I know that’s hard to digest in a society where pregnancies and marriages of D-list celebrities make the cover of People magazine, but there comes a point where the public’s right to know needs to take a back seat to matters like national security and diplomacy.
Heads should roll because of the Fast and Furious debacle. We don’t need every detail of that operation to be made public in order for that to happen.
If it were an isolated sting, maybe. But it is at least the third incarnation of a gun-running scheme stretching across two administrations, which means we could be pressing to open Pandora’s Box. We do not want to open Pandora’s Box, not about this and certainly not about a bunch of other potentially scandalous things the federal government has been involved with.
Fast and Furious? Please.
Being told that something’s “none of your business” is slowly being characterized as rude, and if such a statement is coming from the government, it seems incriminating.
Times have changed. Yet, not everything is our business. And in the political arena, there are things that should be and need to be kept quiet. . . .
You see, freedom isn’t entirely free.
It also isn’t squeaky clean.
And sometimes the federal government deems it necessary to get its hands a little dirty in the hopes of achieving something we generally accept as good for the country.
And maybe it’s better for us not to be so nosy, not to know everything because, to paraphrase the famous line from the movie “A Few Good Men,” many of us won’t be able to handle the truth.
LZ Granderson, CNN Columnist
This is the kind of sophomoric anti-liberty trash that passes for journalism today? Shut your mouth, mind your own business, don’t ask questions of your loving government?
Granderson may be a rabid Obama apologist who would reflexively defend anything Obama says or does, and there’s no law against that. But this man is trying to pass himself off as a journalist!
Journalism is about asking questions that corporations, governments and establishments don’t want to answer. It’s about reporting the full-story, no matter how many toes you step on. It’s about opening up power to real scrutiny. And that is something that the propagandists in big media are often incapable of — which of course is why big media is slowly dying.
I get apoplectic whenever some hawkish deficit-happy foreign policy schmuck advocates American intervention in Syria (no matter how many archaic Turkish planes are shot out of the sky) even more than I did before America struck Iraq.
The utterly bizarre imperative of American intervention in the middle east is thrown into stunning contrast against the background of utter lawlessness and destruction on America’s own border with Mexico as a direct result of the failed drug war. The clowns in successive administrations have spent so much time, effort and energy on policing the borders of Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia, yet they have failed to check the growth of the drug cartels into massive, well-armed organisations.
By trying to obstruct the congressional investigation into the botched gun-running operation Fast and Furious, and instead hiding behind the phoney front of executive privilege Obama and Holder have shown that they have something to hide.
Whatever they are trying to hide should be brought to light. You can’t have an accountable government without checks and balances, and the greatest check to tyranny is transparency.
We need to know the depth and width of Fast and Furious and the programs which preceded it: how was it authorised, how was it designed, how did it go wrong, who was to blame for it going wrong.
We need to know whether or not the widely-spread allegation that the Obama administration has sold guns directly to Los Zetas is true. We need to know whether or not El Chapo and the Sinaloa Cartel are working with the DEA and the Mexican government. (Both of these allegations are widely accepted as fact in Mexico).
We need to know why Obama has chosen to continue the failed drug war, even in spite of overwhelming evidence that the illegality of drugs is the very thing that empowers the criminal cartels, and in spite of the fact that Obama is a former drug user.
We probably won’t get our answers directly from politicians; while it is the responsibility of journalists to ask these kinds of tough questions, politicians will almost always deflect. But I am sure there are some conscientious people inside the DEA, inside the Mexican government, and inside the Justice Department or FBI, or inside the drug cartels who will blow the whistle sooner or later. Anyone who can answer these questions is serving the public good. We can handle the truth, no matter what LZ Granderson or Eric Holder think. We need to hold government to account for its actions.
azizonomics 
The guy didn’t think that “maybe it’s better for us not to be so nosy” in 2009.
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-07-16/politics/granderson.obama.gays_1_gay-community-human-rights-campaign-largest-gay-advocacy-group?_s=PM:POLITICS
PARRY: Katrina.
Disaster responsibility has two dimensions: jurisdiction and time.
Both by law and by capability, the preparation and response “chain of command” is individual-family, neighborhood, city-county, state, federal government. [Note the bottom-up vs. top-down parallel with parenting, education, health, crime, etc.]. In spite of below-sea-level vulnerability, the corrupt (Democratic) governments of New Orleans and LA had woefully inadequate plans and got caught delaying for two days the legally-REQUIRED Governor’s request for federal help while plotting how to blame the Bush administration.
