For context, understand that he's been obsessed with the Attorney General for a long time. He's almost as obsessed by Holder as Ken Star was over Monica Lewinsky. Even in the GOP House he's considered a bit of an outlier in crazy.
"the most recent disagreement over whether to move forward with Issa’s anti-Holder crusade appears to be the first time the House’s most senior leaders publicly made their disagreement with Issa known, and that alone is significant. When even Eric Cantor thinks you are overreaching, it’s a good sign that you might need to dial it back a few notches."
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/05/10/481718/house-gop-leadership-balks-at-issas-anti-holder-witchhunt/
This was written last month. Issa has been planning this phony baloney contempt campaign against Holder awhile. Last month his own GOP House colleagues got him to wait a month:
"Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California have decided to slow Rep. Darrell Issa’s drive to hold the attorney general in contempt over the controversial Fast and Furious program, a move that could infuriate conservatives who have been calling for Holder’s resignation."
"The delay could be a month or even longer, according to lawmakers and aides familiar with the issue."
"Some within House GOP leadership circles would like Issa to abandon his plan for a committee and floor vote, which was sparked by a 64-page memo last week, which laid out the case for contempt."
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/05/10/481718/house-gop-leadership-balks-at-issas-anti-holder-witchhunt/
The whole pseudo scandal actually goes back to some badly handled Bush operation back in 2006-there's a shock:
"In 2006, during the presidency of George W. Bush, the Justice Department launched the first of a series of misguided “gunrunning” schemes that eventually led to the death of federal Agent Brian Terry. Rather than look to ways to prevent such a tragedy from happening again, however, House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) spent his tenure as a committee chair trying unsuccessfully to embarrass Attorney General Eric Holder."
Issa is a conspiracy nut:
"Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this affair is what Issa once suggested his investigation will uncover. In an interview with Sean Hannity, Issa claimed that the Obama administration “made a crisis” when they continued the Bush-era gunrunning operations because they wanted to “us[e] this crisis to somehow take away or limit people’s Second Amendment rights.” This accusation originates from a former militiaman who supports violent resistance to imagined government attempts to seize his guns. And it amounts to an accusation that a series of botched gun stings that begun during the Bush Administration were actually part of a secret Obama plot to release guns to Mexican drug lords, so that those guns could then be used to kill federal agents, which would then cause a national uprising in support of gun control."
And Issa has no case:
"Issa’s uncovered no evidence showing Holder bears any blame for the botched operations begun under George W. Bush, even though the Justice Department turned over thousands of pages of documents concerning the operations. Instead of accepting this fact, Issa has requested many more documents containing confidential information regarding ongoing law enforcement investigations, and is now threatening to hold Holder in contempt if these documents are not turned over. Holder is entirely correct to withhold these documents, however, because Justice Department documents are not subject to congressional subpoena if they would reveal “strategies and procedures that could be used by individuals seeking to evade [DOJ's] law enforcement efforts.”
My mentioning Ken Starr is no mere gloss. This really does remind us of the bad old days when the GOP wasted millions of tax payer dollars and many Congressional hours chasing their own tales on crazy conspiracies. Issa came in 2010 promising "hundreds of hearings."
This kind of meaningless and wasteful scandal mongering is what he had in mind.
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