The Truth about Fast and Furious!

As Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog recommended, everyone in the US who has any interest whatsoever in the Fast and Furious debacle should read Kathrine Eban's article in Fortune, which provides an entirely new viewpoint on the whole sorry matter.  Turns out there was no federal program for intentionally allowing guns to "walk" across the Mexican border.  It happened because in Arizona, purchasing guns (as many as you want) is perfectly legal and so is selling them or giving them to someone else after purchase.  Thus, there were no legal grounds for arresting the surrogates who purchased guns for the cartels, or for seizing the guns after purchase.  It's an amazing story of intrigue, incompetence, election-year politicking and crime, leavened by the toxic absence of meaningful gun control legislation in Arizona.  Now it's at least possible to understand why the ever-paranoid GOP could think that the whole Fast and Furious scheme was a Trojan horse for introducing gun control legislation.  Read the article. 

The Fast and Furious weapons mess

Had lots of cov'rage in the press

But things aren't what they seem:

There was no gov'ment scheme

For allowing guns to walk across

The border to the cartel's boss

And leave an agent dead;

What happened was instead

That agents were completely blocked

From nailing guys that they had stalked -

The agents' hands were tied

No matter what they tried -

And so the whole plan came to naught

And many guns these guys had bought

Could not be intercepted;

That had to be accepted

Because in Arizona guns

Are sacred objects so that none

Can ever be controlled

When they're bought and sold.