Trump again proves he is a dictator-want-to-be and will not accept that the Constitution, Congress, or the courts can limit him. Trump does not believe in the rule of law.
He wants a 'Pennywise' in charge of Homeland Security.
SUMMARY:On Sunday, President Trump announced the resignation of Homeland Security Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen, who reportedly was forced to step down amid Trump’s growing frustration with the growing number of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Amna Nawaz reports and joins Judy Woodruff with Yamiche Alcindor to discuss why Nielsen fell out of favor with Trump and what the shakeup means for immigration policy.
SUMMARY:More than 300 Central Americans have arrived in Tijuana, Mexico, in recent days, and plan on Sunday to ask for asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry [San Diego]. But President Trump has tweeted that Homeland Security is instructed to turn them away. Special correspondent Jean Guerrero of KPBS reports.
There ARE traitors in the United States of America, and they are Republicans.
Like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who refused to make the American public aware of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence conclusion: Vladimir Putin's government deliberately interfered with America's presidential election at a 'secret' briefings.
Is there any doubt that if this situation had been reversed, a foreign country being caught influencing our Presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton, that the Republicans would have gone berserk and attacked President Obama, Hillary, and all Democrats?
In the lead-up to Trump's nomination, the GOP was fractured and in disarray (just look at how many candidates they presented). So now that their despicable candidate Trump has won and they have Congress in their firm grasp, they are not going to risk their position, even to the point of being traitors to the U.S. by allowing a foreign government to hijack our elections.
Just watch. Russia will get what they really want when Trump drops the U.S. sanctions on Russia that were imposed because of Russian's military intervention in Ukraine.
A senior U.S. official, briefed on an intelligence presentation made to members of Congress, told the Post that it's “the consensus view” of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia's alleged crimes had one specific purpose: “Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected.”
There's been some speculation in recent months that Putin's suspected interference was intended to undermine American democracy in general, casting doubts about the strength of our system and its institutions. The Washington Post's report indicates that those assessments were incomplete: Russia wanted Donald Trump in the White House, so Russian officials allegedly took a variety of criminal steps to ensure that outcome.
The White House, swayed by the evidence, wanted bipartisan support to pushback against Russian intrusion, and in mid-September, President Obama dispatched counter-terrorism adviser Lisa Monaco, FBI Director James Comey, and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to brief top members of Congress (the “Gang of 12”). Obama didn't want to be seen as using intelligence for partisan or electoral ends, so he sought a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” against foreign manipulation of our democracy.
That didn't happen, in large part because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused, raising questions about whether the Republican leader intentionally put his party's interests ahead of the nation's.
Indeed, given the fact that a variety of GOP leaders were made aware of Russia's attempts to hijack the American election for its own purposes, Evan McMullin, an independent presidential candidate and former GOP policy staffer on Capitol Hill, asserted over the weekend, “Republican leaders knew Russia was undermining our democracy during the election and they chose to ignore it.”
SUMMARY: More than 21 million Americans had personal data stolen from files held by the Office of Personnel Management. Anyone who went through background checks to apply for a government position since 2000 has been affected, according to the OPM. That makes the data breach six times larger than was originally disclosed. Gwen Ifill learns more from Josh Lederman of the Associated Press.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):More than 21 million Americans had personal information stolen from government files in a data breach that was six times as large as originally disclosed. The information was hacked from the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, which said today it is highly likely that anyone who went through background checks to apply for a government position since 2000 was affected.
Joining us to fill in the blanks is Josh Lederman of the Associated Press, who has been covering the story.
In terms of scope, we know this is huge, but how is it different from the earlier hacks we have heard about, Josh?
JOSH LEDERMAN, Associated Press: Well, what we’re finding out now, Gwen, is not only were many more Americans affected than we previously knew, but just what kinds of data.
We’re talking about very personal data that most people would be very uncomfortable knowing is out there. We’re talking about health histories, their criminal histories, their educational and residency backgrounds, as well as interviews that they conducted with members of OPM, Office of Personnel Management, or other people conducting background checks in the process of applications to get a security clearance.
