Senate Judiciary Member calls for Investigation Of ATF

Iowa Republican wants to examine ATF rifle "sting" purchases

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, R-IA, told newsmen that he has received documents that trace two of the rifles used in an attack on U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry back to an ATF sting operation.

According to a Fox-TV Phoenix report, the Senator said the rifles were purchased in Glendale, Arizona, by ATF agents, then turned up in the attack on Agent Terry in which he lost his life. He and other agents had set up an ambush for bandits who prey on illegal immigrants as they make their way across the Sonoran Desert near Nogales.

Original reports of the Project Gunrunner “Whistleblower Case” first surfaced in columns by David Codrea, a former Guns & Ammo columnist who now writes for the National Examiner.com, and on the Sipsey Street Irreegulars blog maintained and authored by Mike Vanderboegh, the “Dutchman.”

Additional reports have been published on a blog named CleanUpATF.com

They allege that ATF field agents are fed up with their executive leadership at Washington, D.C., and wish to have the Senate investigate the top command structure of the agency before confirming any appointment of a new director. The agency has been rudderless for nearly two years.

Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin told a Houston Fox News outlet recently that his client Bill Carter, proprietor of the 4-store chain of sporting goods stores, Carter Country, is innocent of selling firrearms to straw purchasers because the ATF and FBI condoned the sales, granting permission to sell the firearms to young Hispanic men who paid cash, even though the stores' clerks tipped off ATF agents that the suspects fit the description profiled by federal agencies.

Iowa Republican wants to examine ATF sting purchases of rifles in AZ

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, R-IA, told newsmen that he has received documents that trace two of the rifles used in an attack on U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry back to an ATF sting operation.

According to a Fox-TV Phoenix report, the Senator said the rifles were purchased in Glendale, Arizona, by ATF agents, then turned up in the attack on Agent Terry in which he lost his life. He and other agents had set up an ambush for bandits who prey on illegal immigrants as they make their way across the Sonoran Desert near Nogales.

Original reports of the Project Gunrunner “Whistleblower Case” first surfaced in columns by David Codrea, a former Guns & Ammo columnist who now writes for the National Examiner.com, and on the Sipsey Street Irreegulars blog maintained and authored by Mike Vanderboegh, the “Dutchman.”

Additional reports have been published on a blog named CleanUpATF.com

They allege that ATF field agents are fed up with their executive leadership at Washington, D.C., and wish to have the Senate investigate the top command structure of the agency before confirming any appointment of a new director. The agency has been rudderless for nearly two years.

Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin told a Houston Fox News outlet recently that his client Bill Carter, proprietor of the 4-store chain of sporting goods stores, Carter Country, is innocent of selling firrearms to straw purchasers because the ATF and FBI condoned the sales, granting permission to sell the firearms to young Hispanic men who paid cash, even though the stores' clerks tipped off ATF agents that the suspects fit the description profiled by federal agencies.

On Bayou Bleu

A Big Chief Tablet Tale
By The Legendary Jim Parks

We had just then finished shoveling out the last boat and loading the last trailer with ice and shrimp and ice and shrimp and ice and shrimp and ice and shrimp and cracked open the first brew from the tub of suds on the dock under the shed when Mr. Blanchard said, "Oh, lord, y'all, look'a yonder."


He pointed across the bay where seven water spouts melded into the deep delft of the blue blackened sky over the swamps and the cold breeze wafted toward us leaving white caps on the surface.

You could see LaFitte's dirty red brick fort standing out across the harbor like some kind of afterthought in a watery impressionist painting from another century.

Across the oyster shell lot at the beer joint they call The Hideaway you could hear the juke box swing into Fats hammering the piano and crooning about the shame - bomp, bomp - of the way - bomp, bomp - he cried - bomp, bomp - when she said - bomp, bomp - goodbye - bomp, bomp.

And, then, he hammer hammer hammer some more with that left hand. And the the horns say, again, "Bomp - Bomp" in that yellow sky where you just heard the last bird tweet and twitter and caw caw caw.

Pierre Broussard crossed his chest and said something in Cajun dialect about all the bateau on the Gulf and a merciful God and the souls of all those who are in peril when the patter of rain gave way to sheets of the mercurial stuff raking everything in sight and bolts of lightning forked down all across the world while the Gods thundered their angry approval and the electric lights came on and flickered and went off and came back on again.

We all stared and tried to keep from looking at each other and tipped back our brew and pulled our slicker suits close around us and prayed silently because the island there is only a yard, maybe less, above sea level and we were all miles from our homes.

Many, many miles from our homes.

