Fast and Furious – The Eric Holder Contempt Citation

How ironic it is that the House of Representatives is so upset about the government’s Fast and Furious campaign in Mexico, when nothing fast and furious ever happens in the House of Representatives? Correction, nothing happens particularly fast, but there certainly is a lot of fury – mostly signifying nothing – which of course is the entire purpose surrounding Attorney General Eric Holder’s contempt citation for refusal to cooperate with Congress. How anyone can be cited for refusing to cooperate with Congress when Congress clearly does not cooperate with itself is beyond rational comprehension. Does anyone believe a Republican controlled Congress would have voted for a contempt citation against a Republican attorney general? Would such a citation have been issued if this were not a presidential election year?

The whole sordid episode confuses the real issue – supplying guns to the Mexican drug cartel against whom the guns were intended to be discharged. But then, who really cares about the guns or the people those guns kill? This is an election year, so all that’s important is today’s newspaper headlines. Whatever one has to do to lure the media into printing or broadcasting some story that will hurt his opponent is really all that counts. What other reason is there for holding these hearings?

Actually the real issue has nothing to do with guns at all; it has to do with separation of powers. The United States is one of few democratic institutions with three branches of government – executive, legislative, and judicial. Most democratic governments have only two because the executive leader is the prime minister, a member of Parliament and not part of an independent executive branch of government. Each branch has its own powers, mostly independent of the other branch’s powers, so when one branch – Congress – orders another branch – here personified by Eric Holder, attorney general and a part of President Obama’s executive branch – to do anything, fireworks generally fly. This is politics as usual, nothing to get too concerned about in an election year.

It might be a bit more productive for Congress to spend its time discussing our economic woes rather than fighting with the attorney general. But then, in an election year it’s far too risky to actually deal with an issue that is important to the American public. There are no quick headlines in doing that.