hello, rach sglel what is the practical impact of not having a confirmed director for the atf? well, of course not having a leader in any organization always hurts the organization a little bit. we ve had some great people. you mentioned ken melson. he s done a great job up there. prior to him we had another outstanding fellow named mike sullivan. we ve had great guys doing a tremendous job acting and one of the toughest jobs in government is director of atf. for four and a half years there s not been a confirmed director appointed by the president, confirmed by the senate. and that hurts an organization. a law enforcement organization is critical to america s atf is. and despite what some of the people say in your lead-in about atf, i mean atf is very important to the country. it s come along with the democracy all along. i d like to say that george washington was the first atf agent when he put down the whiskey rebellion in pennsylvania in 1791. so from elliott ness who was in
so it s sort of kept small and in the corner, but it s people fight every day for justice. james cavanaugh, former atf special agent in charge of the nashville field division, somebody who s joined us to talk about the law enforcement politics around these issues, thanks for helping us understand this issue, sir, i really appreciate it. thank you, rachel. so we ve been covering gun policy all week long intensively for obvious and for awful reasons. and in that coverage, we have used the fact that machine guns are legal in this country. we ve used that as an example and a whole bunch of our segments about how gun laws work in our country. that prompted a very simple question in one of our news meetings as a staff yesterday. somebody on the staff raised their hand and said, hey, if machine guns are illegal, then why was rachel able to shoot a machine gun at that gun range when she did that second amendment remedies in review in las vegas right before the election. good question.
atf when we were the bureau of prohibition and busting gangs right up today where one of the most and i m retired now, but one of the most important agencies in the government and one of the most hard-hitting agencies against violence, gun violence, gangs, motorcycle gangs, klansmen, militiamen, bombers, gun traffickers, you name it. atf is always in the thick of it. so it needs to have a director. we need leadership now. we need the senate to stand up and confirm a director. one of the things that i was reminded about this week when i was looking into the politics around the atf director still having an acting director, not being able to get somebody confirmed, when i was looking into the way that the gun lobby talks about the agency, is that it is still, in 2011, totally riddled with conspiracy theories, with these sort of black helicopter, jack-booted thugs conspiracy theories about the atf being an anti-american
should not use plavix. taking plavix alone or with some other medicines, including aspirin, may increase bleeding risk, so tell your doctor when planning surgery. tell your doctor all medicines you take, including aspirin, especially if you ve had a stroke. if fever, unexplained weakness or confusion develops, tell your doctor promptly. these may be signs of ttp, a rare but potentially life-threatening condition, reported sometimes less than 2 weeks after starting plavix. other rare but serious side effects may occur. for the last few days on this show, we have been reporting a lot about guns and gun laws. one of the idiosink rosies we have come across is that for some of the weapons we think of being banned for civilian use in the united states, there is some civilian access to those weapons. like, say, machine guns. it is common knowledge that there is a ban on fully
obama campaign is going to raise a lot of money. we also know there s going to be a lot of money on the ground by groups that were really important to harry reid. labor unions. one of the reasons harry reid made that last push in the last few hours is labor unions were out in force. they were really a great asset to his campaign and demonstrate the problems that republicans have if we don t have boots on the ground. it s also one of the reasons that we welcome american crossroads investing money. certainly the american action network run by my friend, rob cowans invested money. we didn t have a move on.org or labor unions so it s important that we all push in the same direction. we started to see this in this election and we ll see it more in the future. doug, i ve asked you in the past about the american crossroads and those outside groups because it does seem like when big money goes outside the party, it does raise the question of what the party is for. and i know the line i can