But don’t they always, when a policy endangers their own policies of endangerment to the United States and our way of life here?

At least, what’s left of it after all the gnawing, eroding and carving the political left has been doing to it. Morality, limited government, economic security, border security, liberty… If they have their way, the “progressives” will turn this place into a kind of Sodom and Gemorah meets the Bolsheviks — confusing, wouldn’t you say, but whoever said liberals made sense?

So.

From Hot Air:

A program that gives federal immigration officials access to the fingerprints of undocumented immigrants booked into local jails will start Tuesday across New York state despite staunch opposition from advocates and lawmakers, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

A law-enforcement official familiar with the program, called Secure Communities, confirmed that New York City and 30 other jurisdictions would join the 31 communities that already have the program in place. Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester counties, among others, have participated in Secure Communities for more than a year.

Right off the bat, this one should ring up significant support – or so you might think – because it’s actually nothing new. We’re not talking about some program where cops are cruising the parking lot at Home Depot asking people for “their papers” every morning. This is simply taking the fingerprints of illegal immigrants who are already in jail and charged with a crime and getting them into the right database. The prints were already being sent to the FBI, so shipping them over to ICE shouldn’t be much of a leap.

A representative of the immigration enforcement agency is quoted as saying that the program has already delivered results, and “has helped ICE remove more than 135,000 convicted criminal aliens, including more than 49,000 convicted of major violent offenses like murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children.” So what could possibly go wrong?

Asked about the program at a Friday news conference, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said “we prefer that they not do that here.”

….

Speaking on the radio Friday, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said there will be a rally on City Hall’s steps on Monday to urge the federal government to refrain from forcing the city’s hand.

She also said the police were being put in a “terrible position.”

“It’s just so counter to what New York is about as an immigrant city,” she added. “And I’m real proud of our mayor and our governor, who have all spoken out…. The police can’t disregard the law at the end of the day, but it’s a terrible thing to put them in when they should be focusing on real crime.”

New York – particularly the Big Apple – does have a great tradition of welcoming immigrants. Legal immigrants. They built the city and the harbor and made New York a focal point of the economic development of an emerging nation. Unfortunately, its vast size and compressed population also eventually made it a haven for gang activity and illegal trade, including illegal immigration. Contrary to what Ms. Quinn may feel, a program such as Secure Communities is not contrary to “what New York is about.” It’s precisely what New York was and should always have been about. A safe haven and open door for those who follow the legal process we have in place and wish to join America as citizens.

Which, I think, puts things as succinctly as they can be put.

But the lefties will keep on fighting it for the obvious reason that they believe we should be a lawless nation rather than a nation of laws because… because it would be, well, it would be soooooo cooooolllll….

Or something like that. I suppose you have to be a liberal in order to understand exactly where they’re coming from.

It’s really something the way “progressive” ways of doing things, even after they’ve been proven wrong, dumb, suicidal, bone-headed, complete failures leading unerringly, ultimately to future disaster, always seem, rather than teaching a “what not to do, let’s learn from past mistakes” lesson, merely set a precedent for “what to do next time, and the time after that”.

The United States has for several years been secretly releasing high-level detainees from a military prison in Afghanistan as part of negotiations with insurgent groups, a bold effort to quell violence but one that U.S. officials acknowledge poses substantial risks.

As the United States has unsuccessfully pursued a peace deal with the Taliban, the “strategic release” program has quietly served as a live diplomatic channel, allowing American officials to use prisoners as bargaining chips in restive provinces where military power has reached its limits.

But the releases are an inherent gamble: The freed detainees are often notorious fighters who would not be released under the traditional legal system for military prisoners in Afghanistan. They must promise to give up violence — and U.S. officials warn them that if they are caught attacking American troops, they will be detained once again.

See what I mean?

Look at all the terrorists the Israelis have released as elements of “peace” agreements with the Palestinians, who have launched thermselves right back into terrorism.

Look at the significant percentage of GITMO detainees released who have later been found to be back in Afghanistan killing U.S. troops.

In this case,

There are no absolute guarantees, however, and officials would not say whether those who have been released under the program have later returned to attack U.S. and Afghan forces once again.

“Everyone agrees they are guilty of what they have done and should remain in detention. Everyone agrees that these are bad guys. But the benefits outweigh the risks,” said one U.S. official who, like others, discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the program.

