Glen Beck Interview With Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich called into Glenn Beck's radio show this morning and the resulting interview merited a banner across the top of Drudge declaring 'GINGRICH HITS TURBULENCE DURING GLENN BECK RADIO INTERVIEW...'
The actual interview was less firework-y than Drudge's headline suggested -- even Beck concluded it had been blissfully gaffe-free -- which is not to say it wasn't tough.  It was impressively tough.
Beck, who's never exactly been keen on Gingrich, grilled him on some of his more 'progressive' stances (when Beck raises the specter of Theodore Roosevelt you know he's getting out the long knives).  But more importantly grilled him in a way conservative voters who are seriously considering voting for Newt should be eager to hear.
Unlike Mitt Romney, however, Gingrich appeared more than happy to answer for his history of seemingly less-than-conservative stances.

GLENN: Regulation and the government scares the crap out of me and I think most Tea Party kind of leaning conservatives, and Theodore Roosevelt was the guy who started the Progressive Party. How would you characterize your relationship with the progressive ideals of Theodore Roosevelt?

GINGRICH: Well, that depends on which phase of Roosevelt you’re talking about. The 1912, he’s become a big government, centralized power advocate running an a third party candidate which, for example, Roosevelt advocated the Food and Drug Act after he was eating ‑‑ and this supposedly the story, after he was eating sausage and eggs while reading up to Sinclair’s The Jungle, which has a scene in which a man falls into a vat at the sausage factory and becomes part of the sausage. And if you go back to that era where people had ‑‑ dealing with the Chinese where the people had doctored food, they had put all sorts of junk in food, they ‑‑ you know, I as a child who lived in Europe and I always marveled at the fact that American water is drinkable virtually anywhere.

So there are minimum regulatory standards of public health and safety that are I think really important.

Beck also grilled Gingrich on his support for his longterm support of an individual mandate, playing a number of older clips of Gingrich and then did the same on climate change.
And then here's how it concluded.  Which is to say, very nicely.

GLENN: Newt, I have to tell you, I ‑‑ you know, because, you know, it’s obvious it was very clear in advance and I hope my staff made this very clear that this isn’t going to be an easy interview but I think you’ve ‑‑ you know, there was no gaffes here by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t expect any. But I appreciate the willingness to come on and answer the tough questions, and I wish you the best.

GINGRICH: Well, sir, you and I have always had a great relationship and I admire your courage and I admire the way in which you’ve always stood up and told the truth and I think you’ve had a huge impact as I go around the country with Tea Party folks in maximizing interest in American history and interest in the Founding Fathers and I think much of what you’ve done, you know, you and I don’t have to agree on some things to have a great deal of mutual respect and I think you’ve been a very powerful force for good and I wish you well in your new ventures.

So once again Newt proves himself to be able to cope with Newt.  Unlike Romney who thus far appears mostly to be in a losing battle with himself.
But I think it's also one more example of the lesson certain politicians have an impossible time learning mostly to their detriment, which is the more you make yourself available to the press the more likely they are to accept you (and your baggage).  This was always part of the genius of Rudy Giuliani and arguably the fatal flaw of Sarah Palin and possibly Mitt Romney.

