AP – A federal judge has dismissed a firearms industry association’s lawsuit seeking to block the Obama administration from requiring gun store owners in Southwest border states to report when customers buy multiple high-powered rifles.
Continued here:
Judge upholds reporting by gun store owners
(AP)
In the wake of swelling outrage over the Obama administration’s fatally botched Fast and Furious straw gun purchase racket, the DOJ is punishing the very whistleblowers who protested the scheme in the first place. This is a head fake. Instead of exercising more control over lawless bureaucrats within its own agencies, the Obama administration is tightening its grip over law-abiding gun shops : As a backlash mounts over the government’s failed Fast and Furious gun-tracing operation, the Justice Department will begin requiring firearms dealers in California and other border states to alert officials anytime they sell more than two semiautomatic rifles to someone in a five-day period. The new reporting requirement will help the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “detect and disrupt” border gun-smuggling operations, Deputy Atty. Gen. James Cole said Monday. Once the ATF distributes its new reporting forms, about 7,000 dealers near the border must report multiple sales of semiautomatic weapons in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Such weapons “are highly sought after by dangerous drug-trafficking organizations and frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest border,” Cole said. Republican critics quickly denounced the measure, saying it was wrong for the Obama administration to let illegal guns get into the hands of Mexican cartels in Operation Fast and Furious, and then require more monitoring of legitimate gun owners in the U.S. Under the program, the ATF permitted illegal straw purchasers to obtain weapons as part of a plan to trace the guns as they flowed to Mexico. “It’s the height of hypocrisy,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who is leading the House investigation into Fast and Furious, called it a “political maneuver designed to protect the careers of political appointees at the Justice Department and not public safety.” NRA will sue over the new regs. Sipsey Street Irregulars sums it up best: Ironic, ain’t it? It is as if the ATF is admitting that it was incompetent (deliberately or otherwise) in the Gunwalker Scandal and was having trouble keeping track of their cartel straw buyers so now they insist that the FFLs [federal firearms licenesses] who previously tried voluntarily to help them, now must help them. Of course this is another ratchet on the attempt at back-door arms registration… Ignore the distraction . Keep your eye on the corruptocrats’ ball. The latest : Are high-profile suspects in Mexican drug cartels also paid informants for U.S. federal investigators? If so, could a brewing scandal in Washington implicate more U.S. agencies in the ongoing drug-related violence in Mexico? Kenneth Melson, the embattled chief of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), made the earth-shaking revelation in testimony early last week, The Times reports. Melson reportedly told congressional leaders that Mexican cartel suspects tracked by his agents in a controversial gun-tracing program were also operating as paid informants for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the FBI. *** More: Here’s the latest on the brewing Tampa gunwalking allegations . *** On a side note: While I was on vacay, old news about Fast and Furious’s parent program, the stimulus-funded Project Gunrunner, somehow got recycled as new news. But if you read my column and extensive post with links back in March , you already are in the know. David Codrea and Bob Owens try to clear up confusion sown by latecomers.
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DOJ’s Fast and Furious head fake
You get used to it. You’re a foreigner in your own country sometimes. You get the feeling in many parts of Southern California. And in some of the small agricultural towns in the Central Valley you might as well be in Mexico. Democrats and progressives don’t care, except to the extent that it keeps them in power, but we’ve long ago basically undergone a foreign invasion of people whose primary loyalty remains to the countries of their origin. The Los Angeles Times has the report, from Bill Plaschke, ” In Gold Cup final, it’s red, white and boo again .” The U.S team was booed. Here’s a quote from the piece (via Memeorandum ): Most of these hostile visitors didn’t live in another country. Most, in fact, were not visitors at all, many of them being U.S. residents whose lives are here but whose sporting souls remain elsewhere. Welcome to another unveiling of that social portrait known as a U.S.-Mexico soccer match, streaked as always in deep colors of red, white, blue, green … and gray. “I love this country, it has given me everything that I have, and I’m proud to be part of it,” said Victor Sanchez, a 37-year-old Monrovia resident wearing a Mexico jersey. “But yet, I didn’t have a choice to come here, I was born in Mexico, and that is where my heart will always be.” Right. This is an old debate, largely taboo for discussion in polite company, like academic departments. But it’s not a new thing, at all. Recall Samuel Huntington’s seminal essay in 2004, ” The Hispanic Challenge ” Massive Hispanic immigration affects the United States in two significant ways: Important portions of the country become predominantly Hispanic in language and culture, and the nation as a whole becomes bilingual and bicultural. The most important area where Hispanization is proceeding rapidly is, of course, the Southwest. As historian Kennedy argues, Mexican Americans in the Southwest will soon have “sufficient coherence and critical mass in a defined region so that, if they choose, they can preserve their distinctive culture indefinitely. They could also eventually undertake to do what no previous immigrant group could have dreamed of doing: challenge the existing cultural, political, legal, commercial, and educational systems to change fundamentally not only the language but also the very institutions in which they do business.” Anecdotal evidence of such challenges abounds. In 1994, Mexican Americans vigorously demonstrated against California’s Proposition 187—which limited welfare benefits to children of illegal immigrants—by marching through the streets of Los Angeles waving scores of Mexican flags and carrying U.S. flags upside down. In 1998, at a Mexico-United States soccer match in Los Angeles, Mexican Americans booed the U.S. national anthem and assaulted U.S. players . Such dramatic rejections of the United States and assertions of Mexican identity are not limited to an extremist minority in the Mexican-American community. Many Mexican immigrants and their offspring simply do not appear to identify primarily with the United States. Déjà vu . RELATED : At Pamela’s, ” US SOCCER TEAM VICIOUSLY BOOED IN L.A. — MEXICO WAS “HOME TEAM” – ENEMEDIA CALLS IT “UNIQUELY AMERICAN’ .”
