…that the bad guys really are winning.

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, which posted hundreds of civilian volunteers along the U.S.-Mexico border over the past five years, has disbanded, citing what it called “rising aggression” in the country and decisions by lawmakers in Washington who have “pushed amnesty down our throats.”

“The mental attitude of many Americans is turning meaner … and we are concerned that this could cause problems,” MCDC President Carmen Mercer told The Washington Times on Monday. “You see aggression surfacing even at the tea party marches. We just did not want to deal with the liability anymore.

“We have to protect the ranchers as well as the volunteers,” Ms. Mercer said, noting the killing on Saturday of Robert Krentz, a prominent Douglas, Ariz., rancher who was shot along with his dog on his ranch by a suspected illegal immigrant who fled into Mexico and remains a fugitive.

Nothing like a government run by people who apparently believe that their mission in life is to destroy the country they “govern” by any means they deem necessary.

“From the surveillance videos we have gathered in the field over the past six months, it is more than evident the violators of our borders seem to have been given carte blanche permission to willfully violate our public safety,” the message said.

She also said that the MCDC volunteers would be returning to the border to tell Mr. Obama that his immigration policy is wrong and to send a message to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that she is “an unqualified buffoon who risks the lives of American citizens every day she is the head of DHS.”

Emphasis mine.

…an unqualified buffoon who risks the lives of American citizens every day she is the head of DHS. Spot on!

Read on.

…isn’t this lovely.

A top FBI official warned today that many cyber-adversaries of the U.S. have the ability to access virtually any computer system, posing a risk that’s so great it could “challenge our country’s very existence.”

Why not?

We’ve already been transformed into an impending socialist shithole by the marxist toilet cakes voted into government leadership by a whole bunch of people who either didn’t take the time to learn how our political system works, nor to study the pedigrees and voting histories of their candidates before voting for them — the only exceptions being those, of course, who despise the entire concept of America as our founders intended it to be. You know, this free, successful, two century old nation that has, as the leftist scum have gradually succeeded more and more in their efforts to destroy it, begun to enter what might well be its last days.

But I digress.

For the last three decades or so, our government and our vital infrastructure have become gradually more computerized, as have private concerns that possess the personal information of millions. Our defense, security and financial organs can now all be compromized and breached electronically.

Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, delivered a strong and urgent warning about the threat of cyberattacks during a presentation Tuesday at the FOSE government IT trade show here. Chabinsky also offered recommendations for countering the threat, including rules that would restrict the ability of some systems to interoperate with more vulnerable ones.

“The cyber threat can be an existential threat — meaning it can challenge our country’s very existence, or significantly alter our nation’s potential,” Chabinsky said. “How we rise to the cybersecurity challenge will determine whether our nation’s best days are ahead of us or behind us.

Thrilling.

“I am convinced that given enough time, motivation and funding, a determined adversary will always — always — be able to penetrate a targeted system,” he added.

Which is about the same thing any competent security professional will tell you about pretty much any protective issue, but… it kinda’ sorta’ sucks to see computer and communications technology, billed to make everything so much easier, faster and more efficient, also render us vulnerable in an extreme, perhaps making for a majorly uneven trade-off.

Chabinsky said that terrorism is the FBI’s top cyber priority, followed by its investigation of foreign countries “that seek every day to steal our state secrets and private sector intellectual property, sometimes for the purpose of undermining the stability of our government by weakening our economic or military supremacy.”

Both terrorists and foreign countries are turning to cyber-technologies “to exploit our weaknesses,” Chabinsky said.

Isn’t that a cheerful thought!

…have e-mailed me, wondering why I haven’t yet commented herein on the Errol Southers kerfuffle. After all, they reasonably reason, I do tend to pursue topics that concern the government’s affairs regarding our mutual area of endeavor, especially those of the Transportation Security Administration, with what one of my distinguished colleagues describes as “a tenacity that would make a pit bull envious”.

So here goes…

Truth to tell, I was first pleased, then disappointed by and at the same time, cynic that I’ve become where the neo-Democrats are concerned, unsurprised by the entire affair, from Southers’ nomination to his stepping down as nominee.

