Homeland Security Takes Back Seat To Politics

The third time was the charm. After two nominees had to drop out, the Transportation Security Administration has a new administrator. Former FBI Deputy Director John Pistole (interesting name for a someone in law enforcement, no?) was recently confirmed to head the agency. Unions have been pushing to get their hands on TSA employees regardless of how that would affect airport security, but Pistole has not yet taken an official position on collective bargaining for TSA officers.

In the meantime, according to FNC, many other key jobs in homeland security remain unfilled:

Vacancies in the United States' intelligence leadership, including the director of national intelligence and his chief deputies, are raising alarms over a potential "train wreck" of vulnerability, intelligence sources and others on Capitol Hill tell Fox News.

The goal of the national director is to maximize assets across the intelligence community. But the senior Republican on the House intelligence committee says that is not happening because the position, the nation’s top intelligence official, is now subordinate to the White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.

“The other DNIs have always been very, very professional. They've never been political. Under this administration, John Brennan has politicized intelligence. That's the danger here,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan said, adding that Brennan is not subject to congressional oversight as a presidential appointee.

The job opened up when previous Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair was forced out last month after a series of apparent intelligence failures raised questions about the country's preparedness for detecting and stopping new terror plots.

If Hoekstra's allegations are valid, then the Justice Department isn't the only agency that has been politicized in opposition to the public interest.

Along these lines, a proponent of sanctuary city policies recently got a key job in the administration:

The widow of a Houston police officer killed by an illegal immigrant was "shocked" to learn that the city's former police chief has landed a top immigration job with the Obama administration, her lawyer told FoxNews.com on [June 25].

That's because Joslyn Johnson, whose husband, Rodney Johnson, was killed in 2006, is suing former Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt for failing to enforce federal immigration laws. She claims her husband would be alive today if the city had bothered to check up on the gunman's immigration status.

Now that Hurtt is taking a job to oversee partnerships between federal and local officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Johnson -- and other critics -- say they're concerned the official who resisted immigration enforcement in Houston will now be in charge of promoting it.

France's Government Employees: "Fonctionnaires" are Dysfunctional

In this weak economy, millions of private sector workers have been thrown out of work, or forced to accept pay and/or benefits cuts. In the meantime, public sector salaries are out of control, pushing the states and the federal government to the brink of bankruptcy. Why should taxpayer-supported government employees be immune from the "magic of the marketplace"?

When someone like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie seeks to rein in the bloated public sector bureaucracy, the unions and the media typically start throwing around scare tactics about reduced police safety services among other things. No one wants first responders to be taken off the grid; it's the jobs of do-nothing paper pushers that should come under scrutiny. For one thing, have you ever wondered about those "unessential" employees on the state payroll that are allowed to stay home following a snowstorm?

Here's an example from France via the London Telegraph in which a whistleblower puts the "dis" in dysfunctional:

A French civil servant who lifted the lid on the wastefulness of the country's state sector in a book describing a "five-hours-a-week" culture where people competed to take the longest coffee breaks has been suspended.

Zoé Shepard, her pen name, confirmed France's worst fears about its "fonctionnaires" – its 5.2 million civil servants – in a book recounting how they compete to see who will hover longest at the coffee machine, draw up sick notes to stay weeks away from the office or while away the day on Facebook.

In Absolument Dé-bor-dé (Absolutely Snowed Under), subtitled How to Make 35 hours Last a Month, nepotism is rife and taxpayer's money wasted, with one local civil servant even signing off his visit to a prostitute as "travel expenses".

DOJ Whistleblower: Justice Department is Lawless

Is anyone really surprised that the Obama is presiding over the most politicized Justice Department in history? Consider the purely political lawsuit challenging the Arizona immigration law, dropping the Philadelphia voter intimidation case despite a default judgment against the perpetrators, and now allegations that the DOJ facilitates ACORN-like vote fraud according to whistleblower J. Christian Adams, a lawyer who worked in the agency's Voting Rights section:

In November 2009, the entire Voting Section was invited to a meeting with Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes, a political employee serving at the pleasure of the attorney general. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Motor Voter enforcement decisions.

