As I wrote in a post for Big Government this past Sunday, January 22, the Arizona’s legislature has decided once more to do the job the feds won’t do, and has launched its own investigation into Fast and Furious. And during an appearance on FOX NEWS this morning, Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin explained why they’ve taken this step. He said that constituents were flooding their offices with questions about the gun-running operation, and he said one recurring question was, “You’re not waiting for the feds [to do something] are you?” He then said the answer to that question was “No.”

Said Tobin:

This is an incident that occurred on Arizona soil, with Arizona business owners, [where we lost] an Arizona agent (Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry), and quite frankly we felt it needed a lot more attention. We felt our citizens needed a place to go to share their stories. Maybe there’s more there. This was a failed program right from the start and I think the idea is to put more light on it.

Tobin explained that as he’s watched this story unfold, and learned about the tactics used in Fast and Furious, it just hasn’t made sense: “I’m from the family of a law enforcement officer and I don’t think that the process by which they were going was the direction in which we fight back on border security and drug infiltration.”

He went on to explain that the Arizona House has been disappointed in the way Eric Holder has handled things up till now, and added:

It doesn’t appear he had a grasp on it right from the beginning when the inquiries started coming in. And forgive me for being concerned when I hear that the federal government’s here and they’re here to help. [We’re] the state that had to pass S.B. 1070 so we could help secure our borders, and the fed sued us…we’ve lost millions of acres of forest land [to fires] because the feds won’t let us clean them, we’ve got a Navajo power plant that the EPA may close…I meant the list goes on and on.

Without ambiguity Tobin added:

The public deserves some answers and we can’t wait for the fed to give us some of those answers. So let’s put some light on it, let’s have some transparency in government. Let’s go ahead and bring some Arizona citizens in to testify and see where this leads us.

I’m all for what Tobin and the rest of his colleagues in the Arizona legislature are doing. It’s time to put some heat on the feds and see if Holder changes his story (again).

1. President Obama has repeatedly shown that he is a temperamental man.

2. Obama has a history of treating Republicans, military officers, congressmen, and others with disdain and a common lack of respect.

3. Gov. Brewer acted with decorum and respect.

4. Brewer also stood up for herself and deserves respect for that.

5. The Arizona Democrat Party is distorting the incident by demonizing Brewer — without foundation — and trying to raise money off the incident.

6. Obama talks a good game about civility and open-mindedness, but the truth is he is closed-minded and unwilling to listen to opposing points of view.

7. Obama has a history of grandstanding to show up Republicans who are polite and respectful in return.

8. Many left-wingers do not wish to actually debate topics and briskly walk away to avoid confrontation.

9. Obama is the most polarizing president in U.S. history.

10. Democrats, like Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder in particular, are known for judging things — like Brewer’s book, Senate Bill 1070, conservative talk radio, the actions of a Cambridge, Mass. police officer, and others — without reading them or looking into the situation. They use fall-back knee-jerk reactions that make them look bad.

The March for Life may be over, but the momentum has carried on right into the U.S. Capitol, where two men are doing their part to put feet to the prayers of millions of American seeking to restore the right to life in our nation. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) is kicking things off with a push to ban D.C. abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, when it’s widely known that babies can feel pain. “It will emphasize the humanity of the child and the inhumanity of what is being done to them,” Rep. Franks told the Washington Post. As chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee that handles the District, he is all but guaranteed a vote on the House floor. Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has filed the Ultrasound Informed Consent Act, which, like Texas’s law, requires doctors to perform an ultrasound and describe the baby’s development before a woman consents to abort. So far, the measure has 44 co-sponsors. Encourage your member to become one of them. Contact your representatives and ask them to support the Franks and Jordan bills.

Longstanding tension between Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Democratic President Barack Obama flared into the public spotlight today just after Air Force One touched down in Phoenix.

Brewer, who was on the tarmac to greet Obama, hand-delivered a letter before engaging the president “intensely” for several minutes, including pointing her finger directly at him, according to Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown, acting as a pool reporter for other media outlets.

Accounts from both camps later said the terse talk focused on Brewer’s book— “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media and Cynical Politicos to Secure America’s Border.”

The book, which was released in November, describes a June 2010 Oval Office meeting between Obama and Brewer aimed at diffusing conflicts surrounding Arizona’s controversial state immigration law and the administration’s immigration policy.

At the time, the White House called it a “good meeting,” while Brewer’s staff said it was “cordial.”

But Brewer paints a much different picture in her book.

