What's behind the roadblock in ATF confirmation hearings?

Confirmation hearings on the appointment of B. Todd Jones to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have been postponed. The hearings had been scheduled for Tuesday.

Jones, who has been serving as the bureau's acting director, is U.S. attorney for Minnesota. President Barack Obama named him to the ATF post in January.

The hearings were postponed at the request of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who complained that members of the Judiciary Committee had not been given documents necessary to the Senate's advise-and-consent function.

The delay is part of a pattern of contentious politics surrounding the bureau. We look at why the ATF has become so controversial.

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