South Texas: Brooks County Battling Border Crime

Brooks County, Texas is a less than five-hour drive from Houston, but the rural community of just over 7,200 people is facing an overwhelming amount of crime.

High-speed chases, smugglers and a rising body count has become a fact of life in a county made up largely of ranchers and farmers.

“We have a lot to contend with,” said Brooks County Chief Deputy Urbino Martinez. “It takes a toll.”

Houston’s connection to this rise in crime can be clearly seen in the 250 cars kept in the sheriff’s office’s impound lot.

“There’s criminal acts involving every vehicle that’s here,” said Martinez.

Martinez said 95 percent of the cars the county has seized this year as part of human, drug and weapons smuggling were originally stolen out of the Houston area.

“The connection between us and Houston, it’s almost like you would have to say ‘neighboring,’” said Martinez.

In addition to Martinez and Sheriff Rey Rodriguez, Brooks County has only four full-time patrol deputies and one investigator to cover 944 square miles of highway, back roads and ranch land.

Martinez said deputies have to work 12-hour shifts to keep up with all the crime running through the county.

“Whether it’s human smuggling, drug smuggling, or both at the same time, it’s phenomenal,” said sheriff’s investigator Daniel Davila. “They are coming in droves.”

Brooks County averages two high-speed chases every day involving either drugs or human smuggling.

This year, the county is also contending with 60 missing person cases and 116 bodies of illegal immigrants found murdered or dead from exposure.

Sheriff’s office records show the number of bodies found in Brooks County in 2012 has more than doubled from 2011.

“The waste of human life, it makes no sense how people are dying out here,” said Davila. “I can only imagine the bodies that are out there that we have yet to discover.”

In addition to tying up scant law enforcement resources, the rising number of bodies found in the county is also a financial burden to taxpayers.

Sheriff’s officials said it costs the county between $1,200 and $1,500 per body.

That cost includes investigation, sending each body to another county for autopsy and, in some cases, burying the individuals in the county’s cemetery.

“We got maybe 40 unnamed graves out there,” said Martinez.

Brooks County is about 75 miles north of the border, but crime is funneling into the area because of geography.

Davila explained many smugglers make it across the border with people or drugs and then fan out into dense ranch lands to avoid border patrol checkpoints along the highway.

The Sheriff’s office contends with so much crime on a daily basis it has had to supplement its annual budget with money from seized assets.

Records show the sheriff’s office’s actual budget for 2011-2012 was $620,186.90.

Records also show the office had to spend an additional $387,834 from asset seizure funds just to maintain daily operational costs.

“We’re not going to stop just because we don’t have the resources,” said Davila. “The pay is lousy, and it may sound corny, but this is my home. This is where I like to be, this is where I want to be, this is where I want to try to make things a little bit better.”

While it still receives some federal funding through partnerships with surrounding counties, the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office recently lost its state Border Star funding for the quarter.

Martinez explained that with only a staff of three administrators, who also handle calls for help and take missing persons reports, the office couldn’t keep up with all the paperwork required to secure the grant.

Source

Related articles

• Houston’s connection to spike in border crimes (click2houston.com)
• More undocumented immigrants die on US crossing (openchannel.nbcnews.com)

Socialism in the USA, the tipping point has been reached

November 7, 2012

By: David Light

The far left, socialists and communists have attacked the USA from within for years and, with this election, have succeeded in changing our once great Republic, into a Socialist state. The tipping point has been reached.

Many factors contributed to our demise, the indoctrination of our youth being just one of them. Radicals of the sixties became entrenched in our colleges and universities and left leaning unions corrupted our K-12 school teachers (not all, but enough). Curriculums were changed, substituting social welfare subjects for history, thus eliminating any reference our children may have had of the greatness of our Country’s past and the meaning of our Constitution, our Republic and our capitalist society.

The conscious willingness by our leaders to refuse to protect our borders has destroyed the fundamental of assimilation that was the hallmark of our formal immigration policy. We have now become a come one, come all squatter society that is creating a drain on our once great economy. By failing to restrict voting to citizens only, the far left has created just another block to pander to.

The administration has spent millions advertising their mortgage bailouts, free phones, food stamp, disability and welfare programs in order to create an ever increasing entitlement society, the basis of a Socialist state.

