Gibson Guitars Lacey Act raids made possible by a George Bush amendment as the left continues to learn to its embarrassment Bush was on their side

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Gibson has restarted limited production after being closed down by armed agents of the Obama administration.

11/8/11, "The Guitars Gently Weep," J. Christian Adams, Pajamas Media

"In 1968, Eric Clapton played a Gibson Les Paul guitar on the White Album’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by the Beatles. Other guitar greats like B.B. King, Slash, Alex Lifeson, Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend and Keith Richards have all used Gibson Guitars. You would think the Department of Justice has higher priorities than investigating a guitar company, but you’d be wrong.

By now, nearly everyone knows that the Department of Justice raided Gibson Guitars regarding the use of certain wood that may have violated the Lacey Import Act. At issue is Gibson’s import of unfinished, as opposed to finished, rosewood and ebony. FBI raids effectively shut down the business and idled workers. Gibson has since reopened, but the federal action raises issues

• of over-criminalization of business behavior.

Not surprisingly, the legislation to criminalize the use of ebony and rosewood in the Gibson guitars came from the usual suspects on the Left. But it also had support among American forestry

• business interests seeking to erect barriers to competition from overseas wood.

The craziest part of the Lacey Act is that it allows Gibson to import finished guitar pieces made from the same wood. But if Americans working in Tennessee cut, sand and varnish unfinished wood, then call in the FBI raiding parties. The law was amended in 2008 to reach this state with the support of the Bush administration.

This is the sort of illogical madness, fueled by special interest meddling in the economy

• that has most Americans rightfully disgusted with Washington.

Since the Gibson raids, a bipartisan group of Tennessee congressional leaders have sought to amend the Lacey Import Act and make the law more sensible. Reactionary opposition to the amendments reveals who is ultimately behind the policies which led to federal raids on Gibson Guitar: the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace.

The lawmakers seeking to amend the Lacey Act “are basically gutting the law as it is currently enacted,” said Lisa Handy, senior policy adviser for the Environmental Investigation Agency, told the Tennessean.

The “Environmental Investigation Agency?” The convicted felon George Soros helps to fund the Environmental Investigation Agency, a private organization. This group has agitated for action against Gibson Guitar, and of course the Eric Holder run Justice Department delivered.

It would be interesting to see all the third party communications to the U.S. Attorney’s office as well as the Environmental and Natural Resources Division (Environmental Crimes Section) regarding Gibson Guitar. It is hard to believe that these raids didn’t have their genesis in Soros-funded agitation from EIA or one of the other green groups. These are public records and available to people who ask, assuming the Most Transparent Administration in History complies with the law, and assuming someone files a Freedom of Information Act request with the DOJ....

Of course Gibson Guitar is run by an outspoken conservative — Henry Juszkiewicz. Whether or not that has something to do with DOJ’s zeal nobody knows. One thing is for sure, Gibson is going to have to pay a lot of money to lawyers familiar with the Lacey Act. Juszkiewicz has teamed up with Right On Crime to roll back excessive criminalization of the economy, something sure to further endear him to the agitators behind the case against Gibson. "...

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9/2/11, "Gibson Guitar CEO fights back," CNN Money, Les Christie

""We had people sitting there making guitars. We had no weapons.""

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8/25/11, "Gibson Guitar Corp. Responds to Federal Raid, Juszkiewicz on Lacey Act: ‘Make it Stronger’"

"Henry Juszkiewicz, Chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar, has written an editorial for The Huffington Post, expressing his thoughts on the Lacey Act.

In a piece titled “Repeal the Lacey Act? Hell No, Make It Stronger,” Juszkiewicz wrote: “As a lifelong conservationist, I am distressed that our government is using a law as important as the Lacey Act not to fight illegal logging but to enforce protectionist Indian labor statutes. This use of scarce governmental resources does nothing to further the critical environmental effort to halt global deforestation or to protect American jobs.

“In the wake of the raid some have suggested doing away with the Lacey Act altogether. I don’t believe that is the right answer. Rather than repealing the Lacey Act, we should make it stronger so that limited government enforcement dollars can be devoted to fighting illegal logging and poaching, not bureaucratic fights over international tariff codes. In the coming months, I will be working with Members of Congress and the Administration to do just that. We should create a compliance system so that businesses can know – before they buy wood and other plant products – whether or not they are complying with the Lacey Act.”

Click here to read Juszkiewicz’s full editorial."

via Instapundit