The 2013 budget for the Department of Justice is up for review. During deliberations, Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz attached House Amendment 1068. The text of the amendment sounds like CSPAN on Valium:

An amendment to prohibit the use of funds used in contravention of paragraph (1), (2), or (3) of section 1001(a) of title 18, United State Code.

The code section in question is this,

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers

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Sharyl Attkisson reports that the draft of a contempt citation naming Eric Holder is being circulated to members of the House Oversight Committee today. The citation addresses the Attorney General's lack of cooperation in the investigation of Fast & Furious.

Resolved, That Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General of the United States, shall be found to be in contempt of Congress for failure to comply with a congressional subpoena.

Resolved, That pursuant to 2 U.S.C. §§ 192 and 194, the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall certify the report of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, detailing the

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It's already begun. Mitt Romney showed up at the NRA convention Friday and gave a keynote address that boiled down to "Obama's going to take your guns, but I'm the guy who's going to fight for you right to keep them!"

Nice try, Mitt, but some of us have long memories. We remember who supported the original Assault Weapons Ban in 1993, and we haven't forgotten who signed off on a permanent extension of Massachusetts' state-level equivalent in 2004. Signing up for an NRA life membership two years later doesn't erase that.

Frankly, I don't expect the guy to push …

The Maryland District Court has just handed down a decision [pdf] in the Woollard case granting the plaintiff summary judgement. You can catch up on the background here. The meat of the decision is that Maryland's standard for issuance of carry permits is too strict and arbitrary to pass constitutional muster.

From the opinion:

The Court finds that Maryland’s requirement of a “good and substantial reason” for issuance of a handgun permit is insufficiently tailored to the State’s interest in public safety and crime prevention. The law impermissibly infringes the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

Judge Legg maintains that the right to carry outside the home is only covered by intermediate scrutiny, but this is a step forward.

At bottom, this case rests on a simple proposition: If the Government wishes to burden a right guaranteed by the Constitution, it may do so provided that it can show a satisfactory justification and a sufficiently adapted method. The showing, however, is always the Government‘s to make. A citizen may not be required to offer a "good and substantial reason"why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right‘s existence is all the reason he needs. [p. 20]

This is the first opinion to phrase the idea in such clear and forceful language.

I was having a good day. I was rocking out to Hilary Hahn's phenomenal recording of Ives' violin sonatas, until I got word that a profile had been established for me at this site.

That's odd. I've never heard of that site, and I found that "claiming" my profile would require a paid membership. Well, that's pretty dishonest and underhanded.

So, who are these people? They don't seem too keen on making friends. In fact, they spend a great sum of pixels lambasting other established gun bloggers, and they've trolled more than a few gun forums. …

Since Paul Helmke stepped down last year, Dennis Henigan has been serving as active president. Today, the Brady Campaign announced that Daniel Gross would be taking the reins.

Gross was formerly the director of the Center to Prevent Youth Violence. I can't find much about their funding. They were previously known as PAX, who received a $200,000 grant from the Joyce Foundation in 2004, but the trail appears to stop there.

Given that the Brady Campaign's budget has fallen into the four-digit range, I'm curious as to whether this guy is bringing in further funding, as they can't be …

Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the House Oversight Committee again today. As with his previous appearances, we were treated to a litany of evasions and excuses. Long story short:  he doesn't know what's going on in his department, and he claims to have had no knowledge of any gunwalking operations prior to the death of Brian Terry.

It's been over a year since he promised an internal investigation, and he has yet to provide any explanation or any proof of action. Representative Labrador pointed out that Holder continues to show up for Congressional hearings unprepared, and that he seems oblivious to happenings at Justice. Representative Farenthold took it a step further, asking Holder, "knowing what you know, do you think you're qualified to lead the Department of Justice?"

Holder's response? "If you're going to ask me to resign (…) you've asked the wrong question."

I don't think we are.

Attorney General Holder gets another chance to testify to the House Oversight Committee Thursday morning.  Just in time, Representative Elijah Cummings has released a report [pdf] in which he claims to clear the White House and Department of Justice of any complicity in this matter.  Of course, if they were already clear, then why is this unsolicited "report" even necessary?

He doesn't go so far as to claim ignorance, only that,

[t]he Committee has obtained no evidence that Operation Fast and Furious was a politically-motivated operation conceived and directed by high-level Obama Administration political appointees at the Department of Justice.

Instead, Cummings settles for declaring that the administration did not conceive or direct Fast and Furious.  He seems to think that justification hinges on such semantic differences.
Entitled "Fatally Flawed: Five Years of Gun-walking in Arizona," the report tries to lump Fast and Furious in with prior such schemes as Wide Receiver ("see?  George Bush did it, too!"), and it attempts to portray the entire situation as something isolated to rogue elements in the Phoenix field division.
Of course, this flies in the face of facts.  US Attorney Dennis Burke has resigned after being caught providing false claims to his superiors, and newly available documentation [pdf] from NPR shows that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson still approved of the operation's details as of February of 2011.

I'm uncertain how effective the Wikipedia blackout truly was. Most people who've mentioned it to me saw it as a massive inconvenience and little more. That's a shame, because a some lessons are being lost there.

SOPA is a bad bill, and one with potentially dire consequences for the entire internet.
At least one major pillar of the online community was willing to step up to protest it.
Most people don't care and would rather not be bothered. They had to endure 24 hours being deprived of a resource for which they pay nothing, and for which there are alternatives.

I hope just a …

H.R. 2055, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, has passed the Senate and is on its way to the President's desk. The NRA managed the inclusion of three pro-2nd Amendment provisions in the final draft.

The first is quite self-explanatory, and very encouraging.

None of the funds available to the Department of Defense may be used to demilitarize or dispose of M-1 Carbines, M-1 Garand rifles, M-14 rifles, .22 caliber rifles, .30 caliber rifles, or M-1911 pistols, or to demilitarize or destroy small arms ammunition or ammunition components that are not otherwise prohibited from commercial sale under Federal law, unless the small

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Two years after the election, gun sales are still going through the roof.

Two years after the boom in sales, violent crime is still dropping.

As I've pointed out before, correlation does not equal causation. We can't attribute the drop in crime to an increase in gun sales. What we can show, however, is that a vast increase in civilian gun ownership does not lead to more crime.

In other news, Eric Holder's trotting out the race card:

This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with

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The Supreme Court has refused [pdf] to hear United States v. Masciandaro. That leaves Woollard v. Sheridan, which still has decent odds of making it to the calendar.

There's been some scuttlebutt that the Court would rather hear a "pure" case in which the petitioner isn't someone appealing a criminal conviction. Both the Heller and McDonald cases fit this bill, as they were brought by law-abiding citizens appealing unjust laws. In such cases, the Court can address a constitutional issue directly, without having other …