Brewer complains in “Scorpions for Breakfast” that she and her staff were treated coldly by White House aides, prevented from taking pictures in the holding room outside the Oval Office and that their cell phones and cameras were  “confiscated” by Secret Service.

“Too bad we weren’t illegal aliens, or we could have sued them,” she writes.

During her meeting with the president, Brewer said Obama was “condescending” and professorial, “lecturing” on his efforts to promote comprehensive immigration reform.

“It wasn’t long before I realized I was hearing the president’s stump speech,” she said. “Only I was supposed to listen without talking. Did he care to hear the view from the actual scene at the border? Did the opinions and observations of the people of Arizona mean anything to him? I didn’t think so.”

“He was patronizing,” she said. “Then it dawned on me: He’s treating me like the cop he had over for a beer after he bad-mouthed the Cambridge police, I thought. He thinks he can humor me and then get rid of me.”

Obama raised his objections to Brewer’s account face-to-face with the governor today.

“He was a little disturbed about my book,” Brewer told reporters after the meeting broke. “I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt.”

Obama told Brewer ”that he didn’t feel that I had treated him cordially,” Brewer said. “I said I was sorry he felt that way but I didn’t get my sentence finished.

“Anyway, we’re glad he’s here. I’ll regroup,” she added.

A senior administration official later told reporters that Obama’s comments were in response to Brewer’s request for another one-on-one meeting.

“The governor handed the president a letter and said she was inviting him to meet with her. The president said he’d be glad to meet with her again, but did note that after their last meeting, a cordial discussion in the Oval Office, the governor inaccurately described the meeting in her book,” the official told reporters, on condition of anonymity.

Brewer, who said in her letter to Obama that she wants to discuss “Arizona’s comeback” with him, did not attend the presidential event at a Phoenix factory today. But she did make several subsequent media appearances to talk about her tarmac encounter.

In an interview with KFYI radio in Phoenix, Brewer said Obama was “somewhat thin-skinned and a little tense, to say the least.”

“I was very surprised.  I was taken aback.  I really was,” she said.  “I was shocked by the sternness of it all.”

ABC News’ Steven Portnoy contributed to this report.

Upon assuming office, President Barack Obama committed “to making his administration the most open and transparent in history,” and “we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the (White House) website for five days. And allow the public to review and comment before the president signs it.”

But the reality doesn’t match the words:

• Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act signed 2 days after Congress passed it;
• State Children’s Health Insurance Programs signed 3 hours after Congress passed it;
• $800 billion stimulus bill signed 1 day after it passed in Congress;

Obama broke his promise on the first 11 bills he signed into law. Only 6 of these bills were posted on the White House website at all. None were posted for 5 days before signing.

During the Democratic Presidential Primary campaign, Obama promised 8 times he would televise healthcare debates live on C-SPAN, if elected. He said he would bring parties together and not negotiate behind closed dooors.

But until the final few weeks of the process, he refused to let Republicans participate in any debate and sealed negotiations from cameras and live TV.

PolitiFacts confirmed his promise broken.

Obama has also been anything but transparent on his massive stimulus bills.

He has frequently denied freedom of information requests.

He withheld information about the outrageous Cash for Clunkers program.

And among a voluminous number of examples of non-transparency, Obama shielded his unaccountable czars from public scrutiny.

“President Barack Obama addressed a nation that is suffering from record high unemployment and an economic climate that is full of uncertainty. Arizona, along with the entire nation, is looking for assurance from the president during these bleak economic times. Instead, Arizonans received more of the same partisan rhetoric that leads to inaction from the president and our do-nothing Congress. As we watch our families, friends, and neighbors struggle to make ends meet, Washington continues to offer fluffy speeches that theorize about job creation instead of listening to those who have experience in creating jobs.

“Tonight, President Obama called for the creation of American jobs and an American energy initiative. This pro-job, pro-energy independence message comes just a week after the president blocked the Keystone XL Pipeline which killed 20,000 jobs and hindered America’s ability to become independent from Middle Eastern oil. The president’s ‘say one thing but do another’ mentality must stop. We can’t allow his ideologically-driven agenda, which panders to the extreme of his party, continue to crush small business in this country.

“The career politicians in Washington are tone deaf to what is happening in our communities and they are failing our nation. I am running for the United States Senate because in my family we have a saying which is, ‘leave things better than you found them.’ For the first time in the history of our great country, we are in danger of being the first generation that leaves things worse. I don’t know about Congress or President Obama, but that is unacceptable to me. Now is the time to send a new generation of leadership to Washington.”