DHS: The Fascist State

Just when you thought it was safe to travel to America comes the story of a hapless Italian tourist jailed without recourse for ten days while his "well-educated, well-connected" (we believe that means rich and powerful, in the common parlance) girlfriend and her family tried to get him out. Caveat: You need to register and login before you can view the story at the link.

Domenico Salerno, the youngest son of a prosperous contractor in Calabria and a recently graduated lawyer who works in his brother’s law firm in Rome, has an American girlfriend whom he visits several times a year.

Apparently, DHS decided that Mr. Salerno, whose command of English is limited, posed some sort of swarthy threat to the nation. They accused him of seeking asylum and dumped his tush in the hoosegow.

You might form some sort of idea about the social background of Mr. Salerno's American girlfriend when you read this comment from her father about the indignities visited upon Signor Salerno:

“We have a lot of government people here and lobbyists and lawyers and very educated, very savvy Washingtonians,” said Jim Cooper, Ms. Cooper’s father, a businessman, describing the reaction in his neighborhood, the Wessynton subdivision of Alexandria. “They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn’t happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans.”

Although swarthiness is not an absolute prerequisite for having your ass dragged off to the caboose. Witness the treatment of Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl of Iceland, who was held by these valiant representatives of our nation. All uncaring about our fragile economy and its dependence on the tourist trade, they had the gall to seize a blond, pink female person and handle her most inappropriately. And now this.

We can't wait for them to arrest an entire planeload of Israelis, or better yet, Lubavitchers, and fling their tuchuses into confinement for "looking like terrorists," or summat. The combined howls of outrage should surely lead to a "reorg," as we call it in the SillyValley, of the DHS, hopefully rousting out the most maleficent and reducing its powers to appropriate, Constitution-respecting levels.

It won't happen unless you do something about it, though. Reps Jane Harman (D-CA) and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss) have just announced that the DHS is planning to spy on Americans within the country and share any information with local law enforcement. Presumably, the DHS, like our Pretzeldunce, believe that the Constitution may be substituted for toilet paper if there is a shortage of the latter.

Write Harman and Thompson and tell them what you think. Hell, write your Rep too.

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Feel Safer Now?

Raw Story tells us that a man carrying a loaded shotgun was arrested in January near the U.S. Capitol, and explosives left in his truck nearby went undetected for three weeks.

The schmuck in question, one Michael Gorbey, 38, of Rapidan, Va., was allegedly trying to manufacture a

"weapon of mass destruction, that is, an explosive device capable of causing multiple deaths or serious bodily injuries to multiple persons, or massive destruction of property," according to the indictment.

[...]

Now U.S. Capitol Police are investigating how their bomb squad missed the bomb.

[...]

Court records show Gorbey is a convicted felon and has been in and out of prison since 1991 for convictions on larceny, domestic violence and illegal gun and drug charges.

So we have to take our shoes off at the airport and stand in line for hours and dump breast milk and carry shampoo in little tiny bottles, and the FBI and DHS are monitoring every fucking email, phone call, and Web click we make, we can't even fart in peace in our houses without the DHS analyzing our poots, but convicted felons and loonies can bring bombs into the capital and DHS doesn't find them for three weeks? HELLO? Why does Michael Chertoff still have a job?

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National Security: Airport Workers Use Fake ID

Raw story reports that over 100 people with fake ID received security clearance to work at Chicago's O'Hare airport. The workers appear to be employees of a contractor, highlighting once again why privatizing the nation's security is a BAD idea.

The Republican leadership and the Misadministration have sought, over the past seven years, to privatize any function that can be privatized, and even some that cannot, pouring billions of taxpayer dollars from the public treasury directly into the pockets of scammers, cheats, and thieves. Like Neil Bush, for example, whose Ignite "educational" software is designed to teach "hunter/warriors," especially those requiring special education, how to use rhymes instead of learning math.

In their push for privatization, the Powers That (Used To) Be have deliberately obfuscated the fact that private businesses operate for the profit of their investors and shareholders. Public servants have a duty to the people. This crucial fact leads to private services being inferior when it comes to providing for the health, security, and well-being of the people. Their duty is not to the people. Their duty is to a subset of the people known as stockholders and stakeholders. The article states, in part:

... 110 employees of one contractor on site used social security numbers which either did not exist or belonged to other people, some of whom were dead, according to a criminal complaint.

One undocumented worker looking for work at the airport, who was actually a government informer, was told to look through a box with about 20 airport security badges and "pick one with a picture that most closely resembled his own likeness" the complaint said.

Lovely. Doesn't that make you feel a lot better? Safer? More secure?

How in the name of all that's holy did the Republicans get elected on a platform of keeping the nation safe? All they've done for the past seven years is loot the treasury, give their incompetent friends jobs with big titles and lots of money, divert needed monies to scams which enrich a few select people while leaving most of us worse off, and engage in corruption that endangers the whole nation.

The only good news in the article is that Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, is in charge of prosecuting the case. He has a reputation for honesty, fairness, devotion to the truth and damn the consequences, and a legendary tenacity. These creeps will not get away with their acts.


Note: Twenty-three of the arrestees were undocumented persons in the country illegally.

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Politics: Feeling Safer Yet?

Looks more like a vulture than an eagle

Hey, maybe it's just us over here in Casa de Los Gatos, but wouldn't you expect the Department of Homeland Security to hire people who, like, had enough in the old noggin to check that people's faces matched their passport pictures? You know, instead of needing some senior official from the TSA (the same TSA that is continually harrassing nursing mothers and damaging people's computers) to tell them what to look for? This story is just unbelievable.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, recently revealed an email sent by a senior official at the Transportation Security Administration giving screeners all over the country very specific details about what sorts of suspicious clues the undercover testers would expect them to notice -- such as ID's with photos that did not match the people using them and boarding passes with altered dates.

[...]

Security expert David Heyman told NBC that despite the tipoffs the screeners still did poorly, and "that's got to be very discouraging."

BushCo - making the world a safer place for someone, but it sure as hell ain't us.

Raw Story has the video.

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These people are without shame

but you knew that. What you might not know, however, is the extent of their shamelessness. For example, when the EPA, working with Tom Ridge at the DHS, crafted tough laws to implement post-9/11 chemical plant security measures, Dick Cheney's son-in-law (no, the one with a dick) stepped in to effectively emasculate such measures. The Washington Monthly has more.

These people are disgusting vampires who prey on everyone and thing that is not related to them by blood or marriage. Read it. It'll make you uncomfortable, but at least you'll know more about some of the issues that you need to take some action on.

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