Napolitano offers regular meetings with critical House Republicans

By GottaLaff

This is reminiscent of going back to an abusive lover for more:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is following President Barack Obama’s lead in reaching out to House Republicans.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, met privately with Napolitano Thursday morning and said he was encouraged by her promise during their discussion to meet with Republicans on the committee once a month.

Oh what the heck. Keep reaching out. It's never hurt us before, right, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.)?

Wrong. He called for Napolitano's resignation. He's not reciprocating to her reachy outiness in the least:

“At this time, I don’t see anything that makes me more confident about the safety of our country, our lives, and our property while Napolitano is in charge,” he said in an e-mailed response. “Furthermore, last week President Obama made a big show surrounding his meeting with Republicans and then spent the following week mischaracterizing the discussions. I will not gamble away our nation’s security with more of the administration’s PR stunts.”

This from the party of PR stunts. Kettle? Pot on line one.

King would not discuss calls for Napolitano’s resignation within his conference and instead said he was impressed by her offer to meet one-on-one and continue appearing privately before Republicans once a month.

Peter King as the voice of reason. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

UPDATE: Passenger Lights Explosive on Delta Flight

By GottaLaff

A Delta Airbus 330 airliner sits on a runway at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Michigan in this video grab made December 25, 2009. REUTERS/WDIV TV/Handout

Here's an update on the attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight. The explosive device failed. Original post here.

Via CBS:

"This does not strike us as having the earmarks of any kind of well-planned or well-orchestrated attack," a senior security official told CBS News justice correspondent Bob Orr.

White House spokesman Bill Burton, who is with President Obama on vacation in Hawaii said that Mr. Obama was notified of the incident this morning and convened a secure conference call with John Brennan, his Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism Adviser, and Denis McDonough, NSS Chief of Staff.

A senior administration official tells CBS News White House correspondent Peter Maer that the incident was "an attempted act of terrorism." The administration is not raising the terror threat level, but President Obama is receiving constant updates on the situation.

The official declined to elaborate on how a man on a U.S. terrorist watch list was able to board the airliner. The official said the U.S. plans "different things at different airports" in response to the incident. He declined to elaborate.

He added that the U.S. is "in close touch with Dutch counterparts" because the suspect boarded the airliner in Amsterdam.

A high-ranking law enforcement official told Orr that the suspect apparently used a syringe to inject a chemical into powder located near his groin, a technique not seen in previous attempted attacks. It's possible, the source said, that this incident was a test of whether the materials could pass screening and how effective they might be at causing damage.

President Obama was not clearing brush, nor was he reading My Pet Goat. He did not ignore the situation, and he knows how to use one that thing-- Oh what's it called? Oh yeah-- a brain.

Being alert and involved is the new normal.

That's change we can believe in.

Of course, the wingies are fully supportive of their commander in chief in time of war:

the dirtbag in chief will never do anything. if he isnt muslim then he’s just a simpleton. he’s not at war with the scum but they are at war with us. he doesn’t get it that its his Job to protect the citizens of this nation. what a treacherous dumb guy we got stuck with, and all the character of a bedbug.

UPDATE:

Just now on CNN (which was about 2 hours late on this story), Ed Henry said that Obama and Homeland Security would be taking specific measures for airline security, rather than just "some color code".

Yeah, those charts worked so well for us. Of course, politicizing terrorism benefited BushCo like nobody's biz.

Video- IWatch LA

Creepy as hell. Plus the camera is too close to their faces. Are things really that bad in LA? h/t Ben.

ABC News Exclusive: NSA Head Says President Obama Having Greater Success Taking Terrorists Out of Commission Than Bush

Suck. On. That. Dick. This is just an excerpt, go read the whole thing.

Responding to criticism from former Vice President Cheney that President Obama is making the nation more vulnerable to terrorism, the president’s National Security Adviser, Gen. Jim Jones (Ret.), told ABC News in an exclusive interview that actually the reverse is true: President Obama’s greater success with international relations has meant more terrorists put out of commission.

“This type of radical fundamentalism or terrorism is a threat not only to the United States but to the global community,” Jones said. “The world is coming together on this matter now that President Obama has taken the leadership on it and is approaching it in a slightly different way – actually a radically different way – to discuss things with other rulers to enhance the working relationships with law enforcement agencies – both national and international."

Jones said that “we are seeing results that indicate more captures, more deaths of radical leaders and a kind of a global coming-together by the fact that this is a threat to not only the United States but to the world at-large and the world is moving toward doing something about it.”