The room was packed with dozens of Voting Section employees when she made her announcement regarding the provisions related to voter list integrity:

We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law. It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.

Jaws dropped around the room.

It is one thing to silently adopt a lawless policy of refusing to enforce a provision of federal law designed to bring integrity to elections. It is quite another to announce the lawlessness to a room full of people who have sworn an oath to fairly enforce the law.

Adams recently gave this interview on FNC following his testimony before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission:



Should the Republicans take control of Congress after the November, one of their first legislation actions should be to require photo ID in all 50 states to vote. This in addition to requiring full enforcement of Section 8 of the Motor Voter Law.

Blatant vote fraud is what the Democrats really mean by voter "outreach." That's how "Stuart Smalley," among others got elected to Congress. Democrats want every vote counted rather than every legal vote counted. Think of it as a form of community organizing...

Addendum: The lawyer (and now federal prosecutor) who represented the American Taliban is quarterbacking the DOJ's legal effort to block Arizona's immigration law. That speaks volumes about the administration's priorities, does it not?

Judge Martin Feldman, American Hero

He may be overturned or forced to recuse himself by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, but Louisiana federal judge Martin Feldman, a Reagan appointee, has joined Chris Christie and Harry Alford in In General Counsel's roster of American heroes for trying to prevent the Obama administration from totally destroying the economy of the states that border the Gulf of Mexico:

The Obama administration’s efforts to suspend deepwater oil drilling were dealt another setback in court on Thursday when the federal judge who struck down the administration’s six-month moratorium refused to delay the decision’s effects.

The Interior Department petitioned Judge Martin L.C. Feldman of the United States District Court in New Orleans to grant a stay of his decision, which lifted a ban on new drilling projects and on work on the 33 rigs already in place in the Gulf.

But Judge Feldman said he was denying the delay for the same reasons he gave for his June 22 decision: that the moratorium was doing “irreparable harm” to the businesses in the gulf that depend on drilling activity and that the government had not given sufficient basis for the moratorium.

The White House imposed the moratorium in May, about a month after a fatal explosion and fire on April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which left an undersea well spewing crude oil into the gulf. The moratorium, intended to give time for improvements in rig safety measures, was “blanket, generic, indeed punitive,” the judge ruled.

Update: On July 9, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld Judge Feldman's ruling while the government's appeal is pending. The case before the Fifth Circuit is on the fast track for a late August hearing.

Supreme Court Upholds Second Amendment Gun Rights

If a Supreme Court nomination proceeding falls in the woods, and no one hears it, does it make a sound? With all that is going on in the news cycle, the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings have become almost an afterthought (the same thing occurred with the Sotomayor confirmation). The Democrats have the votes for confirmation, so it's pretty much just political theater.

When it comes to who gets appointed to lifetime positions in the federal judiciary, elections have consequences as the old chestnut goes. Absent the unforeseen, another liberal will unfortunately join the High Court. Democrats have a history of trashing the judicial nominations made by Republican presidents, but Senate Republicans don't play that same loathesome game.

In the meantime, you don't have to be a gun owner to applaud the Supreme Court's decision that upheld the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens for what the Court called "the core lawful purpose of self-defense."

The Supreme Court ruled for the first time Monday that the Second Amendment provides all Americans a fundamental right to bear arms, a long-sought victory for gun rights advocates who have chafed at federal, state and local efforts to restrict gun ownership.

The court was considering a restrictive handgun law in Chicago and one of its suburbs that was similar to the District law that it ruled against in 2008. The 5 to 4 decision does not strike any other gun control measures currently in place, but it provides a legal basis for challenges across the country where gun owners think that government has been too restrictive. 

Writing for the 5-4 majority in McDonald v. Chicago, Justice Alito ruled that the Second Amendment "is fully applicable to the States."

Two years ago, in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. ___ (2008), we held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense, and we struck down a District of Columbia law that banned the possession of handguns in the home.The city of Chicago (City) and the village of Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, have laws that are similar to the District of Columbia’s, but Chicago and Oak Park argue that their laws are constitutional because the Second Amendment has no application to the States. We have previously held that most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights apply with full force to both the Federal Government and the States...

