Free Republic

“Environmental justice” describes the commitment of the Federal Government, through its policies, programs, and activities, to avoid placing disproportionately high and adverse effects on the human health and environment of minority or low-income populations. As described in the 2010 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR), our Nation’s vision of homeland security is a homeland safe and secure, resilient against terrorism and other hazards, and where American interests and aspirations and the American way of life can thrive. In seeking to fulfill this vision, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) aspires to avoid burdening minority and low-income populations with a disproportionate share...

I think the Department of Homeland Security just called me a terrorist. Not only me, but millions of other law-abiding Americans, not to mention Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Patrick Henry, among others.

Obama lost my vote yesterday when he declined to expand the exceedingly narrow conscience exemptions proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The issue of conscience protections is so foundational, I do not see how I ever could, in good conscience, vote for this man again. I do not come at this issue as a Catholic special pleader, who wants only to protect my own, although it was a little bracing to realize that the president’s decision yesterday essentially told us, as Catholics, that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our...

Just sit back for a minute and imagine the howls from the media if it was disclosed that George W. Bush's Department of Homeland Security was monitoring the social media activity of journalists. The word Nixonian would be trending on Twitter and you could be assured the daily White House press briefing would turn into a free-for-all. Well, it'll be interesting to see the reaction of Obama's adoring White House press corps when they discover their activities are being tracked by the Department of Homeland Security.Freedom of speech might allow journalists to get away with a lot in America, but...

VIPR Searches and the American Citizen: 'Dominate. Intimidate. Control.' By John W. Whitehead 7/5/2011 "They're trying to scare the pants off the American people that we need these things... Fear is a commodity and they're selling it. The more they can sell it, the more we buy into it. When American people are afraid, they will accept anything."--Kate Hanni, passengers' rights advocate "Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government...Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and...

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security lied to Congress and the media to cover up a secret amnesty program that dismissed the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions. The scandalous story of how the government agency charged with keeping America safe systematically cancels pending deportations was first reported by Texas’s largest newspaper last year. The remarkable program stunned the legal profession and baffled immigration attorneys who say the government bounced their clients’ deportation even when expulsion was virtually guaranteed.After the story broke other media outlets began to dig around and Senate leaders launched...

According to another one of those White House briefings of reporters designed to suck up all available credit for good news, President Obama's homeland security advisor reveals that it was a really tense time in the air-conditioned White House as unidentified U.S. Navy SEALs closed in on the world's most wanted man after midnight a half a world away. "Minutes passed like days," says John Brennan, who bravely stood with press secretary Jay Carney before reporters and TV cameras today chronicling his boss' weekend heroics. The heavily-armed commandos flying in a quartet of darkened Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters more than...

"Project Gunwalker," the growing scandal in which the Burea of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) deliberately allowed thousands of firearms to be "walked" across the U.S./Mexican border by known gun traffickers, was almost certainly primarily the work of the Department of Justice. The DoJ is the parent department of the BATFE, and DoJ's fingerprints are all over this travesty. Still, this is too big for even the DoJ to have done completely on its own. Sipsey Street Irregular Mike Vanderboegh has been digging deeply into what looks like an administration-wide operation to create the mythical "iron river" of guns...

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano used a trip to El Paso, Texas, as an opportunity to claim that the border with Mexico is “better now than it ever has been.”

Obama and Janet Napolitano appointed Arif Alikhan, a devout Muslim, as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano swore-in Kareem Shora, a devout Muslim, who was born in Damascus, Syria, as ADC National Executive Director as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).