This election has also been a tipping point for the left leaning media. Not even pretending to perform investigative reporting on Fast and Furious, and the Benghazi attack, and actually hiding damaging information from the public, they have become just another arm of the far left establishment. A candidate fighting and beating an incumbent is extremely difficult, but at the same time, by having your campaign being sabotaged by the MSM, it becomes nearly a hopeless task.

We now have entrenched in our national political structure, far left ideologues who are students of Cloward-Piven, and Saul Alinsky, proponents of the theory of doing whatever it takes to achieve a goal. For months the President’s campaign bombarded the airways in the swing states with character assassination ads and the President lied repeatedly in the debates with no rebuke from the media. No one will ever know the effects of the Romney votes that mysteriously came up Obama on a number of touch screens across the country or other shenanigans perpetrated by the myriad of voter registration organizations formerly known as ACORN.

And, although the House of Representatives is still in the hands of the opposition party, it has been weakened by the seemingly unlawful acts of Harry Reid in the Senate who has blocked every attempt by the House to get a budget passed, a legal requirement that would negate the necessity for continuing resolutions raising the debt ceiling in order to keep the government running. This tactic is being used to demonize those heartless Republicans when they fight to keep our taxes and spending down. Additionally, the President has taken it upon himself to create legislation through Executive orders and EPA and other agency regulations, thus circumventing Congress, a tactic many believe is unconstitutional.

Can any of this be reversed? No one knows, but the tipping point has been reached.

Suggested by the author:

• The MSM, Barack Obama, Saul Alinsky, and the price of denial
• Election 2012: President Barack Obama wins re-election
• Newark Mayor Booker softens criticism of Obama campaign tactic
• Democrat Nazi tactics asking Americans to spy and dig up dirt on Republicans

Source

Related articles

• The tipping point has been reached (republicmainstreet.wordpress.com)
• Who Is Barack Hussein Obama? And What Is He Really Up To? (americanthinker.com)
• Obama’s Banker’s Policy Strategy Is To Put All Of America Into Jail: Barry Taught “Destroy Middle Class”! (politicalvelcraft.org)
• Rep. Allen West Ascribes Saul Alinsky Conspiracy Theory to Lower Unemployment Rate (redalertpolitics.com)
• Welcome To The New United Socialist Paradise States Of America (buzzfeed.com)
• Obama Taught “Destroy Middle Class” (righttruth.typepad.com)

The Truth About Assault Weapons and Assault Weapons Bans

Posted on October 17, 2012

by Nick Leghorn

Thanks to last night’s little cage match, there’s now renewed talk of an “Assault Weapons Ban,” and before people start making wild statements about firearms and their uses, I wanted to step in and try to give a little context to that term. What exactly is an “Assault Weapon?” Are they really all that dangerous? And is an Assault Weapons Ban going to be effective? Just like everything else we publish here, I won’t be pulling any punches . . .

Sometime after World War II, the powers that be started investing in the production of smaller, lighter, higher capacity firearms than those used during the war. Bolt action firearms like the Mosin Nagant m1891/30 and semi-automatic battle rifles like the M1 Garand were sufficient for earlier conflicts, but with the advent of the machine gun and submachine guns, the need for increased firepower in the hands of the individual soldier was fairly apparent.

The designers wanted something that combined the best features of both of those categories — something small enough to carry like a submachine gun, but with the firepower of a full size machine gun. The eventual design that came from all that was what’s now being called the assault rifle.

The term “assault rifle” comes from the literal translation of the name given to the first weapon that fit the definition. The MP-44, or Sturmgewehr as it was dubbed by Adolf Hitler (literally “assault rifle” in German), was a rifle designed by the Nazis in 1944 that delivered the firepower of a machine gun in a man-portable sized package.

The two main features that contributed to the benefit of the firearm on the battlefield were select fire capability and a detachable magazine.

Select fire gave the soldier the ability to either fire a single round of ammo when they pressed the trigger (called “semi-automatic” fire) or fire continuously until the soldier took his finger off the trigger or the gun ran out of ammunition (“fully automatic” fire). This enabled the soldier to either place a single precise shot on target like with the common battle rifles of the day or spray lead, providing a “weight of fire” that was intended to keep the enemy from advancing or taking action.

A detachable magazine gave the soldier the ability to fire longer and quickly replenish the firearm (a magazine is a mechanical device that feeds ammunition into a firearm, often incorrectly referred to as a “clip”). Previous firearms like the M1 Garand only held 8 rounds in an internal magazine that was relatively slow to reload.