McCaskill Tapped for New Oversight Post

By GottaLaff

Joe Lieberman shouldn't chair anything:

Claire McCaskill will get to chair a new subcommittee under the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (chaired by everybody's favorite, Joe Lieberman). This subcommittee, the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Contract Oversight, will be responsible for overseeing all federal contracting. Quite the plum for McCaskill, who will be able to draw on her previous experience as auditor.

Here's the entire press release.

National Security Watch: Rand Beers Tapped as Counselor to Napolitano

By GottaLaff

Janet Napolitano is the type of person you can have a Beers with:

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D), President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of homeland security, named her first senior aide this morning, tapping Rand Beers as counselor.

Beers, a former National Security Council staffer and State Department official for Democratic and Republican administrations, served from 2002 to 2003 as counter-terrorism adviser to President Bush before resigning to coordinate security issues for the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Beers subsequently formed a small think tank, the National Security Network, and was in charge of Obama's homeland security transition team.

He gets extra points for this:

Rand Beers stirred up controversy with remarks^[5] he made at an event hosted by the Center for American Progress in June 2008. The event, dubbed "McCain University," was a comprehensive effort to illustrate John McCain's policy proposals in the context of the 2008 Presidential Election. During the Question and Answer portion of the event, Beers noted that "his [John McCain's] national security experience [...] is sadly limited" due to the fact that "he was in isolation essentially for many of those years and did not experience the turmoil here or the challenges that were involved for those of us who served in Vietnam during the Vietnam war." These comments elicited widespread criticism from conservative observers such as Rush Limbaugh^[6] and Karl Rove ^[7], as well as a variety of right-wing blogs.^[8]

Kentucky law requires state Homeland Security office to credit God with state's safety

Very weird state commonwealth**.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) _ A lawmaker says the state's Homeland Security office should be crediting God with keeping the state safe.

State Rep. Tom Riner, a Southern Baptist minister who was instrumental in establishing that requirement in 2006, disapproves of the fact that Homeland Security doesn't currently mention God in its mission statement or on its Web site.

The law passed under former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who prominently credited God in annual reports to state leaders. But Gov. Steve Beshear's administration didn't credit God in its 2008 Homeland Security report issued last month.

(snip)

The law that organized the Homeland Security office first lists Homeland Security's duty to recognize that government itself can't secure the state without God, even before mentioning other duties, which include distributing millions of dollars in federal grants and analyzing possible threats.

**corrected via comments.

Home Sweet Homeland Security

By GottaLaff

Pallin' around with terrorists:

President-elect Obama departed his Hyde Park house at 2:42 p.m. this afternoon, arriving at his transition office in downtown Chicago at 3:03 p.m. Just before he left his house, a police officer stationed a block away stopped two local residents at a concrete barrier.

"Let 'em go, they live here!" another police officer shouted. Then, he added: "You only stop them if they live right next door, or if they look like suicide bombers or something."

Home sweet home.

Rand Beers Heading Obama’s Homeland Security Transition

By GottaLaff

More transition news:

Good news for people who don’t like their airliners hijacked or their chemical plants blown up. Rand Beers, longtime counterterrorism aide to presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, is heading Barack Obama’s transition team for the beleaguered Dept. of Homeland Security.

Mark Hosenball at Newsweek reports:

Obama’s transition team for Homeland Security will only meet for the first time later this week, according to a Democrat close to the Obama campaign who would speak about the decision-making only on condition of anonymity. The person reportedly heading the team is Rand Beers…

[...] My understanding is he’s got about 15 people on that team, although he himself isn’t directly in charge of personnel.

And all to the good. Few people know more about homeland security than Beers, who, as Hosenball notes, was part of former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke’s brain trust that spent the mid to late 1990s obsessed with Al Qaeda. He resigned from the Bush administration in protest of the invasion of Iraq, became Sen. John Kerry’s national security adviser for the 2004 campaign, and then founded the National Security Network, a liberal group that mentors Democrats on security issues.

BushCo: Homeland Insecurity. It's a relief to believe that an administration has our best interests at heart.

No tailgating before Obama's big speech

But, but where will I grill the kielbasa?

If you're planning to be one of the 50,000 people attending Sen. Barack Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field, don't think of holding a Broncos-style tailgate party beforehand.

Security-related transportation plans to be disclosed today include a parking ban in the huge stadium lots for the closing night event that is the highlight of the Democratic National Convention.

Officials also plan to announce other measures, including any street and transit detours, closures and restrictions, according to Ron Perea, special agent in charge of the Denver office of the U.S. Secret Service.

Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names

By Paddy


What a fracking joke.

WASHINGTON, DC - The nation's terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government's own reported numbers for the size of the list.

"Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon."

(snip)

"America's new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what's wrong with this administration's approach to security: it's unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought, and is a very real impediment in the lives of millions of travelers in this country," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. "It must be fixed without delay."