Catastrophic flooding requires PROMPT (1) warning and (2) assistance with block-by-block evacuation. Next, short-term food, clothing, shelter and medical care are crucial, followed by resupply. Financial assistance is needed and possible only much later. BUT, without PRE-disaster planning, education and training of the populace, local government personnel (including municipal and school bus drivers), medical personnel, food and drug businesses, etc., nothing works in time to prevent human misery.
Prompt anecdote — planning. A locally retired nationally prominent civil defense/emergency planning expert was asked if the mayor had contacted him when Katrina struck. He answered, “No, but if he had, I would have responded ‘Thanks for asking, but it is two years too late.’ ”
Historic anecdote — LA voters wake up. In his first race for governor LA Governor Bobby Jindal was defeated by the next-in-line-since-Huey Long Democratic candidate. After Katrina, that governor didn’t run, and the Democrat who ran was beaten by Jindal’s reputation as a problem-solver. ONE YEAR later, two hurricanes hit LA. Guess what? The Jindal-led public and local-state government preparations (featuring neighborhood groups) reduced suffering to the absolute minimum possible. Since then? Jindal was overwhelmingly reelected, and both LA legislative houses have switched to Republican majorities. The state is booming with optimism, new industry, and better government (especially education).
RIPOSTE: Reagan’s “handling” of AIDS. TRUE — The REAL AIDS scandal was that the (still-) powerful gay lobby led the usual suspects (Democratic politicians, media, academia, etc.) in a public brainwash that AIDS was spread by heterosexual activity. FALSE — It was always known to be blood-exchange, i.e., anal (as well as punctured-glove, tainted transfusions, etc.). The purpose, of course, was congressional funding for research; while I’m not personally well-informed on this history, there was a lot of ink contending that NON-government (gasp! mostly profit-motivated) research was at full capacity of personel and facilities.
Re Katrina, you make some excellent observations about bureaucrats feathering and protecting their nest. Instead of acting on impulse they have to consult the “Party”.
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Granderson’s attempt to steer the conversation from the “left” is mirrored by Jack Hunter’s recent “right” flank declaration: “Bilderberg conspiracies have become a handicap for the Liberty Movement”
They’re opportunists looking to get ahead in the Beltway or some similar paragon of Most Excellent Social Situation.
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“We can handle the truth, no matter what LZ Granderson or Eric Holder think.”
That would be grand day, wouldn’t it? “My fellow Americans, we invaded Iraq for its oil so that we can keep you driving gas guzzling cars. We play both sides of the drug war to fund our secret projects. We install dictators to exploit natural resources worldwide. We outsource torture to maintain appearances. We steal from the middle class to pay the rich and blame it on the poor. Oh and we’ve been broke since 1980”.
I’m not so sure we can handle the truth.
laboccetta, despite the double-speak and outright lying, people understand what’s going on.
Remember, the double-speak is not for the benefit of the government/corporations, but instead, it allows the people to live somewhat comfortably within the fabrications.
If the American people were really against all this non-sense, it would end quickly.
Very confusing, labo. A couple of your rants (oil, broke) actually have merit, and you left out some favorites lies of the “political class”: opposition to the policies and crimes of neo-coMs (neo-Communists) Obama, Ayers, Holder, et al are only because of skin color; we must make war on fossil fuels (man-caused CO2 is dooming the planet); more public funding for renewables will soon obsolete fossil fuels; fracking causes earthquakes; etc.. etc.
By the way — who are the dictators we’ve installed?
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Yes close your eyes, do not think, close your ears and do not ask awkward questions of power, ignorance is bliss. I am told this day in day out by ordinary people around me…yet they are all afraid of losing their jobs, homes, pensions, government services…and not one of them has the capacity to think or work out a way of fighting power.
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Currently, there are no known remedy for HIV. The bad news is that the cases of HIV/AIDS is raising and there is not much we can do about it. We can mainly hope that in the future there will be a cure for this ailment. Right now, HIV/AIDS sufferers can only have some health supplements to increase their lives and to prevent other health problems.
Scientists on Monday reported failure in a large African trial of three different ways to protect women against H.I.V.The failure was due not to the methods — two different pills and a vaginal gel — but to the fact that the women did not use them consistently.Adherence among the women in the study was “very low,” a researcher from the University of Washington said at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta, where the results were presented. ^
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