Pres.Clinton Collected $50,000 Per Month MF Global

A former MF Global employee accused former president William J. Clinton of collecting $50,000 per month through his Teneo advisory firm in the months before the brokerage careened towards its Halloween filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Teneo was hired by MF Global’s former CEO Jon S. Corzine to improve his image and to enhance his connections with Clinton’s political family, said the employee, who asked that his name be withheld because he feared retribution.
“They were supposed to be helping Corzine improve his image as a CEO—I guess you can tell how that went,” he said. Corzine resigned as CEO and chairman November 4.
Before Corzine joined MF Global in May 2010, the firm was a smart and well-run commodities broker, a culture that was turned upside-down by his leadership style, he said.
“The traders would be shaking their heads,” he said. “They would come back to their desk and say, ‘Well, I thought we were going to do this—but Corzine would come by and do something else all by himself,’” he said.
The Teneo contract with MF Global lasted at least five months, he said. “The board cancelled it after Corzine resigned.”
The source, who is no longer associated with MF Global, said Teneo is a dual-track company with one side devoted to merchant and investment banking and the other side set up to provide image and strategy consulting services.
Clinton is the chairman of the company’s advisory board. His duties and compensation have not been released. The other member of the board is former British prime minister Tony Blair.
Two of the three founding partners are very close to the former president and his wife, Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton. They are Douglas J. Band, who is the former president’s counselor and has served on his personal staff since 1995 and Declan Kelly, who earned the “Hillraiser” status in the secretary’s 2008 run for president for bundling more than $100,000 for the campaign.
Another prominent member of the Clinton political family is Tom Shea. Shea is a senior vice president for Teneo Strategy and served as Corzine’s chief of staff, when Corzine was the governor of New Jersey.
Kelly sold his public relations firm Financial Dynamics in 2006 to FTI for $340 million, and stayed with that company until July 2009, when he joined the State Department as the Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland.
The source said, “Kelly was given a job they created out our whole cloth.” The job did not exist previously.
“He basically got to ride around developing a book of business, while he waited for his non-compete clause to run out,” he said.
Kelley and the former president traveled together networking and making introductions at international conferences and events, he said.
The Secretary of State also traveled with Kelly, including the October 2010 U.S. – Northern Ireland Economics Conference, which Kelly organized and at which the secretary was the featured speaker.
The secretary announced that she accepted Kelly’s resignation May 11.
Teneo landed its first major client June 1, when the Rockefeller Foundation gave Teneo a $3,447,150, six-month contract to help plan the foundation’s 2013 centennial.
The foundation is another member of the Clinton’s extended family. It gave Clinton its Lifetime Innovation Achievement Award July 27 and the foundation is listed as a between $1 to $5 million contributor to the William J. Clinton Foundation, along with several members of the Rockefeller family who are listed as individual contributors.

Pelosi Plans To Reveal Dirt On Newt Gingrich "When The Time Is Right"

Alicia M. Cohn - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is holding back some information on Republican Newt Gingrich that could detract from his presidential campaign, according to a report published Monday.

“One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich,” Pelosi told Talking Points Memo. “When the time is right. … I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”

Gingrich, who served as Speaker of the House, worked with Pelosi in Congress from 1987 to 1999. Pelosi also served on the ethics committee that investigated Gingrich for tax cheating and campaign finance violations in the late ’90s.

Gingrich filmed an ad with then-House Speaker Pelosi in 2008 to urge action on climate change, which haunted him early in his presidential bid this year. Gingrich called the ad “probably the dumbest single thing I’ve done in recent years” last month.

Republicans in Congress have been slow to rally around Gingrich’s rise to front-runner status in the polls, with former GOP colleague Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) stating publicly over the weekend he is not “inclined to be a supporter” of Gingrich due to that past experience.

But Democrats such as the soon-to-retire Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) have suggested Gingrich as the GOP nominee would benefit the Democratic Party.

"He would be the best thing to happen to Democrats since Barry Goldwater," Frank said last week. Goldwater is credited with reviving Republican conservatism in the ’60s.

Pelosi told Talking Points Memo that Frank “spoke for a lot” of Democrats. “I like Barney Frank’s quote the best, where he said ‘I never thought I’d live such a good life that I would see Newt Gingrich be the nominee of the Republican party,’ ” she said.

And Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who also served in Congress with Gingrich and now holds a position of power as assistant minority leader in the House, charged Gingrich on Monday with lacking the temperament to be president.

“He tends to fly off the handle. He will say almost anything in order to get a charge. I’m sure that he’s not serious when he says a lot of these things,” Clyburn said on MSNBC.

Cain To Endorse Gingrich Today?

Ed Morrissey - Will he or won’t he?  After Herman Cain “suspended” his presidential campaign over the weekend, rumors that a quick endorsement would follow today got bolstered by the addition of a press conference to Newt Gingrich’s schedule today.  Given the friendly accord between the two Republican contenders, such a move might be seen as inevitable:

Fox-5 in Atlanta, the same station that broke the Ginger White allegations, is reporting that Herman Cain is going to endorse Newt Gingrich on Monday. Gingrich’s camp put a late add of a press conference at 1:45 p.m. on his schedule.

And Gingrich just added a media availability to his schedule in New York on Monday, suggesting the likelihood the endorsement will be held in Manhattan.

Fox’s Atlanta affiliate reports that the endorsement will come today:

Sources tell FOX 5 News that Herman Cain plans to endorse fellow Georgian Newt Gingrich on Monday. They say details of a formal announcement are still being worked out.
A spokesperson with the Gingrich campaign said there is a 2 p.m. press conference in New York, which would follow a meeting with Donald Trump.