SUMMARY: The U.S. government wants to be able to read certain data that's inaccessible to intelligence agencies due to encryption. At a Senate hearing, FBI director James Comey said the privacy technology can be a double-edged sword, detrimental to public safety. Gwen Ifill speaks to former Homeland Security Department official Stewart Baker and Susan Landau of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Earlier in the day, the Obama administration went to Capitol Hill to make its case to allow government great access to encrypted information. Essentially, the government wants to be able to read certain data that intelligence agencies cannot get now because it’s been protected with special codes. That’s at the heart of an ongoing battle with tech companies.
JAMES COMEY, FBI Director: Encryption is a great thing. It keeps us all safe. It protects innovation.
GWEN IFILL: But, FBI Director James Comey warned at Senate hearings today, it’s also a double-edged sword. That’s because the technologies that seal off smartphones from surveillance also impede efforts to track criminals and terrorists.
JAMES COMEY: We are moving inexorably to a place where all of our lives, all of our papers and effects, all of our communications will be covered by universal strong encryption. And that is a world that in some ways is wonderful and in some ways has serious public safety ramifications.
GWEN IFILL: Google, Apple and other tech firms have ramped up data encryption in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations of sweeping government surveillance. They’re also responding to stepped-up hacking coming from Russia and China.
But, at the same time, Islamic State followers and other militants are now using encrypted communications to recruit at a rapid pace. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates underscored that point today.
SALLY YATES, Deputy Attorney General: ISIL currently communicates on Twitter, sending communications to thousands of would-be followers right here in our country. When someone responds and the conversations begin, they are then directed to encrypted platforms for further communication.
And even with a court order, we can’t see those communications. This is a serious threat. And our inability to access these communications with valid court orders is a real national security problem.
GWEN IFILL: And the FBI’s Comey suggested it’s just a matter of time before that leads to a terror attack.
JAMES COMEY: We are stopping these things so far through tremendous hard work, the use of sources, the use of online undercovers, but it is incredibly difficult. I cannot see me stopping these indefinitely.
SUMMARY: The U.S. Senate took a hard look at airport security after a damning report found that fake explosives, weapons and other banned items went unnoticed in 67 of 70 tests, while another report found that the TSA failed to identify 73 employees with unspecified links to terrorism. Judy Woodruff discusses the lapses with Jack Riley of RAND National Security Research Division.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The U.S. Senate took a hard look at airport safety today and two new accounts questioning the effectiveness of the Transportation Security Administration.
MAN: This Senate hearing will come to order.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The Senate hearing came a week after the leak of a damning report on the TSA’s failures. The federal Department of Homeland Security, TSA’s parent agency, found fake explosives, weapons and other banned items went unnoticed in 67 of 70 tests.
Today, Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse questioned John Roth, the inspector general who wrote the report.
SEN. BEN SASSE, R-Neb.: Do you think it’s possible that TSA really could really have not understood how grave their problem was before last week’s leaked report?
JOHN ROTH, Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security: You know, it’s something that we think about all the time. I mean, do they truly understand the nature of the risk that they face? Candidly, I worry about that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Others said they’re worried that a push for reduced airport wait times has actually harmed security.
Rebecca Roering is assistant TSA director at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.
REBECCA ROERING, Assistant Federal Security Director, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport:TSA is handing out pre-check status like Halloween candy in an effort to expedite passengers as quickly as possible, despite self-admitted security gaps that are being created by the process.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And we are joined now by the man tasked with protecting the country from future terrorist attacks, among other things.
As Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson oversees some 240,000 workers, spread across 22 government agencies. In addition to counterterrorism, he’s responsible for everything from border security, to immigration and customs enforcement, to natural disasters.
Secretary Johnson, we welcome you back to the NewsHour.
JEH JOHNSON, Secretary of Homeland Security: Thank you, Judy. Good to be here.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So we’re now 12-and-a-half years past 9/11. How much safer is the United States today than it was then?
