As we’ve been showing this past week on this blog, Governor Dayton has been using poor Minnesotans as an anvil on which to try to hammer the GOP, intentionally ratcheting up the pain to them of a possible government shutdown.

It’s part of a great liberal liberal tradition; individuals can, and if need be must, be sacrified to “the greater good” (which, to modern progressives, means “liberals retaining power”).

Perhaps you’ve heard – the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been busted running a “sting” that only stung Americans.

Operation Gunwalker – aka “Fast and Furious” –  has unravelled, with allegations that at very best, it was an incompetently-run operation which allowed thousands of guns to go, untraceably but with tacit, undercover government blessing, to Mexico.  Guns involved in Gunwalker are alleged to have been involved in the death of at least one Border Patrol agent.

And that’s the best that can be said about it.  Because…

The most damning revelations coming out of the hearings on Operation Fast and Furious held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are the unmistakable indications that the program was never designed to succeed as a law enforcement operation at all.

The fact that failed as law-enforcement is bad enough.  It gets worse:

A quartet of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agents and supervisors turned into whistleblowers to bring the operation down, but only after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in the Arizona desert. Two of the weapons recovered at the scene of Terry’s murder were traced to the operation.

Bear in mind that every single weapon was bought by a known “straw buyer” under surveillance from the ATF; every single weapon was brought to, and across the border, where it vanished from ATF surveillance.

No, really:

ATF agents testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee could not explain how the operation was supposed to succeed when their surveillance efforts stopped at the border and interdiction was never an option.

ATF Agent John Dodson, testifying in front of the committee, said that in his entire law enforcement career, he had “never been involved in or even heard of an operation in which law enforcement officers let guns walk.” He continued: “I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest.”

Note that the entire gun rights movement – the NRA, the GOA, GOCRA, every single one of us – favors keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

But why would the government do this?  Emphasis added:

The obvious answer is that Gunwalker’s objective was never intended to be a “legitimate law enforcement interest.” Instead, it appears that ATF Acting Director Ken Melson and Department of Justice senior executives specifically created an operation that was designed from the outset to arm Mexican narco-terrorists and increase violence substantially along both sides of the Southwest border.

Success was measured not by the number of criminals being incarcerated, but by the number of weapons transiting the border and the violence those weapons caused…At the same time in 2009 that federal law enforcement agencies (the ATF, the DOJ, and presumably Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security) were creating the operation that led to the executive branch being the largest gun smuggler in the Southwest, the president’s team was crafting the rhetoric to sell the crisis they were creating.

On television, in various news outlets, and even in a joint appearance with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama pushed the 90 percent lie, implying that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexican cartel violence came from U.S. gun shops.

Like Dayton here in Minnesota, Obama and his administration cynically created a crisis to advance their “progressive” political goals.

It’s the stuff of conspiracy theories – except the evidence is right there, in the words from the ATF whistle blowers.

Unlike Dayton (so far), Obama’s perfidy has claimed the life of a US public servant.

This is worse than Iran-Contra, which never killed any Americans.   Indeed, if the allegations are true, it may be the worst abuse of government power I can remember – because with its complete lack of law-enforcement value, it is intended solely to infringe on the human rights of millions of law-abiding Americans, by way of killing hundreds of Mexicans and one unwitting US cop.

If it were a Republican plan, it would be front-page news.

Progressivism will kill you – literally – if it needs to to meet its goals.