The government flouts the Fourth Amendment in the name of security. It was Adolf Hitler who first used science and technology to monitor people, places, and things. Closed-circuit television, or CCTV, was developed for the Third Reich by Siemens AG to observe V-2 rocket launches and operators at the Peenemünde Research Center in Germany. In the 1940s, CCTV used strategically placed video cameras to capture footage and then broadcast it back, allowing for real-time surveillance.Flash forward 70 years and surveillance systems have, like it or not, become broadly accepted as part of 21st century life — from traffic cameras, to...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano rang in the New Year with a visit to Afghanistan. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Embassy in Kabul) (CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which by its own admission has thus far failed to control even half of America's nearly 2,000-mile-long border with Mexico, is now sending personnel to Afghanistan to help that country secure its border with Pakistan. On a New Year’s visit to Afghanistan, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said there are now 25 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CPB) personnel on the ground in Afghanistan. That...

What is unclear is the extent to which companies such as Walmart will be asked to assist in detaining persons of interest. The Gazette asked Walmart corporate if DHS was expecting them to detain individuals, if requested by law-enforcement, until officers could arrive at the scene. They were also asked if they had received assurances they would not be held liable if they detained someone based simply on a report by another customer. Multiple requests for information were not returned. There has already been one such case in which a private company was sued for acting on individuals with concerns....

In the wake of last month’s DHS memo on how to create a de facto amnesty without congressional consent comes a similar “draft” proposal instructing local police to stop enforcing immigration laws. As reported by my colleague Jessica Vaughan, “According to a draft policy document now being circulated among a limited group of stakeholders, ICE chief John Morton intends to prohibit not only his officers, but also local officers with 287(g)immigration authority, from busting illegal aliens who are discovered as a result of traffic violations.” So that means we’ll go back to the situation where illegal aliens can drive illegally...

The 1,200 National Guard troops that are being deployed incrementally to the southwest border “will not be doing direct law enforcement,” said U.S. National Guard Bureau Director of Communications Jack Harrison when asked if the forces would be interdicting drugs and undocumented immigrants. “The two mission sets are criminal analysts and enter-identification team,” Harrison told CNSNews.com. “I can tell you that guardsmen will not be doing direct law enforcement on the southwest border.” In other words, the National Guardsmen will not be used to actually stop and detain illegal aliens trying to sneak across the border into the United States.Harrison...

Sound too conspiratorial to be true? Like the cover-up ops of spy novels? Well, it's reality. And it is possibly the most bizarre, inhumane and abusive way that the White House is expanding its power over the American people. It's not an extremist belief or theory of the far right. It's a fact that has been confirmed by The New York Times, The Washington Post and MSNBC and even documented by the far-left online magazine Salon.com. And it's the gravest nightmare of U.S. citizens and abandonment of our Constitution to date: a presidential assassination program in which U.S. citizens are...

Source: Administration Weighs Bypassing Congress to Let Illegal Immigrants Stay The Obama administration has been holding behind-the-scenes talks to determine whether the Department of Homeland Security can unilaterally grant legal status on a mass basis to illegal immigrants, a former Bush administration official who spoke with at least three people involved in those talks told FoxNews.com. The Obama administration has been holding behind-the-scenes talks to determine whether the Department of Homeland Security can unilaterally grant legal status on a mass basis to illegal immigrants, a former Bush administration official who spoke with at least three people involved in those talks...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation's homeland security chief said Friday. As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans' civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

A top Department of Homeland Security official reportedly said his agency will not necessarily process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona authorities. John Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, made the comment during a meeting on Wednesday with the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper reports. "I don't think the Arizona law, or laws like it, are the solution," Morton told the newspaper. The best way to reduce illegal immigration is through a comprehensive federal approach, he said, and not a patchwork of state laws. The law, which criminalizes being in...

Attorney General Eric Holder tells Jake Tapper this morning that alleged Times Square bombing screwup Faisal Shahzad was facilitated, financed and working under the direction of the Pakistani Taliban. While that clears some things up, remember that there is still a middle-aged Tea Party supporter stalking the Nutmeg State, who is angry about the housing crisis and the health care bill, with his U.S. citizenship still in good standing, and probably linking up with our home-grown militias for more one-off attacks. OK, so I'm the millionth person to make that joke in the last week. But it's more than a...