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| "The system worked" |
The Daily Mail blogs
comments
on the mad bomber who came within seconds of blowing up Flight 253
headed to Detroit. What does the Obama's chief of Homeland
Security plan on doing to prevent a repeat?
Nothing -- Janet
Napolitano said: "The system worked" -- she really, really said
that.
 "The system worked"
If by "system" she means
having a passenger quick, brave and smart enough to fly over other
passengers to get the guy, yes, I suppose in the Land of Lalala the
system worked.
But a real security chief who is more concerned
about the safety of the public than her own public relations would be
angry, would be upset, would be apologetic and would be promising to get
to the bottom of this and to overhaul the system. We need someone
who find out why the system failed to keep this terrorist off the
airplane and why it failed to detect
the bomb in his underpants,
planted by al-Qaeda in Yemen, and why
it failed to prevent him from detonating the bomb.
Jonah Goldberg
adds, "Napolitano has a habit of arguing that DHS is a first
responder outfit. Its mission is to deal with
'man-caused-disasters' after they occur. It appears she really
believes it. If the White House wants to assure people that it
takes the war on terror seriously (a term Robert Gibbs used this morning
by the way), they could start by firing this patently unqualified hack."
Like Obama, Janet Napolitano is
in way over her head, but that's what you get when "diversity" is a
primary job requirement. |
|
A Strategic Redefining Of Homeland Security's Mission |
Obama delivered the nation's first Quadrennial Homeland Security
Review to Congress, defining homeland security for the first time as
including hazards beyond terrorism, in a strategic document intended to
drive long-term budget decisions.
Congress mandated the
high-level strategic review in 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina
exposed failings in the government's response and four years after the
creation of the Department of Homeland Security. The initiative
was modeled after the Quadrennial Defense Review, another
congressionally mandated effort that directed the Defense Department to
reset its strategies and budgets against evolving threats every four
years.
Analysts said that production of the 88-page document
marked a successful milestone for DHS, even though it is not as thorough
as the Pentagon's version and will not be as influential.
"It is
an incredible achievement," said James Jay Carafano, homeland security
expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, noting
that it came months after a Democratic administration's takeover of the
department, that the Obama administration had never before run a
quadrennial review for homeland security and that DHS lacked the Defense
Department's resources.
"This study has given them a road map
for how they are going to think through tough problems," including
developing department human resources, analytical capabilities and
research priorities, Carafano said.
Stewart Baker, former DHS
assistant secretary of policy from 2005 to 2009, said that while the
attempt to link DHS budget, strategy and threat information might be
"lightweight compared to the Quadrennial Defense Review, it's
heavyweight compared" to how, a couple years ago, officials in George W.
Bush's administration had to make decisions based on "budget politics of
the moment."
A copy of the review, obtained by The Washington
Post, shows that the government's approach to homeland security
continues to evolve away from a singular focus on terrorism.
The
issue is still vexing because many experts still struggle to explain,
"What is homeland security?" "How is the homeland best made
secure?" and "What does it mean to be prepared?," the review notes.
Continue reading
here . . .
Kinda makes
you feel safe, huh? -- "What is homeland security?" -- and, "defining
homeland security for the first time as including hazards beyond
terrorism, in a strategic document intended to drive long-term budget
decisions." -- this document isn't about security -- it's about "driving
long-term budget decisions" -- including hazards beyond terrorism --
that's bureaucratese for more reparations and redistribution.
These people aren't working on security issues. They're spending all
their time figuring out how to loot America. |
|
Did He Or Dind't He? |
Did Barack Obama personally consult with Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano on Christmas Day, when suspected al Qaeda terrorist
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
allegedly tried to detonate a suicide bomb aboard Northwest Flight 253?
Asked that question by CNSNews.com, Napolitano initially declined to
answer and then, when asked again, said "we were in contact with the
president’s office" that day.
The White House told news
organizations on Christmas Day that Obama had ordered heightened air
travel security immediately after he was first briefed on the attempted
attack at about 9:00 a.m. Hawaii time (2:00 p.m. Eastern) on Christmas
Day and that he was repeatedly briefed on the incident during that day
In Jan. 20 testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee,
however, Napolitano testified that she had not been consulted in advance
about the specific decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights --
which took place on Christmas night about 10 hours after the suspected
terrorist was arrested. Director of National Intelligence Dennis
Blair, FBI Director Robert Mueller and National Counterterrorism Center
Director Michael Leiter all told congressional committees that they were
also not consulted in advance about the Christmas-Day decision to
mirandize Abdulmutallab.