When he was first put forward by the Administration, I thought, Alright (High Five!!!!), the White House is finally getting it! Unlike in their appointment of the supremely unqualified and profoundly incompetent Janet Napolitano as National Security Advisor, they’re actually looking to appoint a qualified security professional to head up a security agency, the TSA no less.

Assistant Chief of the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department’s Office of Homeland Security and Intelligence, head of USC’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events. Well thought of in the security field, a man who has devoted his career to security and counter-terrorism and who is an expert on both counts.

The man was also appointed by the Governator as Deputy Director for Critical Infrastructure Protection of the California Office of Homeland Security.

Since he earned his Master’s Degree in Public Administration at Brown University and later served on the Santa Monica Police Department and the faculty of the Rio Hondo Police Academy, every aspect of his career has been dedicated to the protection of the public and combating terrorism, and eminently qualify him to head up TSA. While with the FBI, he worked in counter-espionage and counter-terrorism, and was a shooter to boot: he was a member of their elite SWAT team.

Southers’ vision for the future of the agency, in the training aspects, the adoption of Israeli methods for identifying potential threats and enhanced utilization of existing technologies, was exactly what is needed.

I was truly impressed. The Obama Administration was actually going to put the right person in the right position, a real security expert as Director of the TSA!

Who’d a’ thunk it!?

And then…

…along came the broadsides, first the revelation that Southers was entertaining the idea of unionizing (collective bargaining, anyone?) the TSA.

“What!!!?” I exclaimed.

I’m sorry, but I in no way believe in unionizing any part of critical infrastructure, and as a protection professional, there’s no way I can condone the unionizing of any security agency.

Why?

“We’re going on strike, screw the lives or itineraries of the public, we want more lucre!”

“I don’t care if you’re short handed, my union contract says that I don’t have to work any overtime if I don’t want to!”

“My union contract says that I get two twenty minute coffee breaks every day, and if I take ten minutes to guard that door, I’ll only get half my break! I’m not guarding that door, I don’t care if you can’t get anyone else to do it!”

“I’m real sorry you’re short-handed, boss, but I’m taking a personal day. I promised to take my kid to the zoo.”

“You can’t fire me, buddy, I’m union all the way!”

Sorry, but those entrusted with the safety and security of others, by nature of the responsibilities involved, must be prepared to make sacrifices unasked of those in other lines of endeavor; sacrifices of personal time, personal convenience and, as often as not, personal fortune. If you’re not prepared to assume these sacrifices and such other elements as taking personal risks to protect the lives and the safety of others, you do not belong in the security business.

Unionizing TSA would drive a wedge between the objectives of such an agency and the efficiency necessary to realize them.

Based on the above, Senator Jim DeMint was correct in putting a hold on Southers’ confirmation. Given the virtual ownership of the Democrat majority by the unions, a suggestion by a head of the TSA that his or her agency be unionized would be all it took to see greedy, corrupt union czars authorized to “bargain collectively” with the very lives of the traveling public.

Civilian or not, a security department or agency has to be run more like a military venue than a Teamster’s operation. Imagine all of the firemen, EMTs and surgeons simply walking off the job in the middle of a natural disaster because they have a gripe with the institutions that employ them!

Unions have proven, time and again, to exploit the vulnerabilities of members’ employers by threatening strikes or actually going on strike when the employers have been at their most vulnerable.

Collective bargaining in the public sector is one of the factors behind governmental budget shortfalls and tax increases, and strikes, often tragically, can inconvenience and even endanger the majority of taxpayers to accommodate the greed of a very few. Again, it has no place in the safety and security sectors.

Then, there was the back issue of Errol Southers using the information access of his position to pursue inquiries into his ex’s new flame. To me, the only major problem with that is that he was less than truthful when asked about it.

Look, I’ll level with you here… Only a sanctimonious asshole can say with certainty that in a moment of desperation, he or she would definitely not use information access to which he or she is privileged (the exception being if it jeopardized national security or the integrity of the agency, firm or department in which he or she worked) to obtain information he or she felt he/she absolutely needed to possess.

Southers used such access to gain information relevant to a personal matter.

On the same token, any public servant has, without hesitation, got to tell the truth when under oath or otherwise asked about anything pertaining to his/her actions or those of others in the course of any official inquiry. That in itself is part and parcel in the scheme of things. When you serve the American people, you simply do not lie to them about such things — the people own the decision as to whether or not you are to be trusted in a given position and are entitled to all the facts that pertain to your character and to the details of any actions you have taken in the course of your service that are not officially classified as secret.

