NYT uncovers ATF scandal that began in 2011 and has something to do with Fast and Furious.

" Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives used a secret, off-the-books bank account to rent a $21,000 suite at a Nascar race, take a trip to Las Vegas and donate money to the school of one of the agent’s children, according to records and interviews...."

Government spending typically requires a strict audit trail, but the money deposited in the bank account came from an unlikely source. A.T.F. agents told the informants to buy untaxed cigarettes, mark up the cost and sell them at a profit. The sales made millions of dollars, which poured into the account....

It is not clear whether Obama administration officials authorized the unorthodox account, which was opened at a time when the A.T.F. said it was tightening restrictions on undercover operations. The agency was also moving to improve its management after a botched gun trafficking investigation known as Fast and Furious.

Normally, agents use government-controlled funds known as “churning accounts” to finance tobacco smuggling investigations. The new rules imposed greater oversight over churning accounts. By using the secret bank account, agents in Bristol avoided that oversight....

CBS News says Sharyl Attkisson's computer was hacked by a "sophisticated" intruder.

"The intrusions were detected in December, when Attkisson was reporting almost exclusively on the government’s response to the terrorist attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.... Attkisson has previously investigated the Department of Justice’s gun-tracking operation known as 'Fast and Furious.'"

Attkisson said she had noticed unusual activity in her CBS-issued laptop and her home computer, such as dormant computers spontaneously “waking up” at odd hours. The unusual activity, which also had included disruptions on her home phone line, predate the December 2012 breach that CBS confirmed....

“This wasn’t any ordinary malware of a phishing attempt,” that is, an effort to gain personal information, she said. “I assume someone wanted to see what I was working on.”

“The privacy and security of every American citizen in his own home, not to mention the work of a journalist, is sacrosanct. The idea that an unknown party could come into your home electronically is upsetting and disturbing. . . . People should be disturbed that a reporter would be spied on and intimidated this way. I do feel that this was an attempt to make me feel intimidated.”

Inappropriate Holder.

I Googled "inappropriate holder" because I wanted to look deeply into Eric Holder's use of the word "inappropriate" instead of "unconstitutional" when he was questioned about drone strikes.

The top result was from Trip Advisor: "Hotel Am Muhlenteich Photo: Complimentary toiletries, inappropriate holder meant they fell off the holder all the time." LOL. Inappropriate Holder. Don't you hate the way new toothbrushes have these bulbous handles and won't fit in the slots of your old cemented-to-the-wall toothbrush rack?

If only our rights were so secure! Anyway, I'm not really trying to be funny here. I think "inappropriate" is a fascinating word. I see that back in 2011 "Holder Scolds Congress for ‘Inappropriate Rhetoric’ in Fast and Furious Investigation."

The Oxford English Dictionary (unlinkable, sorry) makes short work of "inappropriate," which has one line of definition — "Not appropriate; unsuitable to the particular case; unfitting, improper" — and only 3 historical examples:

1804   Ann. Rev. 2 19/2   A rambling inappropriate retrospect of Indian history.
1846   Dickens Dombey & Son (1848) ii. 9   [He] invaded the grave silence..with the singularly inappropriate air of ‘A Cobbler there was’.
1883   H. Drummond Nat. Law in Spiritual World (ed. 2) Pref. 13   Inappropriate Hybridism is checked by the Law of Sterility.

I resort to my second-favorite reference resource, my husband Meade. I ask: "What associations do you have with the word 'inappropriate'?"

Meade: "Miss Manners."

***

"What is the Physical Politic of Mr. Walter Bagehot but the tension of the Natural Law to the Political World? What is the Biological Sociology of Mr. Herbert Spencer, but the application of Natural Law to the Social World? Will it be charged that the splendid achievements of such thinkers are hybrids between things which Nature has meant to remain apart? Nature usually solves such problems for herself. Inappropriate Hybridism is checked by the Law of Sterility."

"The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt..."

"... for failing to disclose internal Justice Department documents in response to a subpoena."

It was the first time in American history that Congress has imposed that sanction on a sitting member of a president’s cabinet."

The vote – 255 to 67, with one member voting present – followed an acrimonious and politically charged debate. Many Democrats walked out of the chamber in protest without voting, accusing Republicans of railroading the motion so they could inflict political damage on the Obama administration during an election year.

House Oversight Committee votes to recommend holding Holder in contempt.

It was 23-to-17, along party lines.

“Our purpose has never been to hold the attorney general in contempt,” Mr. Issa said. “Our purpose has always been to get the information the committee needs to complete its work — that it is not only entitled to, but obligated to do.”...

“I treat assertions of executive privilege very seriously, and I believe they should be used only sparingly,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the panel's ranking Democrat. “In this case, it seems clear that the administration was forced into this position by the committee’s unreasonable insistence on pressing forward with contempt despite the attorney general’s good faith offer.”

ADDED: So what happens if he is voted in contempt?

"I have realized that I am not really all that conservative, I just hate the double standard in the mainstream media."