JEH JOHNSON: Well, I think we have come a long way since 9/11, which happens to be my birthday, so I remember the day well. I’m a New Yorker. I was in Manhattan on September 11, 2001.
We have come a long way in terms of our counterterrorism efforts. I think we have learned how to do a pretty good job at detecting a number of terrorist threats to the homeland. But we have to be vigilant in a number of respects.
Al-Qaida is now a much more decentralized entity, with affiliates. And we have to always be vigilant in terms of potential homegrown threats, the so-called lone wolf. And we saw an example of that with the Boston Marathon bombing last year.
So we have got to be vigilant on a number of fronts. I still believe that counterterrorism needs to be the cornerstone of the Department of Homeland Security’s mission.
U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government’s top-secret budget.
The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses the money or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress.
The 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program details the successes, failures and objectives of the 16 spy agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, which has 107,035 employees.
The summary describes cutting-edge technologies, agent recruiting and ongoing operations. The Post is withholding some information after consultation with U.S. officials who expressed concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods. Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that The Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online.
“The United States has made a considerable investment in the Intelligence Community since the terror attacks of 9/11, a time which includes wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology, and asymmetric threats in such areas as cyber-warfare,” Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. wrote in response to inquiries from The Post.
“Our budgets are classified as they could provide insight for foreign intelligence services to discern our top national priorities, capabilities and sources and methods that allow us to obtain information to counter threats,” he said.
Among the notable revelations in the budget summary:
Spending by the CIA has surged past that of every other spy agency, with $14.7 billion in requested funding for 2013. The figure vastly exceeds outside estimates and is nearly 50 percent above that of the National Security Agency, which conducts eavesdropping operations and has long been considered the behemoth of the community.
The CIA and the NSA have begun aggressive new efforts to hack into foreign computer networks to steal information or sabotage enemy systems, embracing what the budget refers to as “offensive cyber operations.”
Long before Snowden’s leaks, the U.S. intelligence community worried about “anomalous behavior” by employees and contractors with access to classified material. The NSA planned to ward off a “potential insider compromise of sensitive information” by re-investigating at least 4,000 people this year who hold high-level security clearances.
U.S. intelligence officials take an active interest in friends as well as foes. Pakistan is described in detail as an “intractable target,” and counterintelligence operations “are strategically focused against [the] priority targets of China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Israel.” The latter is a U.S. ally but has a history of espionage attempts against the United States.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): There was new information today about the closure of American embassies and consulates in the Muslim world.
According to a number of news organizations, the United States intercepted communications between the leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahri, and the terrorist branch of that organization based in Yemen. According to these reports, al-Zawahri asked his colleagues to carry out an attack as early as yesterday. American embassies and consulates in 19 cities around the world remained shut today as diplomats and travelers alike grappled with the fallout from the closings which were announced this past Friday.
As travelers checked in for international flights over the weekend, many had more on their minds than the trips ahead.
EMAN ALI, traveler: We're not really scared. I mean, whatever happens happens. But we have family over in Egypt. And they told us everything is OK.
JAMES MELBY, traveler: If I was going to the Middle East, yes, I would cancel my flight. I wouldn't go anywhere, North Africa, Middle East. I wouldn't do it.
GWEN IFILL: In addition to the travel warning, U.S. embassies in Kabul and Baghdad were closed over the weekend, but were given the go-ahead to reopen today.
But nearly a score of American diplomatic facilities across the Muslim world will stay shuttered all week through next Saturday, including in four African cities. Officials cited an abundance of caution, rather than a new threat.
MARIE HARF, State Department: As we all know, one of our top priorities is protecting people on the ground. So, going forward, we will continue to make decisions about when embassies will be open or not. As you know, this doesn't happen that often that we close a large number of embassies. So again our preference is not to have to do so, but security is our top priority.
GWEN IFILL: The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Saxby Chambliss, said yesterday it's the most serious threat from al-Qaida he's seen in years.
SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, R-Ga.: There's been an awful lot of chatter out there. Chatter means conversation among terrorists about the planning that's going on, very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.