Errol Southers lied as a first instinct; There’s no way that anyone with even the most minimal intelligence could possibly believe otherwise. He “didn’t remember” that he himself had used his access to information directly, but rather had others seek private information on his behalf. If he had told the truth in the first place instead of having a “memory lapse”, I could easily find the wherewithal to overlook the underlying incident in light of his dedication and qualifications.

DeMint’s and others’ concerns were reality based, yet the left-wing (mainstream) media and the Democrats cried that blocking Southers’ appointment was based on “politics”.

Southers himself, on stepping down, said that he is “Nonpolitical” and was withdrawing because he believed his nomination and the subsequent ado presented a political lightning rod. On that score, I completely believe he is sincere.

It’s right that Southers did not end up in the job, even though, in my opinion, he was qualified from a professional standpoint.

Yeah, I did mention cynicism, that in my not being at all surprised that Erroll Southers had some “back trail”, as it were, if for no other reason than that he was selected by the Obama Administration: Barack Hussein did, after all, unabashedly bring the corrupt Chicago political machine with him to Washington, and in keeping with everything else he represents, he is forever hard put to produce key position nominees who do not have skeletons, problems with embracing veracity, or at least negative agendas of some kind.

In summation, politics has absolutely nothing to do with my opinion here. Had it not been for the lie and his perception that collective bargaining might have a place in a security organization, I would be, at the least, overjoyed to have a person with Erroll Southers’ knowledge, vision and experience at the helm of the Transportation Security Administration.

Chuck, back from the raucousness (until Thursday, 31 December, anyway) of my typical Christmas Eve through New Year’s Day festivities.

A belated Merry Christmas to many, Happy Hannukah to others. Sorry, we don’t do Atheism, Quansa or Ramadan (Ram-It-In?) here.

By “following up”, I refer to the aftermath of what’s his face, um, why do these murdering assholes have to have these tongue twisters for names, rather than just a simple “Abdul” or “Achmed”? Um, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, that’s it. One of Allah’s faithful, for sure.

Seth pretty well explained how we feel about Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland “Security” and about the way that passel of morons she commands runs the TSA.

And Barack Hussein, that guy a bunch of naive, anti-America or simply stupid people elected president.

Yeah, I know. I’m not what you’d call one of the politically correct, I just call it as I see it, though at this forum I endeavor to be considerably more sedate than I am elsewhere.

So, for this post I’ve brought with me a few links pertaining to the close call the folks aboard Flight 253 experienced and the state of our Homeland “Security” situation in general.

From CNS News:

President Barack Obama, in his first public comments on the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit, described the suspect as “an isolated extremist,” despite reports that the 23-year-old Nigerian had been trained in Yemen, a country he visited twice.

The Associated Press, quoting a Yemeni government official, said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab lived in Yemen for two extended periods of time — a year, from 2004-2005 and again from August-December this year. He apparently was in Yemen a few weeks before the attempt to blow Flight 253 out of the sky over Michigan.

An isolated extremist, of course. There are only a handful of misguided followers of the Religion of Peace© who entertain any malevolent feelings toward America and we, the infidels herein.

More of our fearless leader’s PC and other assorted bullshit can be found in the linked article.

But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we? Also from CNS News, Homeland Security Touts 2009 Accomplishments, Including ‘Secure Flight’ Program

Just days before a Nigerian man tried to blow up a U.S. airliner as it descended into Detroit, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released its “2009 Accomplishments & Reforms” fact sheet, touting its “Secure Flight” passenger vetting program.

The Obama administration has confirmed that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was on the U.S. government terrorist watch list, but the 23-year-old man was still able to board a Northwest plane in Amsterdam bound for Michigan.

On the DHS fact sheet, issued on Dec. 15, the “Secure Flight” program is second on the list and is described as a program that “prescreens name, date of birth and gender against government watch lists for domestic and international flights.”

They sure did a great job in preventing Abdulmutallab, al-Qaeda’s newest celebrity, from getting aboard Flight 253, explosives and all, wouldn’t you agree?

