Even Jon Stewart Not Buying Obama’s Executive Privilege Claim In Fast and Furious Scandal [Video]

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart generally goes along with the standard liberal ideology on the Daily Show but he is having a really hard time with the Obama administration’s assertion of executive privilege in the investigation of the Fast and Furious gun scandal

Although up until recently this scandal has been generally underreported by the mainstream media, Operation Fast and Furious was a botched operation by the U.S. government that purposely sold firearms to Mexican drug cartels, resulting in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens. Another U.S. agent, Jamie Zapata, may have also been murdered by narco-traffickers as a result of a program similar to Fast and Furious; Zapata’s family is now suing the U.S. government for wrongful death.

Next week, the House of Representatives may vote to find U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over Fast and Furious-related documents to Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee. Issa’s committee has already voted to send the contempt motion to the full House floor. On Wednesday, however, President Obama notified Issa that the documents he requested from AG Holder are considered off limits due to Executive Privilege.

In these two clips, Jon Stewart first explains the scandal and then zones in on the administration’s stonewalling and double-talk in the investigation as well as the hypocrisy of Democrats who rejected executive privilege claims during the Bush administration:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Stewart also points out that both Democrats and Republicans change their tune on executive privilege depending on which party controls the White House. However, the referenced U.S. Attorney “scandal” was a bunch of utter nonsense hyped up by the media during the Bush years.

U.S. Attorneys can be fired and replaced at will, and both Democrat and Republican administrations have done so in the past, but the only time the media noticed was when the Bush administration let go a handful of U.S. Attorneys in its second term.

Added: In a piece about Fast and Furious, New York Post columnist John Podhoretz makes the following observations about press coverage or lack thereof:

There’s a reason you don’t know much about the complicated and confusing mess known as “Fast and Furious.” The mainstream media have largely ignored this Obama administration scandal, which would have dominated mainstream front pages and homepages and programs for months had it all taken place under a Republican administration…

There have been stories, and powerful ones, especially by Sharyl Atkisson of CBS News. But there has been no media drumbeat, no constant stream of interlocking articles and broadcasts that put relentless pressure on the White House and the Justice Department…

The fact that a story as juicy as this one has been given short shrift already makes laughable the continued assertion by media panjandrums that they possess no bias toward the Obama administration.

Do you think the media has purposely avoided reporting on Fast and Furious?