We didn't take heed on 9/11 in the way that we should. But here I think it's very important that we do take the right kind of planning as we come to the close of Ramadan.
GWEN IFILL: The intercepted chatter made headlines worldwide and Britain, Germany and France closed their embassies in Yemen through today. Across the U.S., there was stepped-up security at the nation's airports and train stations.
SUMMARY: Gwen Ifill turns to Brian Jenkins of the Rand Corporation and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times to discuss the broad and unspecified terrorist threat, what we know about who may be behind the chatter and how the alert is playing into a broader national conversation on America's surveillance efforts.
The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.
The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”
The order does not apply to the content of the communications.
Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation’s largest telecommunications and Internet providers for corporations. It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon, like its residential or cellphone services, or to other telecommunications carriers. The order prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence, and representatives of both Verizon and AT&T declined to comment Wednesday evening.
The four-page order was disclosed Wednesday evening by the newspaper The Guardian. Obama administration officials at the F.B.I. and the White House also declined to comment on it Wednesday evening, but did not deny the report, and a person familiar with the order confirmed its authenticity. “We will respond as soon as we can,” said Marci Green Miller, a National Security Agency spokeswoman, in an e-mail.
The order was sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that regulates domestic surveillance for national security purposes, that allows the government to secretly obtain “tangible things” like a business’s customer records. The provision was expanded by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which Congress enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The order was marked “TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN,” referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration’s aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.
The collection of call logs is set to expire in July unless the court extends it.
The collection of communications logs — or calling “metadata” — is believed to be a major component of the Bush administration’s program of surveillance that took place without court orders. The newly disclosed order raised the question of whether the government continued that type of information collection by bringing it under the Patriot Act.
SUMMARY: Among the initiatives launched by President Obama in his State of the Union address was a comprehensive cyber security plan. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano talks with Ray Suarez about combating the growing threat of cyber attacks and the top three countries poised to launch cyber attacks against the U.S.
As part of his State of the Union speech last night, President Obama tipped an executive order that is intended to improve the security of Internet-based critical infrastructure. But what does that order include?
Obama's plan would allow federal agencies to notify private companies if they detect any sort of cyber intrusion that would harm operations or the security of company data.
Specifically, the plan expands the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) information-sharing program to other federal agencies. The DIB was put in place in 2011 and allows the Defense and Homeland Security Departments to share non-classified information about cybersecurity-related threats with DIB partner companies, like contractors.
But as we've seen with hacks of the Federal Reserve and the Department of Energy, defense-related agencies are not the only ones being targeted by hackers. So the executive order "requires Federal agencies to produce unclassified reports of threats to U.S. companies and requires the reports to be shared in a timely manner," the White House said. It also allows for "near real-time sharing of cyber threat information to assist participating critical infrastructure companies in their cyber protection efforts."
Obama has also ordered the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop a framework for handling cyber-security threats. "NIST will work collaboratively with industry to develop the framework, relying on existing international standards, practices, and procedures that have proven to be effective," the White House said.
Given the rapid pace of technology, the recommendations will be technology neutral, the administration said. Once they've been developed, DHS will work with other agencies to reach out to companies for voluntary implementation of the framework.
While sharing details about cyber attacks might seem like a no brainer, a major concern is how the data is handled. If these threats deal with a credit card company or major social network, will your personal information be protected?
The White House insisted that the executive order includes "strong privacy and civil liberties protections." Any type of information sharing will be based on the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPP), a set of information-sharing principles developed by the FTC, as well as other applicable privacy and civil liberties policies, principles, and frameworks.
"Agencies will conduct regular assessments of privacy and civil liberties impacts of their activities and such assessments will be made public," the White House said.
Executive Order vs. CISPA
Last night, Obama called on Congress to do even more on cyber security. Two members of the House, in fact, plan to re-introduce the controversial CISPA information-sharing bill today, but it has not secured the support of the White House. A bill backed by the administration was introduced in the Senate last year, but did not make any major headway.
