Mexico sorry for border crossing, but US Marine's apology not enough

 Mexican military officials are apologizing for firing from a chopper at two U.S. Border Patrol agents early Thursday, but one lawmaker says the incident draws a disturbing contrast with the case of Andrew Tahmooressi, the U.S. Marine sergeant whose apology for accidentally crossing the border hasn't spared him a legal nightmare.
Mexican authorities were conducting a drug interdiction operation on the Tohono O’odham Indian Nation, which straddles the border, when they strayed into U.S. air space and fired at the agents, who were not injured. The reservation is a hotbed for drug smuggling, and authorities from both governments have conducted operations on it.

"It's ironic that Mexico says it acted accidentally in this case, and they ask we accept an apology, when they refuse to acknowledge an authentic mistake on Andrew's part."- Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.

"Early [Thursday] morning, a Mexican law enforcement helicopter crossed approximately 100 yards north into Arizona nearly eight miles southwest of the Village of San Miguel on the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation while on a drug interdiction operation near the border," U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokesman Michael Friel said. "Two shots were fired from the helicopter but no injuries or damage to U.S. property were reported. The incident is currently under investigation."
Art del Cueto, president of the Border Patrol union's Tucson local, said Mexican officials contacted U.S. authorities to apologize for the incident.
While no one is claiming the incident was intentional, it brought to mind for some another accidental border crossing. Tahmooressi was arrested at the Tijuana Port of Entry March 31 after mistakenly crossing into Mexico, where he immediately told officials he had three registered guns in his pickup truck. But instead of letting him turn around, Mexican security officials charged him with possession of weapons and ammunition. He faces up to 10 years in prison if he is convicted.
"It's ironic that Mexico says it acted accidentally in this case, and they ask we accept an apology, when they refuse to acknowledge an authentic mistake on Andrew's part," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a former Marine who has championed Tahmooressi's cause. "There are mistakes and there are excuses. Andrew's actions were the result of wrong turn, a simple mistake. Mexico is just making an excuse and no different than the border incursion that are too regular, U.S. officials should approach this incident with absolute seriousness."
Shawn Moran, a Border Patrol agent and vice president of the Border Patrol Council, said mistakes that put his colleagues in peril are not easily dismissed.
"This is not the first incident where Mexican military/law enforcement has crossed the border and fired at our agents," Moran said. "It is a legitimate concern of ours and makes us wonder who we can trust on the south side."

'Makes no sense': Industry group casts doubt on IRS' 'lost' email story

An industry group is claiming the IRS should have kept full records of its apparent destruction of ex-official Lois Lerner's hard drive, saying "the notion that these emails just magically vanished makes no sense whatsoever." 
The latest to weigh in on the lost emails controversy is the head of the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers. Group president Barbara Rembiesa released a statement on Thursday questioning recent testimony by IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who told Congress last Friday that Lerner's hard drive was "recycled and destroyed" after it crashed in 2011. 
She claimed that a certified "IT asset destruction" team should have been brought in to document and complete that process. 
"If this was done, there would be records. If this was not done, this is the smoking gun that proves the drive or drives were destroyed improperly -- or not at all," she said. 
Rembiesa adds her voice to a growing list of industry experts dubious about agency claims that Lerner's emails disappeared after a hard-drive crash in 2011. 
Lerner is the former head of the Exempt Organizations division, and is at the heart of the controversy over agency targeting of Tea Party groups. After the IRS revealed earlier this month that many of her emails from 2009 to 2011 were gone, outraged Republicans arranged a rapid-fire string of hearings on the matter -- and on the sidelines, some computer experts backed up their suspicions. 
The IRS, though, insists this was simply a case of a routine computer failure -- one of thousands across the federal government. Koskinen testified on the matter twice since last week, stressing that despite the computer problems, the agency was able to recover 67,000 Lerner emails, including 24,000 from other accounts, from January 2009 to May 2013. 
"It's not unusual for computers anywhere to fail, especially at the IRS in light of the aged equipment IRS employees often have to use," Koskinen testified Monday, claiming over 2,000 agency workers had hard-drive crashes so far this year. 
Last Friday, he told the House Ways and Means Committee that he understands Lerner's hard drive was physically destroyed after technicians were unable to recover data from it in 2011. 
At that hearing, Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., suggested that the government might have a tracking system of sorts. Koskinen said he wasn't aware of whether hard drives have "identifiers," but said: "If they have serial numbers, you're welcome to them." 
Apparently not satisfied with the response, Camp and Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., blasted out a new round of requests on Friday to various branches of the Obama administration asking for details on how they learned of the crash and information from the IRS on the effort to retrieve data from agency computers. They requested the serial numbers of all failed devices and documents on efforts to recover the data. 
"We still can't get straight answers from the IRS or this administration about the circumstances of the destroyed IRS emails," they said in a statement. 
Meanwhile, Republican calls on Capitol Hill for a special prosecutor to probe the IRS were getting louder. 
"All this garbage about, they have old computers is ridiculous. They have the best software. The best hardware," Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, said. Gohmert says money should be offered to get to the bottom of the missing emails -- $1 million to recover them, and $500,000 for information on who destroyed them. 
"We know those emails are out there. We know they can be found," he said. "We just need people to help find them." 
Koskinen, though, claimed there was no crime involved. 
In Minnesota on Thursday, President Obama referred to recent controversies as "phony scandals," suggesting they are all about politics. 
"It's all geared towards the next election or ginning up a base," he said. "It's not on the level. And that must feel frustrating, and it makes people cynical."