- Jim Parks

Beau Biden Blocking Information On Wheeler Murder

Delaware Attorney General will not inform former Pentagon official's family just how and where he was murdered and police are struggling to construct a timeline of his last hours

Wilmington, Del. - No one knows precisely what happened during the last few moments of the life of John Wheeler, III, but it's for sure it was extremely violent.

A former U.S. Attorney who is representing Mr. Wheeler's family said they only learned last week that the former Pentagon official and West Point graduate died of blunt force trauma and not a heart attack, as previously reported, according to a medical examiner's report.

Other than that information, said Colm Connolly, state officials are working hard to suppress all other revelations through the office of Beau Biden, Delaware attorney general.

Mr. Biden has made a motion for a judge to seal a search warrant for Mr. Wheeler's home, and three search warrants for Mr. Wheeler's cell phone and his 1993 Oldsmobile were sealed at the request of Newark police.

The Wheeler family announced an offer of a $25,000 reward for information regarding his demise.

Mr. Wheeler, who was 66, left New York City on Dec. 28 after spending Christmas with his family there and reported to work at a consulting firm that serves the Pentagon and CIA.

After work, he took an Amtrak train bound from Washington to his home near Wilmington.

He was last seen alive on video surveillance cameras, wandering disoriented, his clothing iu disarray and wearing only one shoe, muttering that he had been robbed and beaten. People who approached him to try to help said he rebuffed their offers and wandered away.

Sanitation workers saw his corpse tumble from the cargo compartment of a garbage truck delivering at a Newark, Delaware, landfill on Dec. 31. The truck had emptied dumpsters on a commercial route in downtown Wilmington.

Mr. Connolly has asked for forensic reports, search warrants and a copy of the video surveillance tape that depicts Mr. Wheeler in downtown Wilmington the night before they found his body in the Newark landfill.

Family members last heard from Mr. Wheeler on Dec. 29 in an e-mail. Mr. Connolly refused to release the contents of the e-mail to the media.

Mr. Wheeler was instrumental in raising funds to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall on the National Mall near the Lincoln Monument reflecting pool and Washington Momument across the ellipse from the White House.

He served three Presidential administrations in various roles as a civilian employee of the Department of Defense at the Pentagon after a tour of duty in Vietnam.

Egyptian Looters Carried Security Force Identification

Former Reuters correspondent called on journalists to use term of “uprising” instead of "unrest," "revolution" instead of "insurrection"

New York – Appearing on “Democracy Now,” Mona Eltahawy, a former Reuters correspondent from Egypt, said neighborhood patrols of young citizens have been catching looters and vandals who have security force identification on them.

They promptly turn them over to the armed forces for apprehension.

Ms. Eltahawy told hostess Amy Goodman that President Hosni Mubarak turned out the jails and penitentiaries and the freed convicts promptly began to loot and vandalize residential neighborhoods.

Citizens who have joined the uprising, or revolution, as she termed it, have formed citizen patrols and when they searched them, they learned the story is nothing but a cover for agents provacateur turned loose on the public.

She urged journalists and commentators to stop using the words “crisis” or “unrest” and begin to refer to the current phenomenon that has seen more than a million people in the streets of Cairo and in Takrir Square calling for Mubarak's ouster as an “uprising” or a “revolution.”

Well, here t'is - that famous document de l'Cote d'Ivoire

In the District of Mombasa, this document heralds the nativity of Barack Hussein Obama, II...Some say t'is, others say t'isn't. Well, well, well...Yeah. Right.

click-ola to enlarge the image, y'all...

Buy Yourself A Piece Of The Rock - The Jailhouse Rock, That Is

For-Profit Jail Bond Financing Shows Hurry-Up Decisions

Of Revenue Bonds issued in the state at the time, those for the CEC Jail were of the highest yield – nearly 2 points higher than the rest

By The Legendary Jim Parks
Reporting by R.S. Gates

Waco – A runaway board, a sweetheart contract with a single bidder, and a hurry-up decision on revenue bond financing mar the record of the supposedly for-profit Jack Harwell Detention Center built for CEC (Civigenics), Inc., in 2009 and not opened until last summer – way behind schedule.

Hurry up and sign up turned into hurry up and wait with a jail only half full of prisoners gleaned from the County's downtown lockup, also maintained and operated by CEC.

As it turns out, they were in a big hurry to rob Peter to pay Paul – at 6.625%.

Now they are having trouble meeting their interest payments. The job sends them scrambling for cash all over the lot and making budget amendments to the annual budget County Judge Jim Lewis calls a “living document.”

Even the most cursory examination of the financial records of the Public Finance Corporation, the entity formed to handle the nuts and bolts operations guiding the financial transactions for the public project of the McLennan County Commissioners' Court, shows a stacked deal in which but one contractor, Hale-Mills Construction, Houston, was given a fair chance to make an intelligent bid.

