Press lets scandal hide in plain sight

Press lets scandal hide in plain sight

John Podhoretz
New York Post
June 21, 2012

There’s a reason you don’t know much about the complicated and confusing mess known as “Fast and Furious.” The mainstream media have largely ignored this Obama administration scandal, which would have dominated mainstream front pages and homepages and programs for months had it all taken place under a Republican administration.

Something changed yesterday. With his attorney general imminently at risk of being held in contempt of Congress, which has happened to administration officials only four times in the past 30 years, the president of the United States moved to claim “executive privilege” in relation to some of the information sought by Congress.

At first glance, this is a perplexing move. Executive privilege is a specific power possessed by the president that allows him to withhold or shield the release of information from Congress because he is its co-equal in power.

But the “Fast and Furious” investigation has to do with the conduct of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder, not the White House or the president.

It has to do with a botched program inside the Justice Department that led to the death of a federal law-enforcement officer.

And, as usually happens in these cases, it has grown to include the way Holder handled the fallout and whether, in an effort to mitigate the political damage, he deliberately misled congressional investigators. The House Oversight Committee claims Holder has improperly withheld more than 100,000 documents from its view.

There’s no question that Congress has the right to examine both the conduct of the Justice Department, whose budget it oversees, and the attorney general, an official confirmed by Congress and obligated by statute to provide all manner of information to relevant committees.

The decision by the president to involve himself directly in this matter is surprising because it means one of two things.

Possibility No. 1: The White House and the president were more directly involved in the “Fast and Furious” fallout than was previously thought. Otherwise, how could there be an assertion of executive privilege? Through the assertion, President Obama is opening himself up to questions about his and the White House’s involvement with an unambiguous disaster.

Possibility No. 2: The claim of executive privilege is a calculated effort to delay the release of certain documents until after Election Day. The claim throws the matter into the courts, with the ultimate adjudication in the hands of the Supreme Court. The process will take months; the Supreme Court doesn’t return to its duties until the first Monday in October.

So even if the claim is entirely baseless, it will work to protect the president from whatever revelations may be contained in the withheld documents.

No matter how you slice it, then, this is a pretty interesting situation — especially with the fact that it is likely the attorney general will be held in contempt of Congress.

So will the story get covered now?

All in all, it’s really dumbfounding how little the public has been told about “Fast and Furious,” given how colorful and melodramatic a scandal it is. A branch of the Justice Department decided to let thousands of guns sold in the United States make their way to Mexico to track their use by the drug cartels.

Everything went wrong. The Justice Department lost track of the guns, and it is believed that one of them was used to murder Brian Terry, a US Border Patrol agent — not to mention hundreds of Mexican citizens caught in the crossfire of that country’s drug war.

There have been stories, and powerful ones, especially by Sharyl Atkisson of CBS News. But there has been no media drumbeat, no constant stream of interlocking articles and broadcasts that put relentless pressure on the White House and the Justice Department.

In short order, we may have: a) an attorney general in contempt of Congress, b) a president asserting a pretty baffling claim of executive privilege that practically requires him to acknowledge White House involvement in the matter and c) an energized conservative press smelling blood.

The fact that a story as juicy as this one has been given short shrift already makes laughable the continued assertion by media panjandrums that they possess no bias toward the Obama administration.

If things continue this way, it will be an admission that they’ve assigned themselves the job of serving as the president’s blocking guard.

Like I said, if they knew it would hurt the GOP, the press would be on this like flies on shit.

Some Europeans think us conservatives are bat shit crazy in saying there's a bias in the media. In the last 3 years, it's more apparent than it's ever been. One has to be blind to not see it. If I was a liberal, I would be embarrassed.

TexasBlue wrote:Some Europeans think us conservatives are bat shit crazy in saying there's a bias in the media. In the last 3 years, it's more apparent than it's ever been. One has to be blind to not see it. If I was a liberal, I would be embarrassed.

They're in denial maybe.

Oh don't worry, you guys cover it more than all the media outlets combined (and it still is not top priority news)

TheNextPrez2012 wrote:Oh don't worry, you guys cover it more than all the media outlets combined (and it still is not top priority news)

Oh really. The biggest scandal in this administration isn't "top priority".

TheNextPrez2012 wrote:Oh don't worry, you guys cover it more than all the media outlets combined (and it still is not top priority news)

You know, you're so fucking obtuse that it's insane! I mean, really! Do you actually know the facts behind this operation to start with? No, you don't. If you did, you'd take a different attitude. Then we get to this bullshit cover-up. I guarantee you, this right here alone is going to sink Obama once things get big enough. It took months before the MSM started to even mention this.... while everyone else already knew about it.

You're nothing but an Obama Apologist.

You are quite right Tex, NP is being nakedly obvious in his leftist bias for that Marxist Obama.

He pretends to be centrist, but his posts expose him for the blatant leftist that he really is.

It's sad really, anyone who was even remotely attentive to current events not being covered by the sycophants in the MSM would know the truly notorious nature of Fast and Furious.

Clearly NP lacks the intellectual honesty and integrity to acknowledge an obvious truth, if this were happening under the auspices of a Republican administration, the MSM would be on this NONSTOP for months on end.

Oh well, such is the stuff of leftist myrmidons.