The Greatest Political Scandal in U.S. History: Fast & Furious (I)

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Jan 30, 2012 4 Comments ›› kyle

Despite the obfuscation of the Democrat-complicit media, time will show that Operation Fast and Furious was the greatest political scandal in American history. The Obama administration’s hubris of running an operation with the unmistakable intent of fabricating evidence to justify the impairment of citizens’ Constitutional right to bear arms, leading to the weaponizing of violent criminals, the murder of Mexican nationals and even of an American border patrol agent, make the operation a state crime for the ages. In fact, all other scandals on record, including those leading to the impeachment of presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and the resignation of President Richard Nixon, pale in comparison.

Such an intrepid case demands air-tight reasoning, historical evidence, and proper contextualization, all of which will be supplied in due course. In order to frame the scandal at hand by its order of magnitude and importance, we shall revisit those scandals of past administrations that led to serious and damaging repercussions. This will be the primary task of the first in a five part series revealing the Obama administration’s Fast and Furious scandal in the fullness of its severity and the graveness of its implications.

The Andrew Johnson impeachment charges are as obscure today as they are relatively tame by comparison to the routine daily operations of the Obama administration. Succeeding the assassinated Abraham Lincoln, the lifelong Democrat and slave owner Andrew Johnson was disliked by many northern politicians for his lax hand enforcing the post-Civil War architecture of “Reconstruction.”  A pretext for impeachment was found when President Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act, a law forbidding the president from removing Senate-confirmed appointees without additional Senate confirmation. Andrew Johnson suspended and replaced the sitting Secretary of War Edward Stanton, thus provoking the impeachment charge by Republicans. Johnson came within one vote of being forcibly removed from office.

President Johnson’s legislative infraction can be directly compared with yet another political scandal: Obama’s recess appointments while the Senate was not in recess.  The U.S. Constitution expressly and quite clearly forbids such an appointment. As Article II, Section 2 states, “The president shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.” The law of the land stipulates in Article I, Section 5, ““Neither House, during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days.” What Obama did was make his “recess appointments” while the Senate was not in recess; in other words, he once again overrode Senate advise-and-consent requirements, just as he did with his “czar” appointments.

President Obama’s violation of the recess appointment laws in The Constitution has been legally challenged, but the Department of Justice, undoubtedly one of the most politicized and corrupt in American history, upheld the administration’s actions on the spurious grounds that the Senate’s pro forma meetings did not qualify as ending the recess. We will later address the role of the Department of Justice, and particularly the testimony of Eric Holder during the House investigation, in the Fast and Furious scandal.

Teapot Dome was one of the most notorious political scandals of all-time, according to Democrat folklore. Regaled in American History textbooks throughout our public schools, the story depicts the insidious Republican figure Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall as an astonishingly corrupt figure.  The scandalcame to light when Senate Democrat John Kendrick inquired into how Secretary Fall could get rich so quickly after the Interior leased out naval petroleum reserve lands to private companies on a no-bid basis.  It turns out Fall had made arrangements with two associates to attain the oil contracts, while he received a kickback of $385,000 in the process. Albert Fall became the first high-ranking public figure in U.S. history to go to prison after committing an ethics violation.

Compare this with President Obama’s financing of Brazilian petroleum company Petrobras SA with American taxpayer dollars.  Not only did the $2 billion in guaranteed loans to the government-controlled Petrobras SA aid the administration of Marxist Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, it financially benefitedshareholder and Obama associate George Soros. Even when Forbes attempted to run interference for Obama and Soros, the publication could not deny that the loan benefited the Brazilian company. As President Obama himself said while in Brazil, “We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.” And the best part? The deal helped the Chinese attain oil resources.

This brings us to the most infamous political scandal in modern history, known only as “Watergate.”  The event became so notorious, that it has been nearly obligatory to append “gate” onto all successive political scandals. Trumpeted as the nefarious machination of President Richard M. Nixon, the scandal centered around a break-in of the Democratic National Committee office at the Watergate complex. When two intruders were captured with rubber gloves and one hundred dollar bills, a journalistic crusade traced the scandal back to Nixon. When the Supreme Court ordered the Nixon administration to turn over recorded tapes implicated in the plot, the president was caught on the record sanctioning the break-in. No one was killed. No Constitutional issue was at stake. It was a partisan and illegal act by an unscrupulous president against the pet party of the U.S. media.  But it was only a break-in committed against the Democrat National Committee for purposes of getting political ammunition against an adversary.

By comparison with Operation Fast and Furious, once exposed to its fullest, Watergate will appear to be the work of pikers. Certainly, the “Lewinskygate” affair of President Bill Clinton, still fresh in the public memory, appears frivolous, despite the fact that the impeachment charges rested mainly on the president’s perjury, and not on the sexual act itself. Even favorable sources apologizing for Clinton’s actions show the president admitted he had misled the grand jury.  President Clinton was impeached by the Republican-led House of Representatives, but the Senate was moved to acquittal, proving Henry Hyde’s comment that, “A failure to convict will make the statement that lying under oath, while unpleasant and to be avoided, is not all that serious.”

Hyde’s comment presages the election of President Obama, who has repeatedly proven that he does not take his Oath of Office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” to heart. The president belies by his actions that he is hostile to the constricting intent of The Constitution, which is not a surprise since this “scholar” without any record of scholarly articles published on the founding document, has stated he believes it to be a doctrine of “negative liberties. ” In other words, Obama has stated that The Constitution “says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.”  Additionally, Obama argued that The Constitution is an “imperfect” document with “deep flaws.”

Such is the appropriate context in which to view the actions of the Obama administration in the Fast and Furious scandal, one that is widely acknowledged as designed to undermine citizens’ Second Amendment right to bear arms and to bolster the case for an international Small Arms Treaty.  The operation, a facet of the publicly announced Project Gunrunner, knowingly risked the lives of Mexican and American citizens, and eventually resulted in the death of U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry. If the Obama administration is allowed to get away with this egregious political scandal, then lawlessness in government will reign. Like those who decried the Watergate scandal relentlessly and repeatedly condemned Nixon  until he was drummed out of office, we sensible and loyal citizens must do likewise. We must work tirelessly until the Obama administration is held to account for its wanton, unconstitutional, and deadly actions.