On Thursday's edition of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart laid into President Obama for invoking executive privilege—the White House's power to withold documents—amid the House Oversight Committee's investigation into the federal government's "Fast and Furious" gun-trafficking operation, which sent weapons to Mexican drug lords.
"During the Bush administration, executive privilege was seen by the Democrats as a refuge of scoundrels, a method of obstruction," Stewart said. In fact, as Stewart pointed out, President Bush's reliance on executive privilege was harshly criticized in 2008 by an up-and-coming Democrat named ... Barack Obama. (And Stewart had the video clip to prove it).
Why won't the White House turn over the documents in question? On Wednesday's episode, Stewart offered his take.
"They need the papers to gift-wrap other weapons for an exciting new prison program: Christmas Guns for Convicts."
"You know, I'm sure there's a lot of ... partisan-type investigations that go on on Capitol Hill, many of them designed to merely tie up or damage the administration, but here's the thing: the ATF did send a bunch of guns to Mexican drug gangs! And one of those guns was used to kill a U.S. border agent."
