The "Bystander President"

"MSNBC's blistering montage of the president denying knowledge of recent scandals"

From The Blaze:

“What did the president know and when did he know it?”

Not much, and not until much later, an MSNBC-created montage of recent scandals recaps.

Among them are Operation Fast and Furious; the Internal Revenue Service’s extra scrutiny of conservative groups; Department of Justice subpoenas of Associated Press records; Solyndra; and the disastrous rollout of Obamacare.

Here’s a clip of the MSNBC segment:

"A mere onlooker in his own White House."

How do the Feds fight cigarette smuggling?

Why, by smuggling (and profiting) off cigarettes...of course!

Video goodness below...



(This effort brought to you by the same agency that brought you "Operation Fast & Furious!")

h/t: Reason.com

U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder and his views on the Second Amendment

If you thought "Project Gunwalker - Operation Fast & Furious," the Dept. of Justice/Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' supplying of high-powered weaponry to Mexican drug cartels, was just "a mistake" or "merely an example of federal bureaucratic incompetence," it's time to think again.

For sometime now, here at The Bliss Index and at many other outlets, there have been numerous accounts of Fast & Furious being a stealth attempt not to track illegal firearms and their use by the cartels but, instead, to specifically undermine the Second Amendment.

Breitbart.com's BREITBART.TV, as part of its "Vetting" campaign, has just released the following video of a talk U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder made a few years before he took the lead at DOJ.

Listen closely -- it's telling and chilling.

From Breitbart.com:

Breitbart.com has uncovered video from 1995 of then-U.S. Attorney Eric Holder announcing a public campaign to "really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way."

Holder was addressing the Woman's National Democratic Club. In his remarks, broadcast by CSPAN 2, he explained that he intended to use anti-smoking campaigns as his model to "change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC" about guns.

"What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable, it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes."

Holder added that he had asked advertising agencies in the nation's capital to assist by making anti-gun ads rather than commercials "that make me buy things that I don't really need." He had also approached local newspapers and television stations, he said, asking them to devote prime space and time, respectively, to his anti-gun campaign.

Local political leaders and celebrities, Holder said, including Mayor Marion Barry and Jesse Jackson, had been asked to help. In addition, he reported, he had asked the local school board to make the anti-gun message a part of "every day, every school, and every level."

Despite strict gun control efforts, Washington, DC was and remains one of the nation's most dangerous cities for gun violence, though crime has abated somewhat since the 1990s.

Holder went on to become Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration, and currently serves as Attorney General in the Obama Administration.

The video of Holder's remarks was uncovered by Breitbart.com contributor Charles C. Johnson.

Incompetence...or worse?

"Operation Fast and Furious" -- the debacle that gives us a view of the administration's efforts to undermine the Second Amendment.

In a video clip (at bottom) from this morning's testimony by the USAG before Congress, Attorney Gen. Eric Holder admits the effort was "reckless," "tragic," "flawed" and that "...more people are going to die."

No big deal, Mr Holder?

U.S. Border agent Brian Terry: Another Fast and Furious casualty...

At the very least, Holder and his team (on this) were criminally negligent. More likely, though, they have been caught in a web of lies they offered in an attempt to cover-up a scheme to subvert the U.S. Constitution – a scheme that resulted in the murders of at least one U.S. Border agent and likely hundreds of other innocent civilians.

It’s not just a crime, it's a national shame.

Fast and (Very) Furious...

According to CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson (who deserves heaps of praise for being first and foremost in the investigation into Operation Fast and Furious), she's touched a nerve.

Jeff Poor, reporting for The Daily Caller, writes about the Department of Justice's reaction to her ongoing coverage:

Did the White House try to strong-arm a journalist in the wake of the Justice Department’s “Operation Fast and Furious” scandal? CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson says government leaders took a very aggressive tack following her revelations earlier this year.

On Tuesday’s Laura Ingraham Show, Attkisson said DOJ spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler and White House associate communications director Eric Schultz yelled and screamed at her over the story.

“The DOJ woman was just yelling at me,” Attkisson said. “The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. Eric Schultz — oh, the person screaming was Tracy Schmaler. She was yelling, not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.”

Attkisson explained the vicious tongue-lashing:

“In between the yelling that I received from the Justice Department yesterday, the spokeswoman — who would not put anything in writing — I was asking for her explanation so there would be clarity and no confusion later over what had been said. She wouldn’t put anything in writing,” she said.

“So we talked on the phone and she said things such as ‘the question Holder answered was different than the one he asked.’ But the way he phrased it, he said very explicitly, ‘I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.’”

Attkisson also said the DOJ and White House representatives complained that CBS was “unfair and biased” because it didn’t give the White House favorable coverage on the developing scandal.

“Is it sort of a drip, drip. And I’m certainly not the one to make the case for DOJ and White House about what I’m doing wrong,” she added. “They will tell you that I’m the only reporter, as they told me, that is not reasonable. They say The Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, The New York Times is reasonable — I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.”

Following is an audio interview with Attkisson. It's worth a listen...