► Show Top 10 Hot Links

Posts Tagged ‘Darrell Issa’

Ed Morrissey still the master of the insanely stupid question.

by Guest Post ( 75 Comments › )
Filed under Blogmocracy, Guest Post, Republican Party at July 18th, 2013 - 6:35 pm

Guest Blogger: Doriangrey


Ed Morrissey today went out of his way to prove that he is still the absolute master of the sublimely stupid question. Opening up a “Open Thread” over at HotAir today with the following title.

Open thread, live video: Can Issa connect the dots in IRS hearing today?

posted at 10:41 am on July 18, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

According to Carl Cameron’s report of a conversation he had with Darrell Issa yesterday, today’s hearing in the House Oversight Committee will connect the dots in the IRS scandal all the way to the White House. That’s hardly a great strategy in setting expectations — unless Issa really knows he can deliver on that promise. Starting at 11 am, we’ll soon find out (via Common Cents and Gateway Pundit):

The star of today’s show will almost certainly be Carter Hull. When his name first popped up, it seemed that Hull might have been at the BOLO nexus, and possibly the key to the scandal. His testimony in depositions didn’t disappoint, either. Instead of being a driver of the effort, Hull told investigators that he had been placed in the “demeaning” position of having his approval authority stripped on Tea Party cases, which went to Washington and the IRS chief counsel’s office rather than concluded positively for the applicants, as he would have determined.

Expect Issa and Republicans to spend a lot of time with Hull, drawing him out on those points, and with Elizabeth Hofacre as well. She has been a gold mine of information on the lower-level operations, and will likely serve to rebut Democrats’ attempts to show equivalence between treatment of conservatives and progressives in the tax-exempt unit. That will balance out the efforts of Democrats on Oversight to pillory J. Russell George for not providing them that equivalence in the first place.

The fireworks should be spectacular today, with the hearing shifting from a veneer of bipartisanship earlier this summer to a full-fledged partisan battle to control the IRS scandal narrative now.

Darrell Issa is the consummate master of advancing the financial and political future of Darrell Issa and only Darrell Issa. If Darrell Issa isn’t personally profiting then nobody will profit, his words and actions become to quote William Shakespeare, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Anyone foolish enough to expect anything else from Darrell Issa deserves the disappointment that they will certainly receive at the end of today’s hearing. Just as they deserved that disappointment for expecting Issa to deliver on the “Fast and Furious” hearings, and the “Benghazi” hearing or any other damned hears that Issa has held.

In the end, the conclusion of today’s hearings is about Darrell Issa selling the American people out for whatever he can, just as he always has.

(Cross Posted@The Wilderness of Mirrors)

Palooka Of The Month: May’s Winner – Darrell Issa

by Flyovercountry ( 134 Comments › )
Filed under Democratic Party, Republican Party at May 16th, 2013 - 2:00 pm

What angers me most about our canvas kissing champion this month is what he didn’t say. He didn’t say, “we’re going to follow the evidence where ever it leads, and take the appropriate action, according to the laws of our land.” What he chose to do instead, was to send the signal that with his position as the chief investigator of the Republican controlled House, he would make certain that Hillary Clinton would be protected against the harshest of forthcoming political consequences for what at the very least, was a level of incompetence rarely exhibited by members of our species.

Not everything in life has to be politically motivated. Certainly the tragedy that befell the four American citizens in Benghazi should escape that realm. However, it is impossible to separate politics from the task of figuring out which politician or bureaucrat fomented that disaster. It is most especially impossible to separate politics from the process when political considerations being given a higher priority than national security was itself the root cause of the tragedy.

Hillary Clinton’s hands may very well have been tied by the man child President, and his foreign policy agenda which centers on projecting American weakness, but she at the same time did keep mum on things afterward and subsequently campaigned hard to help secure his reelection. Looking back at that time period, I seem to remember suggestions being made to place Hillary’s picture on milk cartons in order to locate here. Rush Limbaugh issued an Amber Alert for Secretary Clinton. At no point did Hillary step forward and decide that telling the truth was the way to go. As a matter of fact, she did come forward after a month to accept blame, and promptly spent the next six months attempting to deflect said blame.