Despite the above, however, we must remember that President Obama epitomises the idiocy “wisdom” of liberal reasoning.

The releases have come amid broader efforts to end the decade-long war through negotiation, which is a central feature of the Obama administration’s strategy for leaving Afghanistan. Those efforts, however, have yielded little to no progress in recent years….

(my italicising, there)

…which of course doesn’t seem to matter, since while Obama’s idea of negotiating with the Republicans is “my way or the highway”, his approach to negotiating with terrorists is somewhere on the cusp of “your wish is my command….”

…. In part, they have been stymied by the unwillingness of the United States to release five prisoners from Guantanamo Bay — a gesture that insurgent leaders have said they see as a precondition for peace talks.

How a president can place our people unnecessarily in danger as our side of “peace” talks by freeing murderous terrorists committed unto their version of God to kill Americans is as far beyond me as is Obama’s war on U.S. energy independence, but that’s another story entirely.

The entire WaPo article is here. Even a “progreesive” publication like the Washington Post can’t make the administration’s policies regarding releasing these terrorists sound any kind of sane.

Don’t ask Barack Hussein Obama, he doesn’t seem to know.

The U.S. goal in Afghanistan “is not to build a country in America’s image, or to eradicate every vestige of the Taliban,” President Obama told Americans Tuesday night in a prime-time address from Bagram Air Base in Kabul.

(My emphasis above)

Tell me then, Mister President, if it’s not our goal to eradicte the Taliban, root and branch, why are we even over there? Didn’t you listen when George W. Bush briefed you prior to his moving back to Texas and you moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

If we don’t completely and summarily kick the Taliban’s butt, they and their al-Qaeda pals will only fight their way back to the status quo they enjoyed before we invaded post 9/11, and the Afghanis will once again be enslaved by an oppressive fundamentalist regime while we, once again, have a homeland security threat poised to commit terrorist acts just like they did that terrible morning in New York and at the Pentagon, headquartered in a country on the other side of the world.

Wolf, who has been to Afghanistan, once told me that while there are a lot of Afghani tribes “in country” who subscribe to the stone-age fundamentalism espoused by the Taliban, there are many more in Kabul and other, more “civilized” areas that prefer to exist in the modern world with the kind of freedom to which every human being is entitled.

We can neither pull out completely while there are Taliban cells left intact, nor “negotiate” any kind of truce with that evil entity.

To do either would be to have wasted all those U.S. and allied military lives and all that treasure, only to find the same threat to us lurking in Afghanistan shortly thereafter.

Hours later, Taliban fighters — reportedly disguised in burqas — attacked a compound housing foreign contractors in Kabul, killing at least seven people. The Taliban said the attack was a response to Obama’s surprise visit.

This was the second major attack in Kabul in less than three weeks, and it demonstrates the Taliban’s continued ability to strike in the heavily guarded capital even at a time of heightened security because of President Obama’s visit, the Associated Press reported.

See? As soon as you announced that you weren’t ready to wipe these terrorists out to a man, they showed how naive you really are.

You are as much an embarrassment to we, the people as president, Mr. Obama, as Jimmy Carter was.

When you give liberals an inch, they will not be satisfied to take a mere mile and, like terrorists, they will continue pushing the envelope to see how far they can get. Such is the case with political correctness, and the way the left keeps pushing more and more of it on the rest of us as a way of knocking down our defenses against their various agendas, none of which are in the least bit friendly to America and the American way of life.

Here we have yet another example of this phenomenon in action;

In yet another case of Orwellian political correctness run amok, a video posted at MoveOn.org says calling illegal immigrants “illegal” fits the definition of a hate crime and calls for the word to be banned when used in the context of immigration.

The headline at the MoveOn page screams “One word we hear too often on Fox News,” as if only Fox News calls illegal immigrants “illegal.”

As usual, they alter the context to make “illegal” aliens out to mean that the peoples, their existences, are illegal rather than their undocumented presences in the United States, semantics intended to villify enforcement of federal law.

It irks me to no end that this practice is allowed to continue, but I suppose that this is the essence of a country like ours, one endowed with freedom for all, including those that would destroy us from within, taking away those same liberties that allowed them to do so.

Having said that, here is the article quoted above, complete with video.