On the other hand, Fox’s national desk reports that Cain’s team denies any such endorsement is in the works:

A spokesman for Herman Cain on Monday denied a report that an endorsement is imminent even as a source told MyFoxAtlanta that the former Republican presidential candidate will offer his backing to former House speaker and fellow Georgian Newt Gingrich.
The source told the news outlet that last week broke the story of a longtime mistress — effectively sinking Cain’s campaign — that Cain is preparing to make the announcement Monday, but the details of the formal announcement are still being worked out.
Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon knocked down that report in a statement to Fox News, saying Cain is actually keeping his original campaign schedule — attending an Oklahoma City fundraiser, and will shoot some videos to accompany an energy policy rollout that Gordon said Cain plans to unveil soon.
“I’d ask them where they are getting their information?” Gordon said of the report. “We’ll keep you posted. Nothing to announce at this point.”

The idea of a Cain endorsement so soon after his “suspension” sounds a little hard to believe.  First, Cain has not formally withdrawn from the race yet, although it’s difficult to see how he would restart his candidacy.  An endorsement might create some problems at the FEC that his “suspension” allows him to avoid.  It’s no secret that the two Georgia natives are on very friendly terms, but Cain might want to hold off on making an endorsement until all of the other candidates have an opportunity to vie for it.  Traditionally, this means helping out with campaign debt, too, and it’s far from clear that Gingrich would be in a position to help Cain in that regard.
If Cain did endorse Gingrich, that would have some impact on the primary contest, but probably not as much as one might believe.  Cain’s support has dwindled to a small percentage of voters even in Iowa, and Cain isn’t even in Iowa at the moment. (Why did they have an Oklahoma event on the schedule in December?)  As Chris Cillizza notices from the two most recent polls in Iowa, Gingrich may already have benefited from Cain’s decline anyway — and he might have a lot more potential than these polls show, too:

In the NBC/Marist poll, Gingrich’s leads Romney among self-dentified “conservative” caucus-goers by 14 points; among those who call themselves “very conservative,” Gingrich’s edge over Romney is three to one (29 percent to 10 percent).
Why is that significant? Because in presidential primaries and caucuses, “true believers” — the most ideologically driven voters in each party — are by far the most likely to turn out on what will almost certainly be a cold day in early January.
There are other internal numbers that bolster Gingrich.
In the Register poll, 43 percent of likely caucus-goers name the former House Speaker as either their first or second choice. And, Gingrich is the preferred alternative to businessmanHerman Cain, who suspended his campaign on Saturday.(The Register poll was in the field before Cain’s suspension announcement.)
And, 54 percent of respondents in the NBC/Marist survey said that Gingrich would be acceptable as the Republican nominee for president while another 27 percent said they would find him acceptable with some reservations. Those numbers compare favorably to both Romney (46 percent acceptable/28 percent some reservations) and Paul (38 percent acceptable/34 percent reservations).

We’ll see whether Cain decides to endorse and whether that actually moves the needle any further in Gingrich’s direction.  From this point forward, though, it seems more likely that Gingrich will rise or fall on his own accord, rather than through any consolidation or opposition from the field itself.

Tebowing A Attack On Christians?

Howard Portnoy - The question that forms the title of this post has been getting a good bit of play in conservative circles of late. It was hinted at in a segment of FOX and Friends on Friday that featured NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton. And it is the main focus of a column by National Review Online news editor Daniel Foster that appeared on Saturday.

“Tebowing,” should the term be unfamiliar, takes its name from another quarterback, current Denver Broncos play caller Tim Tebow. More specifically, the term designates the now-viral mockery of his habit of kneeling down and bowing his head after a touchdown to commune with his God.

As Foster writes with more than a hint of indignation, Tebowing his become an Internet phenomenon, with its own website, a Twitter account, and most recently a YouTube video titled “Tebowing for Dummies.” At such sites, Foster continues:

[Y]ou can see an act of communion with one’s creator rendered as a bit of pop-cultural ephemera, [complete with] pictures of folks striking the pose everywhere from Oxford to Istanbul, with that muddle of irony and enthusiasm that has become my generation’s trademark.

Foster’s obvious pique at these send-ups derives in part from the fact of Tebow’s wholesomeness (he is in Foster’s words “squeaky clean, in a sport that notoriously is not”). Wherein, Foster insists, lies the origins of Tebowing. It is, in short, “the power of Tebow’s evangelical-Christian faith, and the earnestness with which he professes it [that] seems to annoy so many people.”

I’m going to have toss out my red challenge flag here. Foster may be right that for some people, the problem isn’t Tebow’s religiosity but the fact that professional sports are “so filled with clichéd Jesus praise that” fans doubt his sincerity. But I submit that for many who prefer to spend their Sundays watching the exquisite choreography of a perfectly executed screen pass, the problem is Tebow’s self-absorption.

