So it turns out that the notorious (and recently captured) narco-terrorist ‘El Chapo’ was found in possession of a heavy (.50 caliber) rifle.  This is unsurprising, of course. What is unfortunately equally not surprising is that one of the guns was identified as one of the missing ones from former Attorney General Eric Holder’s infamous Fast & Furious program. Fortunately never fired, apparently, but that’s a rather small blessing.

‘Fast & Furious,’ for those who don’t remember, was a program where Eric Holder’s Justice Department set up a program that resulted primarily in ensuring that Mexican narco-terrorists were more effectively armed, allowing those groups to terrorize entire Mexican states; kill an alarming number of Mexican civilians, police, and government officials; and eventually get some American cops killed. The typical defense offered up by Obama administration apologists at this point is that Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not mean to do any of this: they just… lost track of all the guns that they were dumping into the situation.

Why this should make a lick’s worth of difference… well. People get desperate when they’re this deep in an ethical quagmire. Particularly since nobody on the other side really wants to admit that at best the thought of that they were running a risk of getting Mexican nationals killed never really occurred to the administration.  And that’s really and truly the most positive spin when it comes to this situation.

A distinctly worse possibility is that somebody in the Obama White House thought that usefully dead civilians might be handy for gun control advocates. Instapundit and Hot Air both note that this particular thought was going through what we’ll charitably call the ‘minds’ of mid-level officials in BATFE; whether or not you think there was an explicit directive or not depends on both your cynicism, and your belief on whether the government is capable of hiding something like that without a paper trail. I’m easily cynical enough to believe it, but I want to see what falls out of the shrubs now that a federal judge has decided that the administration does not have executive privilege when it comes to Fast & Furious.  Should be an interesting year.

Moe Lane

PS: Before you ask ‘What difference does it make?’… consider this. Under a Republican President a Republican House of Representatives could actually hope to find out what the heck went on between 2009 and 2016.  It won’t be an effortless process, of course.  The entrenched bureaucrats will still be fighting to save their jobs and pensions.  But they won’t have the Executive Branch playing interference on their behalf, and they certainly won’t have coverage from a President who can swoop in with a self-interested pardon if it’s absolutely, totally necessary. In fact: I expect a lot of people in government to be taking early retirement this December, honestly. Because a lot of stupid stuff was done by people who thought that eight years was an eternity, and that eternity is literally a year away from expiring.