Case Filed Against Holder

It's official. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has filed suit against Attorney General Eric Holder. The committee is seeking a declaratory judgment to force him to turn over the documents that they are seeking in connection with their investigation into Operation Fast and Furious.

The full title of the case is Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, United States House of Representatives v. Holder. The case is filled in US District Court for the District of Columbia and the assigned case number is 1:12-cv-01332.

The Federal Court's database Pacer shows the case but not the associated documents for the case as of this morning. I assume we will be seeing that later.

The committee's website does not have any further information on the suit.

Issa Confirms Civil Lawsuit To Be Filed Against Eric Holder

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) confirmed last night by Twitter that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will be filing their civil lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder in US District Court today. The suit is being brought to force Holder to turn over the subpoenaed documents that he and the Justice Department have been withholding.

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News first reported that the lawsuit was to be filed yesterday afternoon.

The contempt vote had two possible tracks for enforcement: criminal and civil. But shortly after the House vote, the Department of Justice announced it would not pursue a criminal case against its own Attorney General and did not believe any crime had been committed. The civil lawsuit expected to be filed Monday would ask a federal judge to order the Justice Department to turn over the documents.

Matt Boyle of The Daily Caller has more here.

Ryan On Guns

With Mitt Romney's pick of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to be his running mate, I wanted to know where Ryan stood on guns and gun control. I know where Ryan stands on economic issues but what about guns.

It's a good record. He has been both rated A and endorsed by the NRA-PVF going back to at least 2002. The archives don't go back any further than that.

Gun Owners of America rates him an A. They define this as "A & A- Pro-Gun Voter: philosophically sound."

On The Issues has this on his record on gun rights:

• Voted YES on prohibiting product misuse lawsuits on gun manufacturers. (Oct 2005)
• Voted YES on prohibiting suing gunmakers & sellers for gun misuse. (Apr 2003)
• Voted YES on decreasing gun waiting period from 3 days to 1. (Jun 1999)
• Rated A by the NRA, indicating a pro-gun rights voting record. (Dec 2003)
• National cross-state standard for concealed carry. (Jan 2009)
• Ban gun registration & trigger lock law in Washington DC. (Mar 2007)
• Allow reloading spent military small arms ammunition. (Apr 2009)

More recently, he was a co-sponsor of HR 822, the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act, and HR 615, the Collectible Firearms Protection Act, which allows M-1 Garands and M-1 Carbines to be repatriated without State Department approval.

Ryan is also an outdoorsman. He reportedly proposed to his wife Janna at his favorite fishing lake in Wisconsin. Moreover, in what will drive the PETAfiles nuts, he includes pictures of deer and turkey that he shot on his Congressional campaign website. Here is Ryan with a nice 8-pointer.

With regard to the contempt vote for Attorney General Eric Holder, Ryan said Holder brought it upon himself for stonewalling the Oversight Committee in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious. The video of this interview can be seen here.

On the Department of Justice’s handling of the “Fast and Furious” operation:

Paul Ryan: Attorney General Eric Holder brought this upon himself. He has been stonewalling Congress for 16 months and, yes, he can avoid this if he brings the documents that have been requested for months.

NeilCavuto: Do you think a lot of cynics will say quickly that this is along party lines and this is sort of like a Republican cabal to embarrass the Attorney General and embarrass the White House. What are you saying?

Paul Ryan: I think what’s embarrassing is "Fast and Furious." It is something that should never happen ever again and we need to get to the bottom of it. All Congress is doing is its job, detailed in the Constitution, to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. We have separation of powers for a very important reason, to preserve liberty and limits to government, and this is being infringed upon by this stonewalling so we are just doing our jobs here in the Legislative Branch.

 Finally, here is what a much younger Paul Ryan had to say to C-Span about gun control laws back in 1998 when he was a Congressman-elect. (Thanks to TTAG for the pointer on this.)

 

As a gun owner, I think Mitt Romney made a good choice with the pick of Paul Ryan as his running mate. As an American, I think he made an even better choice because of Ryan's determination to not pass the buck on fiscal issues to another generation.  