The main difference between the White House executive order and CISPA is that CISPA would allow private companies (like Facebook or Google) to share details about cyber attacks with the government, whereas the executive order is a one-way street, with the feds sharing information with the private sector. CISPA opponents were concerned about immunity clauses that they said would incentivize companies to hand over customer information without hesitation.
As a result, the White House threatened to veto CISPA if it made it to President Obama's desk. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a statement that said the bill "departs from longstanding efforts to treat the Internet and cyberspace as civilian spheres."
In a statement last night, the ACLU issued its support for the executive order and warned against CISPA. "The president's executive order rightly focuses on cybersecurity solutions that don't negatively impact civil liberties," said ACLU Legislative Counsel Michelle Richardson. "For example, greasing the wheels of information sharing from the government to the private sector is a privacy-neutral way to distribute critical cyber information."
Broadband trade association USTelecom said the executive order "takes some important steps toward achieving policy goals that will help protect our nation from harmful threats," but said the issue should ultimately be handled by Congress - via bills like CISPA.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): The Obama administration has unveiled a significant change regarding immigration policy in this country. Under the new rules, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will reassess some 300,000 deportation cases, in an effort to focus on deporting criminals, while dismissing the cases of those illegal immigrants who pose little threat to public safety.
In addition, immigration officials will determine case by case priority by considering how long someone has been in the country, their level of schooling, any military service and their ties to the community.
COMMENT: These new rules do NOT remove people on the illegal immigrant list, it only prioritizes which illegals the system should pay attention to first. It does NOT automatically give legal status.
As to funding issues, the voiced concern of the anti-immigration interviewee is false, reviews of immigration status ARE going on as we "speak" (and are funded) this just allows the reviews to be more focused and therefore more cost efficient.
The Obama administration has adopted new procedures for using the Defense Department’s vast array of cyberwarfare capabilities in case of an attack on vital computer networks inside the United States, delicately navigating historic rules that restrict military action on American soil.
The system would mirror that used when the military is called on in natural disasters like hurricanes or wildfires. A presidential order dispatches the military forces, working under the control of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Under the new rules, the president would approve the use of the military’s expertise in computer-network warfare, and the Department of Homeland Security would direct the work.
Officials involved in drafting the rules said the goal was to ensure a rapid response to a cyberthreat while balancing concerns that civil liberties might be at risk should the military take over such domestic operations.
The rules were deemed essential because most of the government’s computer-network capabilities reside within the Pentagon — while most of the important targets are on domestic soil, whether within the government or in critical private operations like financial networks or a regional power grid.
The new approach will begin with a Department of Homeland Security team deploying to Fort Meade, Md., home to both the National Security Agency, which specializes in electronic espionage, and the military’s new Cyber Command. In exchange, a team of military networking experts would be assigned to the operations center at the Homeland Security Department.
The rules were detailed in a memorandum of agreement signed in late September by Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, but they were not released until last week.
Robert J. Butler, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for cyber policy, said the memorandum was intended to cut through legal debates about the authority for operating domestically, and to focus on how best to respond to the threat of attack on critical computer networks.
Mr. Butler said teams of lawyers would watch for potential violations of civil liberties. “We have put protection measures in place,” he said.
For now, the most powerful law enforcement official in the federal government is a 47-year-old lawyer little known outside Washington.
Or inside Washington, for that matter.
He is acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler, who is running the Justice Department until a new attorney general is confirmed by the Senate to replace Alberto R. Gonzales. Mr. Keisler had been in charge of the department’s civil division.
The No. 2 and No. 3 officials are also acting — Deputy Attorney General Craig S. Morford and Associate Attorney General Gregory G. Katsas. More than a quarter of the department’s 93 United States attorneys around the country are “acting.”
Scholars and other researchers who study the federal bureaucracy say the situation in those agencies is becoming increasingly common elsewhere in the Bush administration.
