Fast and FuriousFollow

"If I had the money, I'd relocate my family to Texas." Easy to say, and you actually might, but you've (and I in my initial sentence in this post) behaved/posted in a manner that wouldn't get anyone to trust that claim.

Do you think that every story that appears on a new agencies web site also appears on their live news broadcast that day? Cause that's kind of impossible.

The point is that it's cheap and easy to put a story on the website. It costs much more to put it on the air, but you get a much broader audience. And traditionally, scandals of this nature tend to get massive media airplay. But this one has gotten very very little.



Really? So the fact that the other two major news agencies ignored the story just doesn't matter? You're not a paid operative of the Democratic party Joph, so why are you making such effort to spin this? I know it may be shocking to you to believe that conservatives appreciate when a news agency (well, one person at one news agency) buck the liberal circled wagons and actually writes a story that everyone should be writing. But that speaks more about conservatives willing to give credit than credit is due than any sort of accomplishment among the media as a whole. I'm not sure why you think that is funny. It's an indictment of just how f'ed in the head your "side" is.

The hypocrisy dripping out of all of gbajis posts would be more amusing if his posts were shorter.

No, but nice strawman?


So you really, really want everyone to believe.


They didn't.


Says the guy who started the thread by crying about how "the media" isn't reporting this... I understand you were told your talking points and recited them and now have to stand fast to them truth be damned and say things like "135 news stories don't count because it's not what I say it has to be to count!" but you'd be better off just quietly dropping it than repeatedly showing how wrong you were. Hey, maybe next time you're told no one ever reported on it, actually check it out yourself instead of parroting the "fact" and looking stupid.

Does it blow a hole in gbaji's lack of media argument if I heard this exact story on ABC's nighttime news as I was reading this thread?

When I saw the title of this thread, "Man, Vin Diesel is making *another* sequel?" was *not* the first thought to come to mind. It was the second.

Read the OP article link. The first legitimate reason I can think of to suppress documents about the "Fast and Furious" operations is that it would endanger undercover law enforcement agents still involved with the drug cartel and gun traders. Redacting their names may or may not help that.

The second and more believable reason, at least if this was in Britain, is that the documents would reveal too much undercover police procedure. Even in trials by jury, undercover police are not to be asked WHERE they observed a witness from, because that blows police methods. They can only be asked WHAT they observed of the witnesses' behaviour. Even if the undervover police officer was in the same room as the witness, and fully visible to the witness.

Edited, Jun 21st 2012 2:09am by Aripyanfar

"No media coverage!" has been diluted to "Well, sure there's tons of print coverage and CBS won an award for its broadcast coverage and ABC has been covering it (but we say not enough) and it's been on all the cable news networks but we're pretty sure this one show on NBC (we're not counting any other news coverage on NBC or its affiliates) didn't cover it because... LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS!!!!"

I'm assuming if I heard about it through the mainstream media months ago, they did a good enough job of covering it.



I liked yours better though. It had 95% of what was in gbaji's post, and a lot lot lot less words.


From a CNN opinion piece:


TLDR = basically my understanding is since it isn't a military/state secret they still have to share these documents with the appropriate court if it demands them. They just feel they have no obligation to share them with congress at this point. If there's reason to suspect criminal wrongdoing, you press charges and should have access to the documents in question.

Edited, Jun 21st 2012 8:23am by someproteinguy

My favorite part of this whole thing is how the far right wing is interpreting it. Let's see, this is how Obama is going to destroy the 2nd amendment. Something along the lines of "The gangs will kill lots of people with the guns, causing an outcry for more gun control!".

The better part is the NRA's line about Obama not doing anything at all about gun control in his 1st term to lull people into relaxing, and he's gonna take our guns in his 2nd term!

It's fun watching the crazies sometimes, but not for too long.

Um... No one's asking for the documents to be made public, but for them to be made available to the oversight committee. These committees deal with classified documents all the time and are under the same oaths that those handing them over are under. That is simply not an excuse. These committees exist to examine sensitive documents in the smallest group possible for exactly this reason. There is no legitimate excuse not to hand this stuff over.



Um... Except in this case, it was the procedures used which caused this whole thing to fail. Oversight committees have oversight on the executive programs they fund. That's the whole point of the system. Those programs and those running them are required to provide any information about their operations to the relevant committees upon request. Again, they exist to provide oversight. Saying "we don't want to tell you how we operate" is not a valid response.



This is not a trial. It's a congressional committee asking for information about a program that they have legal oversight over. Holder refusing to hand over the documents would be like an employee refusing to explain to his boss why he lost the Flugelheim contract. Saying "something went wrong, but I'm not going to tell you what" is not a valid response. This is not about releasing these documents to the public. It's about releasing them to a small group of members of Congress who's job is to examine these sorts of documents and make assessments of them so that we *don't* have to tell the whole public (or even the whole congress) the secret details of some government operation.


We trust members of congress with details about black ops we conduct. We then trust them as elected officials to represent *us* when determining whether said operations were handled properly or were necessary. We do it this way so that we can maintain national security interests while still ensuring that "the people" have a say in what goes on. That's the whole point of our system. This is why Holder's actions really do have no grounds at all. If he's not required to report to this oversight committee, then he's not bound by the law at all. That's a really big deal. And for some to shrug this off as partisan politics is not just ignorant, but it's dangerous as well. These sorts of hearings and oversight is the check that we citizens have against abuses of power by our own government. Weaken that and you weaken all of us. Not just Democrats or Republicans.

You're welcome to do so. I've no delusions about convincing you otherwise.

That's not even close to what I said.

Yes, I'm sure you'll think about the media whatever you're told to think about the media. This thread already demonstrated that.

Your butthurt is showing. Also your inability to argue things logically.

Haha, yeah the GOP is taking a bath all over, aren't they? Of course, each thing did have a valid defense by the administration (which is why all the GOP could do was impotently caterwaul) but I know crying about oaths is more important to you so I'll let you have that one was well

Hell of a strawman there Joph.