On Jan. 27, Napolitano failed to attend
a hearing on the Christmas Day attack held by the House Homeland
Security, the committee that has principal oversight over her
department. Senior Democrats on the committee publicly scolded her
during that hearing for her failure to attend.
On Feb. 4,
Napolitano met privately with the Democratic -- but not Republican --
members of the committee. After that meeting, she also met
privately with Rep. Pete King (R.-N.Y.), the committee’s ranking
Republican.
When she emerged from her Feb. 4 meeting with
committee Democrats, CNSNews.com asked Napolitano: "Madame Secretary,
did the president personally consult with you at all in real time during
the day of the Christmas Day attack about the Abdulmutallab situation?"
Napolitano said: "I’m not going to talk about my conversations with
the president."
Later, after her meeting with Rep. Pete King
(R-N.Y.), CNSNews.com asked Napolitano: "Before I was asking you about
if you spoke to the president at all on Christmas Day about the
Abdulmutallab situation -- not the nature of the conversation. I
just want to know if you spoke to him."
Napolitano said: "Yes, we
were in contact with the president’s office." |
| National Security Meeting "Surreal" |
The Northeast Intelligence Network is
reporting that
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and
John Brennan, Barack Hussein
Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and
Counterterrorism, spoke at the National Governors Association's Special
Committee on Homeland Security and Public Safety in Washington last
Sunday. A close aide to one of the longtime governors in
attendance, who was present for much of this meeting, spoke to this
investigator about the oddities that she noted at this event, asking
that her name not be used due to the sensitivity of her job.
She
described a strange and "almost surreal" usage of terms, phrases and
jargon that dominated their presentations to the governors, and noted an
obviously deliberate avoidance of other more specifically accurate terms
that seemed to obscure their messages.
"During both of their
presentations… the best way that I can explain it, it was like listening
to a teacher in health class giving a lecture about sex to a pre-teen,
yet prohibited from or unwilling to use certain proper anatomical terms
or even the necessary anatomical references," she stated, adding that
both Napolitano and Brennan were very careful to avoid using words and
phrases that in any way associated terror concerns with Islam or Islamic
ideology. Although she did not recall the prominent use of
"man-caused disasters" in place of terrorism by either speaker, she
noted their obvious unwillingness to make any references to Islamic
terrorism in their descriptions of recently disrupted terror plots.
For example, this source described Napolitano talking about
Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old, Afghan-born Muslim resident of
Denver and a follower of al Qaeda. Zazi, who pleaded guilty to
charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction on Monday, was
identified by federal authorities as a key player in what has been
described as the most serious terror plot since 9/11.
Investigators found evidence that Zazi was motivated to kill and injure
Americans based on of his beliefs in Islamic jihad.
Napolitano
instead described him generically as a "domestic extremist" and "never
once used the phrase Islamic terrorism" or made any reference to Islam,
jihad, or the ideology and mechanism that motivated Zazi and his
co-conspirators to plot attacks in New York, according to this source.
Rather, Napolitano spoke of the "need to study and analyze the
motivation behind these extremists, something that I thought should have
been quite obvious based on the amount and type of evidence uncovered in
that case, especially when speaking to a body of governors," stated this
source.
"I would characterize their entire presentation as quite
bizarre to say the least," she added.
John Brennan, who spoke of
the five Pakistani natives living in Virginia who traveled to al Qaeda
training camps in Pakistan, was equally circuitous in his presentation.
He specifically referred to a general concern of 'Americans' becoming
'domestic terrorists,' a phrase that seemed to intentionally include all
Americans and not any particular group. "Both seemed to purposely
include all Americans while refusing to cite any nationality or
ideology, which is something I found troubling in light of recent
historical events," stated this source.
