3 Reasons To Elimnate Dept Homeland Security

Nick Gillespie gives three excellent reasons to eliminate Dept of "Homeland Security"...a department that neither makes us safer, nor has caught a single terrorist.

Airport Health Care

Government Officials Exempt From Airport Groping

The TSA has announced that elected, appointed and top bureaucratic officials will be exempt from airport groping by during the security kabuki theatre when they fly commercially.  This is utterly against the basica principles of a republic.  Everyone who flies on commercial airlines MUST be subject to the same indignities that the "little people" must endure.  This was announced by the TSA today.

Cabinet secretaries, top congressional leaders and an exclusive group of senior U.S. officials are exempt from toughened new airport screening procedures when they fly commercially.

If you want to avoid being groped by illiterate cretins, then fly privately or government air.  But if you fly commercially, then you must be exposed to the same bullshit that everyone else has to endure.  Glenn Reynolds comments that this will go over well with the proles...

TSA Will Excempt Muslims From Pat downs....

This is by an unknown author.  I received it from a regular reader.

Government, which grows not out of necessity but by insisting upon itself, needs to slow down. We need to revisit the balance among freedom, cost and security and not continue to double down on bad policies.

The latest is the TSA's (stands for "Thousands Standing Around") directive to be more intrusive in its new "enhanced pat-down" policy. Maybe the TSA seeks to expand its self-serving role, or maybe the unionized agents of the behemoth TSA were just getting bored and wanted a better way to feel up women and explore some new boundaries. Either way, it is unnecessary.

This is the part that will scare Juan Williams: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has told the government - and Muslims - that this procedure violates their religious rights. Now it looks like our government will back off from frisking and even body scanning Muslim women. When female Islamic terrorists blow themselves up, I don't think they are rewarded with 72 virgin men in Paradise. I think they would prefer one good man who cuddles and picks up after himself. We have these in America; they are called gay men.

Since the TSA won't be able to aggressively pat down Muslims, they will now have more time to pat down Irene Smith, the 62-year-old, retired school teacher from Canton, Ohio. Irene, this is your lucky day! If you are subjected to ten "random" pat downs in a row, the eleventh one is free!

In a feeble attempt to justify her decision, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said "women can opt for a same gender pat-down," no doubt something she would like to do herself to other women. So ladies, your choice of who gets to feel you up is either a creepy male who has not even bought you a cocktail yet or a woman in comfortable shoes.
The new body scans are no less troubling. It was recently reported that the U.S. Marshals Service admitted to storing images from courthouse body scans. The TSA is suspected of doing the same, so when the Obama administration started its big push against obesity, it was because they wanted to look at better bodies.

In lieu of full body scans or pat-downs, and to accommodate Muslims, Nancy Pelosi will have her personal California feng shui guy look passengers in the eye and read their Karma. As we know, liberals are OK with their policies being a disaster as long as their stated intentions are good.

To recap the new TSA intrusion, Muslims will be subjected to less security, we average Americans will get more and, as an added bonus, even longer lines at airports.

When the TSA was formed, mall cops from all over our nation had their salaries and job security tripled by becoming government union workers and Democratic voters.

The TSA seems accountable to no one. Increasingly big brother-ish airports have been running a scary message over their PA systems which begins ominously, "Effective immediately: By order of the Department of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration, liquids or gels weighing more than three ounces cannot be carried on planes." Why have they run that for over four years now? This from the same TSA that does not provide shoe horns, and which brought us the confusing color-coded threat levels. If I have it straight, we are supposed to worry when we hit the "lavender" level, but that could be wrong.

If authorities want to assist the flying public, they should taser anyone behind you who is a seat-kicker. Flying is hard enough. I don't like being around kids on airplanes. With all the whining, drooling, fidgeting and childishness, I just feel I am setting a bad example for them.

Why we are so afraid to try to change the TSA? The high-handed, Obama/Pelosi/Reid-like, "it's for your own good" attitude they display somehow discourages inquiry into what the heck they are really doing. Such is the nature of a government bureaucracy or a corrupt church: avow your moral justification and superiority and let no one question what you do.

