creatures are doing!

When are you going to hold them responsible, I wonder? Or is that another "that was then, this is now" topic.

The country has been taken over by voting conservative nuts who want to believe nutty things because it's so much nutty fun.

I used to think they were really good people who just didn't grasp the harm they did to their own countrymen.

I know better, now.

They feel betrayed. I feel guilty and the buck doesn't even stop at my desk.

Bill, I do think Fast & Furious was connected to a plan of hopefully a show-down on gun control.
It got out of hand and an innocent man was killed defending our borders.

This is what happens when you have inexperienced, super inexperienced and highly ineperienced people playing games in the WH.

Obama said , "The buck stops here", referring to his desk.
I believe he knew .
He is too egotistical and too controlling to NOT demand to be enformed on something that paramount.

Of course it never crossed your mind, based on the above statement, that
"he knew nothing about Fast and Furious, that he had never read any documents pertaining to Fast and Furious"

Heaven forbid that Obama says something that is true, that just couldn't happen, could it?

I get the sense he probably knows generally what is in them and understands the ramifications of releasing them. Not sure if you read what I posted earlier:

In contrast, the executive branch has articulated a strong and highly specific reason for withholding the documents at issue: Forced disclosure to Congress of internal deliberations concerning how best to interact with Congress would undermine the executive's capacity to function as a co-equal branch. It would undermine the prospects for future candid deliberations about interactions with the other institutions of government.

Do we need another Deep Throat?

*

I think that would be a good description of the American citizens in regard to Obamacare.
*

This is going to be fun.

Whatever Obama and Holder are wanting to hide is way worse than what they knew would be this fervor over invoking executive privilege when Obama and Holder don't know nothing bout birthin no firearms to kill Brian Terry and Mexican citizens.

I'm getting my coconut oil and organic popcorn out, this will be interesting!

What happened, happened. The question of whether the furor is because of politics means what? That in an election year discussion of things that reflect badly on the candidate are off limits for investigation?

"......some conservatives are treating Fast and Furious like a nefarious conspiracy, rather than just a botched program. The head of the NRA called it "just one part of Barack Obama's agenda to attack gun owners and our Second Amendment rights." And one conservative blogger called it "the Reichstag fire of the Second Amendment." What are they talking about?

.....a conspiracy theory that originated in the far-right blogosphere argues that the program was designed to deliberately provoke an increase in gun violence, giving the administration a convenient excuse to then crack down on gun rights (just as the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag building soon after coming to power and blamed it on their political opponents, giving them an excuse to crack down on political dissent). It's of a piece with the general idea pushed by among gun-rights supporter like NRA president Wayne LaPierre that the fact that the President Obama hasn't yet done anything to limit gun rights only serves as evidence that he plans to limit gun rights. He's lulling gun owners into a false sense of security, you see.

Terry's death is indeed a scandal, part of the "Fast and Furious" operation in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost track of 2,000 guns it was planning to trace on their way to Mexican drug cartels; two of those firearms were found near Terry's body. After that, the Justice Department shut down the program (which followed similar "gun-walking" operations during the George W. Bush administration), fired or reassigned several people who ran the program out of ATF's Phoenix office, requested an inspector-general investigation and handed over about 7,600 pages of records to Issa's committee.

Republicans want to know whether top officials at Justice or the White House knew about the gun-walking program, which, although they haven't turned up evidence of this, would be a reasonable line of inquiry. But casting doubt on their motives are the documents they are demanding: only those since February 2011 - two months after Terry was killed and the program was shut down.

Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) accused Issa of setting up a "kangaroo court" to convict Holder. "If this were a genuine attempt to make sure that the Terry family had closure, we'd have an open investigation," he said, and call witnesses involved in the program over the past six years. But, Democrats complained, Issa never sought public testimony from people in the Phoenix ATF office who ran the operation, or from the former head of the ATF, who told committee investigators that he never informed Justice Department higher-ups of the operation because he didn't know about it.

In unusually caustic terms, the committee's ranking Democrat, Elijah Cummings (Md.), accused Issa of "highly inflammatory personal attacks" on Holder (including calling him a "liar" on television) and said Issa "had no interest in resolving this issue."

The committee's Republicans had essentially one answer to all of this: agent Terry. snip

The indignation would sound more genuine if Republicans weren’t going after Holder over what has happened since Terry died.

If you've been reading even a little about this then you know that he has been negotiating with Issa for some time about it. They invoked executive privilege as a last resort.

If Holder lied then he needs to be held accountable. Sounds like even you know enough to prove that.

Sure Brian Terry's family deserves answers. No one disputes that.

I hope you read what I posted earlier from CNN on one man's opinion about why this is politics.

A key problem now for the House Oversight Committee is thus far it has yet to state in a very concrete way why it needs the particular documents it is demanding.

Issa's committee is seeking documents that show why the Justice Department decided to withdraw as inaccurate a February 2011 letter sent to Congress that said top officials had only recently learned about Fast and Furious.