"I could not believe that
Mr. Brennan used the generic reference 'non-governmental organization'
in place of actually naming the Council on American
Islamic Relations, the 'Islamic advocacy' group to which he was
referring. Also, the term 'religious leader' was used frequently
when describing a
Muslim imam associated with a terror plot, and 'religious
institutions' were used instead of mosques even when it was clear those
were being specifically referenced.
"The entire presentation
seemed quite 'strained' and an obvious departure from previous meetings
I've attended," she added. |
| Homeland Security Can't Even Protect Itself |
Corruption Chronicles is
reporting that the Homeland Security department has lost hundreds of
weapons.
In a baffling example of government incompetence, the
federal agency created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep America
safe has lost hundreds of weapons and some have ended up in the
possession of violent gangbangers and felons.
Remiss officers
working for the embattled Department of Homeland Security have lost
government-issued guns in bowling alleys, public bathrooms, unlocked
cars and a variety of unsecure areas, according to a scorching
27-page report published by the agency's inspector general.
Most of the lost weapons -- including military rifles, handguns and
shotguns -- have never been found, and at least 15 have been recovered
by local law enforcement officials in the possession of criminals, gang
members, and known drug dealers.
The majority of the losses
occurred because Homeland Security officers did not sufficiently secure
firearms in their possession, investigators determined. They
further point out that the lost firearms created an unnecessary risk to
the public -- which goes without saying. Americans may be relieved
to know however, that the abhorrent negligence has been met with "extra
training" and in some cases disciplinary actions.
Pretty bad,
huh? But, there's more.
According to Todd Shepherd,
Homeland Security also
lost more than 1,000 computers in in fiscal year 2008.
New
documents show that component agencies of DHS, specifically Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP),
combined to lose no less than 985 computers in fiscal year 2008.
Along with other component agencies in DHS, well over 1,000 computers
were lost.
But the inventories of lost stolen and damaged
equipment don't stop with just computers. They include radiation
detectors, night vision scopes (hundreds of them), night vision goggles,
lost vehicles, lost blackberries, computer servers, expensive radios and
radio repeaters. |
| Homeland Security Blows 1.3 Billion |
Skookums says the Department of Homeland
Security Reports that it has nothing to show for spending 1.3 billion
during the last five years to build a fence to keep out illegal aliens,
the fence along our border with Mexico doesn’t exist and the money is
gone.
Mark Borkowski, executive director of DHS’s
Secure Border Initiative, told a hearing of the House Subcommittee
on Management, Investigations and Oversight that the department will
likely scale back its plans to install sensors, cameras and radar
towers along the Southwest border.
Borkowski’s
admission came after withering testimony from Randolph Hite of the
Government Accountability Office on the state of the virtual fence
program, known as SBInet.
Hite said SBInet has been troubled
since its outset and plagued by frequently changing milestones,
management weaknesses and performance shortfalls. As a result,
he said, the Department has little to show after spending most of
the program’s $1.3 billion budget.
"In effect
DHS is saying it will have to invest more than a billion dollars
into SBInet before it will know whether doing so was economically
justified or cost effect vis-à-vis other technology alternatives,"
Hite said.
Apparently, management weakness is an excuse to
waste or abscond with 1.3 Billion dollars, in private industry
people would be fired and prosecuted; our government seems to think
we should give them another billion dollars to see if they can
manage the money more efficiently.
Continue reading
here . . . |
| We Don't Need No Steenkeen' Troops |
WeaselZippers
is reporting that Janet Napolitano says we don’t need troops along
the border with Mexico because the security situation is actually
improving.
The always entertaining
Secretary of Homeland Security
Janet Napolitano warned against militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border
and insisted that, despite a public outcry over illegal immigration and
violence in the area, security along the nearly 2000-mile-long dividing
line with Mexico is actually improving.
"This is a civilian
border," Napolitano said during a lunch Friday with reporters in
Washington, responding to a question about sending more U.S. National
Guard troops to beef up border security.
"The National Guard is
not designed to be a substitute for civilian law enforcement,"
Napolitano said. "Civilian law enforcement is being 'plussed-up'
at record rates. And it’s being 'plussed up' all along the border.
It’s being backed up by state of the art technology and it’s being
backed up by infrastructure and that’s the way you have a secure border
area."
Was "Big Sis" drunk when she made this speech?