From the Heritage Foundation’s Blog:

Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), the explosive Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate aboard Northwest Airlines flight 253, is among the most powerful of explosives in the world and was widely used to blow up airplanes in the 1970s and 1980s. The only reason the passengers of Flight 253 are still alive today is because Mr. Abdulmutallab’s syringe detonator failed for still unknown reasons.

Yet despite the facts that PETN is easily detected and Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father warned the U.S. embassy in Nigeria about his son this November, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had the audacity to go on television yesterday and say “the system worked” and that the suspect was properly screened. The “system worked?” The 278 passengers on flight 253 could be dead today but for a faulty syringe and the Obama administration considers that a success? That is pure idiocy. Idiocy that is a direct threat to the security of this country and that goes to the heart of the Obama administration’s approach to the war on terror.

What on earth could Secretary Napolitano possibly mean when she said the “system worked?”

Good question, read the rest of the linked post.

And then move on to what we’ll call a recap by Wesley Pruden, from today’s Jewish World Review:

Well, to paraphrase a famous president of a slightly earlier time, “you’re doing a heckuva job, Janet.” That goes for everybody at the White House.

If Barack Obama wants to reassure a nervous public that bureaucratic incompetence won’t be tolerated, he might look to the example of what happened to the director of FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But no one expects the president to sack Janet Napolitano, the secretary of something the government insists on calling Homeland Security.

That’s not how an administration that regards words and deeds as equals actually works. The lessons in the latest Islamist attempt to bring down a Western airliner could be useful, but such lessons are too painful for the guvvies to think about.

Mzz Napolitano’s early assurance, since amended, that “the system worked” was either dopey beyond belief, or an unintended ringing endorsement of the ancient folk ethic that “G0d helps those who help themselves.” Better G0d than a guvvie, but not everyone can count on having as a fellow passenger a young Dutchman with quick instincts, athletic grace, a sharp eye and a full complement of bravery and courage. That’s not really a “system” for securing the homeland.

President Obama, interrupting a day at the beach, told reporters in Hawaii that he would pursue the plotters in Arabia and he would not rest until they are caught. This time he did not promise they would be executed, as he did of the Guantanamo plotters who are to be tried in New York City. But the attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approached Detroit was “a serious reminder” of the dangers George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and other Republicans warned us about. (Of course, he couldn’t afford to say it quite that way.)

Mr. Obama’s tough-guy rhetoric, his words plain, pretty and well-parsed, is more reassuring than his deeds, or would be if there was evidence that he really understands what must be done. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young jihadist from Nigeria by way of Yemen, was quickly indicted on federal charges of trying to destroy an aircraft, which means that he will have the full array of rights accorded to every defendant in an American court. Someone will have to read his Miranda rights, and he will have the right to a lawyer. This will please the civil rights radicals who imagine the Constitution to be a suicide pact, and who don’t, or can’t, understand that the most important civil right of all is the right not to be murdered. Murder, after all, is the surest way to deprive someone of his other civil rights.

If ever a system isn’t working, this is the one. Warning flags the size of bedsheets fluttered above checkpoints on two continents. The suspect’s father tried to warn the American government that his son had been radicalized and was looking for an opportunity to slaughter innocents. That should have been enough to interview the young man before revoking his visa. But such common sense, common nearly everywhere else, is rarely rewarded in the government precincts of the politically correct. Someone eager to scratch the itch to wound America might be offended.

Where were the intelligence services that soak up so many of the nation’s billions every year? Did the CIA talk to the FBI, or the DEA to DIA, or did considerations of protecting turf take precedence, as such considerations often do? The Obama administration promises an investigation, naturally, and of course it will be fair, thorough, hard-hitting, blah, blah and blah. Congress should be suspicious of bureaucrats investigating themselves, and conduct its own investigation. But Democrats in Congress will no doubt be more interested in protecting the administration than finding out what really happened. To find out might compel even a senator to actually do something.

The Detroit incident ought to persuade President Obama once and for all that making nice with those who are determined to kill as many of us as they can is a fool’s errand. He can go back to Cairo again and again to apologize as eloquently as he can, and when the apologies are over and he bumps the floor with his forehead in bowing to whomever, the Islamic jihadists will still despise us and will continue to plot to destroy us.

