Let me make a little prediction... (and an addendum that explains it a little more fully).

Burnt toast on Black Monday.

Fact: The ATF "Reform" hearing for tomorrow was called off this morning by panicked senators for what they viewed as a very compelling reason.

Prediction: For this and several other reasons, there are members of the ATF Senior Executive Service who will, in retrospect, come to view today as "Black Monday." Jot down the date. It will all make sense in a few weeks.

They're toast.

Burnt toast.

LATER: Since I can't give y'all details as yet, let me be a little more specific about who is toast. I am talking about the agenda-driven, law-breaking members of the Senior Executive Service, especially those who have drifted in and out of the Chief Counsel's Office over the years. The agency will still be there after these building scandals -- and the tax-paid idiots who concocted them -- are swept away.

(Although, there HAS been discussion within the administration to do away with what we know by the shorthand "ATF" and give its explosive side to the FBI, the alcohol and tobacco functions to the FDA or Commerce and take the gun cops and firearms mission and fold them into DHS under another name -- this would give DHS something it has wanted since the beginning: large numbers of boots on the ground that they directly control for bully boy purposes. This plan, or permutations of it, has been offered by people -- largely at Main Justice -- who are heartily sick of the continued stupidity and proto-scandals that the ATF Chief Counsel's Office churns out with prune-eating regularity.)

However, what is happening now (once it is all out in the open -- and believe me, unless they are willing to kill a whole bunch of folks and start a civil war, it WILL all come out eventually) will have a number of both strategic and tactical pluses for liberty-loving Americans. Forgive me if I don't go into them in detail now.

To explain a little further about why the hearing was abruptly "postponed," there are senior executives of ATF who cannot risk being asked certain questions under oath right now. The witness list was locked in by the majority, with the help of their NRA handmaidens. But questions on certain topics from even a single senator could blow the Chief Counsel's Office anti-firearm agenda out of the water. This is also why when they get around to putting the Chicago gang's favorite guncop Traver into the Director's spot, it will be with a recess appointment to avoid similar awkward questions.

In some sense, this is about the Alinsky method of forcing people to abide by their own rules. Since they are assigned such rules by law and yet spend every day breaking them to suit their agenda, oversight by the Congress and (especially) the public will derail the agenda and wreck careers. I eagerly await the day -- and I believe it is coming soon -- when the first alumnus of the Chief Counsel's Office is indicted for his or her felonious misdeeds. Among these will be perjury.

Which is why Senate hearings get canceled at the last moment. One wonders what will happen after January when they can no longer do even that.

Mike
III

PS: If you have a few extra dollars, send them to Larry Pratt at Gun Owners of America. The GOA boys and girls have been doing arduous service for their country behind the scenes recently. Tell 'em you appreciate 'em by sending them some money to continue the fight.