Head of ATF to Be Removed?

[megimoo]

Head of ATF Kenneth Melson,to Be Removed ?

Amidst the fallout from Operation Fast and Furious, the Justice Department is looking to toss acting head of ATF Kenneth Melson. The Wall Street Journal reports that he may be on his way out as early as next week:

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.


http://townhall.com/tipsheet/helenwh..._to_be_removed

[fettpett]

I think the House probably has enough to impeach Holder at this point, and it would probably be a good start, not that Melson shouldn't be removed

[megimoo]

I think the House probably has enough to impeach Holder at this point, and it would probably be a good start, not that Melson shouldn't be removed

Melson's doing whatever he's told by Holder...THe problem is we have a bunch of lily-livered
cowardly Politicians in Congress who fear for their own Political safety and not For Americas !

[fettpett]

Melson's doing whatever he's told by Holder...THe problem is we have a bunch of lily-livered
cowardly Politicians in Congress who fear for their own Political safety and not For Americas !

yeah, thus my statement about impeaching his dumbass

[megimoo]

yeah, thus my statement about impeaching his dumbass

Impeach Holder, the other critter's a small fry !

[megimoo]

Obama tossing Melson under the bus?

The Wall Street Journal reported last night that the political fallout from Operation Fast and Furious has the White House looking for a fast and furious way out. The acting head of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, will likely lose his job, perhaps as early as next week, the WSJ’s sources say, in what looks like an effort to contain the damage:

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.

Speaking of which, the current nominee has yet to get a hearing. Andrew Traver’s nomination came almost two years into the Obama administration, two weeks after watching his party get trounced in the midterms, and the Senate has yet to act on the nomination. Republicans may be holding pro forma sessions during recesses with Harry Reid’s blessing in part to specifically keep Obama from making Traver a recess appointment, and not for no reason, as the Christian Science Monitor reported shortly after his nomination:

The nomination of the Naperville, Ill., native to be top gun cop is applauded by gun-control activists, who say the 5,000-employee ATF has lost ground in its regulation of the $28 billion US firearms business, having labored under interim directors since 2006.

But the idea of an ATF director who hails from Chicago, a city without gun shops, and who has conflated black market automatic weapons with legal semi-automatic “assault-style” rifles is causing Second Amendment defenders to worry that President Obama intends to blast away at gun rights by force of bureaucracy, if not law.

“This is a demonstration that Obama has … the same attitudes about Second Amendment rights now as he did [when he was an Illinois state senator], which is quite hostile,” says Dave Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Golden, Colo., that promotes free-market ideas. “He’s picked a strong anti-Second Amendment person for an administrative job that has far more influence over the practical exercise of Second Amendment rights than any other job in the country.”


http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/1...under-the-bus/