At least that’s what they seem to be thinking at that big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue these days.

From Conservative Byte (above link) and Breitbart:

Today, the National Journal reported that a senior State Department official has announced, “The war on terror is over.”

“Now that we have killed most of al Qaida,” the source said, “now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”

The article itself describes the Obama administration’s new vision of foreign policy, which admits no enemies. Everyone, in this view, is a friend. Islamism, says the Obama administration, is just fine, so long as it does not openly support terrorism.

This, of course, is utter foolishness. Islamism is a religious ideological movement that brooks no real alternatives – so while the State Department proclaims “a legitimate Islamism,” it fails to acknowledge that Islamism, “legitimate” or not, is deeply intolerant of any other modes of expression. Not only that, but Islamism works hand-in-glove with terror groups around the world. Simply because a regime does not openly house al Qaida does not mean that the regime doesn’t support al Qaida; just because a regime pretends at democracy doesn’t mean that it has real democratic values.

Obama has created the brave new Middle East – a Middle East that assumes that every human heart has the desire to vote, but not to be truly free; a Middle East that oppresses women and gays and minorities, but pretends at liberalism; a Middle East that despises America but hides that hate behind a façade of multiculturalism, even as it disposes of its internal dissenters.

In truth, Obama isn’t declaring an end to the war on terror – terrorism continues unabated each day in Egypt and the Palestinian territories and Iraq and Afghanistan and Sudan and Yemen and Syria and Lebanon and a dozen other hotspots around the globe. Obama is truly declaring an end to the war on Islamism. He has made his peace; he has surrendered. In doing so, he has condemned broad swaths of the world to darkness, and more immediately, he has condemned America to a defensive position in the world. Now there is no proactive America shaping the world to her own ends. Now there is only an atomistic world, a series of billiard balls, in which America waits to be struck before bouncing back.

To Obama, the war on Islamism may be over. For Islamists, the war on America is far from over.

Ah, the deceptively peaceful aromas and gentle breezes of the Arab Spring…

All of which goes rather hand in glove with a column by Frank Gaffney.

Have you ever asked yourself why, despite more than 10 years of effort - involving, among other things, the loss of thousands of lives in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, well over $1 trillion spent, countless man-years wasted waiting in airport security lines and endless efforts to ensure that no offense is given to seemingly permanently aggrieved Muslim activists - we are no closer to victory in the “war on terrorism” than we were on Sept. 11, 2001?

Thankfully, we have been able to kill some dangerous bad guys. The sad truth is that by almost any other measure, the prospect of victory is becoming more remote by the day. No one seems able to explain the reason.

In an effort to provide the missing answer, on Tuesday , the Center for Security Policy is making available via the Internet a new, free 10-part video course titled “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within” (MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com). This course connects the proverbial dots, drawing on a wealth of publicly available data and firsthand accounts to present a picture that has, for more than a decade, been obscured, denied and suppressed.

In addition to the threat of violent jihad, America faces another, even more toxic danger - a stealthy and pre-violent form of warfare aimed at destroying our constitutional form of democratic government and free society. The Muslim Brotherhood is the prime mover behind this seditious campaign, which it calls “civilization jihad.”

The Muslim Brotherhood? Yes, that would be the same organization to which President Obama recently transferred $1.5 billion of our tax dollars in a lump-sum payment. For him to do so, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had to waive congressionally imposed restrictions born of fully justified concerns about the nature and direction of the Shariah-adherent government the Brotherhood is birthing in Egypt.

Mrs. Clinton’s presidentially directed waiver came despite the following: the Brotherhood-dominated government’s hostage-taking of American democracy activists; murderous Islamist rampages against Coptic Christians and other religious minorities; the toleration and abetting of escalating violence against Israel in and from the Sinai; and official threats to jettison the 1979 peace treaty with the Jewish state. Matters have only gotten worse since the president’s largesse was made available in an unusual upfront lump-sum payment.

Read all of Mr. Gaffney’s piece here.

Whose side, one has to wonder, is Barack Hussein Obama on, anyway?

Who says they can’t hack it?

The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.

“CIA Tango down,” a member of Anonymous said on @YourAnonNews, a Twitter feed used by the group. “Tango down” is an expression used by the US Special Forces when they have eliminated an enemy.

