Let’s give Mr. Alter some props. He answered my email. Granted, it took awhile but he did respond. Here’s his response. It’s not bad until the end. You’ll see what I mean.

Hi, Mary:
Yes, I would tell you and Brian Terry’s family that Operation Fast and Furious was not a scandal. It was bad public policy that went horribly awry, with tragic consequences. It was a big blunder, a fiasco and maybe some other adjectives you and I could agree on, but not a “scandal” as conventionally defined. If you believe it’s a scandal, which to my mind connotes intentional wrongdoing for financial or personal (sometimes sexual gain), than you must include other huge policy mistakes under your definition.

So I assume you are willing to agree that the Bush Administration’s failure to recognize in advance that Saddam Hussein didn’t possess WMD was a scandal (removing Saddam’s WMD was the explicitly-stated purpose of the war). That intelligence failure led to an unnecessary war and the death of thousands. Many veterans of the Bush Administration have agreed that the war, like Operation Fast and Furious, was a case of good intentions gone horribly wrong.”Stuff happens,” as Donald Rumsfeld put it.

But those unfortunate, even tragic, things are not the stuff of scandal, unless they involved stealing by contractors and the like. As it happens, I was a supporter of the war initially, then criticized its conduct. But knowing that President Bush genuinely believed WMD to be present (In the same way Eric Holder genuinely believed the U. S. government could track guns through that straw purchase program, which had begun under Bush), I never called the Iraq War a scandal. Did you?  I didn’t think so.

If you are motivated by anything beyond sheer malice toward the President of the United States you will agree with the logic of this post. In any event, please feel free to share it with your readers.

Warm regards, Jonathan Alter

I thought it was an okay response until the last part and he shot himself in the foot. If my supposed “sheer malice” for President Obama is blinding me then couldn’t I say Mr. Alter’s total devotion to President Obama is blinding him?

To Mr. Alter a scandal is intentional wrongdoing for financial or personal gain. The Department of Justice didn’t tell the Mexican government about Operation Fast & Furious. Could someone please explain to me how that doesn’t count as intentional wrongdoing? How does anyone think it’s right or a good thing to arm already dangerous drug cartels? How were they going to track the guns without anyone knowing on the other side or tracking devices in the guns?! No attempt was made at the border to confiscate the guns. The DOJ purposely did not tell the Mexican government. They didn’t inform the Mexican government because they wanted this operation fail. Operation Fast & Furious was doomed from the beginning. Eric Holder never believed they could track guns through the straw purchase program. If he did there would be tracking devices in the guns and the Mexican government would be involved. If you think about it the only way for the guns to be tracked would be to find them at crime scenes.

Another reason why Operation Fast & Furious is a scandal under Mr. Alter’s definition: the push for gun control laws. Let’s just say everything Mr. Alter and Mr. Holder has said is 100% true. It’s still a scandal because now the DOJ and some in Congress are using Operation Fast & Furious as a way to push for more gun control. They’re using this situation for personal and political gains. The New York Times concentrated on that one part of Mr. Holder’s testimony!

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Bloomberg recently published a horribly inaccurate post by Jonathan Alter titled, “The Obama Miracle, a White House Free of Scandal.” It’s time for Mr. Alter to wake up, remove the rose colored glasses, and come back to reality. President Obama’s administration has a huge scandal on their watch and it’s called Operation Fast & Furious.

I sent an email to him and the editor responsible for the article.

Dear Mr. Alter & Mr. Lavin:

My name is Mary Chastain and I’m a writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism. Lately I’ve been keeping an eye on the mainstream media and their Operation Fast and Furious coverage. I have one question for you: Are you serious?!? President Obama is scandal free?!? You said How much research did you do? Sir, you have to take off the rose colored glasses and allow me to introduce you to Operation Fast & Furious. Have you heard of that scandal? Probably not since the only mainstream media outlet covering it is CBS and I can tell from your article you don’t put much effort into your research.

Operation Fast & Furious (part of Project Gunrunner) started in fall 2009. The federal government approved the sale of illegal guns to Mexican drug cartels KNOWING they’d be walked into Mexico and used in crimes. Yes sir. The Obama administration told gun shop owners in border states to allow straw purchasers to buy these guns even though they knew these people would give them to Mexican drug cartels and be used in crimes. Do I need to repeat myself?

The Obama administration approved an operation that told gun shop owners in border states to sell illegal guns to straw purchasers KNOWING they’d be walked across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels and be used in crimes.

Do you know what ended Operation Fast & Furious? The vicious murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on December 14, 2010 in Arizona. Yes that’s right. Not all the guns crossed the border. Many have been found at crime scenes in AMERICA! One was used to MURDER Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. I’ve attached a picture of him.

I love this part of your article the most because we all know you’re alluding to Operation Fast & Furious, thus proving you DO know about it and PURPOSELY forgot about it.

Every time Representative Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who leads a House investigative committee, calls the Obama administration “corrupt” without offering any evidence, he hurts his cause. It’s much harder to make a story register as a bona fide scandal when the political motivation is so obvious.

Again, how much research did you do? Would you like to use all the research I’ve done? If you go to CBS News and use keyword Sharyl Attkisson (their investigative reporter who is on top of this SCANDAL) you receive 50+ hits on Fast & Furious.

You can go to Townhall and look at the the excellent work done by Katie Pavlich.

I can’t forget the awesome work done by Matthew Boyle and others.

Also check out Cam Edwards on Cam and Company at NRA News every night from 8-11PM CDT at http://www.nranews.com because he talks about it every night.

