Tom Ridge Sworn in By Clarence Thomas

10/8/01

[LisaFab]

Tom Ridge was just sworn in as Homeland Security chief by Clarence Thomas after great speech by Bush and is now making a rousing speech of his own..."terrorists will not take away our way of life...this job calls for a national effort and each must do his part..."

Sorry if this is a duplicate post.

[LisaFab]

What a great choice by Bush to have Clarence Thomas, so dignified in his robes, swear-in Ridge. Yet another reason to be glad we voted for GWB.

[DoughtyOne]

I have a bad feeling about this. His immediate staff will number at least 100. The known problems with illegal immigration will NOT be addressed. I even doubt airport staff problems will be corrected.

What this leaves is you and I. You and I will have more profiles developed on us. You and I will have to jump through more hoops.

Ridge stated that he has a job for every US Citizen. Oh joy. Now your next door neighbor won't just be watching your relationship with your children any longer, they'll be reporting more juicy tidbits to the government. What Ridge will accomplish is turning this nation into one where everyone suspects everyone else. If you know anything about how the Eastern Block nations and Soviet Russia used to operate, this should be very very disconcerting.

I'm not against people using common sense to report the obvious, but common sense is very uncommon these days.

Good luck folks.

[Jason, from Columbus Ohio]

Government, yet again, grows bigger.
Save the taxpayers $$$, and let the citizens be the homeland defense, we only LIVE here.
We can take care of our selves if we aren't wimps.
Gimme a break. Another government agency to protect America, shows that the FBI, CIA, and other agencies that were supposedly doing just that, just can't do the job.
I guess we will all now be criminals, until interrogated, and proven innocent.
BlaH.

[EternalVigilance]

I have a more sensible solution to 'Homeland Security', one that is much more in keeping with our heritage.

Issue an M-16, with ammo, to every citizen who is of age.

Do that, and over the long haul the security of our families and our republic would not be a problem, thank you very much.

[DoughtyOne]

I agree.

[steelwheels]

Sorry if this is a duplicate post.

Who you afraid of, FR police? Duplicat is good, more people see it.

[blam]

"Issue an M-16, with ammo, to every citizen who is of age."

I have that part taken care of. What I need is someone with the balls to stop all immigration for about 30-40 years.

[Diver Dave]

Homeland Security has a hollow ring to it when Gary Condit (D-CA) still sits on the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee and three (3) of the four (4) Intelligence subcommittees.

Call the House message line and leave a message for Gephardt - Get Condit off and out of Intelligence! It's the intelligent thing to do.!

1-800-648-3516

1-800-648-3516

[Ditto]

His immediate staff will number at least 100. The known problems with illegal immigration will NOT be addressed. I even doubt airport staff problems will be corrected. What this leaves is you and I. You and I will have more profiles developed on us.

Oh boy. With only 100 people he can compile profiles on 280 million Americans but he won't be able to get a few hundred airports to clean up their act.

I hear Al Sharpton is looking for more recruits for his tin foil hat brigade. You're more than qualified.

[Ragin1]

"What this leaves is you and I"

Thank God I'm not the only one. Seem's most people would cut off their nose, to spite their face. Fools. On a ship of fools.

[DoughtyOne]

To: DoughtyOne

His immediate staff will number at least 100. The known problems with illegal immigration will NOT be addressed. I even doubt airport staff problems
will be corrected. What this leaves is you and I. You and I will have more profiles developed on us.

Oh boy. With only 100 people he can compile profiles on 280 million Americans but he won't be able to get a few hundred airports to clean up their act.

I hear Al Sharpton is looking for more recruits for his tin foil hat brigade. You're more than qualified.

10 Posted on 10/08/2001 08:41:51 PDT by Ditto

I think you're making a mistake.  You are thinking that Ridge is a good guy and Bush was smart to appoint him.  I don't necessarily disagree with that, as far as that goes.  This is another massive bureaucracy.  Bush and Ridge won't be the ones running it in eight years.  Someone like Bill Clinton and Janet Reno may be.  How does that sit with you?

The potential for abuse in this agency should be self-evident by Ridge's own comments.  If he has a job for every US Citizen, doesn't that bother you in the least?  I'm thinking that job could have been clearly stated in five minutes by Bush himself, end of story.

It's my firm belief that you will rue the day this homeland defense office was initiated.

[TRY ONE]

When asked what his first action would be, Mr. Ridge said he was going to NY and confront the nation's greatest perpetrator of all time and say "Mr. Clinton, you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney..........."

[Poohbah]

In other words, you need to revoke Congressional authority to regulate immigration for at least 30-40 years. How you could do this constitutionally is beyond me; you'd obviously need to overthrow the government to accomplish this. If I wished to live in a two-bit dictatorship, I'd move to Iraq.

[LisaFab]

I'm certainly not for bigger government but if we MUST have some kind of new cabinet post to deal with domestic terrorism (i.e., organizing groups to guard water supplies, et al) I'm glad to have a man like Ridge lead the effort.

And I DO support Bush's resistance to create 30,000 more federal jobs for airport security. Ridge's agency might be able to privatize this workforce with some federal certification involved. This is new ground folks.

[BlueNgold]

I'm confused: Which is it?
Is Tom Ridge going to over-ride the President, Vice-President, and SecState to hurtle us headlong into the UN One-World threat?
Or is Tom Ridge going to take over the FBI and Justice and turn America into an isolated police state?
Will someone please help me figure all this out ... here I thought he was going to do exactly what the president told him to do and clean up information channels and coordinate resources to protect the border and react to internal threats.

[DoughtyOne]

I've got a good idea. Why don't you move to a nation that doesn't have the laws on the books to do just what we have demanded our government do. If you don't like our immigration laws you're obviously in the wrong nation. Just a helpful hint: Don't move to Mexico. Their immigration laws are roughly the same as ours and they enforce theirs.

[Poohbah]

Maybe you didn't quite catch the drift of the post I was responding to. That post simply wanted ALL immigration banned for 30-40 years, apparently not considering that Congress does have and would continue to have (unless he overthrew the government) authority to regulate immigration. Apparently, he would insist on outlawing any sort of dissent from his idea--and the right of people to elect representatives who have any opinion different from his.

The funniest part about the politics of immigration is that the biggest advocates of rounding up illegals and herding them back to Mexico at gunpoint are also the same folks who hire day labor without being too particular about the residency status of the laborers they hire. And they tend to vehemently oppose punishing those businesses that hire illegal immigrants. They apparently do not understand the concept of an "attractive nuisance."

[DoughtyOne]

I would agree with your criticism of my post.

Congress has the power to restrict immigration any time they like. I wouldn't go for the 30-40 years this poster recommended because I do want to see people from all over come here. But if you were to ask me if I support a ten year moratorium, I'd say definately. We need at least that long to research the people Clinton let come in over the last eight years without checking them out. We know there were felons. I'm guessing there were worse. Actually that was proven wasn't it. Our visas and immigration policies need to be tightened up. When we've cleaned up the mess we can start allowing more in on a well controled basis.