On the front page of the National Review: criticism of Darrell Issa!
Too Fast, Too Furious
Since details about the Fast and Furious scandal first started to emerge, the biggest question has been: Who in their right mind would think that letting criminals walk away with guns would be a good way to fight crime? Thus far, the only explanation seems to be this: The Justice Department thought that tying American guns to Mexican crime scenes would be useful in its attempts to round up cartel kingpins — useful enough that it was worth giving guns to criminals without bothering to track the weapons as they changed hands.
That’s not very satisfying, of course. So, some Fast and Furious critics have searched for a better one — not by analyzing the evidence, but by concocting a conspiracy theory: specifically, that the Obama administration allowed the guns to go to Mexico deliberately in order to increase gun crime there, so it could cite that crime as a reason for more gun control here. And unfortunately, Fast and Furious’s lead critic, House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa, has joined them.
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Fast and Furious is a horrific scandal. The public deserves answers as to who devised the operation and what they hoped to accomplish. But the theory that Fast and Furious was devised to promote gun control goes far beyond the evidence, as Issa basically admitted to ABC this weekend, and it does not withstand scrutiny. The chairman should be ashamed to have dabbled in it, and should fully retract his initial comment, unless he has a considerable amount of evidence he has not shared with the public.
Criticism of Issa from the right is rare enough...but to see a genuinely scathing critique is to approach astonishment.
And then there is this from the same author on the interior of the NR website:
Did Fast and Furious Not Happen?
That’s the rather startling finding of a Fortune investigation. The basic thrust is that for the most part, the ATF didn’t deliberately allow criminals to buy guns; instead, agents weren’t able to interdict weapons and make arrests because prosecutors told them they lacked probable cause. The only actual incident of gunwalking the investigation turned up, apparently, was allegedly the brainchild of John Dodson, one of the whistleblowers who now says he resisted the tactic. This use of the tactic was approved by an ATF supervisor, but it was not part of Fast and Furious.
Is the worm beginning to turn?