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‘José, Can You See?’ U.S. Soccer Team Booed at Gold Cup Final, Rose Bowl, Pasadena
I’ve been red-flagging this most explosive homeland security scandal for you for more than a month. Independent citizen journalists, inside whistleblowers, and relentless GOP watchdogs on Capitol Hill led by GOP Rep. Darrell Issa and GOP Sen. Charles Grassley have kept up the pressure on the Obama administration to come clean on this deadly, stimulus-funded border nightmare. And now, the fit is really starting to hit the shan on the Project Gunrunner story. The latest? Top DOJ officials have been nabbed in the drive to find out who exactly knew what and when. Dutchman6 at Sipsey Street Irregulars called it early on. Matthew Boyle at The DC sums up: Three Project Gunrunner documents Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and House Oversight Committee chairman, released on Wednesday show high-ranking Justice Department officials were aware of Operation Fast and Furious and that there was a consistent administration policy that allowed American guns to be “walked” into Mexican drug cartels’ possession. One of the documents shows Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer approved a wiretap application for suspects Operation Fast and Furious targeted in March 2010. The wiretap application process is lengthy and cumbersome, and often requires those applying to make strong case as to why they need it. So, Breuer would have been briefed in detail on Operation Fast and Furious before authorizing the wiretap. Another document, a briefing paper from January 8, 2010, shows the administration’s step-by-step policy decisions and plans. The Phoenix Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), wrote that the “investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers,” or those who bought weapons, under ATF surveillance, with the intent to traffic them to Mexican drug cartels. The briefing paper shows that ATF’s policy was to allow this to happen. “Currently, our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place, albeit at a much slower pace, in order to further the investigation and allow for the identification of additional co-conspirators who would continue to operate and illegally traffic firearms to Mexican DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations] which are perpetrating armed violence along the Southwest Border.” “ Friction ” between watchdogs and Team Obama is growing, natch. And Holder is finally, finally squirming on the hotseat. As I’ve noted before, this goes far beyond the usual waste, fraud and abuse underwritten by progressive profligacy. It’s bloodstained government malfeasance overseen by anti-gun ideologues. Through continued, unified grilling and demands for disclosure, those security-undermining zealots are being smoked out. They can run away from Gunrunner, but they cannot hide.