"Six Hundred newspapers would blare Fast and Furious on the front page every day if Bush were in office. President Obama has managed to win office while the NYT and Wash Post are still in business, and can carry the water for him. They will be gone soon, but for now, this will be a 2 day story, 'nothing to see here, keep it moving.'"

So says Fprawl, in the Fast and Furious/Executive Privilege thread.

Obama exerts executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents.

"In a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., a Justice Department official said the privilege applies to documents that explain how the department learned that there were problems with the investigation called Operation Fast and Furious."

ADDED: I'm going to add my "Obama is like Nixon" tag. I think a lot of Americans, when they hear "executive privilege" think of Nixon. And, unfortunately for Obama, we've been hearing plenty of talk about Watergate lately, what with the 40-year anniversary of the break-in. Most notably: "Woodward and Bernstein: 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought." Ironically, that was a mainstream media effort to help Obama.

But Obama has suddenly chosen to look like Nixon. It must be worth it. And without the documents, we must speculate about what is in them.

ALSO: This creates an occasion to look back and see when Presidents other than Nixon have invoked executive privilege. I'm going to rely on Wikipedia, so correct me if I'm wrong. After Nixon, the next President to invoke executive privilege was Bill Clinton, in 1998, trying to keep aides from testifying in the Lewinsky scandal. The district court judge ruled against him. Clinton also used executive privilege to negotiate the terms of his own testimony in the scandal.

George W. Bush used executive privilege a few times, as you can see at the Wikipedia link.

"I'll agree not to mention your racist agenda if you'll agree not to mention my incompetence."

1 of 2 cartoons about Eric Holder and Fast and Furious (with 2 different views of who's guilty of playing racial politics).

Both cartoons do great — and different — caricatures of Holder.

40% of likely voters think Eric Holder should resign (and only 27% say he should not).

33% are undecided.

Only 24% of voters have at least a somewhat favorable opinion of Holder, while 48% view him unfavorably. This includes eight percent (8%) with a Very Favorable view of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and 32% with a Very Unfavorable one. Twenty-eight percent (28%) don’t know enough about Holder to venture any kind of opinion.

Eric Holder says: "I Stuck by My Guns."

I don't like clichés. George Orwell instructed: "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."

But Holder has a fresh expression here. The cliché is "stick to your guns" not "stick by my guns." But it's unclear what he's been saying about guns:

The House Oversight and Government Reform committee, which has been investigating the Justice Department’s involvement in a gunrunning operation dubbed “Fast and Furious,” plans to vote June 20 on whether to hold Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to provide more than 100,000 subpoenaed documents pertaining to the botched gun sting.

As part of Fast and Furious, a Justice Department program that began in September 2009, law enforcement knowingly allowed about 2,000 U.S. guns to flow to Mexican drug cartels, with the intent of tracking the weapons and making arrests. However, law enforcement lost track of most of the weapons.

The program was halted in December 2010 after two weapons from the program were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

So, come on, Mr. Holder. Say some more things about guns.

By the way, Jimmy Kimmel made a "stick to your guns"/Fast and Furious joke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in April:

"Is the Department of Justice sanitizing its connection to Media Matters for America?"

"Needless to say, nobody’s talking over at DoJ... at least they’re tacitly admitting that getting caught at treating with MMfA too openly is a public relations disaster…"

Treating with?

Could the people inclined to inform us about this Fast & Furious episode please write more competently? I went to that link (at RedState) after reading this story at Breitbart where I couldn't find a quotable sentence. It seems like an important story. How about making it easy to share?

IN THE COMMENTS: mariner said:

"Treating with" is "making nice with" or "allying with".

I haven't seen that usage in a long time.

So "treat" in the sense used in "treaty"? I don't remember ever seeing that. But let me check the OED. The oldest meaning of "treat" as a verb is:

intr. To deal or carry on negotiations (with another) with a view to settling terms; to discuss terms of settlement; to bargain, negotiate.

I'm surprised at this usage, which I think I would have picked up if I'd seen it written in something from the 19th century or earlier....

1617 F. Moryson Itinerary i. 195, I‥. was forced to treat with unknowne Merchants for taking money upon exchange.

I would have understood that easily. I'm not sure that's the usage needed in the quote in the original post, since the point is that the DOJ and Media Matters were already in an alliance, and it was showing, not that they were negotiating in public.

Prosecutor invokes 5th amendment privilege in the Fast & Furious investigation.

"The chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona has cited his Fifth Amendment rights... before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee...."

Andrew Sullivan misunderstands why I did not read his "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?" article.

He writes:

I wondered when I wrote this what the reaction would tell me. Just browsing at a few of the right-wing blogs, I see that they have attacked it without actually, you know, reading it. Althouse is a classic example:

I don't even want to read it. It just seems like red meat for Obama fans. And what a cliché! Republicans are stupid.

Half the article is devoted to liberals and Democrats! But it would be too much for her to actually read it.

