AG Holder cleared in Justice gunwalking probe

 Ethics  Comments Off
Sep 202012
 

(CBS/AP) The Justice Department’s inspector general cleared Attorney General Eric Holder and his top deputies Wednesday of knowing about the gun-walking operation known as Fast and Furious that allowed thousands of weapons to cross into Mexico.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that there were “serious failures” at both the Justice Department and its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives going back more than six years, CBS Radio News reporter Stephanie Lambidakis reports.

Horowitz found that no one running the operations — not agents, nor prosecutors, nor managers — questioned the wisdom of letting guns vanish across the border with Mexico, where they ended up in the hands of drug traffickers. …

Holder, who the Republican-led House of Representatives cited for contempt in a dispute over Fast and Furious documents earlier this year, said that the report was “consistent” with what he’s said about the botched operation. …

The report found no evidence that Holder was informed about the Fast and Furious operation before Jan. 31, 2011, or that the attorney general was told about the much-disputed gun-walking tactic.

CBS News

 Posted by at 12:54 am

Republicans Screw Vets On Jobs Bill

 GOP Says NO, Jobs, Legislation, Military, Republicans  Comments Off
Sep 202012
 

WASHINGTON — The Senate blocked legislation Wednesday that would have established a $1 billion jobs program putting veterans back to work tending to the country’s federal lands and bolstering local police and fire departments.

Republicans said the spending authorized in the bill violated limits that Congress agreed to last year. Democrats fell two votes shy of the 60-vote majority needed to waive the objection, forcing the legislation back to committee.

Supporters loosely modeled their proposal after the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps used during the Great Depression to put people to work planting trees, building parks and constructing dams. They said the latest monthly jobs report, showing a nearly 11 percent unemployment rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, merited action from Congress. …

A handful of Republicans joined with Democrats in voting to waive the objection to the bill: Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Dean Heller of Nevada, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Maine’s Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Brown and Heller are also in tough re-election contests.

Associated Press

 Posted by at 12:49 am