Sadly, our government, founded on liberty and tasked with "providing for the common defense," is being slowly taken down by deluded notions of political correctness while bestowing equal rights on our enemies. Common sense - and our safety - are being sacrificed.

If there is a simpler, less intrusive and more efficient way to do something, we should try it. Our country was founded by a bunch of folks who thought there was a better way

Grope & Change!

There's a great analogy on just why we don't want a government bureaucracy taking over our health care system to be found in the TSA fiasco.  When a mindless bureaucracy is placed in charge of ANYTHING...especially when political correctness forces security screeners to grope grandma's, children and nuns looking for "explosives" is exactly why we don't want our government involved in health care.

To put it bluntly, governmental bureaucrats just don't give a shit about you, as long as their rules and regulations are being followed.  They only have the power to say NO! and use that power whenever and where ever they can.  This is from Legal Insurrection:

In a nation already revolting at the ballot box against overly intrusive government, the prospect of having your junk fondled out of bureaucratic inflexibility and political correctness is feeding the anger. Providing security at airports and generally is a perfectly appropriate role for government. But the seemingly mindless TSA screening procedures show what happens when bureaucracy takes over.

 Because bureaucracy doesn't care about you...only that it's rules be applied to EVERYONE...except politicians.  Even Hillary Clinton has said she wouldn't take the "pat down" fondling...but then as one of out "political elite" she wouldn't have to.  But as Glenn @ instapundit points out this is far from over!...

BTW Glenn, thanks for the post title...I couldn't help it.

Ron Paul to TSA: Enough is Enough!

I don't often agree with Ron Paul...but once in a while he does get it right.

TSA Training Film

Here's a training film from the Transportation Security Agency



via Instapundit

Here's some more on TSA's Efficeincy.

TSA Screws Up Again

A man identifying himself as a federal agent was able to get through airport security with a "prisoner" a woman who has been identified as an illegal alien. Moreover, he took the woman first to a border patrol office and attempted to have them deport her. When that failed, he took her to San Diego international airport and successfully put her on a flight to the Phillipines...

To make matters worse...he followed all the protocols and procedures of the TSA has in place for federal and local law enforcement offices. The matter is "now under investigation."

Our country is in the best of hands...

Transportation Security Agency: More Failures To Come

The time has come for our politically correct liberal "elite" to recognize that the nature of the threat that we nationally and civilizationally are under from Islamic Jihadists. The time has come for our politically correct liberal "elite" set aside their PC outlook and allow our transportation security personnel to do the unspeakable...to literally begin to profile those who commit terrorist attacks and to target those people fit that profile.

Israel and Saudi Arabia haven't had a significant terrorist attack on their transportation infrastructure in quite some time. Why? Because they understand the threat they face and attack that problem head on. They do so by vigorously targeting those who fit the profile of a terrorist and pursue them relentlessly. We on the other hand deny pillows to [possible] child terrorists. Which is, patently ridiculous. We target grandmothers and force them to frisking...our transportation security is ridiculous. Silly also fits the bill. But serious, certainly doesn't.

Instead of targeting "muslim" men...we harrass our domestic travelers for hours. Once upon a time, you could arrive at the airport 30 minutes before your flight was to depart...then after Sep 11, 2001, "security" demanded 2 hours. Now? 4-6. That is rediculous. How so? Because TSA couldn't figure out that a man traveling from Yemen without baggage, paying cash for a one way ticket MIGHT just be a terrorist.

State Department Fails To Screen Terrorist

Kevin Bacon's bit in Animal House is spot on for this article.

Hilary Clinton's State Department failed to screen a potential terrorist from entering the US.