But detachability gave the soldier the ability to use a larger 20 or 30 round mag that could be exchanged when empty for a full one in just a couple of seconds. The extended capacity allowed the soldiers to fire continuously for longer, and the ability to quickly change the magazine allowed them to replenish their ammunition supply and keep firing for extended periods of time.

The two most popular designs to be adapted from the MP-44 for use by the modern military were the AK-47 or Avtomat Kalashnikova (automatic rifle Kalashnikov) developed by a team led by Mikhail Kalashnikov and including features from other similar projects of the time, and the M-16 designed by Eugene Stoner. Both were based on the MP-44 design and included select fire capability and took detachable magazines, but the manner in which they accomplished that was very different.

Naturally, while these weapons were originally intended for military use, just like every other firearm designed before them, they were adapted for sale on the civilian market. However, in the United States, the firearms being sold were subject to the National Firearms Act of 1934 and were generally sold without the ability to fire in full-auto mode. Those that were sold to civilians with the fully automatic option still operational were registered under the National Firearms Act and are still tracked by the ATF to this day. They only pass from one owner to the next after a thorough anal exam background check and ATF approval.

NOTE: There have been only two murders ever committed with a legally owned fully automatic machine gun, one by a police officer in 1988 and the other in 1994. No murders have been committed since then.

Once these rifles started to gain popularity with both the military and the civilian shooting population, the mechanical improvements that made them possible began to be implemented in other firearms designs — firearms with fixed, relatively small capacity magazines now had the same basic operating mechanism as an AK-47 running the firearm, for example. And the military firearms began to be adopted and modified to do everything from deer and hog hunting to target shooting.

These days, the AR-15 design (the civilian version of the M-16) is one of the most popular firearm designs in the United States. The reason for that is not its high magazine capacity or its rate of fire, but its modularity. The rifle is the firearms equivalent of a Lego set — it can be changed, reconfigured and tweaked very easily by the end user to exactly suit their use. For everything from short range target shooting to hunting to long range precision shooting, the AR-15 can be quickly modified to suit that role.

As the features of the MP-44 and its derivatives began to filter into other firearms designs, the public wanted a term that could encompass all of these designs into a single class of firearm for the purposes of discussion. Using the original “Sturmgewehr” name of the first such weapon as a base, the term that has generally been used to describe firearms of this type has become “assault weapon.”

Of course, the adoption of this term has been fought tooth and nail by those who legally own and enjoy these guns, as the word “assault” carries a negative connotation and colors the way in which these firearms are viewed. The rising term that has become more acceptable among such populations is “modern sporting rifle” since the mechanics of these types of firearms have been adopted into almost every new firearm being produced and used today and these types of firearms are currently the most popular design of rifle in the US.

While the ability to fire in full-auto mode is generally not available to civilians, the fact is that the detachable mags still allow them to fire longer without reloading. And semi-automatic allows the gun to be fired as fast as the shooter can pull the trigger. These two facts have raised some alarm — particularly among the anti-gun community — with some concerned that the features of these weapons enable someone to commit a “mass shooting” like the recent one in Aurora, Colorado.

The desire to keep these weapons out of the hands of people who intend to do harm to innocent civilians is one that’s shared by both sides of the gun control debate. However, the manner in which that should be accomplished differs greatly. While those who are generally termed “pro-gun” believe the current system of background checks for firearms purchases required by the Brady bill for every sale of a firearm from a gun store is sufficient, there’s a vocal minority generally referred to as the “gun control advocates” who believe the only solution to keeping these weapons out of the hands of evil people is a nation-wide ban of their sale and manufacture.

That option is known as an “Assault Weapons Ban,” and has some issues.

As soon as you start trying to define exactly what constitutes an assault weapon, you start getting into some thick weeds. Assault weapons don’t have a single defining feature that puts a firearm into this category.

The defining features of a true assault rifle are the ability to accept detachable magazines and the ability to fire either semi-automatic or fully-automatic. But the number of firearms in civilian hands with select fire capability are statistically insignificant and detachable magazines are now a standard feature of many slow firing guns. Just like Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of obscenity, most people tend to define firearms in this category using the “I know it when I see it” test. But while that might work for pornography, when legally categorizing a firearm, more objective definitions are required.

When the original national “Assault Weapons Ban” was enacted in 1994, the following criteria were used to determine prohibited guns:

Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:

•     Folding or telescoping stock
•     Pistol grip
•     Bayonet mount
•     Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to  accommodate one
•     Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device that enables launching or firing rifle grenades, though this applies only to muzzle mounted grenade launchers and not those mounted externally).

Semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and two or more of the following:

•     Magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
•     Threaded barrel to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, handgrip, or suppressor
•     Barrel shroud that can be used as a hand-hold
•     Unloaded weight of 50 oz (1.4 kg) or more
•     A semi-automatic version of a fully automatic firearm.

Semi-automatic shotguns with two or more of the following:

•     Folding or telescoping stock
•     Pistol grip
•     Fixed capacity of more than 5 rounds
•     Detachable magazine.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Because the actual defining feature of an assault rifle is generally absent (full auto), the politicians decided to base their definition on a set of cosmetic features that generally had no impact on the operation of the firearm. Weapons banned under this “Assault Weapons Ban” or AWB were no more dangerous that weapons legally permitted under the AWB…they just looked scarier.

Another issue raised with an AWB is determining if it will actually be effective. The entire point of such a ban is to reduce the number of fatalities and improve the quality of life, but it only makes sense if these types of firearms are actually being used in crimes. Thankfully, the National Institute of Justice published a report in 2003 as the ’94 AWB was getting ready to expire that indicated that assault weapons accounted for, on average, 2% of firearms used in crimes [source], with the highest estimates at no more than 13%. Of those, the vast majority were assault pistols rather than rifles, which are handguns with some of the features listed above.

In reality, the AWB was fueled more by fear and the political desire to “do something” than by fact. A mass murder or attack with an assault weapon, as defined, is what we in the risk analysis business call a “low probability, high consequence” event. One where it will probably never ever happen to you, but it will suck if it does. This is the same reaction we have to every mass shooting, and one I talked about at great length here. It’s an emotional reaction that is disproportionate to the actual risk posed by the situation.

So-called assault rifles are the most popular design for firearms in the country. They’re used for everything from hunting to target shooting to competitions. “Assault weapons” account for somewhere between 2% and 13% of all guns used in crimes, the overwhelming majority being handguns. And distinguishing between a modern hunting rifle and a “military style assault weapon” as these have been called by gun controllers is almost impossible.

In other words, an Assault Weapons Ban would be an ineffective deterrent to crime, detrimental to the economy in terms of manufacturing and hunting and almost impossible to enforce given the ability to change firearms designs to circumvent regulations.

Or, put bluntly, it sucks. And that’s the truth.

You may also like –

• Media Matters (Wrongly) Thinks Cosmetic Differences Matter for an Assault Weapons Ban
• Details of Diane Feinstein’s Upcoming Assault Weapons Ban Proposal Begin Leaking
• Details of Dianne Feinstein’s Upcoming Assault Weapons Ban Proposal Begin Leaking
• Question of the Day: Is President Obama Blowing Smoke on an AWB?

Source

Related articles

• How Do We Know an ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban Would Not Have Stopped Adam Lanza? Because It Didn’t. (reason.com)
• The Truth About the Guns Used in the Newtown School Shooting (thetruthaboutguns.com)
• Details of Dianne Feinstein’s Upcoming Assault Weapons Ban Proposal Begin Leaking (thetruthaboutguns.com)
• New York Daily News Proposes New Definition of ‘Assault Weapon’ (reason.com)
• Senator Feinstein’s Assault Weapons Ban: Give Us Your Guns, No Exceptions (2ndamendmentright.org)

Zetas gang threatens Mexico’s shale gas near border

September 26, 2012 at 12:25 am

by FuelFix.com

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — The brutal Zetas gang poses one of the most daunting challenges to the development of Mexico’s abundant shale gas reserves near the Texas border.

The gas fields extend from the booming Eagle Ford play of South Texas deep into the ranch and coal country stretching inland from this violent border city. This is Zetas country, among the most fearsome of Mexico’s criminal badlands.

U.S. and Mexican energy companies long have been besieged by the gangsters here – their workers assaulted, extorted or murdered – despite a heavy military and federal police presence. Now, with feuding Zetas factions bloodying one another and fending off outside rivals, what has been a bad situation threatens to get much worse.

Northern Mexico’s gas production has suffered for years as gangland threats or attacks have kept workers from servicing the wellheads, pipelines and drilling rigs in the Burgos Basin, the territory between the Rio Grande and the city of Monterrey, which now provides up to 20 percent of Mexico’s natural gas.

