Homeland Security

The Hill invites two established bloggers from either side of the political spectrum to sound off in original commentary.

News reports today detail how House Republicans are secretly planning their takeover of the Capitol after November’s elections — right down to who gets the best views of the National Mall out the West Front of the building. They’re reading the polls, choosing color palettes and selecting office space, but as they plan to assume leadership positions they’re failing to demonstrate leadership on everything from the economy to jobs to foreign policy to Pastor Jones’s plan to fuel the fires of hatred with the pages of the Quran.

The Colombian Ambassador Carolina Barco held a reception in honor of my old boss, former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. Barco was effusive in her praise of Denny, who in the mid-1990s took a keen interest her country.

Back then, Colombia was teetering on the edge of complete chaos. Drug cartels and then narco-terrorists had the upper hand in their battle for control. Brutal murders, kidnapping and overall mayhem constantly terrorized Colombian citizens. Because the drug merchants had so much money, they were well-equipped and -armed, and they gave the Colombian military a run for its money. Because the cartels had so much money, they were also able buy off many in the justice system and in the police force.

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

— The Secret Sits, Robert Frost

The recent WikiLeaks (tsunami would be a better word) of about 77,000 diplomatic cables and intelligence reports raised a recurring issue of American law and policy.

A disturbed young man in our military in Europe turned over classified government documents to WikiLeaks (ironically, an organization dedicated to transparency that does not disclose its address or officers’ names). It, in turn, passed them on to The New York Times, as well as reputable British and German press organizations. Read more...

My first position on the controversy over the planned mosque and Muslim community center planned to be constructed within two blocks of Ground Zero was to applaud Mayor Bloomberg’s courage in not blaming all Muslims for the murderous actions of extremist, inhuman, suicidal thugs who happen to be of the Muslim faith. 

In 2004, in the wake of anthrax attacks in New York and in Washington, the Congress passed and the president signed into law legislation that was purported to protect the American people from a biological attack. The law created a special reserve fund dedicated to developing medical “countermeasures” to treat symptoms that came from any biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear weapons that might be used by our enemies.

Now, many libertarians might harrumph that the government shouldn’t take such an active role in the biological marketplace, but the fact of the matter is that the risk of a biological attack is fairly low, so the marketplace can’t really support such medical countermeasures without government support. Also, one of the purposes of government as defined in our Constitution is to provide for the common defense, and well, this fits the bill.

The American Psychological Association argued to the Texas licensing board that one of its members, James Mitchell, should be stripped of his license for “patently unethical behavior” in violation of the organization’s ethical guidelines, The Washington Post reports. In 2002, Mitchell, then retired from the Air Force, reportedly assisted the CIA’s interrogation of a terrorist detainee, Abu Zubaydah, in Thailand. Zubaydah was alleged to be a top al Qaeda official. A Senate report stated that interrogators including Mitchell used extreme measures to question Zubaydah, including waterboarding. Mitchell called the complaint libelous, distorted and inaccurate, though he added he was not permitted “to discuss any work that I may have done for the CIA.”

Read more...

Born and raised in New Jersey, I’m hardened to the slights about my native state — what exit do you live at? and put-downs like that. But the home of two terrorists — alleged — in North Bergen, my own hometown, is too much. As if “The Sopranos” and “Jersey Shore” and “Real Housewives” weren’t enough to seal the distorted reputation, to eclipse the high-class Princeton image — now we have terrorists in North Bergen? As they’d say at the Institute For Advanced Learning, gimme a break.

Here's a badly needed Miranda Advisory for all the political and pundit blowhards: "You have the right to remain silent. Use it.”

It would be particularly worthwhile right now if it was taken to heart by all the opportunists who are trying to exploit fear by wildly criticizing officials who Mirandize suspected terrorists in their custody, even U.S. citizens.

They know such simple-mindedness gets voters riled up, which is the way they play the game. Never mind that constitutional rights are not games.

The story of Faisal Shahzad's path from naturalized U.S. citizen living the American dream to terrorist attempting to kill an untold number of people in New York's Times Square is terrifying, a chilling reminder that not only does the enemy live among us, but we can't do much to stop attacks on the homeland no matter how hard we try.