US Government Gunrunners

Not that the national media notices much, but the federal government under President Barack Obama has been supplying guns to Mexican drug gangs for quite a spell. With only a few print media bothering to cover the story, Obama’s Justice Department has been discovered secretly supplying firearms to Mexican drug lords using taxpayer “stimulus” monies. If that wasn’t bad enough, guns supplied to these Mexican miscreants by federal agents were used to kill at least one US Border Patrol agent. After the death of the BP agent, California Congressman Darrell Issa launched an investigation into the matter and uncovered what most anyone would correctly describe as a vast government conspiracy to supply firearms to Mexican drug cartels. As a result of Issa’s congressional investigations, numerous heads at the ATF have lost their jobs--or more correctly--have been “reassigned.”

Two days ago, the Washington Post reported, “The ATF head has been reassigned amid an investigation into a controversial U.S. gun-trafficking operation, part of a broader shake-up at the Justice Department in which the U.S. attorney in Phoenix also stepped down, officials said Tuesday.

“Kenneth E. Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, will become a senior adviser on forensic science in the department’s Office of Legal Policy. He will be replaced as acting director at ATF by B. Todd Jones, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, the department said in a statement.”

The Post report went on to say, “In a sign of the continuing fallout, Dennis Burke, the U.S. attorney in Phoenix who worked closely with ATF and provided legal guidance for “Fast and Furious,” [codename for the ATF gunrunning operation] has resigned, the department said Tuesday. He is being replaced on an acting basis by his deputy, Ann Scheel.

“An assistant U.S. Attorney in Phoenix, Emory Hurley, who helped oversee “Fast and Furious,” is being transferred out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s criminal division and into the civil division. That means he will not be involved in criminal cases.

“The multiple moves amounted to an extraordinary shake-up for a Justice Department that has been under fire for the gun-trafficking probe, which critics consider ATF’s biggest debacle since the deadly 1993 confrontation in Waco, Tex. ATF is part of Justice.”