Tag: atf

Fast and Furious update: Ken Melson’s secret testimony.

The sound that you’re hearing is the muttered “Uh-oh” of a plethora of staffers at the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives.  Of particular interest is the letter that Oversight Chair Darrell Issa and Judiciary Ranking Member (for now) Chuck Grassley sent to Attorney General (for now) Eric Holder regarding Melson’s testimony… but we’ll get that in a moment.

For those coming in late: Issa and Grassley are investigating the horrifically botched Fast & Furious program that Justice/BATFE had put together, starting in late 2009.  F&F was this ingenious method by which the federal government ended up knowingly and deliberately permitted illegally-resold firearms to be supplied to Mexican narco-terrorists; said narco-terrorists then proceeded to use those guns to shoot various hostages, Mexican civilians and police officers, at least one US Border Agent… as you can imagine, the Mexican government is not exactly pleased about any of this, which is why elements within said government are currently muttering about extradition treaties.  This is where Kenneth Melson comes in: he is the Acting Director of BATFE, and was apparently picked to be the duly-assigned sacrificial lamb in this particular drama.

Only, it turns out that Melson doesn’t actually believe in any of that dulce et decorum est pro Duce mori stuff; so he grabbed a lawyer and started talking to Issa & Grassley – on July 4th, no less. Continue reading Fast and Furious update: Ken Melson’s secret testimony.

#rsrh Fast & Furious update. It’s bad.

It’s very, very, very bad.

CBS News has confirmed that ATF Fast and Furious “walked” guns have been linked to the terrorist torture and murder of the brother of a Mexican state attorney general last fall.

That is ‘recall the Mexican ambassador to the USA’ bad.  Wars have been started over less – probably not in this case, given the rather lopsided power levels of the two countries involved, but that does not excuse anything.  It also answers once and for all just how much Mexican officials knew about Operation Fast & Furious / Gunrunner in the first place; and I cannot imagine that the Mexican government is pleased with us right now.  I cannot actually blame them, either.

Background here: the short version is that the US government set up a program where it deliberately permitted firearms intended to be illegally resold in Mexico be resold in Mexico.  Naturally, these guns were then used to kill people, including at least one Federal agent (and now, Mexican officials).  There is increasing speculation that the overarching goal was to use this situation to justify more stringent gun control laws in the United States.

Heads will roll over this.

Via Say Uncle, via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

150+ Mexicans killed by Operation Fast & Furious?

Bob Owens over at Pajamas Media has done a good job walking through the utter disaster that was Operation Fast & Furious (short version: the US government deliberately let Mexican narco-terrorist groups get their hands on illegally-purchased firearms).  But note this paragraph:

The eventual — perhaps inevitable — death of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent killed by criminals armed with at least two “walked” AK-pattern semi-automatic rifles finally shut the program down in December of 2010. The shooting death of an American cop was the final straw for the ATF whistleblower who exposed the program, which may also have contributed to an estimated 150 or more Mexican police and soldier shootings, and many of civilians. Had a whistleblower come forward earlier, all might have been alive today.

Continue reading 150+ Mexicans killed by Operation Fast & Furious?

Kenneth Melson’s Fast & Furious Firing?

OBAMABUS HUNGERS!!!!!

Word is out that Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms acting head Kenneth Melson is going to be sacrificed some time this week over Operation Fast & Furious:

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[*].

The Wall Street Journal sort of gets it wrong, there: the problem was not that smugglers were allowed to buy guns.  It was that they were allowed to then smuggle them.  The evidence is pretty damning that higher-ups in both BATF and the Department of Justice were looking to trace drug-trafficking networks in Mexico by seeing which gangs ended up with federally-supplied firearms… and if you think that that strategy looks incredibly pernicious when just written out that way, well, I used the word ‘damning’ for a reason.  Particularly since the federal strategy in this case led to Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry being murdered by someone using one of the tracked firearms.

Continue reading Kenneth Melson’s Fast & Furious Firing?

Stopping more Tax Hikes on the poor in Florida.

This ad comes from Grover Norquist’s Americans For Tax Reform, and it’s aimed squarely at the Florida legislature’s attempt to emulate the Obama administration’s recent lower-class tax hike:

The argument here is actually very simple: cigarette taxes are in fact taxes, not ‘user fees’ or any other kind of bureaucratic nonsense. People like to pretend otherwise because it’s easier to pass something that’s not called a tax, and because in this particular case the the average member of the group that Rasmussen likes to call the Political Class probably doesn’t smoke anyway. In other words, if it’s not affecting them personally, it’s not their problem. This is not a particularly inclusive attitude, but then nobody was accusing the Political Class with an excess of empathy anyway.

Continue reading Stopping more Tax Hikes on the poor in Florida.