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Project Gunrunner update: The fit hits the shan
YUMA, Ariz. (AP) — Three more Southwest Airlines jetliners have small, subsurface cracks that are similar to the cracks suspected of playing a role in the fuselage tear of a Boeing 737-300, causing the aircraft to lose pressure and forcing a frightening emergency landing, officials say. The 5-foot-long hole tore open in the passenger cabin roof area shortly after the plane left Phoenix for Sacramento, Calif., Friday afternoon. None of the 118 people aboard was seriously hurt as the plane descended from 34,400 feet to a military base in Yuma, 150 miles southwest of Phoenix. Since then Southwest grounded its 79 other Boeing 737-300s and began inspecting them. Sunday night, another Southwest Boeing jet was diverted, this time because of a burning electrical smell in the passenger cabin, Southwest and Los Angeles International Airport officials said. The plane carrying 142 people was en route from Oakland, Calif., to San Diego, when it made an unscheduled landing about 8 p.m. PDT in Los Angeles, where passengers changed planes and continued on their journey, Southwest spokeswoman Whitney Eichinger said. No one was hurt. She said the cause of electrical smell is being investigated, but it “was completely unrelated to the issue in Arizona.” She said Sunday’s aircraft was also a Boeing 737 but she didn’t know if it was the 737-300. In its statement on the inspections, Southwest said Sunday that two planes have been found to cracks similar to those in the stricken aircraft and will be evaluated and repaired before they are returned to service. A National Transportation Safety Board member told The Associated Press later that a third plane had been found with cracks developing. The other 19 aircraft inspected so far showed no problems and will be returned to service. Checks on the remaining jets are expected to be completed by late Tuesday, the airline said. That means flight cancelations will likely continue until the planes are back in the air. About 600 flights in all were canceled over the weekend after Southwest grounded 79 of its planes. The cracks found in the three planes developed in two lines of riveted joints that run the length of the aircraft. The agency is focusing its probe on the area of the cracks but has not determined that the cracks caused the rupture. NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said Boeing was developing a “service bulletin” for all 737-300 models with comparable flight cycle time as the Arizona jet, which was 15 years old and had about 39,000 takeoff and landing cycles. There are 931 such models in service worldwide, 288 of which in the U.S. fleet. Boeing’s bulletin would strongly suggest extensive checks of two lines of “lap joints” that run the length of the fuselage. The NTSB has not mandated the checks, but Sumwalt said the FAA is likely to make them mandatory. The tear along a riveted “lap joint” near the roof of the stricken plane above the midsection shows evidence of extensive cracking that hadn’t been discovered during routine maintenance before the flight – and probably wouldn’t have been unless mechanics specifically looked for it – officials said. “What we saw with Flight 812 was a new and unknown issue,” Mike Van de Ven, Southwest executive vice president and chief operating officer, said. “Prior to the event regarding Flight 812, we were in compliance with the FAA-mandated and Boeing-recommended structural inspection requirements for that aircraft.” Sumwalt said that the rip was a foot wide, and that it started along a joint where two sections of the plane’s skin are riveted together. An examination showed extensive pre-existing damage along the entire tear. Further inspection found more cracks in areas that had not torn open. The riveted joints that run the length of the plane were previously not believed to be a fatigue problem and not normally subjected to extensive checks, Sumwalt said. “Up to this point only visual inspections were required for 737s of this type because testing and analysis did not indicate that more extensive testing was necessary,” Sumwalt said. That will likely change after Friday’s incident, he said. The FAA declined to say if it was requiring other operators to check their aircraft for similar flaws. The NTSB also could issue urgent recommendations for inspections on other 737s if investigators decide a problem has been overlooked. Federal records show cracks were found and repaired a year ago in the frame of the same Southwest plane. A March 2010 inspection found 10 instances of cracking in the aircraft frame, which is part of the fuselage, and another 11 instances of cracked stringer clips, which help hold the plane’s skin on, according to an AP review of FAA records of maintenance problems for the Arizona plane. The records show the cracks were either repaired or the damaged parts replaced. Cracking accounted for a majority of the 28 problem reports filed as a result of that inspection. It’s common for fuselage cracks to be found during inspections of aging planes, especially during scheduled heavy-maintenance checks in which planes are taken apart so that inspectors can see into areas not normally visible. The Arizona jetliner had gone through about 39,000 cycles of pressurizing, generally a count of takeoffs and landings. Cracks can develop from the constant cycle of pressurizing for flight, then releasing the pressure. Southwest officials said it had undergone all inspections required by the FAA. They said the plane was given a routine inspection Tuesday and underwent its last so-called heavy check, a more costly and extensive overhaul, in March 2010. The decompression happened about 18 1/2 minutes after takeoff from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport after the pilots reached their cruising altitude. They immediately donned their oxygen masks, declared an emergency and briefly considered returning to Phoenix before the cabin crew told them of the extent of the damage, Sumwalt said. “They discussed landing in Phoenix, but quickly upon getting the assessment decided to divert to Yuma because it was the closest suitable airport,” he said. The plane’s voice and data recorders were being examined in Washington. Southwest operates about 170 of the 737-300s in its fleet of 548 planes, but it replaced the aluminum skin on many of the 300s in recent years, a spokeswoman said. The planes that were grounded over the weekend have not had their skin replaced. Southwest said “based on this incident and the additional findings, we expect further action from Boeing and the FAA for operators of the 737-300 fleet worldwide.” Boeing did not immediately return messages left Sunday. US Airways operates 19 of the older-model 737-300s. Airline spokeswoman Liz Landau said they have not been grounded and no additional inspections are being done. In July 2009, a football-sized hole opened up in-flight in the fuselage of another of Southwest’s Boeing 737s, depressurizing the cabin. Sumwalt said the two incidents appeared to be unrelated. A fuselage failure, although extremely rare, can have deadly consequences. In 1988, cracks caused part of the roof of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 to peel open while the jet flew from Hilo to Honolulu. A flight attendant was sucked out of the plane and plunged to her death, and dozens of passengers were injured. — Associated Press writers David Koenig contributed from Dallas; Joan Lowy from Washington, D.C.; and Terry Tang, Walter Berry and Mark Evans from Phoenix.
