The Age of Unity may indeed be upon us. The right-leaning Heritage Foundation and left-leaning Center for American Progress appear to be in significant agreement on at least one thing: The need for a BRAC-like commission of independent voices to review the tangle of homeland security laws and mandates issued in the frantic years after 9/11.
His Senate colleagues voted today to allow Sen. Joe Lieberman to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. For those who are still angry at Lieberman for campaigning against Barack Obama during the presidential election, have no fear. There’s something for you, too. (After all, this is Congress — candy for everybody!) The senators voted to boot Lieberman off of the environmental something-something committee and confiscate his global warming somethingorother subcommittee gavel.
Glenn Fine, the Inspector General at the Department of Justice, has published a fascinating in-depth memo listing the Top 10 challenges facing the next Attorney General. I’m certain the David Letterman’s list would be much funnier, but this is worth a read anyway.
If the Democrats didn’t need Lieberman’s vote, you can be sure that he would have already been offered a “lateral move.” Say to the chairmanship of the Cigarette Butt Disposal and Parking Lot Beautification Committee.
John Torres, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will take the helm after yesterday’s announcement that Assistant Secretary Julie Myers is stepping down.
I would place Coll’s book along side Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11″ as indispensable books for anybody wishing to understand what led to al Qaeda’s murderous attack on the United States in 2001. (Not to mention the 1993 forerunner attack on the World Trade Center, the 1996 Khobar Tower bombing and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.)
The U.S. Coast Guard has always been on the cutting edge of communications. At a time when its mother agency, the Department of Homeland Security, is still struggling with simply putting video online, the Coast Guard has long since developed its own channel on YouTube. Years ago, the Coasties recognized the value of gathering photos […]
Stepping out of the Newseum’s “G-Men and Journalists” exhibit, you’re left to reflect on this notion that John Dillinger was ever held up in American popular culture as some kind of folk hero. That Sixties-era radicals, who planted bombs in our neighborhoods, are embraced in some quarters today as, to use the words of Chicago mayor Richard Daley, “valued members” of the community. On the grotesque line of logic that leads some anti-government extremists to hold up Timothy McVeigh as a martyr.
Nobody has forgotten 9/11. And yet. And yet, many have put it behind them, and not in a good way. Seven years after the tragedy of that day, it is good that the American public has moved beyond the visceral anguish we all experienced in the immediate aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s declaration – and execution – of war on America. But many have not simply moved on; they have returned to a September 10 mindset. And part of the blame for this complacent mindset must directed at the man who will be our nation’s next leader.
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