Actually, according to my hubby, a “tango”, specifically, is a terrorist, but let’s not stray.

Article here.

From the front end of (this last) New Year’s weekend, Oliver North in Town Hall…

…This week, as we prepare to ring out 2011 and welcome 2012, President Barack Obama asked for Congress to authorize yet another increase in our national debt — the third such rise in less than 15 months. Housing prices continue to slide; more than 13 million Americans are unemployed; government spending continues unabated; and America’s credit rating is at risk of another downgrade. In January, barring action by Congress and the White House, U.S. defense spending cuts totaling $1.1 trillion over the next four years will begin to take effect. Such an outcome in the midst of these perilous times ought to be unthinkable.

Instead of putting tens of thousands of Americans to work building new ships, submarines, aircraft and a missile shield to protect the American people from nuclear attack, the Obama administration wants the federal government to create temporary jobs repaving highways, painting bridges and re-roofing public schools. Rather than have unemployed construction workers build a petroleum pipeline from Canada (and improve U.S. energy security), the Obama White House wastes billions on phony “green jobs.” The administration has to hope we all will forget the word “Solyndra.”

Ollie North looks like better presidential material than anyone running in the current field.

In a burst of year-end euphoria, progressive politicians, pundits and government economists are predicting that the worst of the “Bush-era recession” is behind us and that good times are just ahead. They pin their economic hopes for 2012 less on American entrepreneurs than they do on German taxpayers.

The experts are praying Berlin will continue to bail out European PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) and prevent an Old World financial collapse that would drag down the sale of U.S. goods and services on the Continent. Expect to see German Chancellor Angela Merkel feted at a White House state dinner early in the new year. A million or so American jobs could well depend on whether she likes the soup.

{In the Truth Hurts Department} OUCH!

Jobs — the word used most often by politicians running for office in 2012. Regardless of party, whether challenger or incumbent, every office seeker tells us he or she has a way of “creating,” “protecting,” “saving” or “improving” jobs for American workers. What few of our elected officials ever mention is how vulnerable these “well-paying” and “secure” jobs are to factors far more threatening than the European debt crisis. Here are the top three issues that should concern those who purport to care about our economic well-being in the year ahead:

1) An Iranian nuke. Just before Christmas, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told us Iran could have a workable nuclear weapon in 2012. He also knows — but didn’t say — that the theocrats in Tehran already have the means of delivering it. Tel Aviv, Israel, is target No. 1. American civilians are No. 2 on the ayatollahs’ hit parade. To Israelis, the expression “Never Again” isn’t a political slogan. It’s a way of life. They are not going to wait to be incinerated.

The Obama administration could stop the Iranians from building atomic weapons and perhaps even bring about regime change by forbidding any company doing any business in Iran from doing any business in the U.S. But unless the O-Team takes such a step, the Israelis will have to act pre-emptively to prevent annihilation. If you think the “2008-11 global recession” hurt, you don’t want to contemplate what the world economy would be like after an attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons sites.

2) The jihad. The “Arab Spring” — once so proudly proclaimed to have been instigated by Obama’s soaring rhetoric — has become a nightmare for democratic aspirations in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Moammar Gadhafi and Anwar al-Awlaki are dead, but the jihad being waged by radical Islamists is stronger than ever. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Sudan are headed for Shariah rather than secular governance in 2012. Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, Nigeria and even Saudi Arabia could follow suit soon. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom forecasts that Christianity could be eradicated in these countries. The economic impact of such an upheaval is potentially catastrophic.

3) The collapse of Russian democracy. Vladimir Putin is presiding over a dying country — and he knows it. Though Russian energy exports to Europe and China currently fill the coffers of Moscow’s kleptocracy and help rebuild Soviet-era nuclear weapons, the future for the land of the czars is bleak. Russia’s population — now 141.7 million — drops by nearly 1 million per year. With an average male life span of just 59 years, look for 2012 to be the year Putin and his cronies do all they can to line their pockets — at our expense.

You have to wonder what all those people we presently pay to think about these things and govern accordingly have been doing with their time, you know? Are they so busy working on getting reelected, lining their pockets via insider trading and figuring out new perks and benefits to give themselves that they haven’t got any time for America, their employer whose shareholders are the taxpayers?