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father in Nigeria reported concern over his son’s “radicalization” to the U.S. Embassy there last month, intelligence officials in the United States deemed the information insufficient to pursue. The young man’s name was added to the half-million entries in a computer database in McLean and largely forgotten.
The lack of attention was not unusual, according to U.S. intelligence officials, who said that thousands of similar bits of information flow into the National Counterterrorism Center each week from around the world. Only those that indicate a specific threat, or add to an existing body of knowledge about an individual, are passed along for further investigation and possible posting on airline and border watch lists. …
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) joined GOP critics in asking how the suspect was able to retain a U.S. visa — issued by the U.S. Embassy in London in 2008 — after his name appeared in the terrorist database.
“What happened after this man’s father called our embassy in Nigeria?” Lieberman asked. “What happened to that information? Was there follow-up to try to determine where this suspect was?”

White House officials struggled to explain the complicated system of centralized terrorist data and watch lists, stressing that they were put in place years ago by the Bush administration. Spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Obama has ordered reviews of the watch-list system and the airport explosives screening.

Moreover, the TSA and Dept Of Homeland Security (another useless department) has failed dismally. After all, the best Napolitano can say is they reacted "successfully after the event". Jonah Goldberg says "

I watched her on three shows and each time she was more annoying, maddening and absurd than the previous appearance. It is her basic position that the "system worked" because the bureaucrats responded properly after the attack. That the attack was "foiled" by a bad detonator and some civilian passengers is proof, she claims, that her agency is doing everything right. That is just about the dumbest thing she could say, on the merits and politically. I would wager that not one percent of Americans think the system is "working" when terrorists successfully get bombs onto planes (and succeed in activating them). Probably even fewer think it's fair that they have to take off their shoes, endure delays and madness while a known Islamic radical — turned in by his own father — can waltz onto a plane (and into the country). DHS had no role whatsoever in assuring that this bomb didn't go off. By her logic if the bomb had gone off, the system would have "worked" since it has done everything right.

Napolitano has a habit of arguing that DHS is a first responder outfit. Its mission is to deal with "man-caused-disasters" afer they occur. It appears she really believes it. If the White House wants to assure people that it takes the war on terror seriously (a term Robert Gibbs used this morning by the way), they could start by firing this patently unqualified hack.

The emphasis is mine...



Mrs. Napolitano, if the system had worked this man would never have gotten onto the aircraft without a passport. A passenger on the flight, one Kurt Haskell who boarded the plane at the same time as the terrorist says that an "Indian/Pakistani" looking man berated the ticket clerk into giving a ticket to the terrorist. So, NO! The system didn't work. Your endless regulations and screening obviously has failed...yet again. Your useless department has done nothing but add discomfort to travelers and hired idiots who can't do anything else...here's a link to The Hill that has a whole host of governement experts who agree that the system has failed. Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, said:

Yes -- in Bizarro World, where up is down, right is left, and a "system" supposedly designed to protect us instead breaks down completely and leaves passengers on a plane utterly defenseless.

What universe is this woman living in? I'll tell you -- it's the world of Washington, D.C., where the main occupation appears to be covering your own a[--]. How she could sit there and say that with a straight face reveals an iron will: too bad she didn't apply that will to actually doing her job.

Consider: the passengers on that plane were left completely on their own: no air marshalls were on board. Also consider that the would-be terrorist got on the plane without a passport (according to a passenger on the flight, one Kurt Haskell), and in spite of the fact that his own father had personally gone to our CIA and the US Embassy to warn them about his son's activities, and that he presented a risk.

We're fighting a war in two countries, simultaneously, on the dubious grounds that we are combatting "terrorism" -- and yet the terrorists apparently have no problem getting into this country. We're protecting the Afghan-Pakistani border from incursions by the Taliban-- but our own borders continue to be among the most porous in the world.

It's time to dissolve the Department of Homeland Security, discharge the useless bureaucrats and ignoramuses who man the "security checkpoints" whose sole basis is to harass travelers, not stop terrorist from traveling.

UPDATE: From Megan McArdle

No, what this points out is not that Napolitano is incompetent, but that our elaborate system of security theater is probably next to useless. I cannot imagine where this is going to end. No, actually, I can imagine all too well: with passengers checking all luggage and flying in specially issued hospital gowns. And when some enterprising terrorist manages to sneak through that cordon by swallowing his explosives, the TSA will tell us that "the system works" and start the cavity searches.