Posted on 06/18/2011 4:35:40 AM PDT by stevie_d_64
The Justice Department is expected to oust the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to people familiar with the matter, amid a troubled federal antitrafficking operation that has grown into the agency's biggest scandal in nearly two decades.
Moves toward the replacement of Kenneth Melson, acting ATF director since April 2009, could begin next week, although the precise sequence of events remains to be decided, these people said.
The shakeup shows the extent of the political damage caused by the gun-trafficking operation called Fast and Furious, which used tactics that allowed suspected smugglers to buy large numbers of firearms. Growing controversy over the program has paralyzed a long-beleaguered agency buffeted by partisan battles. The ATF has been without a Senate-confirmed director since 2006, with both the Bush and Obama administrations unable to overcome opposition from gun-rights groups to win approval of nominees.
In November, President Barack Obama nominated Andrew Traver, the head of the ATF's Chicago office, as permanent ATF director. The nomination stalled in the Senate after the National Rifle Association said Traver had a "demonstrated hostility" to the rights of gun owners.
Traver is set to travel to Washington on Tuesday to meet with Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole, the people said. The administration is weighing whether to name Traver as acting director or choose another interim chief while awaiting Senate action on his nomination, they said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
That puts him out of the running for STAR WITNESS.
So, you would support ethanol subsidies? (under the right conditions, I would too.)
Their reporters could not have done those stories without knowing some of the details of how it turned out that those guns "walked" from AZ to Mexico.
Maybe they imagine that by becoming "witnesses" to the crime rather than mere "participants" we will forgive them.
The only way that will happen is to KEEP the PRESSURE ON
The “acting head” of ATF goes, yeah right. Acting head was probably a Bush hold over anyway. No, this did not stop at his office, no way. This HAD to be approved at some layer of the Justice Department. When doing this grand an operation, it is routine to seek counsel of DOJ before proceding. This is not a group of agents in some post of duty waking up and saying one day, hey, let’s let a huge number of firearms go to Mexico and see where they pop up. Even if someone said, let’s see where they pop up, where was the connection or cooperation of the Mexican authorities?...how about in DC under DOJ or even the Department of State. No number of rougue GS12 or 13 agents could ever pull this off without a large amount of pre planning, authorizations, and liaisons. This whole thing stinks right up to the Oval office. Get these guys before a ground jury and start the ball rolling in earnest...can you say Special Prosecutor?? There is a cancer on this administration, in fact in this administration it is a plague.
Indeed, blame the guy, not the policy. That is what Zero is doing because the policy is for and by Zero.
No, I’m very much agin’ ethanol subsidies.
They don’t need Jared, the got the weapon right? Trace the weapon.
That's been done. What cannot now be done is "trace Jared" and find out specifically why he got a gun and did the killings.
It wouldn't matter if that gun was traced all the way back to the Mesabi Iron Range!
Remember, the Brady Campaign is not interested in killers ~ just guns ~ so they've just never gotten on top of how you deal with the mentally incompetent.
This reads like it was written by the WH.
Fast and Furious killed people. Other people need to go to prison.
It doesn’t matter who Obama throws under the bus, the investigation needs to continue. In fact, I think it needs a special prosecutor, because the evidence seems to be pointing at Holder and Obama. (Too much redacting goin’ on.)
i guess an indictment is tooo much to hope for...
Even for charcoal filtered, aged corn squeezin’s?
Self-styled journalists are trying to figure out if the unwritten rules would allow them to win an award for uncovering the facts that bring down a (half) black President and a black Attorney General.
Those rules are quite complex.
P. S. I’m making an assumption about Holder’s genealogy. His parents both come from a Barbados lineage.
So only in 2011, if the acting director of the BATFE isn’t ousted, then we’re living in a police state? Since 2011?
How about the federal government telling farmers what crops they can plant, when they can plant, and how much of said crop they can plant? How about all of the illegal-at-idea federal firearms laws that are on the books (remember the Second Amendment?) How about the federal government regulating everything due to the Commerce Clause?
You’re saying that the federal government trying to make a case that a shotgun with a sawed-off barrel had no military purpose in 1934, when Miller was dead and nobody came to his defense, wasn’t out of bounds in that case?
Jerrybob, the US government enacted a police state a very, very long time ago. If the technology curve was 20 years earlier, we’d all be living in chains by now, because nobody would’ve realized what was happening before it was too late.
Charge the whole lot of those who knew the program was 311 billion over budget before the vote and hid it’s details.
And Charge Obama for hiding waivers until the day after his SOTUS.
Everything the Republicans charged came true.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/28/tawdry-details-of-obamacare-420960137/
Oops,wrong thread (good article).
“The Justice Department is expected to oust the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives”
How does the Justice department “oust” a guy who works at the Treasury dept? ATF is treasury.
Here is Travers, head of ATF in Chicago.
http://thetruthaboutguns.com/2010/11/robert-farago/missing-andrew-traver-tv-interview-surface/
>>.the curtain is coming down, hard and fast..<<
Joe, where do you get that good coffee? Want to lay odds that not a single firing or demotion will result from this? Lots of transfers and ‘letters of counsel’ will be inserted into personnel files but no earthshaking trials for Holder or anyone else.
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