If you look at my blog post, it's a reaction to the Newsweek cover, beginning with some analysis of the photograph of Obama and continuing to the question that Newsweek framed for the purpose of getting people to buy the magazine. Inside was Sullivan's article, which I did not have time to read. Not that Sullivan could know this, but we had to drive halfway across the country today. Another way of putting that is: I have a life. I can't read everything. Generally, I scan the web in the morning and find some things that feel bloggable to me. Today, it was the Newsweek cover photo and headline, and that's what I wrote about. Writing about the headline, I had the reaction that it doesn't work on me. It doesn't make me want to read. It's insulting! That is a journalistic failure by Newsweek.

Now, quite possibly Newsweek sold the article short, and I was fair enough to Sullivan not to presume to know what he said. But he has melded his web presence — once fiercely independent and alive — to the rotting corpse that is Newsweek, and he bears some responsibility for his predicament. Judging from his blog post, I think he wants his article to be taken as a sane, sober, balanced assessment of Obama's presidency, but he has opted to wrap himself in Newsweek — how much money is that worth to him? — and doing that, he loses many of the readers he purports to mean to speak to and persuade.

But how sober and balanced is he really? I can't help noticing that in talking about me, he wasn't fair. He called me "right-wing," and yet I'm a political moderate, liberal on the social issues, and I voted for Obama.

So there I was, en route from Texas to Wisconsin, pulling in the 3G on my iPad, and I could see that I had an engraved invitation from Andrew Sullivan to read his article. I read it out loud, as Meade drove. (Meade is my husband, and — speaking of personal insults to me from Andrew Sullivan — Sullivan insulted us for deciding to marry!)

The cover really does misrepresent the article. The internal headline is: "How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics." Note the difference between calling the critics "dumb" and saying Obama will "outsmart" his critics. Sullivan does a good job of marshaling the evidence that Obama has done a pretty good job — not that it's impossible to quibble. (Sullivan claims that Obama has "not had a single significant scandal to his name." What about Fast & Furious?!) But his central theme is that Obama has an 8-year rather than a 4-year plan, so we need to reelect him to "recapitalize him to entrench what he has done already and make it irreversible."

I know that last quote will make many of my readers think: That's exactly why we need to oust him! The changes he's made need to be reversed, and if we don't act now, it will be too late. 

But maybe if you take the time to read the article, you'll agree that some of what Obama has done is admirable. It's still a separate question whether we should want 4 more years of him rather than the alternative. It might be better for the country to have Mitt Romney step in and give the Republican Party a chance to take ownership of the economy and national defense. Four years ago I saw the benefit of the Democratic Party having its turn in power after the Bush years left so many people feeling frustrated and excluded.

In short, Sullivan's article is elaborate and well articulated, but it doesn't answer all the questions, and it certainly doesn't answer the insulting and off-putting question "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?" I don't expect Sullivan to address the larger journalistic question in which his career is embedded, but it's obvious that Newsweek fully intended to drag in some readers with that red-meat title, and in doing that, it knowingly repelled others like me. I'm not the slightest bit apologetic for passing over an article that didn't appeal to me. I can't read the entire internet. Like every other reader, I have to make choices about what I'm going to read, and that's a choice that must necessarily be made without reading the article.

If I choose not to read the article, must I also choose not to blog about it? Of course not. I'm careful not to say anything I can't fairly say. I don't assert that I know what's in an article I haven't read, but criticizing media, I often have very good reason to write about why I'm not reading something. I analyze covers as covers and headlines as headlines. I think that's entirely appropriate.

"If the Obama administration did arrange for the shipment of arms to Mexican drug gangs..."

"... not for any legitimate public purpose but in order to advance a left-wing political agenda, and those guns were used to murder hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American border agent – which they were – then we are looking at a scandal that dwarfs any in modern American history."

John Hinderaker, trying to fathom Fast and Furious. We really do need an explanation. If Hinderaker's conclusion seems extreme, consider that it could be easily refuted by a clear statement from the Obama administration disclosing the true and legitimate purpose. The absence of such a statement propels us toward the extreme conclusion.

Sarah Palin says: "Fire Eric Holder."

A new Facebook missive:

He’s either lying [about Fast & Furious] or he’s so grossly incompetent and lazy that he didn’t read important life and death briefings from his deputy attorney general and didn’t know about this deadly operation run by people under him. So, which is it? Incompetent, lazy, or lying? No matter which explanation fits, he needs to go.

Eric Holder: Fast & Furious was "flawed in its concept, and flawed in its execution."

"It must never happen again."

The ATF acting director would like people to "calm down" about Fast and Furious.

I'm sure he does.

Jay Carney sloughs off the call for a special prosecutor in the "Fast and Furious" investigation.

"I think it's the biannual call for a special counsel by this particular congressman... Once every six months, we hear something similar."

It's just like all that other stuff you didn't notice. Nothing to see here.

AND: "Is CBS News Silencing Fast and Furious Reporter?"