Take Back the Senate
Keep the House
TOSS OUT THE DASCHLE/CLINTON DEMOCRATS!
Posted on 09/05/2002 8:06:30 AM PDT by PhiKapMom
Homeland Security Debate Off Track
2002-09-05
FOR a change, it would be good to hear Senate Democrats, discussing the proposed Department of Homeland Security, talk about homeland security. After all, that is the reason for creating the new agency. Yet instead of focusing on protecting America from outside threats, some Democrats seem to be preoccupied with protecting federal workers' job security.
We're not against employee rights. But in this debate, fixation on workplace procedures, rules and guidelines just misses the real point -- which is how to set up and operate a new department that will make the United States safer from attack.
This appears lost on Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D- Conn., whose bill creating the department so restricts President Bush's authority to shape and manage the agency that the White House is threatening a veto.
Daschle, speaking to reporters Tuesday, said: "We're not going to roll over when it comes to the principles and beliefs we hold to be very, very important."
What principles? Freedom? Liberty? The American way of life? No. Daschle referred to organized labor, hiring and firing practices and whether Congress will micromanage the department -- certain to appeal to unionized federal workers who are major players in Democratic Party politics.
Lieberman, who normally is one of the Senate's most thoughtful members, said he was "perplexed" at Bush's veto threat. He said he was concerned with "team spirit" in the new department. Worker morale is important. But again, it's not the purpose of the new department.
Our concern, expressed here before, is that if Democrats get their way, Homeland Security will become just another Washington bureaucracy, moving at glacial speed while terrorists and other security threats run laps around it.
This must not occur. The stakes are too high to simply shuffle a few organizational charts. The new department should be lean, nimble and responsive. Bush should be given the control he needs to make it that way.
The Senate should follow the lead of the House of Representatives and pass enacting legislation Bush can enthusiastically sign.
If you do not know your Senators contact information, please visit the Senate website to get the information and Call, Write, or whatever. Let them know you will not stand for daschle/clintons putting America second!
And send letters to your local papers -- call talk radio -- and send to everyone you know to get them to do the same.
America #1 not Public Employees Unions!
I don't think we need a "Department of Homeland Security".
What we need is a "Department of citizen's concealed carry".
First, you give any citizen who desires one a concealed carry permit after they have taken some training. Then, let those citizens, who have a concealed carry permit, carry where ever they go. Airports, airplanes, trains, home, out in public, etc.
THAT should be our, "Department of Homeland Security".
The Homeland Security Bill's Poison Pill
September 4th, 2002 | Michelle Malkin
Criminal aliens and their lawyers are rooting mightily for the Senate's version of the Homeland Security bill now being debated in Washington. That's because buried in the legislation is a very dangerous proposal to grant unprecedented power to a secretive, soft-on-immigration crime bureaucracy that oversees deportation appeals.
Under Title XIII of S. 2452, dubbed the "Immigration Reform, Accountability and Security Enhancement Act of 2002," political appointees on the Board of Immigration Appeals would be elevated to the level of statutory appellate judges. They could formally reopen any final order of deportation and reopen the factual findings of trial courts at their discretion.
Such procedures trample over bedrock principles of appellate review within our judicial system. No other appellate body in the country has the same power to retry the facts of cases on appeal, including the federal court system. This means that criminal aliens get "two bites at the apple" -- two opportunities to present their facts. It's a legal advantage that American citizens themselves do not enjoy when pursuing matters in the federal courts.
Once the board determines that illegal aliens, asylum seekers and criminal aliens convicted of violent felonies can stay in this country, these decisions would be the final word.
Here is why you should be afraid: The bill would completely strip the attorney general of his longstanding ability to administratively overrule the board
-- as he did recently in the outrageous case of Melanie Beaucejour Jean. She was a Haitian nanny convicted of second-degree manslaughter in the beating death of a 19-month-old boy from upstate New York in 1995. In May, Ashcroft reversed a bleeding-heart ruling by three Janet Reno-appointed members of the board who had argued that Jean should be allowed to stay in the United States because the brutal killing of a defenseless child did "not constitute a crime of violence."
We don't know just how rampant such unconscionable legal reasoning by the board really is because the majority of its decisions are unpublished. But among the criminal alien appellants who have prevailed in published board decisions are repeat drunk drivers, sexual abusers, burglars, drug offenders and other aggravated felons who escaped deportation on convoluted technicalities.
The unaccountable appeals board has been a major obstacle in immigration law enforcement, and by extension, the War on Terror. Ashcroft highlighted the panel's abominable record earlier this year when he unveiled a package of reforms to streamline its decision-making process. The board receives more than 270,000 cases a year, and recently had a massive backlog of more than 56,000 pending cases. It is a sham deportation system that has spawned more than 314,000 fugitive alien deportees, with an unknown number of potential terrorists and violent criminals among them.
Among us.
As Ashcroft noted: "The backlog gives unscrupulous lawyers an incentive to file frivolous appeals in which the immigrant has no valid argument. Even though they cannot win, they are able, using the system, to guarantee the client additional years within the border of the United States. By exploiting this bottleneck in the system, such lawyers allow individuals who are here in violation of our laws to remain here even longer . . . we cannot and we will not allow an administrative bottleneck to threaten our national security."
Creating bottlenecks is the bread and butter of the immigration lawyers' lobby. That is why they and their friends in high places (such as the legislative staffs of Sens. Joe Lieberman and Teddy Kennedy) are livid at Ashcroft's attempts to rein in the board. Their poison pill -- secretly snuck into the Homeland Security bill with no public debate -- is perilously petulant payback disguised as "reform" and "accountability." Isn't it time to stop putting profits and politics ahead of national security?
I'd also like to know just exactly how Liebermann ever got the image as a "thoughtful" senator. All he does is say that he's "troubled" or "perplexed" and then votes 100% Liberal.
Michael
That question is not in my department. My comment was meant to concur that there are NC State Troopers driving Jeeps and they don't have the normal Cop Car profile. My brain needs to adjust to scanning for something different on the road.
It's high time we dispatched some deadweight Federal BureaucRATS from the dole!!
FReegards...MUD
FGS
I think the homeland security issue is but another excuse for more expenditure, and more expansive government.
America must be ultra secure, but ultra free which is a hard balance, but if we lose freedom in our persuit of security, then the terrorists really have won.
We do not need more government. We need the $2,000,000,000,000 dollar budget used to secure the country, not expand the government.
Think consolidation. If "W" gets his way, my suspicion is much of the responsibility of our "not so efficient" and Rat infested agencies will be rolled into the new agency. Hence, the reason for the flexibility to manage this new agency. JMO...
FGS
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