"Proving once again that the American government is always willing to provide charity to the needy in other lands. . ."

Found at Death By A Thousand Paper Cuts (I love their header -- "A Rip-Snortin' Gang of Hard-Living Rightwing Cuthroats") here, is a reprint of this commentary and cartoon by Stilton Jarlsberg at Hope ' Change -- "The Conservative Daily Web Comic." Since the author/artist gives license to do so, I reprint it here, but plan to make his website a regular read. The cartoon is a hoot.

Proving once again that the American government is always willing to provide charity to the needy in other lands, the ATF (under Eric Holder's Department of Justice) apparently helped smuggle more than 1700 weapons to Mexican criminals and drug cartels "to see where they'd surface."

Theoretically, this would provide valuable information which would allow the ATF to shut down gunrunners. But in this case, "theory" went out the window... and the AK-47s and armor-piercing shells were unsurprisingly used to murder dozens (if not hundreds) of people, including a U.S. Border Patrol agent and a Customs Enforcement agent.

When a huge operation like this goes so badly awry, it's important to find out exactly who authorized it and just what the hell they were thinking. And already, an investigative House Committee has been able to strike two names off the list: Barack Obama and Eric Holder - both of whom claim they knew absolutely nothing about the operation.

Mr. Holder denied responsibility for the actions of his people, claiming that he'd established in previous testimony that "my people" are actually the Black Panthers.

Mr. Obama went even farther, explaining that he couldn't possibly be aware of every Justice Department plan to ship guns to the Mexican drug cartels because he oversees "a pretty big government" with "a lot of moving parts." He then added that many of the moving parts are "really shiny," and that he blacks out if he watches them too long.

While it's disturbing to think of so many high-powered weapons heading into Mexico, we doubt that the problem will last very long. Because considering the porous state of our southern border, we're pretty sure a lot of those weapons will be coming back eventually...