“Petroleos Mexicanos has problems with security … principally in Burgos,” Guillermo Dominguez, a senior member of the National Hydrocarbons Commission, told the Mexico City newspaper Reforma.

And now the surging Zetas bloodletting pits the gang’s top bosses – Heriberto Lazcano and Miguel Angel Treviño – against Ivan Velazquez, a former underling known as “El Taliban.” From his base in the western state of Zaca­tecas, Velazquez reportedly has allied with the remnants of other gangs to launch a challenge for control of Coahuila state, which holds most of the shale gas reserves.

Challenge to control

Banners recently hung by both Zetas factions have accused one another of treason and other transgressions that will be avenged with death. Fighting has rattled Nuevo Laredo, the Zetas stronghold that also is the busiest land port for U.S.-Mexico trade, killing scores this month alone.

Still more banners appeared in Nuevo Laredo Tuesday, reputedly written by beleaguered civilians, promising all the gangster factions further bloody vengeance.

“Zetas are pretty much in control, but they have been challenged,” said a U.S. official in Mexico who monitors the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity. “You have all these groups fighting one another, shifting alliances and internal fights … It’s a wilderness of mirrors.”

The Zetas’ spats with rivals already have turned Coahuila’s other large cities – Torreon in the west, Monclova in the center and Saltillo in the east – into fierce gangland battlegrounds. State officials are blaming the Sept. 17 escape of 131 prisoners from a Piedras Negras prison on the Zetas seeking to replenish their ranks for new battles.

The insecurity in Mexico’s gas fields contrasts sharply with the drilling and production frenzy seizing the ranchlands just north of the border. Oil field pickups and semi-trailer fuel tankers choke Highway 83, the once-desolate ranch-country highway that cuts northwest from Laredo though the lower reaches of the Eagle Ford.

Some 6,000 drilling permits have been issued for Eagle Ford shale in Texas, and 550 wells are producing there. By comparison, Pemex so far has drilled five exploratory shale gas wells, but hopes to drill 170 more in the next four years. The company plans to spend $200 million on exploration in the short term.

Those first exploratory wells have been drilled to the west of Nuevo Laredo and below the border at Piedras Negras, ranch and coal country that remains relatively violence free for now. But that tranquility may owe more to the now-threatened dominance of the Zetas bosses than to rule of law.

“They are in control,” said a U.S. official. “They are pretty much just doing their thing.”

Workers disappearing

At least eight Pemex and contract employees vanished in May 2010 near a gas facility near Falcon Lake, territory under the Zetas’ firm control. Last March, two men working for a Mexican company doing contract work for Houston-based Halliburton disappeared outside Piedras Negras.

Halliburton spokeswoman Tara Mullee-Agard said employees get regular security briefings, but the company declined to comment on the contractors’ disappearance.

“Many companies that were active in the areas have stopped until Pemex or the government can provide security,” said an employee of one Reynosa-based company. “In places where there have been incidents we don’t operate anymore. When darkness falls, we stop wherever we are.

dudley.althaus@chron.com

Related articles

• Zetas crimping gas industry in northern Mexico (mysanantonio.com)
• Banners claim an alliance has been formed against the Zetas (mysanantonio.com)
• Mexico: State Officials Killed in Nuevo Laredo (hispanicallyspeakingnews.com)
• Piedras Negras “megafuga” just the latest massive prison break (mysanantonio.com)
• 132 inmates escape from Mexican prison near U.S. border (theprovince.com)

ICE agents sue own agency over deferred deportations

By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY

A group of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents filed a lawsuit against their own agency Thursday, arguing that the Obama administration is not letting them fully identify and deport illegal immigrants.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano says her department does not have the manpower or money to deport the 11 million illegal immigrants in the USA, so she issued a memorandum last year ordering immigration officials to focus their efforts on dangerous illegal immigrants. In June, Obama announced a program that will allow up to 1.7 million illegal immigrants brought to the USA as children to have deportations deferred for at least two years.

The 10 ICE agents suing Napolitano and ICE Director John Morton say those directives violate the Constitution and federal immigration law. “We are federal law enforcement officers who are being ordered to break the law,” said Chris Crane, an ICE agent and president of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, a union for ICE employees. “This directive puts ICE agents and officers in a horrible position.”