Commissioner Joe Mashek leveled allegations of poor ethics against County Judge Joe Lewis at the time. He said he would be seeking the advice of a lawyer on his own initiative to see if the way the bidding was handled was legal and above board.

Mr. Mashek alleged that County Judge Jim Lewis hand fed Hale-Mills the floor plans and design specifications that would be on the request for proposal a year in advance. Other contractors were given but one month to prepare their bids for the 816-bed facility after submitting their response to a request for qualifications.

Our readers might like to review news video made at the time of the County Commissioners' Court meeting in which they dealt with finalizing the deal with the construction company. Mr. Mashek went on record with his complaints while Judge Jim Lewis said he would “help him sign the letter.”

He said the allegations are substantially true – on camera.

Interviewed by a newsman after the meeting in a courthouse corridor about the possibility that there may have been an ethics violation, he said, “That's the most ignorant statement I've ever heard in my life.”

Mr. Mashek is not the only public figure with whom Judge Lewis has clashed over his methods of building for-profit jail facilities and financing their construction. His opponent in the November general election, local attorney Ralph Cooper, called him a liar in print and on a talk radio show when the Judge had told voters that CEC would pay off the revenue bond issue.

The bond financing agreement shows that McLennan County is the ultimate underwriter of record – meaning taxpayers are obligated for the debt and its debt service, which is many millions of dollars above the nearly $50 million cost of construction.

If the county should default on the bond issue, it would ruin its credit rating with bond underwriters such as U.S. Bank, which is the entity that loaned the money and pays the investors their tax free interest on coupons clipped periodically.

What's more, reading the minutes of the Bond Pricing Committee appointed to set the interest rate of the bond issue shows a rush to accept a coupon rate of 6.625% on the $49,015,000 project - just under the ceiling of 6.98% adopted when the committee was formed.

This compares with a bond coupon rate of 2.389% set in Hidalgo County on a similar bond issue; 2.816% set in a Hewitt bond issue; 3.207% on a Brenham issue; 3.273% on a Huntsville issue; 4.249% in New Braunfels; 4.441% in Lufkin, and two issues in Pflugerville of 5.101% and 5.252%.

Only two members of the committee, Commissioner Ray Meadows and County Treasurer Bill Helton, raised question about the cost of doing business.

You might call it buyer's remorse, though only one of them voted against it. That was the Democratic Treasurer, Bill Helton. He was defeated by a Repubican, retired State Trooper Danny Volcik, on the 60/40% bias most other Democratic office holders experience last November 2.

They both expressed concern with costs. Mr. Meadows made an issue of the costs of construction, holding an official of the construction company to a closer examination of costs; Mr. Helton asked to hold off on setting the rate for 60 days to see if a more favorable interest rate could be obtained.

It was one of his principal duties, seeking out the most favorable interest rates the County can get for its investment capital on a day to day basis.

“Mr. Mike Harling of Municipal Capital Markets stated that they have been monitoring the markets,” the minutes say. “He explained that there have been a lot of redemptions in the nutual funds, so the area tha they and most issuers are relying on now, is the retail investor market as opposed to the institutional investor market. Mr. Harling stated that upon approval of the Committee they have the Bonds sold at a coupon rate of 6.625%...with a closing date of January 29, 2009.”

Treasurer Helton wasn't having it. He hung tough, according to the minutes.

(Mr.) “Helton stated he would like to give it another sixty (60) days.”

Earlier, the record shows, “Mr. Herb Bristow with Haley & Olson P.C. (the law firm handling the bond issue) explained that we are here as a sub-committee of the Board of Directors of the Public Facility Corporation for the purpose of establishing the proposed rate on bond issuance.”

Looks they got 'er done, y'all.

“After further discussion, President Lewis made a motion that since we are at 6.625% and our ceiling was 6.98%, we accept the recommendation of ht eFinancial Advias and Legal Advisor, and it was seconded by Vice President Meadows. Treasurer Bill Helton questioned if this is a majority vote or one hundred percent (100%) vote. President Lewis replied majority. After further discussion, a vote being called for, voting in favor of said motion was President Lewis and Vice President Meadows with Treasurer Bill Helton opposing.”

The meeting took place on January 12, so they were just under the wire to keep their appointment to hit the law office conference room and sign the paperwork.

Our readers may be interested in the spread sheet prepared by the Texas Bond Review Board at Austin that compares the rates set by similar committees of Public Finance Corporations that issued revenue bonds for public projects during the same period of time.

Click the image to enlarge it for easy reading.