Well DUH. I mean, yes, TTAG did report on this likelihood last week, but it’s not like you’d have to be psychic to figure this one out. Melson’s resignation was every bit as obvious (and every bit as not-funny) as a Gallagher routine with a watermelon. Even with Melson essaying the role of the stunt melon . . .
I’ve got zero respect for Melson – under his watch, the ATF made “loose cannon on deck” look less like a cautionary phrase and more like “standard operating procedure.” You can speculate that he was clueless instead of willfully breaking the law. I choose to believe he was an active, willful participant, based on what little evidence and testimony we’ve seen come out of the Issa hearings so far. Your results may vary.
But I don’t see how “clueless” absolves him of any guilt, makes the SNAFU any less normal (or f**ked-up, for that matter). Nope. Melson’s going down. Now the only question is “will that satisfy anybody?” Allow me to speak for anybody and everybody, when I say Hell NO.
It’s painfully obvious that the ATF is obstructing justice. Wait…that’s weird. Don’t they WORK for the Justice Department? Yes, bunkie, they do. But they also have been acting as if they are above the law since Hector was a pup and Billy Bob was Prez. No, these clowns need to go down, and that means two things –
First, they need a new Sheriff in town, an outsider who will clean house, getting rid of the cowboys. Second, they need to see who was running this debacle and hold THEM accountable. It wasn’t Melson. If it had been, he would have been road kill the millisecond after this mess came to light. Nope. It goes higher.
Just how MUCH higher is the $64 billion-dollar question. My best guess is that AG Holder, DHS Sect. Napolitano and former Chief of Staff Emmanuel better be looking for the best criminal defense attorneys money can buy. I suspect that when all is said and done, they’re going to be asked/forced to fall on their swords for the O-Man.
Will this scandal get Obama the way Watergate got Nixon, or will he live to shove his ideology down our throats another day, like President Bubba (a man who STILL claims to be the first black President. Do we need to take a peek at his birth certificate, or was that just a metaphor?) I suspect that the worst we’ll see from this is that it will further damage Obama’s chances to be re-elected.
Not that he needs any help in that area. He’s so busy shooting himself in the foot, I can’t see how his chances could get much worse unless somebody dug up a membership card for him in the Hitler Youth. If you know anything about politics, Chicago Style (and I do) you’d know that the big guys at the top insulate themselves from as much dirty work as possible. Plausible deniability and all that. Why you’d have to be as stupid as…um…Rod Blagojevich to incriminate yourself in something this outside the law.
It’s heartening to see somebody like Melson take a fall. But it would be more heartening if this were to result in REAL change you can believe in, like an outsider taking over ATF and cleaning house, the people that ordered this disaster brought to justice, and an object lesson in “Thou Shalt Not Place Thyself Above the Law,” writ large, so even Congress can read it. Don’t hold your breath.
But if I was a betting man, I’d make book that Melson won’t be the last casualty of the Cluster-f**k that is/was Fast n’ Furious. Nor will the ATF be the only federal agency with a new head before the next Presidential election.
At the risk of revealing journalistic bias, GRTBR (Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish). If the ATF puts Chicago jefe Andrew Travers forward for the slot, they will only make things worse. It’s an outsider or more twisting in the wind. Or both.
This is worse than Watergate. Nobody got murdered by the plumbers. They were just conducting political espionage. But remember it was the coverup that was fatal not the deed. Gunwalker is in itself fatal to many careers and when you combine it with a cover up then you are getting into Presidential resignation and prosecution territory. The Watergate Prosecuter could let Nixon go for the the good the country, but a theorectical Gunwalker special prosecutor cannot let any high level official walk. Innocent people died because of this program.
The Obama adminstration is walking the same path as all criminal conspiracies. They have identified the scapegoat and will shove him over the cliff. The victim no longer has a stake in the success of the coverup. He is not going to go down by himself. Melson is going to talk and Holder and co are going to face some tough hearings.
Will this go the way of Watergate? Not likely, because Robert Woodward or his functional equivalent support both President and his anti-Second Amendment agenda and like any Party/goverment run press will bury the story as much as much as possible. I don’t expect Obama to be hurt anymore than he is already by his failed economic and foreign policies.
While I want to see the AFT disbanded and the repeal of CGA’s of 1968 and1934 once again RF and Kozac give all the blame to the “Liberals” and ignore any blame for anyone else. Below is a link for Project Gunrunner. Of note, Start 2005, expanded 2006, June 2007 AFT publishes Gunrunner strategy document, etc, etc etc.
I personally would like to see a post or reply that blames all the actors no matter what party was on office it the time. While I will agree that the current administration is less then forthcoming with a hostile congress. It is the some thing that the Bush administration did for 8 years whenever ANYONE questioned it on ITs actions or lack of actions. My 2 cents.
http://www.handgunclub.com/hca/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Project-Gunrunner-timelines.pdf
You nailed it, Todd. +1.
I’ll protect myself from my enemies, but who can protect me from my so-called RINO “friends?” It was W’s administration that started this Gunwalker business and let slip the dogs of ATF. Barry-O went with the flow and probably made it worse. The result is two dead Feds and I-don’t-know-how-many dead Mexicans. A plague on both their houses.
Except under the Bush Administration they busted the straw buyers before they crossed the border. Busting gun runners who are selling any kind of weapon to drug cartels is a good thing.
^This^
Under Bush the SOP was to get the buyers and not let the guns get away, that doesn’t mean a few might not have. Just that the policy was to keep them in country unlike under Obummer.
Todd,
What makes you think I’m giving Bush & Co. a pass? If you read my other stories here on TTAG, you’d see that I’m an Equal-Opportunity Destroyer of myths, ideologies, and mendacity, no matter the “D” or “R” by their name. From where I sit, BOTH parties are full of it, and exist solely to acquire and amass power. The minute they get in office, they start making deals and selling out.
It remains to be seen if the “Tea Party” candidates will be any different in office. Too soon to tell. But I’ve been on-the-record, howling about the wretched excesses of the “Kinder and Gentler” strain of Republicans for a very long time. I frankly don’t care what political affiliation someone has – if they are corrupt, get ’em outta there.
Having said all that, the ATF’s history of loose cannonism goes back to at least Bush the Elder, with Ruby Ridge. I don’t think their wretched excess is a Left or Right thing. But the Obama administration took what was a questionable entrapment scheme and turned it into a criminal offense, when they allowed/encouraged/schemed to get weapons across the border and into the hands of the drug cartels’ foot soldiers. So while Bush certainly can be held to task for some of the wretched excesses of the ATF under his watch, the really big SNAFU had to wait for Obama to pull the trigger. So to speak.
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