ICE spokesman Ross Feinstein did not comment on the lawsuit but said more than half of the nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants deported in 2011 had been convicted of crimes, the largest number in the agency’s history. He said that shows the decision to focus on the most dangerous illegal immigrants is a policy that works, and June’s decision to defer deportation for young illegal immigrants enhances that strategy.

A spokesman for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Obama may have overstepped his authority by ordering the deportation deferments, and Romney would forge a long-term solution with Congress instead of relying on Obama’s “stop-gap measure.”

“The courts will have to sort this out, but this kind of uncertainty is unacceptable as these young people brought here as children are seeking clarity on their long-term status,” spokesman Ryan Williams said.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Dallas federal court, requests that a judge strike down the two directives and protect the agents from any retribution for their lawsuit.

The suit is funded by NumbersUSA, a group that proposes lower levels of legal and illegal immigration, and the attorney is Kris Kobach, the secretary of State of Kansas who has helped Arizona and Alabama craft strict anti-illegal-immigration laws. His work on this lawsuit is not part of his official state duties.

The lawsuit was supported by some GOP legislators who have criticized Obama’s immigration plans as “backdoor amnesty.”

“These agent’s mission is to keep our borders secure, but the head of their agency is directing them otherwise, telling them to undermine their missions and contradict immigration law,” Sen. David Vitter, R-La.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., said the program actually helps ICE officials by allowing them to focus on the most dangerous illegal immigrants. “Deferred action is a major boost to law enforcement who do not have to waste time on honor students and can do the harder work of actually tracking down and deporting criminals,” he said.

Source

Related articles

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• Napolitano sued over new immigration policy (thehill.com)
• ICE agents sue to stop Obama amnesty (wnd.com)
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Lacking Courage, Politicians Not Moving on Fast and Furious Scandal

A handful of Republicans are pursuing the biggest scandal in American history, but guess what: House Speaker Boehner isn’t one of them, and that puts him on par with Democrats like Jim Costa, who think “Issa and Holder should sit down and work it out.”

West Virginia Democrat Nick Rahall wants Holder to turn over the subpoenaed documents but is “not ready to go as far as contempt yet, no. Not yet.”

Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana explained why he thinks Boehner, along with Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), are going along to get along.

With the other issues, the economy and everything else, I think they would like to focus on that. I don’t think they’re opposed to going ahead with the contempt citation; it’s just that if we can get the Justice Department to move without having to move it, they would probably prefer that.

Americans would probably “prefer” that career politicians grow a spine and stand up to one of the most corrupt attorneys general in recent history and hold everyone responsible for the murders of innocent people accountable.  Not gonna happen, according to an insider.

From Roll Call:

A GOP aide also warned against a racial backlash if Republicans are seen as unfairly targeting the first black attorney general, who is serving under the first black president. “Especially after Trayvon,” the aide said, referring to slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

How about an attorney general targeting Hispanics?  “The term Hispanic, as dominated [sic] by the Office of Management and Budget, is used in the United States for people with origins in Spanish-speaking countries, including Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica.”

Over 300 Mexican citizens have been murdered by weapons trafficked by our own government, with “more to come” according to Holder’s testimony.  Many Mexican-Americans have relatives south of the border.  Where is La Raza?

Bloggers, journalists, and investigators have chronicled this mess from the beginning.  They’ve uncovered evidence leading first to the Department of Justice, then straight to the White House.

How about the three Os?  Ogden, O’Reilly, and Obama.

In March 2009, Former Deputy Attorney-General David Ogden said, “The president has directed us to take action to fight these cartels and Attorney General Eric Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration’s comprehensive plan.”

A September 2010 e-mail from ATF Phoenix Special Agent in Charge Bill Newell to White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly showed an “arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up.”  The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

In March 2011, on the 30^th anniversary of the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, Sarah Brady met with Jay Carney to discuss the need for tougher gun control laws.  The president joined them, and Mrs. Brady recalled him saying, “I just want you to know that we are working on it[.] … We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”

Agent Brian Terry died nine months after Obama’s “under the radar” statement.

Issa has indicated that he will seek a contempt citation if Holder doesn’t turn over the remaining documents by Memorial Day.  We’ll see.  In the meantime, I suggest that both Democrats and Republicans read the following words from the Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.

Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.

And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

Somebody needs to get on with it.  Charge Holder with contempt now.

Read more M. Catharine Evans at Potter Williams Report.

