Lying Republican Scumbag of The Week - Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) Lied About When and What He Knew About Fast and Furious

Lying Republican Scumbag of The Week -  Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) Lied About When and What He Knew About Fast and Furious

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said this week that he was "never" briefed about what was going on in Operation Fast and Furious and that ATF agents who ran an April 2010 briefing he attended "never mentioned 'Fast and Furious' by name."

That contradicts contemporaneous documents prepared for that meeting as well as the claims of officials familiar with the briefing, who say Fast and Furious was, in fact, discussed in detail. Still, Issa's office says staffers at the meeting don't recall Fast and Furious coming up and say they weren't given the briefing materials.

An official with knowledge of the meeting told TPM that Fast and Furious was one of "several cases that were briefed in great detail" at Issa's April 2010 briefing. The official specifically said that the names of the operations were mentioned in the briefing, which was run by former ATF Director Ken Melson.

"Specifically with regard to this investigation, what was briefed was the number of weapons that had been purchased, the types of weapons, caliber, the amount of cash that had been spent by the traffickers, the different techniques that ATF was using to investigate and the different techniques that ATF was using to further the investigation," the official told TPM.

The official told TPM that ATF briefers talked about straw purchasers, the fact that guns had gone to Mexico and been recovered in Mexico, coordination efforts between ATF and Mexico in the case and the volume of weapons that were being purchased by individuals during the briefing Issa attended.

Documents prepared by ATF officials for Issa's briefing back up that narrative, detailing specific developments in Operation Fast and Furious.


....That officials in Washington differ in their recollections of an 18-month-old briefing wouldn't be entirely surprising, or indeed always news. In fact, TPM obtained some of the documents about the meeting back in June (before the Washington Post published their own account in which a source familiar with the session said Issa was briefed on everything he'd "been screaming about") but at the time elected not to publish a story about them because at the time the dispute was about the facts of the case, not the content of the meeting.

The proto-fascist conservative blogs and pundits from Michelle Malkin to Fox News have been lying, twisting and fabricating nonsense about Fast and Furious, and Attorney General Eric Holder for months. It has simply been the fanatcal right-wing attempts to crucify another Obama administration official. As usual conservatism continues to be the enemy within. Conservatives constitute a Fifth column of anti-American zealots who hide their perverse values behind the flag and frequently the Bible - they have no shame.The almost comic irony here is that the deeply corrupt Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is House Oversight Committee Chairman.

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The Solyndra Scandal in Context - Republicans pursued clean energy loans, too

The Solyndra Scandal in Context - Republicans pursued clean energy loans, too

As I predicted, Solyndra's bankruptcy is serving as the new Climategate -- it's giving conservative politicians who once felt the need to grope for some sort of muddled centrist-sounding position (e.g.,"the science is uncertain," or "all of the above") the pretense they need to transition to full-on oppositionalism.

We see this now as Republicans decry clean energy loan guarantees that they were begging for a few years ago. I had some fun with Mitch McConnell a few days ago, and ThinkProgress has a great post nailing Daryl Issa -- who even now is investigating Solyndra -- for pleading with DOE's Steven Chu to fast track a loan guarantee to Aptera Motors, an electric car manufacturer.

The hypocrisy charge is legit, as far as it goes, and it's catnip for the media and for activists. But let's not forget: the main problem with Issa's effort to cripple the clean energy loan guarantee program is not that he did something contrary earlier, but that it's a bad idea to cripple the clean energy loan guarantee program.

I worry that the hypocrisy attack makes it look like Republicans were doing something embarrassing or unseemly by pursuing loans for clean energy companies in their districts. Quite the contrary! If I were one of Darryl Issa's constituents, I would be most pleased to hear that he was angling to get some advanced manufacturing in my district. Electric cars are are a booming market and it would be to a region's great benefit to establish an early foothold as a center of research, skills, and experience. Issa was serving the people who elected him.

This gets at a weird schizophrenia in public dialogue about energy policy. In an economist's dream world, all units of carbon emissions are priced equally. The government does not pick winners or otherwise interfere in the market. The carbon price creates demand for new low-carbon options, which pulls new competitors into the market. Lots of left pundits seem to have convinced themselves that this is the only thing they can credibly advocate for. Anything else is vaguely malodorous.

This is pure mythology, though. For one thing, a carbon price wouldn't be enough to spur innovation (see here or here). Putting that aside, though, it's not like a price on carbon would, in and of itself, make energy markets "free" or "fair." There are no markets in the world more riddled with state intervention, collusion, price-fixing, subsidies, tax breaks, cartels, monopolies, etc. etc. The government is always and already involved in energy markets, always and already "picking winners and losers."

Conservative Republicans don't care if they have to lie all day every day. They don't care if we all eventually find out they have been flaming two faced hypocrites for the millionth time. It is all about the politics of destruction and hysteria.