The subpoenas issued last year originally cited a broad array of documents, including wiretap requests and other materials involving confidential sources that Holder argued he was prevented by law from supplying. Issa narrowed the request in negotiations with Holder in recent weeks to focus on documents pertaining to decision-making on withdrawing the February 2011 letter.

However, Holder refuses to turn over materials containing internal deliberations, and he asked Obama to assert executive privilege over such documents before Wednesday's committee meeting.

Now that you've read the above quote, do you think that what is being withheld really helps the Terry family understand? Remember, only some of the documents are being withheld, not all of them. You understand that, right?

Weapons got into the wrong hands. The weapons were found at the scene of the killing. Knowing any more than that won't bring him back and I doubt they will get anyone prosecuted.

Maggie, did you read the link? It's no theory, unless Holder's putting words in Obama's mouth. Zero evidences? I'd say that's pretty hard evidence. I won't address the rest of your post.

I believe he is claiming executive privilege to protect the release of the documents.

I agree. Now take that a step further. WHY is he protecting the release of the documents? It has nothing to do with security. THey could always black out names. He's protecting Holder. Only now, because of involking executive priveledge, he owns it, and it's HIS a$$ on the line now. He just screwed himself. You can disagree all you like, but watch and see if I'm right.

Not before the shooting, which were all released, indicating that they didn't know about it - as they stated.

David, if you think for one minute that Holder AND Obama didn't know about this op before it all blew up, I have a bridge to sell you.

Of course it never crossed your mind, based on the above statement, that
"he knew nothing about Fast and Furious, that he had never read any documents pertaining to Fast and Furious"

No way in hell. At the very least, he was aware of the operation (if he wasn't, Holder'd be history already, if for no other reason than as a sacrificial lamb), and I'd be surprised if he wasn't completely informed.

Again, I'm not excusing them, its a real SNAFU with real dead people, and people should lose their job. But the Republicans are making fools of themselves trying to pin something, anything, on Holder.

If they wanted to know what happened, why not subpoena the guys from Phoenix?

I am forever bewildered by the powers that people confer upon the President. Powers he simply does not have.
If the President could impose his will you would have a single payer system of health care, increased taxes on the super wealthy and lots more money invested in education and infrastructure.

The President is only one person in a system with significant checks and balances. The only thing he can control on his own is defense and foreign policy and in that regard he is seen as doing a relatively good job.

the fact that the President Obama hasn't yet done anything to limit gun rights only serves as evidence that he plans to limit gun rights. He's lulling gun owners into a false sense of security, you see.

Everybody's got a conspiracy theory.

Right now the president and AG claim Congress has all the documents they're going to get.

Congress says we'll see about that.

Next week we will find out if the Obamacare mandate stands.

Any president with fantasies of bypassing the American people has his work cut out for him when both parties are in play. How cool is that?

It would be cool if the Republicans would participate with the average American's best interest at heart. 3.5 years of saying "no" with no real good proposals to do better is getting pretty un-cool. Now Romney wants keep from telling people about improvements in the economy just so that he can keep people in fear.

I guess Nik that both parties are in play only when you say so.

Oh yeah big fun.

Go back to the beginning of this. For ten months, Eric Holder denied that Fast and Furious even existed. Then we find out, he ended the program in Dec. of 2010, yet testified before congress that he learned of the program in Feb. 2011. No one has been fired, no one has been held accountable for the death of Brian Terry. No one seems to be willing to give truthful answers. He has promised to turn over the documents yet has never done so. Now we have the president claiming executive privilege. Shades of Watergate. The dems are doing just what the republicans did back then.

And what to do double down once more!

Petty partisan politics is not entertainment for me, but hey have fun with that.

fyi, Bill...the link you posted was written by an NRA peep. lol Im starting to think that anyone capable of believing their lies, should not own guns. I already got the fear factor call from them on this issue. Full speed ahead they should have another banner 4 years.

Great piece, Mrs...so according to John your a hypocrite
____________________

"In the segment, Stewart echoed Republicans who have charged that Attorney General Eric Holder has engaged in a cover-up and that the president's assertion of executive privilege in the case is hypocritical."

____________________

You say Mrs is a hypocrite according to Stewart because he said that? Maggie, that is so lame.

___________________

"point to Stewart or Maher when it suits them..."

Of course. Mrs is not stupid. Speaking for myself, it's nice to refer to something positive about Stewart for a change. He's very talented, and it's such a shame that he wastes it most the time on hopeless causes. It's very freeing to find the humor in this, instead of speaking hatefully about the man just because he opposes my beliefs most the time.

I like it.

As I stated aleady, this investigatino is a sham and an inept one at that asking for documents that are against federal law to release and not calling key players while making references to Watergate and gun control. A joke..

It is hyper-partisan and has been spun into ridiculous theories including that the program was set up to discourage gun ownership in the US. LOL.
Only idiots believe that kind of spin and God knows there are a lot of them in this country.

