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I'm quite sure that there are plenty of constructive things you could say about President Obama's recent trip to Mexico and what policies would actually benefit the citizens of both countries, such as our trade laws and our drug policies among other things, but you weren't going to find that on this Saturday's Fox & Friends.

Hosts Tucker Carlson, Alisyn Camerota and Clayton Morris opened up the segment by using the speech as an opportunity to trot out the old "apology tour' attacks. Then after playing a portion of President Obama's speech where he said this:

In the United States, we recognize our responsibilities as well. We understand that the root cause of much of the violence here—and so much suffering for many Mexicans— is the demand for illegal drugs, including in the United States. [...]

We also recognize that most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.

...they of course had to bring up one of Fox's other favorite faux scandals, the trumped up Fast and Furious failed gun trafficking sting. And for good measure, heaven forbid a former Mexican diplomat and writer that Obama quoted in his speech said something critical about the United States thirty years ago, so therefore Obama must be siding with anti-American radicals.

They did their best to twist what the president said in his speech as well, and claimed that his comments about the drug trade and guns meant he was blaming the United States for all of their problems, which, as anyone can read for themselves, is not exactly what he said to the audience there, to put it charitably. He said we shared some responsibility for those specific problems.

As I already said, there are plenty of legitimate items to criticize about our relationship with Mexico. You'd never know it listening to the garbage being spewed by these clowns.

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We've had an awful lot of really terrible reporting on the so-called Fast and Furious "scandal," primarily from the right, Fox "News" and right wing hate talk and in the mean time, we also were lucky enough to have some good reporting on the issue, like Cenk here from this week, or Rachel Maddow from this week as well. This Saturday on Chris Hayes' show on MSNBC, we were treated to even more in depth coverage of the issue with this really great interview of Forbes reporter Katherine Eban.

If anyone has not read the entire article yet, here's the link: The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal.

Here's a rough transcript of the early portion of Eban's time on the show and the portion about the kids being paid for the gun walking and how ATF's hands were tied was just astounding to me, but in this day and age with the NRA having the hold it does over our members of Congress, nothing should be surprising these days.

HAYES: So Katherine, let's start with the context. I think one of the most important things about this article […] it was sort of unclear, like what was the whole problem it was set up to solve, that, it was a point unclear, like what exactly was the issue they faced? And one of the things you created is the context of this, which is that there is a massive flow right now, of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico. In fact, 70 percent of weapons recovered in Mexico come from the U.S., which is a startling statistic and that's largely due to the fact that Mexico has very tight gun restrictions and the U.S., particularly along the southwest border has particularly lax ones.

So what was the idea behind this operation to begin with?

EBAN: What's alleged or what in fact is the idea behind the operation?

HAYES: Let's go with the facts. I think the allegations have gotten a lot of time. So what was the idea?

EBAN: Basically the idea behind this ATF investigation, it's not a program, it's a single investigation called Fast and Furious was to stop straw purchasers from buying guns that they were then funneling to Mexican drug cartels.

HAYES: Explain what a straw purchaser is.

EBAN: A straw purchaser is basically somebody the cartels tap who can legally go and buy weapons, so in Arizona that might be an 18 year old kid who is not old enough to buy beer, but who, if he has no criminal record, or she, can go into a gun dealership and buy 50 AK47's, pay in cash and face no waiting period, no need for extra permits.

So there are lots of kids in Arizona for example who want to make a few extra bucks. This is what they do.

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Fox is always terrible when it comes to letting little Joe McCarthy Jr. Bachmann run amok with wild accusations against the Obama administration, but this one with Uma Pemmaraju from this Saturday's America's News Headquarters was particularly awful. Bachmann is now calling the Mexican drug cartels "terrorists." She's pretending that Republicans have an ounce of concern for gun control or that the problem with the guns showing up in Mexico is not something they and the NRA have created themselves with terribly weak gun control laws.

She asserts criminal behavior because President Obama used his powers of executive privilege all of one time to ward off a Republican witch hunt, never mind the fact that she made no such assertions when her best buddy George W. Bush invoked it six times.

She also thinks there is some conspiracy theory behind the media giving more attention to the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act instead of the contempt vote against Eric Holder, blaming the media of course and ignoring that John Boehner was the one who decided to intentionally schedule the vote on the same day, knowing full well it would get buried because he wanted it to be.