Because no sober person would claim the raging narco-insurgency spilling
over the border with Mexico is getting better, as demonstrated by this
Sweetness & Light
item, "22 Killed In Fight 18 Miles From US Border."
MONTERREY, Mexico – A gun battle between Mexican
soldiers and suspected drug cartel members left 22 dead at ranch near
the U.S. border, the Defense Department said Thursday. All the
dead were suspected gang members, the department said in a statement.
One soldier was injured.
And yet we are not even allowed to ask
them for their driver’s license.
The military said the drug
suspects provoked the gun battle Wednesday morning, opening fire on
soldiers conducting reconnaissance patrols at a ranch on the outskirts
of Ciudad Mier, a northeastern town about 18 miles (30 kilometers) south
of the border with Texas.
"18 miles south of the border?"
Then what are we worried about?
Soldiers seized 55 grenades, 18
rifles, four handguns guns, 99 ammunition clips, 1,540 rounds of
ammunition and vehicles at the ranch, the statement said. They
also found military style uniforms, which are frequently used by drug
gangs staging attacks. |
| Guess Who Ordered The Nude Body Scanners |
Bob Unruh says that a constitutional attorney
preparing to legally challenge the Transportation Security
Administration's enhanced screening procedures -- which reveal a
virtually nude image of passengers -- says airline passengers have
Barack Obama to thank for the process.
"Legislation has been
proposed to mandate full-body scanners and make them the primary
screening method in all U.S. airports by 2013, but Congress has yet to
act on it," John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, wrote
in a new commentary.
"So we can thank President Obama for this
frontal assault on our Fourth Amendment rights. Mind you, this is
the same man who insisted that 'we will not succumb to a siege mentality
that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we
cherish as Americans,'" Whitehead said.
"Yet in the wake of the
bumbling underwear bomber's botched Christmas Day attempt to blow up a
Detroit-bound plane, Obama directed the Homeland Security Department to
acquire $1 billion in advanced-technology equipment, including body
scanners, for screening passengers,'" he continued.
Concerns
over the invasion of privacy by TSA scanners, described as voyeurism by
critics, along with the "molestation" of the associated "enhanced"
pat-downs and the health concerns from the blasts of radiation have
reached a critical mass.
Groups have formed to organize
passenger boycotts and prepare protests at airports, calling for a
"National Opt-Out Day" on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
Whitehead said he's working on assembling numerous allegations regarding
the constitutionality of the scanners in light of the Fourth Amendment's
provision that the "right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable
cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
"It's a huge civil liberties issue. In the United States, we've
never before strip-searched -- full-body strip searches -- unless
there's reasonable suspicion of some kind of criminal activity."
For the third straight day, TSA officials declined to respond to
requests for comment or explanation.
"We've gotten tons of
e-mails, mainly from females about the invasions of the body scanners,"
Whitehead said. "In one case, a mother [told how] her 12-year-old
daughter was pulled out of the security line, and [TSA] did touch her
breast and vaginal areas.
"This is an unreasonable search and
seizure," he said.
Rutherford said any court adhering to the
Constitution would find that so.
Continue reading
here . . . |
| Obama Plans Pull-Back Of National Guard |
So, Obama should use the American military to
enforce his progressive agenda, but withdraw those force from
America's Third War.
Behold, the progressive agenda!
Fox News
is reporting the Obama Administration plans to withdraw National
Guard troops from the Texas, New Mexico and California borders by the
end February under a new Southwest security plan, even as turmoil in
Mexican border cities grows, according to documents obtained by The
Washington Examiner.
A letter sent to various members of the
Texas Congressional delegation from Texas' Gov. Rick Perry's office
says, "In February, 2011, the Texas, New Mexico, and California National
Guard forces that were deployed to the border in September, 2010, under
President's Obama's Southwest Border Augmentation Plan, will have 30
days to complete a total draw down of forces."
The roughly 550
troops will have the month of February to redeploy back to their units,
Texas Congressman Ted Poe told The Examiner. Troops would not be pulled
off the Arizona border under the plan, and about 100 of the troops would
re-deploy there from other states, officials said.
Poe received
the letter today. His office confirmed with Department of Homeland
Security officials that the plan came from the administration.