Janet Napolitano can conjure up more ways to harass air travelers, going after all those blue-eyed Scandinavian grannies in Minnesota again to avoid “profiling” the likely terrorists. She may require us to take off our pants as well as our shoes. But even with more harassment of the innocent, she still won’t have a “system” that works. We must pray for a Dutchman.

Amen!

…I could, in any kind of conscience, leave one of my few pet peeves, that being the incompetence of the Transportation Safety Administration, by the wayside, along comes this item.

The Transportation Security Administration inadvertently revealed closely guarded secrets related to airport passenger screening practices when it posted online this spring a document as part of a contract solicitation, the agency confirmed Tuesday.

The 93-page TSA operating manual details procedures for screening passengers and checked baggage, such as technical settings used by X-ray machines and explosives detectors. It also includes pictures of credentials used by members of Congress, CIA employees and federal air marshals, and it identifies 12 countries whose passport holders are automatically subjected to added scrutiny.

TSA officials said that the manual was posted online in a redacted form on a federal procurement Web site, but that the digital redactions were inadequate. They allowed computer users to recover blacked-out passages by copying and pasting them into a new document or an e-mail.

Okayyyyy….

Yeah, I know, in the past I posted quite a bit about TSA, about their incompetence and the dangers it poses, as a result, to the millions of people who fly out of U.S. airports annually.

The problem, as I’ve said before, is not that the rank and file employees of the TSA are lazy, don’t want to do their jobs or what have you, and not even that they, themselves, are as incompetent as their agency is, as a whole.

Like any government entity, the TSA is run not by people who should be running it, ie veteran industry professionals who have been around the block a few times, but by political appointees who, despite flowery resumes of administrative excellence and vast bureaucratic experience, don’t know diddly about the hands-on aspects of that which they purport to command.

This was true at TSA’s inception, and it’s true today.

It was true under the Bush Administration and it’s true under the Obama Administration, and it’ll probably still be the same under the next administration.

Why?

Because those who run your — our — government, Democrat and Republican alike, care more about the repayment of political favors than they do about your — our — lives. Period.

Stewart A. Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said that the manual will become a textbook for those seeking to penetrate aviation security and that its leaking was serious.

“It increases the risk that terrorists will find a way through the defenses,” Baker said. “The problem is there are so many different holes that while [the TSA] can fix any one of them by changing procedures and making adjustments in the process . . . they can’t change everything about the way they operate.”

Of course there are “so many different holes” — what do you expect when you entrust policies to people who shouldn’t even be managing a security agency?

Another former DHS official, however, called the loss a public relations blunder but not a major risk, because TSA manuals are shared widely with airlines and airports and are available in the aviation community.

“While it’s certainly a type of document you would not want to be released . . . it’s not something a determined expert couldn’t find another way,” the official said.

A “public relations blunder” is certainly of more worry to a government agency than a risk to the lives of those that depend upon them for security.

As for it’s not something a determined expert couldn’t find another way, well, to say that such a statement should earn the official who uttered it an immediate date with a firing squad would be completely accurate in my book. A dedicated security professional would be looking for methods of preventing “a determined expert” from “finding it another way”.

The “former DHS official”, in my professional estimate, is a piece of shit who has no business in the Protection Industry, not even emptying the waste baskets of the folks actively engaged in doing the job at hand. But then again, look who’s running the Department of Homeland Security — Janet Napolitano, no real, hands-on security experience, instead, an infinitely more relevant qualification, political relevance.

This is a measure of how cavalier, in the name of self and party serving politics, the government can be with the safety of we, the people, whom they are sworn to protect and defend.

Of course, there’s the usual bland, butt covering form letter style malarkey from the TSA.

“TSA takes this matter very seriously and took swift action when this was discovered. A full review is now underway,” the agency said in a statement. “TSA has many layers of security to keep the traveling public safe and to constantly adapt to evolving threats. TSA is confident that screening procedures currently in place remain strong.”

To be perfectly blunt, what’s needed is management, from top to bottom, of the Transportation Safety Administration by purely meritoriously appointed or hired, experienced security professionals who have no political or other debts to anyone in the administration or anyplace else in government.

Such people would ensure the proper training and, in effect, that those trained in each specialty area have completely absorbed all of said training before they are deployed. That these employees are properly motivated. That their supervisory personnel are both responsible people and are experts themselves at their subordinates’ duties, “been there, done that”.