Tebow is free to give “mad respect” to his lord, but I’d rather he do it on his own time. A number of players cross themselves on every play, but they do it discreetly — and expeditiously. Tebow’s prayer timeouts, by contrast, are as gratuitously in-your-face as the most flagrant end zone dance. And they last as long. Yet, according to his supporters, all of footballdom is supposed to give him a pass because his purpose is holy. Isn’t that what churches are for?

Another, subtler, ingredient in the widespread antipathy toward Tebow is that he is an anomaly. His success as an NFL quarterback (he is 4 and 1 since replacing Kyle Orton at the helm of the Broncos offense) doesn’t make sense to diehard football fans. His passing numbers — he has a 45% completion rate — are awful. His team is winning through a combination of razzle-dazzle and offensive schemes that haven’t been used by college, let alone NFL, coaches in two decades.

I am predicting that “this too shall pass” (to cite a proverb that Tebow should appreciate because of its religious roots). Sooner or later all 31 remaining teams in the league will develop defensive strategies to counter Denver’s pre-Knute Rockne offense, and Tebow — and Tebowing — will be gone.

Fast And Furious Cover-Up Reaches A Boiling Point

Bob Beauprez - The Fast & Furious scandal pot may be reaching the boiling point.  Attorney General Eric Holder has maintained he knew nothing about the “gun walking” operation on the southern border that put thousands of high powered weapons into the hands of the Mexican gun cartel and led to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and increased the mayhem on both sides of the border. 
He would have us believe that the operation was simply a misguided adventure involving a couple of rouge officers behaving badly way out west.  Holder contends that even after Agent Terry’s murder in December, 2010, the subsequent extensive press coverage, and formal inquiries for information to DOJ by Members of Congress that Fast & Furious simply didn’t register high enough on priority meter to merit any attention from the Attorney General himself, and that F&F was a minor subplot at the Department of Justice.  (See previous articles here)
However, 1364 pages of documents just released to Congressional investigators tell a very different story.   It’s a story of “robust internal deliberations” at the highest levels of the Justice Department to craft denials and falsify the facts of the gun running operation leading up to a formal response sent to Senator Charles Grassley on February 4, 2011.  Based on the release of these new documents, the Justice Department has withdrawn the February 2011, and is now going through a tortured effort to cover their considerably messy tracks.
In a letter sent to Congress on Friday, December 2, 2012 Deputy Attorney General James Cole said, “Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the February 4 letter contains inaccuracies.” That would be DOJ-speak for “we lied.”
“Department personnel…relied on information provided by supervisors from the components in the best position to know the relevant facts: ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona…Information provided by those supervisors was inaccurate. We understand that, in transcribed interviews with congressional investigators, the supervisors have said that they did not know at the time the letter was drafted that information they provided was inaccurate.”

According to a lengthy expose in Politico.com, “A selection of documents the Justice Department released to reporters on Friday demonstrates that U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke, ATF Acting Director Ken Melson and ATF Deputy Director William Hoover vigorously urged the department to issue a forceful and broad denial of the allegations.” 