Obama's new Southwest security plan
is to have no security, and to let America's Third War continue, or
worsen. He is hell-bent on creating chaos in America.
Glorious
leader is demonstrably anti-American. |
| Rights Of Muslim Suicide Bombers Supersede
Those Of US Citizens |
DrJohn says the horror stories about TSA
screening procedures are now legion:
A cancer survivor
forced
to remove her prosthetic breast.
A man with a urostomy left
covered in urine.
A 12 year old girl
forced to submit to being naked in a scanner.
A rough
search into her crotch
leaves a woman in tears.
Pants pulled down because of
artificial knees, nipple rings removed, TSA agents screaming, "I
have power!"
I have had enough. Barack Obama should be
impeached and removed from office.
He appointed the most inept
and ignorant Attorney General in the history of this country. Both
Holder and Obama have nothing but contempt for the Constitution.
Barack Obama appointed the single most stupid person in the United
States to be head of Homeland Security. Obama is determined to
punish the citizens of the United States in order to preserve the rights
of Muslim suicide bombers. He is determined to humiliate all of us
in order to protect them.
If a vehicle is involved in the
commission of a crime, police don’t stop ALL vehicles and search them.
If a suspect in a crime is described as a white male aged 25-30,
police do not stop elderly black women and detain them.
It’s
called profiling.
Banks profile. Insurance companies
profile. It’s been a part of life for a long time. It would
be single most effective method at discovering would-be suicide bombers.
And it is the one thing this damned idiotic administration won’t do.
There's a lot more. Continue reading
here . . .
Obama is
violating the constitutional rights of 99.9% of the flying public,
because he refuses to psychology (not racial) profile the .1% of people
who are a threat. Political correctness will be the death of us
all. |
| Shirtless Boy Searched At Utah Airport |
Paul Foy
is reporting that a YouTube
video showing a shirtless young boy
resisting a pat-down at Salt Lake City's airport is renewing criticism
of search methods for travelers.
Utah Valley University student
Luke Tait shot the video Friday while waiting in a security line. It has
been viewed on YouTube more than 765,000 times.
Tait said the boy
appeared so shy he couldn't keep his arms raised for a pat-down, and the
father removed his son's shirt out of frustration to speed up the
search.
"I was shocked and realized something crazy was going on,
so I took my BlackBerry off the conveyor belt and started recording,"
Tait told The Associated Press on Monday from Oxford, Miss., where he
traveled for Thanksgiving.
"A couple of times the father raised
the arms of the boy. That ended up not being enough, so the father got
frustrated and tore his boy's shirt off," Tait said.
That
prompted a security officer to protest, "Sir, sir!"
The
Transportation Security Administration said in a blog posting that
nobody has to disrobe at an airport checkpoint. Passengers need only
remove shoes, coats and jackets for a screening
 You vill
be groped, and you vill like it!
Related: Spreadin' the glove. Is
TSA infecting the U.S.? Latex coverings 'have been in crotches,
armpits, touching people who may be ill.' It is flu season.
Coming to an airport near you -- body cavity searches. |
| 70% of Americans Support Adopting Israeli
Profiling System |
Zip has
an item on the question, "should the US adopt Israeli-style airport
security measures?" A debate over just that issue has been running at
full steam over the past few days due to profound public criticism of
invasive security techniques which include a full body search and pat
down in intimate areas.
 Notice,
the inspector feeling up
that nun is in full Muslim regalia. How's that for irony?
House of Representatives
delegate for Utah Jason Chaffetz, on Monday called for a probe into
methods employed by Transportation Security Administration agents and
for a look into alternative methods which would be based on the use of
sniffer dogs with secondary use of screening machines and implementing
behavioral profiling as Israel does.
In the past, Americans
vetoed the security system used at Ben Gurion Airport claiming it casts
suspicion on one sector in an inclusive fashion, namely, against Arabs
and Muslims. White House Press Secretary Robert
Gibbels lied on
Monday when he said that the reason US authorities refused to adopt Israeli methods
was because "Israel has one international airport and we have 450 of
them that makes all the difference" -- Israel has 2 international
airports --
Ben Gurion International Airport and
Ovda International Airport and
10
domestic airports. The United States
has 149 international airports.