The incompetence at hand, as such, makes for a rather grim joke.

Employees at the Transportation Security Administration inadvertently exposed classified information about the agency’s security procedures because, apparently, they don’t know how PDF documents work.

Read on…

1.1. In for a penny, in for 3/4 of a cent?

In the battle on the U.S.-Mexico border, the fight against illegal immigration often loses out to environmental laws that have blocked construction of parts of the “virtual fence” and that threaten to create places where agents can’t easily track illegal immigrants.

Documents obtained by Rep. Rob Bishop and shared with The Washington Times show National Park Service staffers have tried to stop the U.S. Border Patrol from placing some towers associated with the virtual fence, known as the Secure Border Initiative or SBInet, on wilderness lands in parks along the border.

In a remarkably candid letter to members of Congress, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said her department could have to delay pursuits of illegal immigrants while waiting for horses to be brought in so agents don’t trample protected lands, and warns that illegal immigrants will increasingly make use of remote, protected areas to avoid being caught.

The documents also show the Interior Department has charged the Homeland Security Department $10 million over the past two years as a “mitigation” penalty to pay for damage to public lands that agencies say has been caused by Border Patrol agents chasing illegal immigrants.

By all means, let’s protect our nation from illegal immigration and terrorism, but let’s do so only where it coincides with the precious concerns of the enviro-weenies.

Maybe the government can strike a deal with the coyotes to smuggle their illicit human cargos only in areas first approved by those whose environmental concerns take precedence over the lives and wellbeing of Americans, and make a similar arrangement with any terrorists or MS-13 gangs wishing to come into the U.S. to wreak their havoc.

Dipstix…

2. Our esteemed Ego-In-Chief:

PRESIDENT OBAMA was too busy to attend the celebrations in Germany this week marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But he did appear by video, delivering a few brief and bloodless remarks about how the wall was “a painful barrier between family and friends” that symbolized “a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being.” He referred to “tyranny,” but never identified the tyrants — he never uttered the words “Soviet Union” or “communism,” for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan — or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

He did, however, talk about Barack Obama.

Of course he did. He is, after all, his favorite subject.

It’s been a point of debate between Chuck and I whether he was this big a self worshiper before he ran for his present position (Chuck’s opinion) or his ego was hyper-inflated by the messiah building PR showered upon him by the mainstream media, and the adulation he received from millions of gullible mental zeros or overreactive Bush-haters who elected him (my opinion).

If I’m right, my flashback to Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network (you know, “Go to the window…”) is almost spot-on.

“Few would have foreseen,” declared the president, “that a united Germany would be led by a woman from [the former East German state of] Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.”

As presidential rhetoric goes, this was hardly a match for “Ich bin ein Berliner,” still less another “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” But as a specimen of presidential narcissism, it is hard to beat. Obama couldn’t be troubled to visit Berlin to commemorate a momentous milestone in the history of human liberty. But he was glad to explain to those who were there why reflections on that milestone should inspire appreciation for the self-made “destiny” of his own rise to power.

Was there ever a president as deeply enamored of himself as Barack Obama?

The first President Bush, taught from childhood to shun what his mother called “The Great I Am,” regularly instructed his speechwriters not to include too many “I’s” in his prepared remarks. Ronald Reagan maintained that there was no limit to what someone could achieve if he didn’t mind who got the credit. George Washington, one of the most accomplished men of his day, said with characteristic modesty on becoming president that he was “peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.”

Obama, on the other hand, positively revels in The Great I Am.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” he told campaign aides when he was running for the White House. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.”

At the start of his presidency, Obama seemed to content himself with the royal “we” — “We will build the roads and bridges . . . We will restore science to its rightful place . . . We will harness the sun and winds,” he declaimed at his inauguration.

But as the literary theorist Stanley Fish points out, “By the time of the address to the Congress on Feb. 24, the royal we [had] flowered into the naked ‘I’: ‘As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress.’ ‘I called for action.’ ‘I pushed for quick action.’ ‘I have told each of my cabinet.’ ‘I’ve appointed a proven and aggressive inspector general.’ ‘I refuse to let that happen.’ ‘I will not spend a single penny.’ ‘I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves.’ ‘I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half.’” In his speech on the federal takeover of GM, Obama likewise found it necessary to use the first-person singular pronoun 34 times. (”Congress” he mentioned just once.)

