Saturday, May 14, 2011

ATF Responsible for Texas Wildfire

As the ATF continues to deal with the burgeoning Gunwalker scandal that involved their putting guns in the hands of criminals who killed a Border Patrol agent with those guns, it's now facing claims from a Texas county official that the agency is also responsible for burning countless acres of Texas land. This does just a little bit more than compound the problem that is Barack Obama's lack of interest in giving Texas federal assistance so it can deal with the much larger problem of wildfires all over the state.

Via Reuters:
A county official in the Texas Panhandle is now blaming a federal agency for starting one of the fires through carelessness.

Tom Edwards, the county attorney in rural Motley County east of Lubbock, said on Friday that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives was responsible on Tuesday for sparking a fire that consumed 150 acres.

"You can quote me on it: That bunch has a real corner on stupid," Edwards told Reuters.

Tom Crowley, a spokesman with the federal agency, said bureau officials were assisting four local bomb squads -- at their request -- to destroy some explosives. Firefighters were on hand, he said. The wind picked up, but the explosives were too dangerous to move, so the officials went ahead and destroyed the explosives.

"Unfortunately, a fragment ignited some grass," Crowley said. "As far as the community, we're working with them to let them know how to go about making a claim with the government."

Texas Governor Rick Perry has publicly criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency for declining the state's request for a major disaster declaration for wildfires that have scorched some 2.5 million acres since November.
Illegal aliens started a fire in Arizona 50 miles north of the border that left countless people homeless; the ATF authorized an operation responsible for dead Border Patrol agents; and now it's responsible for scorched earth in Texas, which Obama seems disinterested in helping in the context of a much larger problem. All this while the president mocks those who want to secure the border.

Read it all.

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