She also had the audacity to complain about the administration leaking given her track record, or the fact that it's ridiculous to pretend that they all don't leak when it's politically convenient for them. Regardless of Bachmann's assertions here, this is not the first or the worst, or sadly the last administration that's going to leak classified information when it suits them. The fact that this woman was given a spot on the House Intelligence Committee is a tragedy in its own right.

Rough transcript below the fold.

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Fox News host Brian Kilmeade insists that Democrats in Congress were "playing the race" card when they walked as House Republicans were voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt.

Kilmeade on Friday asked Geraldo Rivera "who looks best" after Republican Representatives -- led by House Government and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA) -- made history by voting to hold the nation's black attorney general in contempt.

Rivera pointed to the following quote by Justice Clarence Thomas: "And from my standpoint, as a black American, as far as I am concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas. And it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree."

Thomas was admonishing Democrats for accusing him of sexual harassing Anita Hill while he was her supervisor at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but Rivera observed that the same could be said about Republicans' actions against Holder.

"The optics are horrible," he explained. "This is a terrible thing that John Boehner and Darrel Issa allowed."

"Anybody can play the race card any time they're not happy!" Kilmeade objected.

"Did race play a role in Clarence Thomas' [confirmation]?" Rivera asked. "Probably not. Did race play a role in Eric Holder being held in contempt? Probably not. But they have given sufficient ammunition to the other side to reach that conclusion."

"This is congressional graffiti. This is legislative vandalism," he continued. "Darrel Issa knew that there was not even a strong suspicion that Eric Holder knew about Fast and Furious. They could have negotiated this. They could have gotten the information they needed."

"Aren't you sick of the race card being played every time something controversial happens?" Kilmead exclaimed. "So no race card with Obamacare, that's no problem. But there's a race card when something goes wrong with Fast and Furious."

The Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus, Progressive Caucus and other Democrats -- including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) -- walked of Congress in protest on Thursday as the contempt vote was being held.

"You’re seeing the whole diversity of the Democratic caucus," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) told reporters. "This is a terrible day for the House of Representatives. What it’s about, we can’t decide for sure, but it’s not about Eric Holder and handing over papers. We don’t want to participate in something that has some kind of smell to it."

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It appears the former militia leader and wingnut extraordinaire Mike Vanderboegh is far from done causing trouble yet. It seems he wasn't too happy after the Supreme Court made its ruling on the Affordable Care Act this Thursday, to put it mildly.

Ex-Militia Blogger Who Spawned Fast And Furious Scandal Predicts Armed Insurrection Over Health Care Decision:

Mike Vanderboegh, the ex-militia blogger who calls himself one of the "midwives" of the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, recently predicted that if the Supreme Court declared the health care reform bill to be constitutional, it would lead to violent insurrection against "government tyranny."

The blogger posted the statements, which come from a recent unpublished interview, the same day the House of Representatives voted to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt over his unwillingness to release documents related to Fast and Furious.

In the excerpts Vanderboegh posted on his blog "which deal with the decision today," he says of a then-potential decision upholding the health care law, "You may call tyranny a mandate or you may call it a tax, but it still is tyranny and invites the same response." He further predicts the response of his ilk: "If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed -- unless we kill them first. ... I am on record as advocating the right of defensive violence against a tyrannical regime." Read on...

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The Young Turks Cenk Uygur did one of the better summations of just what went wrong with this Fast and Furious operation and on Fortune Magazine's investigative report: ‘The Fast and Furious program as you know it is a myth’ :

Cenk digs into Fortune Magazine’s report following a six-month investigation into claims that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sold guns to straw purchasers for Mexican cartels during Operation Fast and Furious. Attorney General Eric Holder may be held in contempt, but Fortune concludes that ATF agents never purposely sold to cartels. Instead, their efforts to track purchasers were often blocked by weak gun control laws. “You want to know the irony of this? The NRA had those weak laws passed in the first place,” Cenk says. “Do you know that, in Arizona, all you need to do to buy a gun is to be 18 and pass a background check? In fact … you can buy 10 guns — 100 guns, if you want.”