The writer of the linked column, Jeff Jacoby, knows his subject:

At this rate, it won’t be long before the president’s ego is so inflated that it will require a ZIP code of its own.

No, they really don’t, these members of the current majority festering in Congress. Anytime any opportunity arises where they have the chance to sabotage our economy, our freedom of speech or our security in the name of liberal quagmirism, they’re wide awake and on it with a vengeance.

The Senate rejected a move Thursday to block the Obama administration from using ordinary federal courts to prosecute those alleged to have plotted the Sept. 11 attacks.

On a 54-45 vote, the Senate tabled an amendment from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that would have left military commissions as the only option for prosecuting Sept. 11 suspects.

All 40 Republicans supported the amendment, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and four Democrats: Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.)

Graham said the measure, offered as an amendment to the annual appropriations bill for the Commerce and Justice Departments, was needed to head off what he said were plans by the Obama administration to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others allegedly involved in the Sept. 11 plot to trials before civilian courts in the U.S.

Of course, we were expecting something like that, the left having discussed it for a long time, often with comparisons of the gulag and Nazi death camps when referring to the Camp Delta incarceration facility at Guantanamo Bay, the feeble argument that these Butchers For Allah are mere felons, not captured prisoners in a war between civilizations we did not start, but to now see that they’ve actually done it, well, is nevertheless disconcerting.

The more sensible among our leaders, mostly Republicans, were, rightly, completely for the bill.

“These people are not criminals. They’re warriors — and they need to be dealt with in a legal system that recognizes that,” Graham said. “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, did not rob a liquor store.”

“The attacks of 9/11 were not a crime. They were a war crime,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said.

Some Democrats flatly disagreed, arguing that military trials could play into the Al Qaeda operatives’ claims that they are fighters in a holy war against America.

“They are criminals. They committed murder,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said. “These are not holy warriors. They are criminals.”

Here, here!

Jim Webb, one of the few smart Democrats present:

“I have consistently argued that the appropriate venue for trying perpetrators of international terrorism who are in fact enemy combatants is a military tribunal,” Webb said. He said federal court procedures for turning over evidence to defense lawyers and for calling military and intelligence agency witnesses “could lead to the exposure of classified materials.”

My emphasis, there, and the man said a mouthful.

Regular court procedures would require the prosecution to produce evidence that might consist of disclosure of methods, means and personnel we can’t afford to have the enemy read about in the New York Times.

Then again, that precedent was already set back when the NYT was printing the details of Bush terrorist surveillance strategies, so I don’t suppose it would be anything new.

Webb also indicated he was concerned that a terror suspect sent to federal court could be released in the U.S. if he was found not guilty.

Fancy that!

The whole story is here.

…,this one purportedly by a Law student, that sounds like a GREAT idea to me!

DIVORCE AGREEMENT

Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950’s, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce.

I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model 20 separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.

You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.

Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.

You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a
bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).

We’ll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.

You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens.

We’ll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks. We’ll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.

You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we’ll help provide them security.

We’ll keep our Judeo-Christian values…You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain.

You can also have the U.N…but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We’ll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We’ll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.

We’ll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute Imagine, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.

We’ll practice trickledown economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot.

Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Sincerely,

John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.

P.P.S. I would like to include the following addendum:

Again, in the spirit of this Divorce Agreement, we will also keep the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States of America since the current administration, from President through all those listed above have ceased to use or abide by it. You can keep the writings of every anti-American you choose to follow.

Works for me!

Hat Tip to the illustrious B.J.S.

Yeah, by him I mean former New York Mayor Ed Koch, a Dem left over from the years before the far left bought and paid for the Democratic Party. Granted, he’s somewhere on the liberal side of things, but he doesn’t lick the hind quarters of the anti-America crowd like most of the other Democrats do these days.

In a September 22nd editorial, The New York Times renewed its opposition to the construction of a fence to deter illegal crossings from Mexico to the United States.

The Times speculates that the current decline in border arrests “could be because of the bad economy as much as the fence.” They are probably right. What I object to is the Times’ insistence that a better solution to the problem of illegal immigration is “for Congress to reform the nation’s immigration laws. No fence can keep a determined immigrant out or absolve Congress of that responsibility.” The Times’ version of reforming our immigration laws means providing amnesty and a path to citizenship to the estimated 12 to 20 million illegal aliens now living in the U.S.