And yet, it seems that the
American public disagrees. A Washington Post and ABC network poll
revealed that 70% of Americans support adopting the Israeli profiling
system and its implementation in US airports.
Israel has 7 million citizens. We
have 310 million. That ratio is 1 to 44.
Israel
has 2 international airports. We have 149. That ratio is 1
to 74. So Gibbels' argument against psychological profiling is a
lie. Now, there's a surprise.
Obama's administration lies
to the American People all the time. It's what they do.
After all, these socialists believe deeply that the ends justifies the
means.
Let's understand, psychological profiling is not racial profiling.
Customs and Immigration does it every time Americans return to the
States after traveling abroad. Most of us have been through it.
The C&I
inspector reads a question from his or her computer display -- you
respond -- and the computer displays the next question for the
inspector, who continues to ask questions until he or she is satisfied
you are not a smuggler or a threat.
This IS psychological
profiling. The government does it today. The FBI does it.
Your local police do it. Your banks and credit agencies do it.
But the Obama Administration won't do it because the airport pat downs
have less to do with security than control of the American People.
This IS fascism, pure and
simple.
Remember Benjamin Franklin's
warning,
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." |
| Obama's America -- A Laughingstock |
|
| Why Airline Security Doesn’t Work |
Daniel Greenfield three men go on a camping
trip. On the way there they’re told by a park ranger to be careful
because their campsite is located near some dangerous animals.
What dangerous animals? The park ranger won’t say, because that
would be profiling. "Just keep in mind," he tells them, "that
people who camped there in the past never made it back alive."
As
the sun goes down, they pick up their hunting rifles and stand watch for
dangerous animals. But they don’t know what dangerous animals
they’re watching out for. And they don’t want to profile. So
they keep watch for crickets as much as for bears, and for deer as much
as for mountain lions. A rabbit, an owl or a bullfrog all equally
frighten them out of their wits. They open fire on mosquitoes and
stand watch against monstrous raccoons. By the end of the night,
they can hardly see anything or react to danger. That morning, a
pair of mountain lions stroll lazily into their camp and find them
snoring away.
This little story illustrates why we can’t do
things this way. Because it’s stupid and it’s suicidal.
Human survival is based on recognizing threats, not on reacting to all
stimuli because one of them might be threatening, but we don’t want to
single it out and make it feel bad. If we actually did things that
way, we’d all be dead by now.
There are three stages to coping
with a threat. First you have to recognize the threat.
Second, you have to formulate a plan for dealing with the threat.
Third, you have to implement the plan.
So far we haven’t even
made to the first stage. We haven’t recognized the threat.
At the airline security level, we insist that the threat is completely
random. Anyone at all could be a terrorist. There’s no
specific ideology or countries that are sources of terrorism.
Instead terrorism is like some sort of disease. Anyone at all
could be a carrier. And so we have to watch out for everyone.
All the time. And like those hunters, we’re either on alert all
the time or we’re completely apathetic. We’re either security
manic or security depressive. We go from letting everyone pass to
strip searching everybody. There’s no rational approach to danger,
because we don’t have a rational plan. We just go from 0 to 60
every time there’s a new threat.
Since we failed the first stage,
we can’t move on to the second stage. We can’t recognize the
threat, so every plan we formulate to deal with is doomed from the
start. Instead of addressing a known threat, we go down a lot of
blind alleys. Technology keeps getting abused as a shortcut in
another episode of security theater, as new machines are bought and
installed. But technology is "dumb." Machines are a tool,
not a plan. Like any tool, they can let us do more. But like
all tools, they’re only as smart as the people using them. And the
people using them are trained to be dumb.
"Dumb" is the only
policy that can exist in the absence of intelligent threat recognition.
To be "smart" you have to make it to the second stage. When you
can’t even identify the threat, then you’re hopelessly stuck on stupid,
no matter what your IQ might be, or how many diplomas are hanging on
your wall. And if you’re just a glorified security guard following
a "dumb" policy, then the outcome is going to be really dumb.
Continue reading
here .
. . |
| Obama's Police State |
Jeffrey T. Kuhner says Obama is engaging in a
relentless assault on our freedoms and constitutional government.
The growing backlash against the new
Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) airport screening procedures signifies that
Americans finally may have had enough.