Burke, who was also a former chief-of-staff to Janet Napolitano, resigned in August.  Melson was “reassigned.” But, the head-rolling from this scandal is likely far from done.  Politico explains that the huge volume of newly released documents “shed little light on precisely where in the federal bureaucracy the erroneous denials originated and whether the misstatements were deliberate or the product of some confusion.”  Resolving those questions remains a major focus of the ongoing investigation. 
One of Holder’s key deputies, Lanny Breuer, must be particularly nervous over the newly released documents.  Breuer, who heads the Criminal Division at DOJ, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 1 that “I cannot say for sure whether I saw a draft of the letter that was sent to you.”  The “letter” referred to was the February 4, 2011 letter that DOJ now admits was “inaccurate.”  In written testimony sent to Senator Grassley, Breuer also said he had “no recollection” of seeing the letter before it was sent.
However, as the Friday dump of documents indicates, Breuer forwarded versions of the letter from his official email to his personal gmail account on three occasions: once before it was sent and twice after. 
Further, Breuer’s aid Jason Weinstein was deeply involved in the drafting and redrafting of the Feb. 4 letter.  On Feb. 2 expressing frustration and how difficult it was to satisfy all concerned, Weinstein sent an email to both Breuer and Burke, “The Magna Carta was easier to get done than this was.” In another email addressed to both Breuer and Weinstein as the final draft was near completion Burke wrote, “Great job by you.”  Breuer replied, “Thanks, Jason, as usual great work.” 
James Cole, the Deputy AG who drew the short straw and sent the letter to Congress Friday retracting the Feb. 4, 2011 Letter-of-Lies is going to have some explaining to do, as well.  The documents show that his chief deputy, Lisa Monaco, expressed serious reservations about the “categorically false” claims in the Feb. 4 letter that F&F guns were used to kill Agent Terry. 
“Obviously we want to be 300% sure we can make such ‘categorical’ statement” she warned, but apparently to no avail. 
To some degree, these new documents are just further confirmation of what was already known.  That the Fast and Furious operation, and most particularly the cover-up following Agent Terry’s assassination, involved some of the most highly placed officials at the Department of Justice.  While there has been no disclosure as of yet that the new 1364 pages implicate Eric Holder himself, we reaffirm our earlier conclusion that on May 3, 2011 the Attorney General perjured himself when he testified to Congress that he had only just learned of F&F “over the last few weeks.” 
Briefing memos from Holder’s closest aides including Lanny Breuer indicate Holder knew – or had an obligation to have known - of F&F as early as July, 2010, five months before Brian Terry was gunned down.   Holder’s top aides have now been implicated in a cover-up plot to deny Congress, the American people, and Agent Terry’s family from knowing the truth of an ill-conceived, shameful operation that extended to the highest levels of government.  And, yet, to date all Barack Obama has said of the scandal is, “I have complete confidence in Attorney General Holder.”  And, for the record, the “I was not aware” defense invoked by Holder and Breuer is also the defense of choice by the President, too.  Time will tell. 

Prison For Corzine, Soros, Waters, Paulson, Frank, Pelosi

John Ramson - Newt Gingrich made headlines in October because he suggested that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should go to jail for authoring the so-called Dodd-Frank banking reforms. Taken together the “landmark” reforms look a lot like an Obama speech: very wordy, very partisan, but full of inaction, cross-purposes and the typical liberal confusion about economics, society and man.
The legislation crafted by Dodd and Frank has reformed none of the systemic failures in our banking system, but it sure has made it harder for banks to loan money, or for you and me to buy a house.
Much of the failure of the housing sector to recover since 2008 can be laid at the feet of the misshapen and misanthropic Dodd-Frank reforms. And much of the failure of the economy in general to recover since 2008 can be laid at the feet of the failure of the housing sector to recover.  
Loaning money was not a problem when Dodd and Frank both were getting favors from the industries they regulate. Dodd got a VIP loan from one of the most reckless sub-prime lenders, Countrywide; and Frank got his live-in lover- boyfriend, husband, wife, whatever- a job at Fannie Mae, the largest of the government mortgage mills- and Frank went on to staunchly defend Fannie as safe and sound in the run-up to the mortgage meltdown.
So naturally when Congress was looking for a pair of geniuses to fix the banking sector, Dodd and Frank had comedic resumes that stood out. It’s the way Congress has always done business.
"All being corrupt together," wrote E.L. Godkin, of Congress in 1873, "what is the use of investigating each other?" Godkin made a name as a muckraker and a reforming journalist who helped found the periodic magazine The Nation. Note that Godkin was a fierce critic of socialism.        
But of course Frank and Dodd’s chances of seeing a jail cell are not just remote; the chances are nonexistent mostly because they would be judged by others who share the same ethical lapses that Dodd and Frank do.
You are either part of the club or not.
And it’s gotten to the point that we are just not even surprised anymore at the depth of depravity of our political class.
The TV news magazine 60 Minutes recently did an expose of how members of Congress, most notably our former Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi and our current Madam Speaker John Boehner, have possibly traded stocks on non-public information for their own benefit. And the reaction from Congress has been a tepid attempt to make Congress follow the same insider trading laws that the rest of us have had to follow for decades.
Despite some strong indications of ethical lapses not just jail, but even strongly-worded censure is out of the question.     
This week it was revealed that at the height of the financial crisis at Fannie Mae, secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, stopped by some Wall Street offices and shared with traders his plan to have the government seize the assets of Fannie Mae, while he was publicly telling investors and the press the opposite.
Congress won’t investigate, and it practically won’t comment on the matter either.
Former US Senator, New Jersey Governor and Obama pal, Jon Corzine- according to vice president Joe Biden, Corzine was the first person Obama called for economic advice after the election and a key architect of the stimulus law passed by Obama- ran futures firm MF Global so solidly into the ground in a little over a year after being bounced from office that the firm dipped into customer accounts to pay their bills. Not only is that an ethical problem, it’s also illegal. No arrests have yet been made as of December 1st. Charlie Gasparino at Fox News says that as much as $1.2 billion dollars in customer money may be missing.
Oops.  
And that’s how Congress will treat it.
Sure it issued a subpoena to Corzine.
But don’t expect the man to ever face jail time.
Now that the government is firmly in the business of business, expect the graft to multiply. 
Our government subsidizes not just government guaranteed loans, as seen in the green graft Solyndra scheme, but government guaranteed profits to prominent campaign contributors.
As our featured writer Mike Shedlock observed on Monday, in 2009 the FDIC turned over a bank to an investment group led by George Soros that in one year made more than a billion dollars in profit- more than the group invested to buy the bank- despite the federal government still being on the hook for $11 billion in potential bad loan losses.
From the LA Times:
The billionaires' club of private financiers who took over the remains of IndyMac Bank from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. turned a profit of $1.57 billion last year on the failed mortgage lender -- more than they invested less than a year ago.
Yet under the sale agreement, the federal deposit insurance fund still could lose nearly $11 billion on bad loans that the Pasadena institution made before it was sold last March and renamed OneWest Bank.
And soon, thanks to Barney Frank’s retirement, we could be looking at Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-God Help Us) in charge of tweaking the Dodd-Frank reforms as the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee. Waters, named by Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington as one of the most corrupt politicians in DC, is under an ethics investigation for trying to secure a federal bailout for a bank she is personally, financially involved with.
Jail time? Ha!
Look for the House to tell Waters how very disappointed they are with her as she ascends to the number one post on the Financial Services Committee, while the US continues its descent into hell. 