Here’s a link to my page at Big Journalism. http://bigjournalism.com/author/mchastain/

I will let you read through all of their hard work, which includes the EVIDENCE Congressman Issa has against the administration. I guess you missed out on all of the memos PROVING Mr. Holder was briefed on Fast & Furious as far back as July 2010. You should also check out Congressman Issa’s appearance on Face The Nation a few weeks ago. He again showed the evidence he has. You can easily find that appearance in the link I provided from CBS News.

Mr. Lavin, I know you put a disclaimer that said these are Mr. Alter’s opinions and not Bloomberg’s. But in all honesty this horrible and bias piece reflects incredibly bad upon YOU. I cannot believe you published an article that is filled with obvious LIES.

Respond back to me ASAP. I’ll have a piece up at Big Journalism soon. I’ll make sure to email it to you as soon as it’s posted.
Mary Chastain

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When does a columnist write something so utterly absurd that his credibility is forever damaged? I am not sure how to answer that in general terms, but I think at least one journalist answered the question for his own, now-thoroughly destroyed veracity. Jonathan Alter of Bloomberg has written one of the most ridiculous, least reality-based assessments yet of Barack Obama’s short White House tenure.

Alter

Alter put on his strongest rose-colored glasses and penned an uproarious piece headlined: “The Obama Miracle, a White House Free of Scandal.”

In his Bloomberg piece Alter claimed that Obama is “honest” and falsely asserted that his White House has been “free of scandal.” In fact, some of the incidents that Alter himself notes, and immediately dismisses, carry at least a whiff of scandal — if not untruthfulness.

Naturally, Alter ignores far more than he reports on Obama scandals but he also misses the biggest reason why Obama seems to him to have a scandal free presidency. The Media refuses to call anything Obama does a scandal!

After all, if you have a guy that wantonly lies, that double deals, that hides facts, that also allows subordinates to lie and that fellow is allowed to just get away with it without repercussion from journalists, I guess that makes for a “scandal free” guy, eh?

Alter’s first attempt to give succor to Obama’s failing presidency comes with a baseless swipe at “the whole” Republican Party.

The sight of Texas Governor Rick Perry tumbling out of the clown car recently as a “birther” (or at least a birther- enabler) is a sign of weakness, not just for the Perry campaign but for the whole Republican effort to tarnish the president’s character.

This is a false premise. It assumes that “the whole” Republican Party is using birtherism to “tarnish the president’s character.” This is a flat out untruth. Only a small portion of the center right polity in America has any interest in Obama’s birth certificate. Alter’s attempt to make the whole of the GOP into birthers is simply baseless.

Next, Alter dismisses the Solyndra scandal as meaningless. I guess if you don’t think its a touch scandalous when you have millions upon millions of tax dollars going into the pockets of buddies who turn around and go bankrupt almost immediately, well, what can you say to that?

Alter also dismisses both Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s tax evasion and Obama’s firing of Ag. Dept. official Shirley Sherrod without knowing what she really did. Then Alter makes the silly claim that Obama’s stimulus spending was free of any waste or abuse — the latter claim is laughable on its face. Have you ever heard of a government spending program that had no waste at all?

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Remember the  day when “Nothing Happened?” to Ralph Melish back in 1973?

Oddly enough, 1973 was also the year that gave us Rachel Maddow, star of the ratings-challenged MSNBC. Perhaps as an infant, young Ms. Maddow heard the Python sketch and filed it away for use on a show she would host some 37 years later. Yesterday was that day, as Maddow decided she would cover and analyze things that did not happen.

A California Judge decides that he knows better than the 7 million California voters who supported Proposition 8 and overturns the will of the people. Fast forward a day later and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is indignant. But Maddow is not upset about the anger bubbling up from the GOP. Perhaps that is because there was little or none. On her Thursday night show, Maddow’s spent the entire first block of her show wondering why the GOP and social conservatives were not freaking out about this.

Maddow was incredulous. How dare they not play into MSNBC’s hand on this? Newsweek Senior Editor Jon Alter was called in to toss a few hollow theories on why the GOP was not convulsing and hollering because an activist judge decided that he knew better than the people. The two prattled on for nearly 15 minutes on a non-story. (more…)

Journalists love whistleblowers. Just not when the whistle is blown on them.

Journalists love transparency.  As long as they’re not the ones being exposed.

No steadfast journalism rule is unbendable when it comes to justifying and protecting the racket that is modern journalism, specifically, political journalism in the United States today. The ends justify the means for the Democrat Media Complex. They lie when they claim to be objective. They lie when they claim to be unbiased, because these so called “truth seekers” are guilty of engaging in open political warfare. And when the whistle is blown, they simply double down. “Journolist” — like Media Matters, but more insidious, if that’s possible — is an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, technology and “the masses” uncovered the conspiracy:

Talk radio and the Internet have allowed outsiders the ability to challenge a multiple generational shift from journalism being about the story, to journalism being crafted toward a partisan end. From Newsweek killing the Lewinsky story to the Swift Boat veterans (until the undermedia pressure got too big) to the Dan Rather implosion to the open attempt to keep the Al Gore masseuse story under wraps to the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter debacle to the Van Jones admission of missing the story to the networks ignoring the ACORN video footage to the media playing up trumped up charges of racism in the Tea Party — while ignoring exculpatory evidence — to the mother of all media-as-political weaponry: the non-vetting of candidate Obama, the mainstream media has shown that it is in an ideological death spiral. And the ground is right here.

American journalism died a long time ago; today Tucker Carlson got around to running the obituary. What The Daily Caller has unearthed proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that most media organizations are either complicit by participation in the treachery that is Journolist, or are guilty of sitting back and watching Alinsky warfare being waged against all that challenged the progressive orthodoxy. The scandal predictably involves journalists posing as professors posing as experts. But dressed down they are nothing but street thugs. They deserve the deepest levels of public consternation. We must demand that they do. (more…)