Fast, Scandinavian, and Furious

("Scandinavian" has nothing to do with it, I'm just trying to attract Minnesotan readers)

Michael Walsh in the NY Post -- Rep. Darrell Issa has called for a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of the festering mess known as Operation Fast and Furious:

“There is an ongoing coverup of a pattern of wrongdoing,” Issa noted earlier this week. “Even though I have subpoena ability, I don’t have the ability to lock people up for contempt until they fess up and give us what we want.”

Locking people up will probably have to happen. For the evidence strongly suggests that Fast and Furious was hatched in the Justice Department in an attempt to paint law-abiding American gun dealers and gun owners as renegades, to give the administration an excuse to crack down.

In other words, it was a deliberate provocation, undertaken without a thought for how it might affect our relations with Mexico -- or how many people might die.

I'd say "I knew it!" except for the fact that as soon as the thought entered my head I dismissed it as something so heinous as to be impossible. It's impossible, right? To facilitate murders for political gain, impossible.

Imagine knowing you're responsible for deaths, but not taking responsibility because you tell yourself that you're just part of the group; a cog in the machine. Well I'm going to assume there is some other reason for Fast and Furious. I'm just not seeing it yet. If this turns out to be the underlying reason, I say jail everyone involved. And the horse they rode in on. Yes, jail their horses too. And their pets as well.

Along those lines, I suppose most everyone knows that I'm off the reservation on the death penalty. I oppose it, and not just because we might make a mistake.