Lengel: The Terrible Message President Obama is Sending About ATF and the U.S. Marshals Service

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By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Imagine if you will, if there was an interim director of the FBI and President Barack Obama announced that he wasn’t going to bother nominating the interim director to a permanent post because he didn’t want to expend the political capital and energy.

Imagine the message that would send: Presumably that the FBI wasn’t worth the trouble, that it wasn’t worth the effort, that it wasn’t really that important of a law enforcement agency.

Well, The Hill newspaper reports that Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the President wasn’t going to nominate U.S. Marshals Service Acting Director David Harlow nor interim ATF head Thomas Brandon for a Senate confirmation. That means both will be deputy directors.

It not only sends a message to the agencies and its workers that “you’re not that important,” it also sends the same message to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who set their budgets, and to the public at large.

The U.S. Marshals Service transports prisoners, hunts fugitives and protects federal courthouses and judges. Sounds pretty important to me.

ATF enforces our gun laws and investigates explosions. That also sounds pretty important.

Interestingly, at a time when President Barack Obama is shouting from the mountain tops about the importance of cracking down on gun violence, he’s whispering behind closed doors that ATF, which could help in the battle,  is not a very high priority to him.

President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch need to step up and defend their law enforcement agencies.

It’s the right thing to do.

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