Justice Dept: Details Fast And Furious Lies And Deception

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Friday provided Congress with documents detailing how department officials gave inaccurate information to a U.S. senator in the controversy surrounding Operation Fast and Furious, the flawed law enforcement initiative aimed at dismantling major arms trafficking networks on the Southwest border.

In a letter last February to Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had not sanctioned the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser and that the agency makes every effort to intercept weapons that have been purchased illegally. In Operation Fast and Furious, both statements turned out to be incorrect.

The Justice Department letter was responding to Grassley's statements that the Senate Judiciary Committee had received allegations the ATF had sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers. Grassley also said there were allegations that two of the assault weapons had been used in a shootout that killed customs agent Brian Terry.

In an email four days later to Justice Department colleagues, then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Phoenix said that "Grassley's assertions regarding the Arizona investigation and the weapons recovered" at the "murder scene are based on categorical falsehoods. I worry that ATF will take 8 months to answer this when they should be refuting its underlying accusations right now." That email marked the start of an internal debate in the Justice Department over what and how much to say in response to Grassley's allegations. The fact that there was an ongoing criminal investigation into Terry's murder prompted some at the Justice Department to argue for less disclosure.

Some of what turned out to be incorrect information was emailed to Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division. Breuer sent an email saying "let's help as much as we can" in responding to Grassley.

The emails sent to Capitol Hill on Friday showed that Burke supplied additional incorrect information to the Justice Department's criminal division that ended up being forwarded to Breuer. For example, Burke said that the guns found at the Terry murder scene were purchased at a Phoenix gun shop before Operation Fast and Furious began. In fact, the operation was under way at the time and the guns found at the Terry murder scene were part of the probe. Breuer was one of the recipients of that information. In written comments this week to Grassley, Breuer said that he was on a three-day official trip to Mexico at the time of the Justice Department response and that he was aware of, but not involved in, drafting the Justice Department statements to Grassley. Breuer says he cannot say for sure whether he saw a draft of the letter before it was sent to Grassley.
Where Burke got the inaccurate information is now part of an inquiry conducted by the inspector general's office at the Justice Department.
Burke's information was followed by a three-day struggle in which officials in the office of the deputy attorney general, the criminal division and the ATF came up with what turned out to be an inaccurate response to Grassley's assertions.
The process became so intensive that Breuer aide Jason Weinstein emailed his boss, "The Magna Carta was easier to get done than this was." A copy of the latest draft was attached to the emails.
Initial drafts of the letter reflected the hard tone of Burke's unequivocal assertions that the allegations Grassley was hearing from ATF agents were wrong. Later drafts were more measured, prompting Burke to complain in one email: "Every version gets weaker. We will be apologizing" to Grassley "by tomorrow afternoon." Regarding the allegation that ATF sanctioned the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser, the Justice Department denial was scaled back slightly from "categorically false" to "false." ''Why poke the tiger," Lisa Monaco, the top aide to the deputy attorney general, explained in an email to Ron Weich, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs whose signature was on the letter.
In another email, Burke wrote, "By the way, what is so offensive about this whole project" of response "is that Grassley's staff, acting as willing stooges for the Gun Lobby, have attempted to distract from the incredible success in dismantling" Southwest Border "gun trafficking operations" and "not uttering one word of rightful praise and thanks to ATF — but, instead, lobbing this reckless despicable accusation that ATF is complicit in the murder of a fellow federal law enforcement officer."