Source

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• Holding Eric Holder Accountable for Operation Fast and Furious (gds44.wordpress.com)
• IT’S OFFICIAL – John Boehner is stalling Fast and Furious contempt citation of Eric Holder (gunnyg.wordpress.com)
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Mexico: 49 bodies dumped on Mexico highway

By Dudley Althaus

Updated 08:45 p.m., Sunday, May 13, 2012

MEXICO CITY – Officials blamed the Zetas gang for the slaughter of 49 people whose headless, handless bodies were recovered early Sunday near a highway that leads from the industrial city of Monterrey to the South Texas border.

A message left with the bodies outside the oil refining town of Cadereyta – supposedly signed by the Zetas – claimed credit for the latest in a series of recent atrocities by rival criminal gangs waging a brutal terror campaign against one another. The message’s content was not disclosed.

Though the lack of heads or fingerprints obviously will complicate identification of the victims, authorities rushed to assure a beleaguered public that ordinary citizens aren’t being targeted.

“This is not an attack against the civilian population,” Jorge Domene, public security spokesman for the state of Nuevo Leon, said at a news conference. “That’s important to point out.”

The corpses of the 43 men and six women were dumped about 2 a.m. The victims were killed elsewhere as many as two days ago, Domene said.

Monterrey and its suburbs, home to some 4 million people, have become a crucial front of the gangland violence that has killed more than 50,000 people since President Felipe Calderon deployed federal forces against Mexico’s powerful gangs upon taking office in December 2006.

The escalating bloodshed has besieged Cadereyta and nearby towns in recent months as the Zetas battle their former paymasters from the Gulf Cartel for regional dominance. Both narcotics trafficking gangs are anchored in the Mexican cities bordering south Texas.

Thriving drug trade

In addition to its own local narcotics market, metropolitan Monterrey is an important warehousing center for cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs bound for U.S. consumers. Petroleum pipelines running between Cadereyta and the border have also been among those most tapped by thieves, supplying Mexico’s vibrant black market for gasoline and other petroleum products. Small towns, ranches and isolated clusters of weekend houses between Monterrey and the border long have been favored haunts for gangsters.

Fighting in the Monterrey area and along the border recently has worsened with the participation of gunmen loyal to Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the crime boss based in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa. Considered Mexico’s most powerful gangster, Guzman reportedly has allied with the Gulf Cartel and returned to the region – especially to Nuevo Laredo – to take on the Zetas.

Sunday’s slaughter followed the murder last week of 18 people near the western city of Guadalajara – at least some of them apparent innocents kidnapped from once-bucolic towns where thousands of U.S. and Canadian retirees live. Officials also have blamed the Zetas for those killings, which supposedly were committed in response to the Guzman gang’s killing in the past month of dozens of alleged Zetas in Nuevo Laredo.

In response, Calderon’s government has extended cooperative security agreements with both Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas states – which border Texas from upriver of Laredo to the Gulf of Mexico – to guarantee the continued presence of federal troops and police.

“We are not going to yield, we will never yield,” Nuevo Leon Gov. Rodrigo Medina said in signing the agreement Thursday in Monterrey. “We will continue investing and taking the necessary actions so that Nuevo Leon has solid institutions and safe cities.”

Zetas inmates aided by guards murdered 44 other prisoners allegedly belonging to the Gulf Cartel in the state prison in Apodaca, another Monterrey suburb in mid-February. More than 30 of the Zetas prisoners then slipped over the jail walls. The prison’s new warden, named just three weeks ago, resigned Sunday citing “personal reasons.”

New tactic

Intended to terrorize rivals and the general population, the public display of butchered corpses has replaced the traditional gangland practice of burying victims in clandestine mass graves. Hundreds of bodies were collected from such graves last year in both northeastern Mexico and the western state of Durango.

But in September killers allied with Guzman dumped 35 bodies of accused Zetas on an highway interchange near an upscale suburban mall in the port of Veracruz. Zetas and their allies responded in November by leaving 26 corpses, supposedly belonging to members of Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel, in downtown Guadalajara. The Zetas also claimed the massacre of several dozen people in Sinaloa this spring.

“I have no doubt that this is a media measure taken by organized crime to get the attention of the public and the rival group,” Javier del Real, the retired army general who was recently appointed head of Nuevo Leon’s state police, said of the Cadereyta incident at Sunday’s news conference. “They achieved that result.”

dudley.althaus@chron.com

Source

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Is Fast and Furious the Next Watergate?

by Alan Caruba on May 5th, 2012

When suspects in a crime are interrogated, they often develop memory loss. When the crime is running guns to drug cartels on both sides of the border, the crime involves the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol officer, Brian Terry, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, Jaime Zapata, and countless Mexican citizens.