With only 15 months left in office, President Bush has left whole agencies of the executive branch to be run largely by acting or interim appointees — jobs that would normally be filled by people whose nominations would have been reviewed and confirmed by the Senate. In many cases, there is no obvious sign of movement at the White House to find permanent nominees, suggesting that many important jobs will not be filled by Senate-confirmed officials for the remainder of the Bush administration. That would effectively circumvent the Senate’s right to review and approve the appointments. It also means that the jobs are filled by people who do not have the clout to make decisions that comes with a permanent appointment endorsed by the Senate, scholars say.
While exact comparisons are difficult to come by, researchers say the vacancy rate for senior jobs in the executive branch is far higher at the end of the Bush administration than it was at the same point in the terms of Mr. Bush’s recent predecessors in the White House.
Cry, my fellow Americans. In the name of safety we have finally lost any right to privacy. Orwell's 1984 (book) vision of a nation that constantly spies on its citizens has become reality. It is here, it is now.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Department of Homeland Security has approved a measure to allow federal civilian agencies and law enforcement to turn American spy satellites on their own citizens for the first time.
Until now, the highly sensitive satellites were aimed mostly at other countries, usually ones we didn't really trust. Occasionally, geologists and NASA scientists got to use them to make things like topographical maps. Letting domestic security folks use them to spy is, the Journal says, "uncharted territory."
Officials have been mulling the plan for a couple years, but often bumped up against questions about whether this kind of snooping would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars military for engaging in law-enforcement activity within the U.S., since the satellites are built for and owned by the Defense Department.
The decision was made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnel, and OKed in May by DHS chief Michael Chertoff.
Access to the satellite will be controlled by a new Homeland Security branch, the National Applications Office. As Charles Allen, the DHS's chief intelligence officer who will head up the new program, summed up cryptically, "It is an idea whose time has come."
Naturally, privacy groups are freaking out. Sentences like this one probably don't help. "The full capabilities of these systems are unknown outside the intelligence community, because they are among the most closely held secrets in government."
One privacy advocate complained that it was this secrecy that was the real problem.
"You are talking about enormous power," said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Project on Freedom, Security and Technology for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group advocating privacy rights in the digital age. "Not only is the surveillance they are contemplating intrusive and omnipresent, it's also invisible. And that's what makes this so dangerous."
We all should be freaked out. About phone conversations overseas are being spied on (don't believe the only suspected terrorists malarkey, you can't know this until after you spy on the phone call); we have cameras watching street corners, now we have spy satellites watching us from above. From now on, be careful what you do in the open, in your own backyard or school or business or at the beach. Big Brother is watching.
Nearly five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security continue to clash over who is in charge of coordinating and vetting information on terrorism. As a result, state and local authorities continue to get conflicting or incomplete information - sometimes none at all - on threats inside the United States.
Surprise, surprise! The behemoth Homeland inSecurity suffers from typical "Bureaucratic Disease." Bloat and turf wars. Bigger is not necessarily better.
In December of 2005, Fox News talking head Bill O’Reilly floated an unlikely — even brash — idea to the Homeland Security secretary to seal off the porous southwest border.
“Why don’t you put the National Guard on the border to back up the border patrol and stop the bleeding, and then start to increase the Border Patrol, the high-tech and all of that?” O’Reilly asked.
Michael Chertoff, in those relatively calmer days before mass pro-immigration rallies, heated immigration reform politics in the Senate and cellar-dwelling opinion polls for President Bush, dismissed the idea out of hand.
“Well, the National Guard is really, first of all, not trained for that mission,” Chertoff told O’Reilly. “I mean, the fact of the matter is the border is a special place. There are special challenges that are faced there.”
Chertoff added that that it would take a huge amount of National Guard troops, that they would need new training. But couldn’t the National Guard pull it off, O’Reilly asked?
“I think it would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem,” Chertoff said. “Unless you would be prepared to leave those people in the National Guard day and night for month after month after month, you would eventually have to come to grips with the challenge in a more comprehensive way.”
Gosh! Gasp! A traitor in the Administration! He dares to disagree with King Gorge's decree. Off with his head!
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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