There is a grass-roots
revolt against state-sanctioned sexual harassment. And who can
blame the protesters? Children are stripped of their shirts, and
their private parts are touched. Nuns and old ladies are groped by
intrusive TSA agents. Breasts have been fondled. Men's
crotches have been patted down. Full-body scanners show images of
people naked -- a clear violation of privacy and civil liberties.
The administration insists that the enhanced procedures are vital
for national security. The rationale: Last year's underwear bomber
nearly blew up a plane flying over Detroit. Hence, everyone's
private parts are now the property of the federal government -- at least
when flying.
This is wrong and dangerous. Airport screening
procedures have been a huge experiment in mass political correctness.
For fear of insulting Muslims, the U.S. government has insisted that all
Americans take off their shoes, pull out their belts and walk through
metal detectors at airports. Americans have patiently put up with these
inconveniences. But now, for many, enough is enough. "Don't
touch my junk" has become a national rallying cry.
The central
problem with modern airport security is that it falsely assumes that
every person -- each of the 7 billion people who inhabit the planet-is
an equal terrorist threat. The 80-year-old Irish Catholic nun, the
3-year-old toddler, the 61-year-old bladder cancer survivor whose urine
bag was punctured by TSA apparatchiks -- all of them, according to
Obama, are potential suicide bombers. They're not. To
pretend they are is to engage in leftist multicultural fantasy. It
embodies the triumph of ideology over reality -- the deranged belief
that anyone at any time is a lurking jihadist.
Islamic terrorism
is not an open-ended, universal characteristic. Rather, it is a
specific, narrowly defined phenomenon. It is fueled by Muslim
extremists bent on waging a holy war against the West. Its
perpetrators tend to be young adults from the Middle East, North Africa,
the Arab world and the Muslim ghettos of Europe. Most jihadists
fit this profile. What is needed is not more groping,
crotch-grabbing or nude screening, but better intelligence-gathering,
random checking and targeted profiling.
Washington insists on
perpetrating the illusion that a Christian grandmother in Iowa poses the
same possible national security threat as a 19-year-old Yemenite
exchange student majoring in Islamic studies. Hence, America is
squandering precious resources and manpower, as well as abrogating basic
civil liberties and humiliating its population, in order to appease the
sensitivities of the Muslim lobby.
Moreover, the new TSA
procedures mark another major step in Obama's drive to impose state
socialism. If anyone else did what TSA agents do regularly, they
rightly would be charged with sexual assault. Obama has done the
unthinkable: He has extended the federal government's reach into our
most private, intimate body parts. Big Brother not only watches us
in the nude, he can routinely molest us at will.
The
administration is not restricting its unprecedented power grab to
airports. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently
said that trains, boats and subways also may implement the same
screening procedures. If the White House has its way, Americans
will be getting felt up on the Metro and Amtrak every day -- morning,
afternoon and night.
Ultimately, these measures are not only
degrading and wrongheaded. They are profoundly illiberal,
reflecting a deep-seated contempt for individual rights and civil
dignity. They also reveal a radical leftist outlook that views
Americans not as self-governing citizens, but as subjects of a nanny
state.
Continue reading
here . . . |
| Help You Make It To Your Flight |
The two enemies of the people are
criminals and government. So let us tie the second down with the
chains of the constitution, so the second will not become the legalized
version of the first. -- Thomas Jefferson |
| The Dumbest Woman In America |
|
Last Christmas when a Dutch passenger prevented the Crotch
Bomber from blowing up a commercial airplane over Detroit, Janet
Napolitano declared "the system worked."
In September, Napolitano
said we don’t need troops along the border with Mexico because the
security situation is actually improving.
Now she declares that a
year consists of 364 days:
"What I say to the American people is that…
thousands of people are working 24/7, 364 days a year to keep the
American people safe."
You can't make this stuff up. "Big Sis" has
to be the most brain-dead person in government, and she's in charge of
your security and safety.
Of course, if you're cynical, you're
thinking that she knows exactly what she's talking about, because the
365th day is the day the next attack occurs, and she's just covering her
butt.
Don't you feel secure now? |
| |
©
Copyright Beckwith 2010
All right reserved
|