Note to all running for office in 2012: The word “entitlement” does not appear in the Constitution. The words “provide for the common defence” do. Happy new year.

Yes, to all, Happy New Year.

This is, as we know, a security oriented blog, and as such, there is no way we cannot link this interesting New York Post Op Ed by Stewart Baker, a former mucky muck at the Department of Homeland Security.

What’s the best way to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11? By returning to the mindset of Sept. 10, apparently. At least that’s the message delivered by the Associated Press and a chorus of blogs hyperventilating about the NYPD’s antiterror tactics.

I spent what felt like the better part of a day reading the long AP article and the commentary, thinking that surely there must be a scandal in there somewhere.

Nope.

When you’re done, you find that the New York Policy Department is uniquely determined to find terrorists before they strike. To do that, the NYPD is willing to go far outside its borders — to London, to Jerusalem, even to New Jersey.

It partners with counterterror analysts at the CIA. It looks for leads in places where terrorists have been found before — in immigrant communities and in mosques, for example — and it doesn’t give terrorists a haven where they know the cops can’t go. It takes advantage of its diversity by asking its officers to hang out in communities where they blend in. It recruits street sources wherever it can find them. It maps the neighborhoods it’s most concerned about.

Shocked yet?

Me neither.

So what gives? How come we’re getting this story, at this length, at this time?

What gives? How come? Read on.

Mr. Baker’s explanation most definitely sounds about right, given the territorialism over teamwork mentality of government agencies and the general state of the liberal media, which seems increasingly to be a general state of anti-United States.

One of the things that’s cool about babysitting Seth’s email and Hard Astarboard for the moment is the access I have to “the boss’” daily emails at his various addresses, including one of his professional ones (where he receives stuff pertaining to his professional milieu). I get to read more in-depth articles on various issues that are hardly covered in the media, but also find articles and other items of interest that are specifically pointed out at certain on-line publications, such as this one that has published an article from, of all newspapers, The Tennessean.

Since one of Seth’s largest concerns here and elsewhere is Security with, in large part, emphasis on Homeland Security and one of his pet peeves has long been the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), here’s this one:

Thousands of airport security breaches raise alarms

More than 25,000 security breaches — an average of seven per day — have occurred at U.S. airports since November 2001, according to newly released Department of Homeland Security documents.

More than 14,000 were people entering “limited-access” areas by going through airport doors or passageways without permission, or unauthorized people going from airport buildings to planes, according to the documents to be presented at a House subcommittee hearing today.

The documents, obtained in advance by USA TODAY, don’t provide details about the security breaches or whether any could have led to potential attacks on planes or passengers.

The total number of infractions is small when compared with the large volume of traffic at the 450 major airports in the U.S., which have served more than 5.5 billion fliers since 2001. But critics say there is still reason to worry.

“It’s clear the airports are not secure,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations. “For all the money, time and persistence we have thrown at airport security, it’s a real mess.”

Clear/ not clear/ whatever: that many flaws leave plenty of room for one or more of their number to allow one or more incidents which, given that we’re talking airplanes (we need only look back to September 11, 2001 to see how much tragedy can be brought about by unsecured airplanes, even one such plane), which contain not only enough aviation fuel to make them into WMDs, but scores of vulnerable innocent human lives in the form of passengers, as well.

You have to ask, “What are these TSA people and DHS doing with their working hours and our tax dollars, exactly? Playing “tiddly winks”?

Damage Control

Transportation Security Administration spokesman Nicholas Kimball said the breaches represent a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the air travelers who used U.S. airports in the past decade. The term “breach” is broadly defined and can mean accidental violations that pose no real danger to the public, he said.

“Many of these instances were thwarted or discovered in the act,” Kimball said. “These events were reported, investigated and remedied. … We have taken extensive steps to increase the safety of the traveling public, and that is why airports today are safer than ever before.”

Reality

Security consultant Raffi Ron will testify today that the TSA has spent billions of dollars to screen passengers and bags and relegated other aspects of security “to the back seat,” according to written testimony submitted to the House subcommittee.

“As it stands today, the vast majority of commercial airports in this country … do not have the capabilities to detect and prevent an intruder from entering the air side of the airport through the fence or an adjacent waterfront,” said Ron, a former security director at Tel Aviv Ben-Gurion International Airport.