Originally posted here:
Inspectors Find 3 More Southwest Planes With ‘Subsurface’ Cracks
YUMA, Ariz. (AP) — A Southwest Airlines flight to Phoenix from California was diverted Friday to a military base in Yuma due to rapid decompression in the plane, federal officials said. Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman in Los Angeles, said the cause of the decompression wasn’t immediately known, but some passengers on Flight 812 said there was a hole in the cabin. “You can see daylight through it,” a passenger identified as Brenda Reese told Sacramento TV station KCRA by cellphone. Southwest officials said there were no injuries among the 118 people aboard. Gregor said the plane landed safely at Yuma Marine Corps Air Station/International Airport at 4:07 p.m., less than an hour after takeoff from Sacramento International Airport. It was due to arrive at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport at 5:30 p.m. Passengers became aware there was a problem when they heard a noise and felt the rush of wind and oxygen masks started dropping in the cabin, according to Reese. She said a few people passed out “because their oxygen wasn’t working. It was scary.” Reese said flight attendants went around the cabin aiding passengers. Emergency medical technicians were on board the plane treating passengers after it landed in Yuma. Gregor said an FAA inspector from Phoenix was en route to Yuma to investigate the incident. Gina Swankie, a spokeswoman for Sacramento International Airport, said Southwest was sending another plane to Yuma to take the passengers to Sacramento. They were expected to get to Sacramento around 8:30 p.m. Friday. “I want to get home and hold my three children,” Reese said.
Original post:
‘Hole in the Cabin’: Rapid Decompression Forces Emergency Landing of Southwest Jet
Reuters – Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told border mayors and business leaders on Thursday that the Obama administration is committed to ensuring the Southwest border region is open for business, despite raging cartel violence across the line in Mexico.
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Napolitano: Border region open for business
(Reuters)
Brutal crimes crossing over the U.S. southern border from Mexico is the latest dangerous import threatening America’s cities. Growing cases of human trafficking, drug smuggling and violent acts are overwhelming law enforcement officials from Texas to California in scenes reminiscent of the days of organized crime waves orchestrated by professional criminal syndicates. Is there a “new mafia” in America today? The Daily : A brutal new crime wave from Mexico is hitting America’s suburbs. Drug cartels and their heavily armed henchmen are moving into the house next door, torturing and imprisoning victims for profit in middle-class neighborhoods. Law enforcement agencies from Texas to Northern California report being overwhelmed by the surge of violence. “Mexican drug cartels are in well over 200 cities here in the United States,” Gil Kerlikowske, the White House drug czar, told The Daily. When his boss, President Obama, meets with President Felipe Calderón of Mexico today in Washington, violence from the drug war will be at the top of the agenda. One of the most disturbing and least discussed aspects of this new crime wave is the “drop houses” — rented homes that function as makeshift prisons where criminal gangs and human smugglers hold large numbers of victims for ransom. The phenomenon is centered in the Southwest, often in foreclosure-devastated suburbs, but is spreading across America. “What we’re talking about is nightmares, the stuff of nightmares,” said Los Angeles-based special agent Jorge Guzman of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ”[It’s] playing out in suburban America — playing out all over America.” Hundreds of police reports and thousands of crime scene photographs obtained by The Daily expose a startling pattern of torture, rape and murder. Read the rest of Part One here . The Daily : To judge by the tone of the White House news conference President Obama held with Mexico’s leader Felipe Calderon, better days are ahead in the war against cross-border violence. “We are very mindful that the battle President Calderon is fighting inside of Mexico is not just his battle, it’s also ours,” Obama said. “I have nothing but admiration for President Calderon in his willingness to take this on.” But missing from the discussion were many of the thorny new realities of the Mexican drug cartels’ expanding influence in the United States, including places like Vekol Valley. Law enforcement sources describe the nearly 1,000-square-mile swath of desert along Interstate 8 between Arizona and California as one of the most dangerous places in America. It has been effectively ceded to Mexican drug cartels and human smugglers, they say. Read the rest of Part Two here .