On Friday night, Grassley spokeswoman Beth Levine said that "Burke personally apologized to Sen. Grassley's staff for the tone and the content of the emails" after learning from the Justice Department that the emails would be released.

It is unusual for the Justice Department to provide such detail of its internal deliberations as it did on Friday with Congress.

The department turned over 1,364 pages of material after concluding "that we will make a rare exception to the department's recognized protocols and provide you with information related to how the inaccurate information came to be included in the letter," Deputy Attorney General James Cole wrote Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is looking into the Obama administration's handling of Operation Fast and Furious.

Operation Fast and Furious involved more than 2,000 weapons that were purchased by straw buyers at Phoenix-area gun stores. Nearly 700 of the Fast and Furious guns have been recovered — 276 in Mexico and 389 in the United States, according to ATF data as of Oct. 20.

Amid probes by Republicans in Congress and the IG, the Justice Department in August replaced Burke, acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson and the lead prosecutor in Operation Fast and Furious.

Misleading Drop In Unemployment Rate To 8.6% From 9%

Anthony Mirhaydari - The market has been on crazy pills lately. Massive, bear market type volatility has even the most steel hearted market veterans feeling seasick from the undulations. Adding to the confusion has been some political and economic developments that -- while they make for nice headlines -- mask some serious underlying problems.

Take Friday's big drop in the unemployment rate to 8.6% from 9%, the lowest level since March 2009. The problem is, the number of actual new jobs added in November (120,000) came in under expectations. So the real reason for the drop was that a huge number of people (316,000 to be exact) left the workforce out of frustration and lack of opportunity. rNot exactly good news. It was the same story with Wednesday's European "bailout" by the Federal Reserve -- which I discussed in my last post.

All of this distracts from an emerging truth: The global economy is rapidly falling into a new recession. And the U.S. stock market, despite this week's gains, is showing signs of tipping into a new long-term downtrend. Here's why.



I think the most notable development this week was Thursday's big release of global factory activity surveys. It wasn't pretty. Overall, the JP Morgan Global Manufacturing PMI dropped for the third straight month and fell below the 50 level -- the line of demarcation between growth or contraction in monthly factory activity -- for the first time since recession was descending upon us back in early 2008. Scary stuff.

Although U.S. activity was buoyant (no doubt a remnant of the sentiment tailwinds enjoyed from the market rally in October), we cannot remain an island of tranquility as Asia and Europe fall into the abyss.

Here are the highlights (any reading under 50 indicates a drop in activity):

*Brazil PMI: 48.7 vs. 46.5 prior
*Ireland PMI: 48.5 vs. 50.1 prior
*Sweden PMI: 47.6 v. 49 estimated
*Norway PMI: 48.6 vs. 50.2 estimated
*Denmark PMI: 47.7 vs. 43.6 prior
*Poland PMI: 49.5 vs. 51.7 prior
*Spain PMI:  42.8 vs. 43.9 prior
*Swiss PMI: 44.8 vs. 46.6 estimated
*Czech PMI: 48.6 vs. 51.7 prior
*Italy PMI: 44 vs. 42.8 estimated
*France PMI: 47.3 vs. 47.6 estimated
*Germany PMI: 47.9
*Greece PMI: 40.9 vs. 40.5 prior
*South Korea PMI: 47.1 vs. 48 prior
*Taiwan PMI: 43.9 vs. 43.7 prior

And, now for the big boys:

*Eurozone PMI: 46.4 -- lowest reading since recession ended in July 2009
*U.K. PMI: 47.6 vs. 47 estimated -- lowest since June 2009
*China PMI: 49 vs. 49.8 estimated -- lowest reading since February 2009
*China HSBC PMI: 47.7 vs. 51 prior -- 32-month low

In addition to signs of economic weakness -- which was enough for a Chinese vice finance minster to say the global economy faces a "worse situation" than in 2008 -- there was evidence that the financial system remains under severe stress despite the freak out over Wednesday's move by the Federal Reserve to lower dollar funding costs for foreign banks (which, as I discussed at the time, wasn't really a game changer). The European Central Bank reported that eurozone banks borrowed nearly €9 billion in overnight emergency cash -- up from €2.7 billion earlier this week. Not good.