Katie Pavlich has written an extraordinary expose, “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover-Up” (Regnery Publishing). She is a veteran agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) who has meticulously documented a story that should result in contempt of Congress action against Attorney General Eric Holder and possibly Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano as well.

It is an appalling story of arrogance, stupidity, and the intimidation of ATF agents who dared to question and expose the operation. It is a story of deception at the highest levels of our government. Both Holder and Napolitano exhibited memory lapses before a congressional committee. Both knew about a federal government authorized gun-running operation to Mexico called “Fast and Furious.”

Pavlich reports that “Fast and Furious was closely followed by Department of Justice officials. On multiple occasions, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke met with Phoenix ATF Director Bill Newell to discuss the progress of the Fast and Furious operation. ‘There were DOJ attorneys and prosecutors who were involved in this since the beginning, giving advice,” testified ATF Special Agent Peter Forcelli.

As Pavlich details it, “Operation Fast and Furious wasn’t a ‘botched’ program. It was a calculated and lethal decision to purposely place thousands of guns in the hands of ruthless criminals.”

The operation was designed to attack the Second Amendment right of Americans to purchase and bear arms, a right considered so essential to the nation that it followed directly after the First Amendment rights of free speech, freedom of the press, the prohibition of the establishment of a nationally sanctioned religion, and the right of Americans to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We are in the grip of an administration that would restrain and erase those rights, and which engaged in a reckless and ruthless operation to achieve that goal. It is an administration that is moving toward the confirmation of a United Nations treaty that would override and eliminate the right to own and bear arms.

The facts regarding Holder’s and Napolitano’s testimony are clear:

“Eric Holder was sent five memos, personally addressed to him, in the summer of 2010 that detailed Operation Fast and Furious.” Holder claimed he first knew about the program in February 2011.

“Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has feigned ignorance when questioned about Fast and Furious. She claims she only found out about the program after Brian Terry was murdered.”

“She visited the White House with Eric Holder to visit President Obama just a day before Holder testified on Capitol Hill about Fast and Furious, leaving the reason for her visit blank.”

Pavlich writes, “These are the facts: There are still 1,400 Fast and Furious guns missing and ATF agents are not actively trying to track them down. Ten thousand round of ammunition were sold to cartel-linked straw buyers under the watch of the ATF. Eight hundred of the original 2,500 weapons sold through Fast and Furious have already been linked to criminal activity.”

The program, observers believer, was the deliberate effort to blame the violence in Mexico and in some cases in America on the gun shops, but those shops were intimidated into participating in Fast and Furious out of fear that ATF would take away their licenses.

After questioning ATF and Justice Department witnesses, Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa, R), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a January 31 letter to ATF officials saying, “As you may be aware, obstructing a Congressional investigation is a crime. Additionally, denying or interfering with employee’s rights to furnish information to Congress is also against the law.”

On May 3rd Rep. Darrell Issa, (CA) Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent every member of his committee a 64-page draft contempt order against AG Holder, along with a 17-page memo outlining the history of the scandal. Only one attorney general has been found in contempt, Janet Reno in 1975.

Fast and Furious is redolent with memories of the Watergate cover-up.

On March 23, 2011, in a Univison interview, Obama said, “First of all, I did not authorize it” and when further pressed said, “Eric Holder did not authorize it. He’s been very clear that our policy is to catch gunrunners and put them in jail.” The facts strongly suggest otherwise insofar as Fast and Furious literally authorized a gunrunning program under the aegis of ATF.

As Pavlich noted, “Many people in ATF saw what was happening and tried to warn the bureau, but the new corrupt and arrogant culture of management had become too powerful and intimidating. Field agents who spoke up were punished for having an opinion and daring to voice it. Whistleblowers had their reputation, careers, and finances shattered.”

This culture of corruption is endemic to the Obama administration and as more and more examples become known it has been in full panic mode to suppress the truth. No matter what the outcome of the testimony of two of its top appointees, the only way to save America is to vote out President Obama in November and ensure that Mitt Romney has a Republican Congress.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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• Katie Pavlich Exposes “Fast And Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal And The Shameless Cover-Up” (thedaleygator.wordpress.com)
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