Carney or Karnak?

When Johnny Carson was the host of the Tonight Show, he had a stock character that he trotted out from time to time. Karnak the Magnificent was a seer who could name questions whose answers were given to him in sealed envelopes. The humor was sophomoric at best. Here's an example: After holding the envelope to his forehead, Karnak would announce that the question was "What do you call a Japanese house after a large rock falls on it?" The envelope was then opened and Ed McMahon would read the answer: "a frat house."

In recent days, we have had White House spokesman Jay Carney doing his own impersonation of Karnak the Magnificent. He has been feeding nonsense to the press corps in ways that seem too humorous to be unintentional. Yesterday, Carney was asked repeatedly at the daily press briefing about Fast and Furious and about the pending Congressional resolution to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents. Congress was focused on the period of time after DOJ sent a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Investigations in February of 2011 telling the committee that there was no DOJ involvement with Fast and Furious. Months later, DOJ rescinded that letter and said that it had been involved. Congress has been trying to find out how it came to be that DOJ gave it misinformation. After all, someone could have been intentionally lying to Congress. The documents relevant to this deception by DOJ are the ones that Congress has been asking for and which Holder has refused to turn over.

Carney told the press that this was just a political stunt. After all, Carny told them, Holder was the one who deserved full credit for stopping Fast and Furious. Carney kept saying over and over again that Holder put an end to Fast and Furious and he should be praised rather than hounded for doing so.

Here's the problem. Holder testified under oath to Congress that he first learned of Fast and Furious just a few weeks priod to mid May of 2011. He repeated that he had never heard of the operation prior to that time. Indeed, when he was shown memos addressed to Eric Holder that discussed Fast and Furious by name, Holder said that he had not read them. In short, Holder made it crystal clear that he had not involvement with Fast and Furious until April of 2011, long after the US border guard was shot with one of the weapons that the government had allowed to be delivered to the Mexican drug cartels.

Do you see the problem? Fast and Furious ended in January of 2011. Holder never even heard of the operation until April of 2011 (or so he swore under oath.) Carney, however, is giving Holder credit for stopping an operation about which Holder was unaware. That's right, either Holder or Carney is wrong. Oh, why be coy; either Holder or Carney is lying. Indeed, maybe they both are.

The cavalcade of lies has gotten so intense in the Obama White House that it is no longer big news when Obama or one of the Obamacrats strays from the truth. Indeed, it is now news when the president and his cronies actually tell the truth.