Sipsey Street Irregulars: CBS: Melson jerked from witness list! "It was Melson's decision not to testify."

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

CBS: Melson jerked from witness list! "It was Melson's decision not to testify."

"Run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the Gunwalker man!"

ATF chief won't appear at Senate hearing in wake of "gunwalking" scandal

So far, Congress and the media haven't had much luck getting answers on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' ongoing "gunwalking" controversy.

The Department of Justice and ATF have missed repeated deadlines to turn over information and documents to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who's investigating. ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson (at left) was scheduled to appear before a Senate hearing Thursday, in which he would likely have been asked questions about the scandal. However, CBS News has confirmed Melson has now been pulled from the hearing witness list.

We contacted the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ask why Melson is no longer scheduled to appear. They referred us to the office of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) who chairs the subcommittee holding the hearing. A press spokeswoman at the senator's office said it was Melson's decision not to testify, and that the subcommittee doesn't have jurisdiction over ATF.

Later, a spokesman told us in an email, "The Subcommittee had invited, but not confirmed, Mr. Melson as well as other officials from ATF to testify at the hearing this week. In the end, ATF declined to send a representative."

The gunwalking investigation may also have derailed any chance for Melson to have confirmation hearings anytime soon. President Obama made Melson, a former Justice Department attorney, acting director in April 2009. Sources on the Senate Judiciary Committee believed confirmation hearings for Melson were about to be scheduled before the gunwalking scandal broke. Now, they believe confirmation hearings for Melson will not happen in the near future.

All of Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson's reports, videos and articles can be found in one place at cbsnews.com/sharylattkisson.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...: So what? Congress needs to have the balls to serve Melson with a Subpoena to appear.

What this does show is that Melson does have something to hide which adds weight to a decision to subpoena him. Could be he fully realizes this and just wants to go last so he can craft a story that matches what everybody else said...

Bob Katt; March 29, 2011 at 12:41 PM
Gaviota said...: What's the MATTER with these people? How many times in the last hundred years have public employees gotten fired and/or gone to prison, not just over the crime, but over the cover-up?

Hell, my kids knew by the age of five that making a mistake earned a lecture, violating rules got a time out, but lying and covering up resulted in serious hard time.

Stupid Only Ones; March 29, 2011 at 2:23 PM
Dennis308 said...: Representatives Issa and Smith will have to eventually Issue Congressional Subpoenas for Melson and the rest of the Gun-Walker jerks and force them to testify before Congress. I am hoping that they will be caught Perjuring themselves and that Smith and Issa have the Evidence in hand to convict them and their bosses.

Dennis
III
Texas; March 29, 2011 at 5:28 PM
Dedicated_Dad said...: Is ANYBODY surprised by this?

ANYBODY?

Bueller??

Didn't think so...; March 29, 2011 at 7:00 PM
Mark Matis said...: What makes ANY of you think that The One and his toadies are going to respond to ANY Congressional subpoena? Never mind that, in the Senate, such a subpoena would require approval by the Democrat in charge of the subpoenaing committee...

The stench is overwhelming. And I think you know by now what it smells like.; March 29, 2011 at 7:18 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

CBS: Melson jerked from witness list! "It was Melson's decision not to testify."

5 comments:

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