UPDATE: More on Ryan and the Second Amendment from HotAir.com. Also has another picture to drive PETA nuts not that they aren't already.

Don't Bring A Van To A Gun Fight

Three men in a van rammed the front wall of Guns & Ammo Gunsmith in North Augusta, SC in an attempted burglary. What they didn't count on was that the owner lived right behind the store and, as befits the owner of a gun store, that he was armed.

When owner Stephen Bayazes came into the store, he found the three men loading guns from his store into their van.

Bayazes grabbed an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and found three men loading guns into a van that had crashed through the side wall of the store.

After hearing the men yell to kill him, Bayazes shot one 30-round magazine of .223-caliber bullets before retreating to his bedroom to reload, he later told officers.

As he left the room, Bayazes saw two men drive away in the van.

Imagine that - the owner defended his life and his business with an AR-15. Moreover, one of the burglars is dead and the other two are in the hospital. Mr. Bayazes fortunately was unharmed. The only mistake that I can see that Mr. Bayazes is that he didn't bring extra ammo.

The moral of the story is you don't bring a van to a gun fight.

They Should Have Left Well Enough Alone

The remake of Red Dawn is scheduled to be released around Thanksgiving. The bad guys this time are the North Koreans instead of the Russians and Cubans. It seems that the producers originally were going to make the Chinese the bad guys but were pressured to make a switch to the North Koreans.

I'm sure it will do decently at the box office. However, as with many things, the original is usually better and Hollywood should have left well enough alone.

54% Of People Surveyed Don't Have A Clue

Gallup recently polled 1,014 Americans over age 18 living in the United States on their view of how good a job TSA is doing. Unbelievably, 54% of those polled think TSA is doing either an excellent or good job.

I knew there were a lot of stupid people but I never realized the numbers were that high.

It gets worse. Of those who have flown at least once in the last 12 months, 57% think they are doing a good or excellent job.

If there is anything encouraging about this poll is that less than half of all those surveyed - 41% -  believe that the screening procedures are either extremely or very effective. That said, only 13% of those surveyed don't think the TSA is "not too effective" or "not effective at all". I guess I should be happy that at least 13% of those surveyed have a grasp on reality.

MAIG Doesn't Like The Light Shone On Their Activities

It looks like blogger Sean Caranna of All Nine Yards and Florida Carry has struck a nerve with Mayor Bloomberg's Illegal Mayors. They seem to be scurrying around like cockroaches when the light is turned on.

The Daily Caller has the details.

Two days before Media Trackers Ohio requested an interview with Coleman, Bloomberg staffer Christopher Kocher emailed a story by a Florida blogger to Glaze, Roberts and several other MAIG regional coordinators. Kocher warned MAIG leaders that Sean Caranna, the president of Florida Carry Inc. — a pro-Second Amendment organization — had published a story criticizing Orlando MAIG coordinator Linda Vaughn.

Caranna found that a grant from the left-wing Joyce Foundation — which is managed by Bloomberg’s office — was insufficient to cover Vaughn’s salary. He reported that MAIG was leveraging taxpayer funds to reduce its overhead costs, by installing MAIG lobbyists in mayors’ offices nationwide — effectively using public dollars to lobby for gun control.

Kocher preceded Caranna’s story with a note instructing MAIG coordinators: “if anyone contacts you about the article or if anything like this has come up previously for you, please let us know.”

What I find most interesting about this story is the interconnections between MAIG, Bloomberg's office, MAIG Executive Director Mark Glaze, and Media Matters for America. When you add in the known connections between the White House and Media Matters, these linkages between the so-called progressive groups gets very interesting. If one was an expert in social network analysis, I'm sure he or she would have a heyday mapping all these linkages.

Monthly Gun Giveaways!

Aaron at the Weapon-Blog has posted his monthly list of gun contests. It can be found here.

I count at least 7 AR-15s or AR uppers, a 1911 in .22LR with a suppressor, the new Springfield XD-S, a couple of Glocks, and the Colt Mustang Pocketlite. And that's just a start.

If you take advantage of this, I'd suggest thanking Aaron for providing this excellent service.