Meanwhile, have Republicans done anything to address the impact on this country that the deadly drug running crime syndicate in Mexico has had? Have they offered any solutions to help Mexico?
Nopre, they are just too busy with these pimpy attacks trying to get to Obama.

This is about an operation that put a couple of thousand guns in the hands of hardened criminals with no way to track them and no oversight. It is about the death of an American Border Patrol agent and hundreds of Mexicans when the Mexican government knew nothing about the operation. And the people who want to know why it happened. It is about an attorney general who works for the American people first and foremost, who lied under oath.

And now the president of the United States invokes executive privilege over papers pertaining to something of which he claims no knowledge.

So maggie, I'm a hypocrite when I point out that one of the most partisan lefties can see the wrong in this? What an absolutely silly statement. I hear one of maddies snorts coming on.

"...funny when righties cherry pick Jon Stewart."

Because it WAS funny. Why bother paying attention to him when he's just being his usual self? That's why it's an extraordinary pleasure when he's fun for me to watch; so rare.

"...asking for documents that are against federal law to release.."

Now, whose word do we take for that?

_______________
Posted by heri_cles 10 (My Page) on Fri, Jun 22, 12 at 19:49

"his "investigation" is only interesting for people who watch wayyyyyyy too much Fox News."

So you watch a LOT of Fox News. Nothing to be ashamed of, Heri. Just remember, they're not REALLY "fair & balanced".

"...ridiculous theories including that the program was set up to discourage gun ownership in the US."

Ridiculous? Hmmm. As a supporter of the right to bear arms, I'm always suspicious about motivations in that regard. It could be true.

"Only idiots believe that kind of spin and God knows there are a lot of them in this country."

Your opinion. And it's nice to know you believe in God.

"Have they offered any solutions to help Mexico?"

Help Mexico? With what; why? If the demand for drugs wasn't here in the U.S., the problem would go away. Tell everyone to stop using illegal drugs. And stop treating illegal drug abusers as sick people instead of the criminals they are.

"Nopre, they are just too busy with these pimpy attacks trying to get to Obama."

This is not a news flash.

You just made me realize-- I haven't watched Fox in MONTHS. :-) I gotta catch up-- don't want to lose my decoder ring. (or my tax breaks)

Fox News will play a clip and play all of it so you can get the whole picture.

Liberal Media will cherry pick a clip or statement, edit it to fit the liberal agenda, and leave you (if you are a liberal) thinking what a good job they do.

I can't imagine why a liberal wouldn't tune in to Fox News ever once in while to find out what is going on up at the WH.

I thought liberals said they made up their own minds.
If all you watch is Jon Stewart...Rachael Maddow, Bill Mahr and the liberal media how do you know you aren't being influenced ?

Those folks at those multi-thousand a plate dinners that run this country also said "thank you very much" for making their existence possible.

I think Jon Stewart has proven several times that that is not true.

I don't have to watch Fox News - I find out whatever their outrages are just by reading here. Are you saying they cover more than just political outrages?

Then there was this kind of sillyness that they engaged in

Then there was just plain old Glen Beck & the stories he just loved to make up as he went along.
Beck reported that Soros had helped send Jews to the Death Camps (disgusting creature Beck)
Then we have the dandy doozy that one poster could'nt wait to put on this forum I think shes still thinking about how to respond to the mockery flung at the Fox/Bachmann OBAMA 200 Million a day trip to India that one came back to me from a demented/fox/republican relative only about a month ago as fact.

Greta Van Sustern, too.

Speaking of news .. why is it that Yahoo news has gone from words to video ? I would rather read an article than watch a film clip, if I wanted to do that I would turn on the lamestream media.

Elvis I totally agree that our so-called news is just entertainment and opinion, which means those who watch it should be aware of that. But are they?
________________

Sometimes not. I have elderly relatives who truly believe that if it's reported on the news, it is fact (used to be, except for War of the Worlds, from what I hear). When gently corrected, the reaction I got was: "Isn't it against the law for the news to lie?"

Seriously; these people are from a generation when liars were not the norm. It's pathetic. :(

"The report found no evidence that Holder was informed about the Fast and Furious operation before Jan. 31, 2011, or that the attorney general was told about the much-disputed gun-walking tactic employed by the department�s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives."

That'll be the day.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is vowing to continue pursuing Attorney General Eric Holder's contempt of Congress citation in court and said the report is all the more reason to continue his own probe with new zeal.

Issa will "absolutely" continue pursuing the civil lawsuit attempting to compel Holder to hand over more documents about the gun-running investigation, spokesman Frederick Hill said.

Hill said the findings of the IG report and some of its loose ends "only enhances the importance of the House moving forward in its civil action against President [Barack Obama's] flawed claim of executive privilege."

Give it a coupla weeks. There will be a new thread.

elvis: Are you aware of the fact that news is not supposed to be Fair and Balanced. It's supposed to be Accurate.