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If timing is everything, the House Homeland Security Committee could not have picked a more interesting or appropriate time to begin a month of hearings focused on ‘resilience.’ Recent events – ranging from the devastating cyclone in Burma to skyrocketing gas prices – lend themselves quite nicely to the central point that was discussed by hearing witnesses and Committee Members: “Are we ready to bounce back from a blow when it happens?”

We see the “100 Percent” debate playing itself out between DHS and Democrats on the Hill — in the areas of employee screening at our nation’s airports, the screening of air cargo, and the screening of shipping containers coming from overseas. In all these instances, Democrats have passed legislative mandates requiring DHS to implement the costly solution of 100% scanning. DHS has been correct to push back, and they should do so more forcefully.

Harris writes: “Increased airport security and scrutiny of foreign visitors are not the primary causes of America’s global image problem. The excesses of Abu Ghraib, the existence of the Guantanamo prison (which all the presidential candidates say they want to shutter) and our controversial and passionately debated interrogation practices have done more to diminish our global standing than some gruff Customs officials or aggressive airport security personnel.”

An article last week implies that the Amtrak’s rail security upgrades are akin to smoke and mirrors. I might remind these critics that every government agency and business has competing budgetary needs and face a challenge of achieving their missions with the money, staff and resources on hand. Amtrak is no different. Securing operations is only a part of its mission, and trying to spread the available money as far as possible is never easy.

When one thinks of a “victimless crime”, many thoughts come to mind. One of the most perplexing, particularly in light of the current economic crisis facing the United States, is “piracy” and more specifically, the theft of “intellectual property rights” (IPR). The federal government estimates that U.S. businesses lose $250 billion per year in sales to “pirated” goods. That’s right, billion – not million.

The State Department’s renewal of its contract with Blackwater shows the gap between operational necessity and public perception. All the evidence available from reports of those in Iraq using their services is that Blackwater has worked offensively to project a much more efficient, user-friendly image. They are also now being far more closely supervised and are working even more closely with the military. Yet the public reaction to the continuation of the Blackwater contract is clearly negative.

Seven years after the horror of September 11th, these cultural sophisticates exude a kind of national-security ennui, bored with the hassles of visa paperwork and ready to go back to the way it was on September 10th. For them, even common-sense security measures are viewed with resentment and are held up as evidence that America is no longer that shining city on a hill but one turned inward with in fear and loathing.

There was time in our Nation’s history when the hallmark of excellence in journalism was The New York Times. While the excellence and certainly the integrity of that paper have fallen on what can diplomatically be called ‘hard times,’ it appears that things are even worse for ‘The Old Gray Lady’ (aka – the New York Times) than we knew. While its legendary editorial page has long thrown its weighty opinion around without abandon, it seems that when you go to respond to it with hard-cold facts, including actual reference to law, the Times does not have the guts to share the stage (or a portion of its editorial page) to allow a response.

Last week, al-Qaeda’s Deputy in Command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, resumed answering questions previously submitted to Al-Sahab via the internet. His answers and how they have been analyzed and reported by some journalists sheds new light on the growing criticism of the terrorist organization in the “Muslim world”.

The Department of Homeland Security recently announced a strategy to combat threats posed by terrorists trying to use small boats for attacks in US waters – one that aligns with a number of previously-recommended strategies including an emphasis on local / state government control and self-regulation on the boats themselves to watch out for potential threats.