Our decision in Heller points unmistakably to the answer. Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day, and in Heller, we held that individual self-defense is “the central component” of the Second Amendment right...

In sum, it is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.

Plainclothes Dutch Officers Try to Curb Anti-Semitic Street Violence

Undercover cops will try to thwart anti-Semitic violence in the Netherlands. Helen Thomas said that the Jews should "go home." Which--given the situation in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe--leads to the logical question: What happens if they are already home?

Paul Belien explains in Hudson New York:

"Decoy Jew" is a new phrase in the Netherlands. Jews are no longer safe in major Dutch cities such as Amsterdam. Since 1999, Jewish organizations in the Netherlands have been complaining that Jews who walking the Dutch streets wearing skullcaps risk verbal and physical attacks by young Muslims. Being insulted, spat at or attacked are some of the risks associated with being recognizable as a Jew in contemporary Western Europe.

Last week, a television broadcast showed how three Jews with skullcaps, two adolescents and an adult, were harassed within thirty minutes of being out in the streets of Amsterdam. Young Muslims spat at them, mocked them, shouted insults and made Nazi salutes. "Dirty Jew, go back to your own country," a group of Moroccan youths shouted at a young indigenous Dutch Jew...

In an effort to arrest the culprits who terrorize Jews, the Amsterdam authorities have ordered police officers to walk the streets disguised as Jews. The Dutch police already disguise officers as "decoy prostitutes, decoy gays and decoy grannies" to deter muggings and attacks on prostitutes, homosexuals and the elderly. Apparently sending out the decoys has helped reduce street crime....

The deployment of "decoy Jews", however, is being criticized by leftist parties such as the Dutch Greens. Evelien van Roemburg, an Amsterdam counselor of the Green Left Party, says that using a decoy by the police amounts to provoking a crime, which is itself a criminal offence under Dutch law.

Belien says that Jews are in particular bailing on the city of Antwerp, which has (or had) a large Jewish community, for Israel, America, or the U.K.

What is more offensive--anti-Semitic criminals or the leftists that for some weird reason feel the need to pander to them? And how long would the Socialists or the Greens last under a totalitarian theocracy?

Top Chef Serves Up Some Propaganda

Bravo Network's hit reality show Top Chef, starring culinary judges Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio (and based in D.C. this time around) usually provides fun, entertaining, and apolitical content. But last night's unusually boring installment came garnished with some political propaganda revolving around "underfunded" public school cafeterias and efforts to encourage students to eat more healthy fare.

What Jonah Goldberg writes at NationalReviewOnline is almost exactly what was going through our mind during the episode:

But Holy Crisco Batman, the agitproppy sermonizing of the whole thing was infuriating: The crocodile tears, the quivering lips, the personal testimonials about how passionate the chefs are about the issue, the righteousness about our poor underfunded schools. But what was worse was the ignorance and innumeracy. Watching the show, you'd have no idea that DC public schools are among the best funded in the country ($25,000 or so per pupil – on par with DC’s most expensive private schools). The problem is they are among the worst run...If kids are getting bad meals in DC public schools it's not because they're being starved for resources it's because the teacher's unions and bloated bureaucrats running the schools are, quite literally, stealing food from the mouths of poor children.

According to Top Chef, schools get a mere two dollars and change per student per meal. So the contestants were given 2 bucks and change per student to cook a nutritious meal for fifty kids...Here's the problem. No one bothered to mention the fact that the schools buy in bulk at the wholesale level...But they kept using this low per-student amount to make it sound like the only reason public schools don’t serve more nutritious food is because school cafeteria’s are underfunded. And they may be underfunded, but the fault doesn’t lie with American taxpayers whose consciousness needs to be raised. They pay more than enough already. The fault lies with incompetent bureaucrats, greedy unions and cowardly politicians.

As Goldberg adds, no one watches Top Chef for political grandstanding. Just the opposite. The intense competition among the "cheftestants" is supposed to provide an escape from all that. And this is only the second episode of the program's D.C.-based seventh season. We may wind up with a case of indigestion.