Former prosecutor decries Gunwalker, Obamacare

“Fast and Furious” a ruse to "take our guns”

Austin – Michael Williams is no stranger to guns and all the things that can go wrong when they fall into the wrong hands.

He survived death threats from the KKK when he prosecuted thieves who stole military weapons and faced the charges in federal court.

Before that, he was an Assistant DA in his hometown of Midland, the el rancho deluxe oil town of them all in the boom town wildcat atmosphere of Texas, both east and west.

That's not the only mark of distinction he claims as a former chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission who resigned to run for Congress – first as a U.S. Senator, then as a representative from the newly-created District 25.

“I'm the only public official in this race who has ever cut a budget, and I did it without taking any of the pay raises,” he told a cheering crowd at the candidate's forum hosted by the Travis County Republican Party and the North Shore Republicans last Sunday.

The newly redrawn district will include the massive new gas play of Johnson County, something that he considers ultra important when it comes to America's need for energy independence. It's here, as the wildcatters always said. And that's the good news.

The bad news? It's nothing we can't fix, according to Mr. Williams.

Operation Fast and Furious is high on his list of complaints against a federal government he thinks is plotting to take away Americans' ability to protect and defend that all-important U.S. Constitution. He calls it without any double talk. The operation involves the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives encouraging gun sales to individuals who then smuggled them into Mexico.

When two of the weapons showed up at a crime scene where a Border Patrol Agent was shot down in cold blood by smugglers last December, Michael Williams recognized it as a threat to American citizens' basic civil rights – especially the right to keep and bear arms. So did other prominent Republicans, including Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who made the snafu an object of investigation in the all-important Senate Judiciary Committee. Following the hearings and extensive national publicity, the acting director of the BATFE was replaced and the Obama Administration's first choice to take on the job as the permanent director was passed over.

He also decries the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010, something he says is a total abrogation of the enumerated powers of Congress outlined in Article One, Section 8 of that hallowed document.

They are trying to take the decision-making power as to how a man and woman will care for their families out of the family circle and put it in the hands of federal bureaucrats, according to Mike Williams, a constitutional scholar who has taught law at Texas Wesleyan School of Law and served as an adjunct professor at Texas Southern University's School of Public Affairs.

He holds those opinions about Constitutional law by virtue of his extensive experience using his law degree earned at the University of Southern California to serve as General Counsel to the Republican Party of Texas, his church, Most Blessed Sacrament Catholic in Arlington, where he makes his home, and his stint as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Law Enforcement at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

There, as an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, he had oversight responsibility for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Customs Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

As an appointee as the Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, he followed in the footsteps of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

He won Sunday's straw poll of about 500 voters with 27.2% of the ballots cast, edging USAA executive Dave Garrison's 26.8% showing.