Other signs of strain could be seen in the way German 12-month bill yields dropped below zero on Wednesday as European investors were willing to pay Berlin for the luxury of lending it money. The motivation is that, if you're holding a big wad of euros, German short-term debt is one of the few "sure bets" left out there. It's a sign of extreme risk aversion and fear.

Of course, the epicenter for all this is Europe.

Adding to concerns were comments this week from new ECB chief Mario Draghi that while downside risks to the economic outlook have increased, he cannot ride to Europe's rescue by engaging in unmitigated money printing and bond buying; instead, it must adhere to its founding principles, including an inability to engage in monetary financing of government debts (exactly what the likes of Italy would love right now).

Draghi's comments were akin to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater before announcing all the fire extinguishers are empty. Whoops.

According to the team at Capital Economics, based in London, the eurozone economy is on track to contract by 1% next year and by 2.5% in 2013, with risks to the downside for both forecasts. Recession will only deepen the budget deficits at the center of the eurozone debt crisis. The only way out is growth. And the only way the likes of Greece, Portugal, and Italy can restore growth is via massive currency depreciation and domestic inflation -- something that's not going to happen as long as they're in the eurozone.

Sure, there will be distractions like Wednesday's move by the Fed or additional stimulus measures out of places like China and Brazil. That's just how the market gods like it. All the better to keep the masses confused and complacent as the fundamentals just get worse and worse.

To put it differently: When you look around the theater, everyone's still focused on center stage blissfully unaware what's happening around them. Turn around. The balcony level is in flames.



I know patience is hard to muster in times of epic volatility, like now. Yet trying to catch the short-term oscillations of a new bear market is a futile effort. Better to lock in defensive positions like cash or Treasury bonds via funds like the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT) before buckling up and grabbing the Dramamine.

For short-term traders and my newsletter subscribers, I continue to recommend a net short positioning. Maybe I'm digging my own grave here, but the clouds on the horizon are too dark to justify anything else. 

OWS Protest Obama NYC Fundraiser

Matt Flegenheimer - More than 100 Occupy Wall Street protesters marched to a Midtown hotel on Wednesday night to protest a fund-raising event for President Obama.
Escorted by police vehicles as they helped snarl traffic across the Times Square area, beginning at Bryant Park, the group settled in front of barricades on the southwest corner of 53rd Street and Seventh Avenue, in view of the Sheraton hotel at which Mr. Obama was expected to appear by 9 p.m.
Demonstrators held signs that leveled some of the Occupy protest’s most pointed criticism to date of the president. “Obama is a corporate puppet,” one said. “War crimes must be stopped, no matter who does them,” read another, beside head shots of President George W. Bush and President Obama.
One man, wearing a mask of the president’s face and holding a cigar, carried a sign that read, “I sold out!”
Ben Campbell, 28, one of the march’s organizers, said he hoped to prove to skeptics of the protests that the demonstrators were political critics of equal opportunity.
“President Obama is coming to town solely to raise money from the richest of the rich,” Mr. Campbell said.
The 45-minute march from Bryant Park forced shoppers and theatergoers into retreat on what most likely would have been a difficult night to find sidewalk space anyway. At one point, two pedestrians tried to move through the crowd head-on but quickly reconsidered, breaking into a jog in the other direction. “You better not go that way,” one protester told them moments earlier. “You’re going to hit democracy.”
Officers, on foot and on motorcycles, followed the protesters with each step, trying — with occasional success — to keep marchers off the road. Many protesters chafed at the sight of barricaded pens near the hotel, but a majority decided to stay, given how close they were to their destination. Shortly before 9 p.m., as the police cut off traffic and began making final preparations for the president’s arrival, officers informed demonstrators that the area had been designated a “frozen zone” until the president’s departure: They were not allowed to leave their enclosure, bound by three lines of barricades and a Chase bank. Some protesters tried to break through, but were swiftly rebuffed by officers, who shoved them back to their initial perches.
Before the trek began around 6:45 p.m., one officer appeared to foretell a difficult evening. “This is going to be fun,” he said to a colleague, dropping his head. “I already tore my A.C.L. on this job.”