The House subcommittee says it does not have a breakdown by year when the security breaches occurred, but former Federal Aviation Administration Security Director Billie Vincent says 25,000 security breaches indicates a problem.

“We’re open to penetration if someone decides to penetrate,” he said.

The Rest Of The Story

In 2006, tests by the TSA showed that security screeners at Los Angeles International Airport and Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as passengers in more than 60 percent of tests, according to a classified report obtained by USA TODAY.

In 2003, five undercover Department of Homeland Security agents posing as passengers carried weapons undetected through several security checkpoints at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

Documents to be introduced at today’s subcommittee hearing also show:

6,000 security breaches in which Transportation Security Administration screeners failed to screen, or improperly screened, a passenger or a passenger’s carry-on items.

2,616 security breaches involving an individual gaining unauthorized access to the “sterile area” at screening checkpoints or an exit lane without submitting to all screening procedures and inspections.

1,026 incidents when someone gained unauthorized access to a sterile area but was “contained” or “constantly monitored” by airport or security personnel until apprehended.

1,318 incidents in which someone gained unauthorized access from airport perimeters to aircraft operations or security identification display areas and was under constant surveillance until apprehended.

Vincent, who praises the TSA for compiling security-breach numbers, says that very few perimeters at airports worldwide are secure.

Chaffetz has no praise for TSA.

“It’s absolutely stunning that the vulnerabilities are so wide,” Chaffetz said. “There’s not much to suggest that airports are more secure than years ago. We’ve just been lucky.”

The article is here.

Mrs. Wolf here.

Chuck has joined up with my husband and Seth in what is hopefully to be the final chapter of a difficulty Seth got himself into (not by fault, but due to his loyalty to a man who was employed by him, but I suppose that was all explained previously, or will be, when it’s all over, by one of the unholy trinity who usually post hereabouts) almost two years ago.

In the meantime, I have inherited the duty of attempting to keep things afloat, as Wolf would say. Chuck disappeared about a month and a half ago and left it all to me, but I’ve been so busy that this is actually my first opportunity to stick my two cents into the scheme of things.

What I want to post today is an article from todays New York Post that, knowing Seth as I have for over thirty years, would be right up his alley. He does, after all, tend to get his hackles up when he perceives that the government (the folks who are supposed to protect and defend us against all enemies, foreign and domestic) exhibits a complete lack of security competence in one matter or another, thereby failing, or potentially failing, in its protective duties.

Here we have a case in point

It’s enough to drive someone mad.

In a stunning security lapse, the federal General Services Administration mistakenly shipped nearly three dozen license plates marked “U.S. Government — For Official Use Only” to a humble Queens accountant, The Post has learned.
The foul-up is part of a troubling pattern of lost license plates at the agency, which handles plates for every federal office except the military.

“I don’t know how it happened. Mistakes can happen, but I guess in this day and age, you want to be careful,” said Antonio Guadagnino, who received the package, addressed to him, via UPS at his small Astoria office.

“If they ended up in the wrong hands, they could be used to get into secure places. Not everyone is so honest,” added Guadagnino, who said that he never held a federal contract and that his business consists mostly of personal income-tax returns.
Unsure of what to do with the plates, he handed them over to state Sen. Michael Gianaris, whose district office is in the same building.

But, Gianaris said, the GSA didn’t appear overly concerned.

“The reaction we got was that this was business as usual,” he said.
“This is not a time in our nation’s history to be screwing around with federal identification. What would happen if they wound up in someone else’s hands, someone who thought he could profit selling them — or worse?”

The GSA didn’t even bother to make arrangements to claim the plates until The Post made inquiries Friday. Only then did it rush over to take them.

Of course “it” did.

While Seth would kind of steam over stupidity like this (just imagine some disciple of Osama bin Laden behind the wheel of a vehicle sporting a set of these “official business” government plates driving through the gates of a nuclear power plant or some other volatile compound with a trunk full of explosives), my husband, having been turned profoundly sardonic by over 30 years of what he terms in-depth military and related “behind the scenes” government experience, would just laugh uproariously as he always does at unadulterated idiocy-slash-negligence, that or just shake his head in utter disgust, then pour himself a glass of Jack Daniels.

Now, just imagine how much more of this kind of thing goes on that we don’t hear or read about.