Political Quotes

“Mark Twain is credited with quipping: ``Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.'' If he were around today, he might add: It also passes for gun policy in the U.S. Congress. The ATF is under fast and furious fire right now, and rightly so. Allowing hundreds of guns to ``walk'' in the hopes of catching big fish traffickers was terribly ill advised. But so too is Congress's excuse for gun policy. And sorry, folks, but the two are not entirely unrelated. If Congress wants to crack down on straw purchasing and stop the trafficking of firearms to Mexico, it is operating from the mother of all playbooks of how you would not accomplish it: Chapter 1, ensure that the ATF remains devoid of leadership; Chapter 2, pass only perfunctory straw purchasing laws; Chapter 3, attempt to block a simple commonsense proposal that border State dealers report multiple sales of AK-47s; Chapter 4, author legislation to immunize corrupt gun dealers and call it the ATF Modernization Act. It's true: ``Denial River'' in Congress runs vast, wide, and deep. ____________________”