Here's more from Dave Dayden over at FDL's News Desk: On Eve of Contempt Vote, Revelation that Fast and Furious Is a Convenient Fiction:

White House officials have been in consultation with the GOP House leadership in advance of tomorrow’s contempt of Congress vote for Attorney General Eric Holder over the Fast and Furious scandal and the Justice Department’s response to an Oversight Committee investigation and document request. However, the two sides have not reached an agreement, and as of now, the contempt vote will be held as scheduled. Even though the White House provided access to 30 new documents, that was not enough to delay the contempt vote, suggesting that the vote itself and not the investigation is the end goal here.

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Here we go again with Darrell Issa out there pushing the right-wing conspiracy theory started by Mike Vanderboegh, that the Fast and Furious debacle is really just a secret ploy to try to get more gun control laws enacted: GOP Oversight Chair Doubles Down On Wild Conspiracy Theory: Obama DOJ May Have Started Fast & Furious To Limit Access To Guns:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) doubled down on a right wing conspiracy theory this morning, again suggesting that the failed “Fast and Furious” operation was a secret scheme by Democrats designed to promote stronger gun control regulation. But he also admitted that he had absolutely no evidence to back the theory and likely never would. [...]

Issa is more than happy to continue to promote the theory — started and peddled by Mike Vanderboegh, a man who once called for militias to break the windows of members of Congress because of the passage of the Affordable Care Act — even though even he concedes even he does not believe he will ever be able to produce any evidence of the allegations.

Transcript below the fold.

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Apparently it's asking too much of any of these talking heads in our corporate media to ever push back at Republicans when they start spouting over the top nonsense like Rick Perry did on Face the Nation this Sunday, because we didn't get an ounce of it from Bob Schieffer here.

Perry: Obama’s Use Of Executive Privilege Is ‘Nixonian’:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry compared President Obama’s use of executive privilege in the Fast and Furious controversy to President Nixon’s coverup of Watergate. “You gotta admit, this is almost Nixonian if not absolutely Nixonian in the coverup that’s going on with this Fast and Furious,” Perry said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“With Watergate, you had a second rate burglary,” Perry said to host Bob Schieffer Sunday. “Now you have a president who is using his executive privilege to keep that information from Congress. If that’s not Nixonian, than I don’t know what is, Bob.”

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The Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Sunday said that there was no proof that President Barack Obama's White House had any involvement in Fast and Furious, a botched gun "walking" program that intended to trace weapon sales to Mexico.

Last week, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) charged that by asserting executive privilege over certain documents, the White House essentially admitted it had been involved in a cover-up.

"The decision to invoke executive privilege is an admission that White House officials were involved in decisions that misled the Congress and have covered up the truth," Boehner told reporters.

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday asked Oversight Committee Chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA) if he had any evidence to support Boehner's claim.

"No, we don't," Issa admitted. "And what we are seeking are documents that we know to exist, February 4 to December [2011] that are in fact about [Border Patrol agent] Brian Terry’s murder -- who knew, and why people were lying about it."

"No evidence at this point that the White House is involved in a cover up?" Wallace pressed.

"And I hope that they don't get involved," Issa replied.

(h/t: Think Progress)

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From this Friday's PBS Newshour, in case anyone thought Fox was the only place where no matter what, IOKIYAR and if you engage in a political witch hunt, you will be given cover for your actions, look no further than The New York Times overpaid Villager and turd polisher of all things Republican, David Brooks and his regular weekly appearances on The Newshour on PBS.

Brooks excuses Issa as "doing what they're supposed to be doing" with his committee's attack on Attorney General Eric Holder, and justifies the committee having political gain as a motivation with this Fast and Furious investigation, while ignoring the fact that that Issa has used his chairmanship for issues other than going after actual corruption, which he's ignored time and time again, if he doesn't think his party can benefit from their actions politically and that anything he's actually bothered to have hearings on has been purely political.

Sorry Mr. Brooks, but you can make all the excuses you want, but that's not how these committees are supposed to work. And as a member of the media, opinion based or not, your job should be holding these people accountable for their actions, not making excuses for them and calling it playing politics as usual when they don't do their jobs, and treating the public as though they should just be accepting of how broken and corrupt our political system is right now.

David Brooks... proof that if you're willing to carry enough water for Republicans and make their horrible ideas palatable to the American public, you'll be allowed to continually fail upwards with ever larger pay checks as a reward.

Transcript below the fold.

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