When the whistle blowers came forward last week and confirmed for many of us what we already knew, our side had securely placed victory well within our grasp, if not already achieved it outright. Which is why it hurts to watch Palooka Issa take the dive and allow a woman to escape that quite possibly may one day win the Presidency. If the investigation into this event accomplishes nothing else for the American people, it should highlight at the very least why Hillary Clinton is woefully short of the makings of a good President. Her behavior throughout all of this should preclude that from ever being even the remotest of possibilities. Yet here we have Darrell Issa, who in one minute and nineteen seconds, let Hillary off of the hook, that goddamned palooka!

I can only guess as to the motivations of Congress Critter Issa, and why he chose to publicly let Hillary off of the hook. Not a single one of those guesses is at all flattering for Representative Issa. They range from bizarre to perverse, and in this case, the perverse would be the best case scenario for Darrell. I will add this however, should our nation one day be saddled with the prospect of addressing Hillary as Madam President, we, and I mean every one who considers him or herself a conservative, should surround Darrell Issa with lit torches and pitch forks and run his ass out of town.

Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.

The Fast and Furious Scandal

by Phantom Ace ( 133 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Republican Party at June 20th, 2011 - 2:30 pm

The last thing the Mexican Drug war needed was the ATF getting involved. In operation fast and furious, the US Justice Department sold weapons to he Mexican drug cartels. There have been many excuses made by the Obama regime but none made sense. The logical explaining was they wanted to fuel the Mexican drug war and use the pretense of US arms as a pretext for gun control.

Rep. Darrell Isaa (R-CA) is investigating this scandal. So far, ATF head Kenneth Melson has being thrown under the bus by the Obama regime. This is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s a war along the Mexican border all right, but it’s not necessarily the one you’re thinking of. In fact, this one has spread all the way to the halls of Congress.

This week, the Obama administration is expected to fire Kenneth Melson, the acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — tossing him under the bus as a symbolic gesture to a congressional committee headed by Rep. Daryl Issa (R-Calif.).

Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating an insane ATF operation — a supposed sting that involved the deliberate funneling of thousands of weapons to ultra-violent Mexican drug cartels in 2009-10.

The op’s name, “Fast and Furious,” came from the series of movies about an undercover drag racer working for the FBI — which gives you some idea of the lack of seriousness behind this cockamamie scam.

The Justice Department, which oversees the ATF, says the idea was to allow the sale of handguns, AK-47s and .50 caliber rifles to so-called “straw purchasers,” who’d then pass them along to the cartels. In theory, ATF agents would then trace the extent of the smuggling networks in an effort to stop the illegal cross-border gun trade.

Instead of working to stabilize Mexico, the Obama regime puts fuel on the fire to make a political point. Something stinks and it needs to be investigated as detailed as possible.

Rep. Darrell Issa and Rep. Howard Berman introduce bill to cut off aid to Lebanon

by Phantom Ace ( 6 Comments › )
Filed under Democratic Party, Headlines, Hezballah, Israel, Lebanon, Republican Party at June 19th, 2011 - 2:42 pm

Rep. Darrell Issa was smeared as a supporter of Hizballah by Debbie Schlussel, well low and behold, she lied. Issa along with 2 other Lebanese-American Republicans are joined by Rep. Howard Berman,  a Jewish Democrat, to submit a bill cutting off funding for Lebanon. The current government is controlled by Hizballah, an Islamist organization.

LOS ANGELES – A Jewish congressman has joined with three Lebanese-American colleagues to sponsor a bill to cut off American aid to Lebanon, as long as Hezbollah remains part of the ruling coalition government.

The unusual alliance, cutting across ethnic and political lines, was initiated by Democratic Rep. Howard Berman of Los Angeles and includes Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Charles Boustany (R-La.) and Nick Rahall (D-W. Va.).

Designated as the Hezbollah Anti-Terrorism Act, or HATA, the bill seeks legislation “to make certain that no US taxpayer funds benefit the terrorist organization Hezbollah or any party that allies itself with Hezbollah,” Berman said in a phone interview Friday from his Washington office.

[….]
Issa commented that “Hezbollah is a terrorist group and a cancer on Lebanon. This bill surgically targets this cancer.”

It’s good to see Lebanese Maronites and Jews working together. Hizballah is an Arabic threat to Lebanon’s Phoenician heritage and to the state of Israel. Just as Phoenicians and Israelites were friends in ancient times, so should their descendants today Maronites and Jews. Both are indigenous to that area, not the Arabs. I hope this resolution passes.