The Times refuses to use the words illegal aliens when referring to people crossing our borders without permission. Instead, it calls them “immigrants,” or “migrants.” If people entered The New York Times building without permission and squatted there, would the Times call them migrants? Or would it call them trespassers and have them evicted?

If people entered The New York Times building without permission and squatted there, would the Times call them migrants? Or would it call them trespassers and have them evicted?

Have ‘em evicted, of course. Do as we say, not as we do, right?

The pro-amnesty liberals are, after all, the same people who live in gated communities that won’t be having any of these amnestied aliens living in them, anyway, so they can wish whatever they want on the rest of us.

I oppose the granting of amnesty except in cases demanding a compassionate response, e.g., children who are American citizens whose parents are illegals. My solution to illegal immigration is prison for American employers who knowingly hire illegals. I do not support jailing the aliens, but I would support paying their transportation costs back to their homelands. If their own countries want to give them a preference in applying for U.S. citizenship and allow them to jump ahead of those who have patiently waited in line, I would try in some way to accommodate that action. I doubt that will occur.

If such amnesty is offered again, as it was in 1986, it will make a mockery of our laws. The illegals will continue to come, hoping and expecting a subsequent amnesty. The Pew Research Center, according to the September 23rd Times, reported “one-third of Mexicans say they would move to this country if they could, and more than half of those would move even if they did not have legal immigration documents.” Those Mexican citizens seem to agree with the Times on open borders.

Personally, I agree with Koch that the Reagan amnesty of 1986 was a mistake (which only goes to show that even the greatest among us make a mistake now and then), but I disagree with the former mayor about anchor babies. If the parents are here illegally to begin with, the child shouldn’t have automatic U.S. citizenship. It’s a piss poor system that allows such flaws as the opportunity for people to use the creation of human life for the purpose of exploiting the legal system, not much different from a welfare mother who keeps on cranking out babies for the sole purpose of milking more money out of the taxpayer to support her drug or alcohol addictions.

The Times’ editorial is correct, however, to criticize the cost of the fence. It also tells us that “Investigators from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office report that the larger, actual fence-covering a 600 mile-plus stretch between San Diego and Brownsville, Tex.-cost $2.4 billion to build and will cost an extra $6.5 billion in upkeep across two decades.” It also notes that “Auditors reported last week that the high-tech, 28-mile “virtual” section of the fence was running a mere seven years behind this month’s planned opening.”

Ridiculous. Somebody, probably a lot of people, should be fired for incompetence. That is why when government officials tell us they intend to fund a new program like health care and save money by eliminating waste, fraud, and incompetence, nobody believes them. This single example explains why, but there are many others. The purpose of this article is to sound the alarm so that we can gird our loins and prepare for the next congressional battle over immigration which is likely to take place in the election year 2010.

The above emphasis is my way of shouting “Right On!!!!” from the rooftops.

Read the entire column.

…and see a more secure America.

From 2 August, 2009:

The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison.

Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and foreign fighters now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

The officials outlined the plans — the latest effort to comply with President Barack Obama’s order to close the prison camp by Jan. 22, 2010, and satisfy congressional and public fears about incarcerating terror suspects on American soil — on condition of anonymity because the options are under review.

The best way to satisfy public fears about incarcerating terror suspects on American soil would be to leave them incarcerated at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, and try them there, as well!

Getting that bit out of the way,

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama’s top advisers settled on a course of action they With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

Truncating…

Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. “I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives,” he said.

the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives

Is that convoluted thinking, or what?

One of the chief concerns in the whole “what to do with the terrorists imprisoned at GITMO” kerfuffle is a typical liberal concern, of course: Other countries, particularly European countries, disapprove of our holding them there.

American liberals, for the most part, are more concerned with the approval of the European Union than they are with what’s actually in the best interests of the American people. Shame on them!

Durn, I forgot — liberals have no sense of shame.

However, I haven’t read anyplace where the EU countries have pledged to take the detainees off our hands and accept them into their own societies.

Q:Why is that?

A:Old fashioned good sense!

Maybe our President needs to GITMO of that!