This was the tactic of gun running across the border, so you can build cases and supposedly get the big drug kingpins. The tactic started during the Bush administration. It was ended by Eric Holder when they realized what a disaster it was. And it was turned over to the inspector general of the Justice Department, who is investigating and has access to all the documents, including the ones that the White House and Justice Department don't want to turn over to the Congress. The documents they're after are internal deliberations about how the administration is going to respond to the investigation - in other words, the spin they're going to put on it - which the Congress is framing as a cover-up. They're dragging out all the Watergate language, hoping to smear the president and the attorney general. And what they're in danger of is overreaching, like Whitewater and impeachment. And I don't believe that Speaker Boehner wanted this. He's being pulled along by his caucus. The right has been after Fast and Furious for really the better part of a year. And now it's out there, and let the politics fall where they may. And I don't think the White House is upset that this is front and center, taking away from Mitt Romney and his jobs agenda. -Eleanor Clift

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In contempt. That's how the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Congressman Darrell Issa, ruled against Attorney General Eric Holder. AG Holder refuses to hand over documents related to the botched U.S. federal gun-running program dubbed Fast and Furious. Hours before the vote, the president inserted himself into the fracas, citing presidential executive privilege over the documents that Issa wants. Some 1,700 big guns were purchased in the U.S. by suspected Mexican gun smugglers as the U.S. federal agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the ATF, looked on. The guns were moved across the border to Mexico. It was a set-up - the ATF hoped they could trace the weaponry to Mexico's big drug cartels. But the guns went awry, notably in the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, a year and a half ago. The documents Congressman Issa is demanding from Holder allegedly detail how the Obama administration misled Congress about Fast and Furious. To the White House, the documents contain privileged internal communications. So it's a standoff between the executive branch and the legislative, one that Holder called a quote-unquote constitutional crisis. Republican House Speaker John Boehner, in a statement, said quote Unless the attorney general re-evaluates his choice and supplies the promised documents, the House will vote to hold him in contempt this coming week. Unquote. That means the full House.